Gamer (Gamer Trilogy) (11 page)

I felt the familiar rush of teleporting and then felt the world
become solid again.
I opened my eyes – and felt something literally grab my
heart. My eyes bulged as my chest strained against the force
restraining it.
Behind the red spots across my vision, Xander advanced
on me. Suddenly I felt like I’d been plunged into cold water.
A voice sounded in my head.
‘Victor, if you value your life, you’ll do exactly as I say.’
The
presence left.
Fear and adrenaline coursed through me, I felt sure that I
was going to die. I would not give in to Xander’s threats,
however.
My heart struggled to beat harder and harder. Red spots
became black spots. Black spots became white spots.
Then nothing.

I prayed, for Victor’s sake, that he was just manipulating
Grace - because even he had standards. At least I thought
he did…
I wished Grace was dead.
When I came to, I found myself in complete darkness. My

hands had already been chained, the weights on my feet
stopped me from moving too far and after a short time, I
discovered that there was no way of escape.

Only three times, had the deafening silence been
interrupted. Twice, an uncharacteristic thudding noise,
each time from a different place – and the other time was
when Victor arrived and looked me in the eye while hooking
up with Grace.

The worst part about my imprisonment was the silence. I
was scared to break it myself, however, for fear of Grace
coming back.

Letting the events wash over me, I relived the forest scene,
where Victor pushed me away. I went back further, and
remembered when I had protected Grace, patted her hair
and hoped that Lily hadn’t hurt her.

I shuddered – now I wished she was dead.
Lily. I hadn’t seen Lily since she ran from the meadow – I
wondered briefly if she was okay, or if she had been killed.
Surely somebody must’ve seen her at some point. I mean,
she wasn
‘
Stefanie.’
I shrank back. Somewhere, I had heard somebody call my

name, but it definitely wasn’t aloud.
‘Stefanie, it’s me. Lily.’
I looked around, convinced I was going crazy. I stood up

‘Stefanie, it IS m
e. I’min the cell next to you,’
the voice
said.
“Stefanie,” a whisper that definitely sounded like Lily’s
emanated from the silence.
Wow. Coincidence or not? I’d just been thinking about
Lily, and at that exact same moment, she’d found me. But
now I was alert – how had she gotten into my head?
‘It’s my power,’
Lily’s voice mentally sounded again,
‘I can
read minds –and use my power to talk to people in their
minds.’
Oh shit, I mean shoot, I mean, agh. Hi Lily.
‘Hi Stefanie,’
she responded. Somehow I could tell she was
finding this humorous.
We sat in silence for a moment and then I was reminded of
the fact that I had zero powers thus far. Eugh.
‘Don’t worry,’
Lily said,
‘you’ll get themwhen you need
them.’
How optimistic of her.
Sorry, I meant thank you.
I heard her laugh mentally.
How can you be so cheery?
I asked her,
Grace has fricken
locked us up and she’s probably going to kill us very soon.
Suddenly Lily’s thoughts took a different direction.
Rather than telling me, Lily showed me images of what
had happened to her while I was either asleep, unconscious,
or absent. It was horrific.
The memories rang through with fear; in all of them,
Grace was using her wand to get Lily to tell her what her
powers were. Lily was yet to concede, but each time she
remained silent, the illusions and the pain got worse.
I watched in mental silence while illusions of electric
shock, icy coldness, extreme heat, lashings and maggots
plagued Lily and yet somehow she remained silent.
Even more worrying were Grace’s thoughts, that Lily
could hear the entire time. They were so laced with hatred,
anger and cruel intent that the barely sounded human.
Just as worrying was the fact that Lily was coping easily
enough to suggest it seemed like something she endured on
a regular basis. She was tough.
I could feel her fear and I realised that she just needed a
friend.
A memory of a metal collar flashed before my eyes.
“What was that?” I called out to her.
‘Nothing,’
she responded mentally. I could feel the
vulnerability behind that sentence.
‘It wasn’t entirely all for nothing, however,’
Lily said.
‘I
managed to gather how she made all of, this.’
A sequence of mental images flashed through my mind,
Grace choking Lily, Grace running so fast that there were
two of her, Grace vibrating on the spot while casting an
illusion of the building and then bringing it to life, Grace’s
wand then conjuring an image of… me? Focusing more
closely, I realised it was an image of me receiving a Citizens
Award a couple of years back, an award I might not have
deserved, but all the same, an entirely random memory. And
then Grace disappeared into the image.
I watched from Grace’s perspective as she created the
illusion of the army and then burst into the clearing, having
us surrounded. I listened to her thoughts as – she was
playing Victor. I watched myself, clinging to Victor with
fear, my face buried in his shoulder – and then watched as
he shot Grace a lovesick expression. Grace winked back,
thinking how easy Victor was to manipulate.
Fast forward and then I was here but still there was more.
I watched as Grace cast an image of B3ast and summoned
him to her. He was battered and bruised but clearly, for
some reason, thought he was still fighting. Grace did
something to him and he slumped at the entrance of the
building. His body was transported to one of the cells.
Grace was unstoppable.
‘She uses her wand to make fake images and then
somehow uses her extremespeed to make themreal,’ Lily
said. ‘Like this building.’
This mental communication thing was so exposing. It
opened up a whole new arena of potential exploitation, the
ability to drive people insane by manipulating them from the
inside, maybe you could even take control of someone…
But I thought about what this meant. Grace’s powers
literally extended as far as her imagination – in which case
we had no hope in making this out alive. And that was
dangerous in itself – what happened when you died in
Simulator when you were trapped?
There was a dragging sound from the cell across from me.
‘Don’t worry,’
Lily’s voice chided,
‘that’s just B3ast.’

B3ast. I remember coming into Simulator thinking that he
would be the biggest threat. I hadn’t seen or even heard
from him up until now and I questioned whether or not I
was flawed in my original ideas.

Lily’s voice sounded in my mind again,
‘don’t
underestimate him. He’s powerful.’
This mental communication thing was also kind of
convenient.
Waiting for B3ast to completely wake up, I crossed my
legs, trying to find a comfortable position. As I did so, my
hair fell in front of my face – so gross.
My mind briefly flashed to Kaltimore at Edge Designs – I
would be lucky to make it out of here alive, let alone win the
Omega.
My heart rate instinctively increased at the mention of the
award. I wondered if I had any chance at all…
Another dragging sound echoed through the hall and then
another and another and I realised that B3ast was trying to
walk around with the weights attached to his legs.
I wondered momentarily if B3ast could still use his powers
to escape. On the one hand, Lily could still use her powers
of, well, telepathy, down here but before, when Victor had
arrived, he hadn’t been able to teleport away.
Somehow, Grace had blocked his power and yet for some
reason hadn’t blocked Lily’s.
“Hello,” B3ast called out, “is there anybody there?”
I thought it could be a significant advantage if he didn’t
know we were here and if either of us managed to escape, it
would be one less person we would have to set free.
However, if he didn’t know we were here and he escaped…
‘I think we should tell himwe’re here,’Lily’s
voice echoed in
my mind.
Okay.
“B3ast,” I called out, “I’m here and so is Lily.”
Another shuffle.
“Who are
you
?” he called back.
“I’m Stefanie,” my voice sounded so tired.
“Oh…” he said.
Silence. Awkward silence. For some reason or other I was
clearly not the person he wanted to see but it didn’t bother
me, he wasn’t exactly my first choice either.
“How did you get here?” I asked. Even though I saw Grace
conjure him, I wanted to know what he had been doing
before that.
“Grace brought me here,” was his only response.
“We know that,” I heard Lily’s actual voice for the first
time, “but what were you doing before that?”
Silence.
Lily’s laugh sounded in my head.
‘All you had to do was get
himto think about it.’
A series of images that Lily had taken from B3ast’s mind,
flashed through my head.
B3ast had been with Xander. They were walking through
the forest but B3ast decided to attack Xander and slowed
down walking for a moment. When Xander turned around,
B3ast launched a hail of rocks at his face, then turned the
ground beneath Xander into quicksand and solidified it
back into dirt.
Xander had somehow deflected the rocks but was now
stuck, ankle-deep, in solid dirt. It was all he could do to
stand upright. But then B3ast went rigid.
Something Xander was doing had caused B3ast to freeze
and there was a sudden rush of adrenaline from B3ast, as
Xander’s voice sounded in his head.
Before I could make out what it meant, Xander
telekinetically launched a fallen glass tree branch at him.
Just as it began to hit, B3ast disappeared – and reappeared
on the marble steps of the building we were in now – facing
Grace. He was sent down to the jail and only just woke up.
Lily’s power was invaluable,
thanks.
‘You’re welcome,’
she responded.
And then I thought of Xander. Xander, who had
supposedly attacked me, incapacitated me and caused
Victor to teleport into that damn meadow where Grace had
cornered us. I had really liked Xander, I had considered
“It wasn’t him,” Lily said aloud.
“What?” I called out into the darkness.
Lily reverted to mental speech, clearly with the intent of
keeping B3ast in the dark. Hah, pun. Lily’s mental eye-roll
reached me. ‘
Well Victor had been in it with Grace the
entire time. They plotted fromthe beginning to take you
out. Fromwhat I understood fromGrace’s thoughts, Victor
couldn’t kill you himself but took advantage of his affair with
Grace to get you out of the picture. When he got cold feet,
he made sure you were only made unconscious.’

Xander and wanted you to
hate him.’
“What?! That’s crazy!” I yelled into the darkness.
“But it worked, didn’t it.” Lily hadn’t asked it as a question

I felt guilty. “Oh god, so now Xander thinks that next time
I see him I’m going to try and kill him. Which means he’s
going to-”

Lily’s presence entered my mind again and calmed me
down.
‘We’ll think about it when we get there, now let’s just try to
find a way out of here.’
“How is it,” I spoke aloud, “that Grace was able to block
Victor’s power and assumedly
is
blocking B3ast’s power,” I
figured if B3ast could use his powers, he would be long
gone by now, “and yet cannot block yours?”
Lily and B3ast answered my question in sync, “Because she
doesn’t know what it is.”
“Oh,” was my only response.
I stood up again to start searching for some kind of escape.
Any grates, gaps, windows, anything whatsoever. Likewise,
Lily was doing the same.
After several minutes of searching, I gave up.
“Nothing,” I said.
Lily’s voice echoed the same response.
I sat on the floor of my cell, frustrated at everything. Victor
had played me, Grace was a cow, Lily had been tortured,
B3ast was incapacitated and Xander was innocent after all.
Nobody should have the right to be able to imprison me
like this.
Nobody in Simulator was even close in status to me. I was
going to be a super-model. A super-model.
Grace was a pathetic cheater and Victor and her deserved
each other.
B3ast was just as weak, a coward behind his own powers. I
wouldn’t be too fussed if he died.
Lily and Xander were the only two people who hadn’t
managed to do anything wrong as of yet. Xander was slowly
going crazy though, if I didn’t get to him soon enough – to
tell him it was okay, that I knew it wasn’t him – he’d be too
far gone on his power bend to recover.
Being bullied by Victor, losing me, nearly dying fighting
Grace, having B3ast in his grasp and then watching him
disappear, Victor now going after him and anything else inbetween, it was a miracle that he still had any ounce of
feeling left to him.
But now this game was making me angry. I was being held
against my own will, trapped by the wants of a little, albeit
sadistic, girl and I knew that I was so much better than this.
The anger only intensified and although it was irrational, I
just wanted to lash out at everything and everyone around
me.
I started to feel hot, as if the anger was literally giving me a
fever and even then, this just made me angrier.
I wished Grace was dead.
Suddenly my skin erupted in flames, I yelled out, but it was
too late.
The lights in the hallway were on and Grace appeared. I
needed to put the fire out or do something to make myself
unnoticed before she blocked my power.
Seeing her, however, just intensified my anger and without
even thinking, the red and yellow flames leaping around my
body, became blue and then invisible.
Invisible.
Grace couldn’t see me.
I crouched in anticipation, waiting for her to discover I
was missing. As she saw Lily and then B3ast, she turned to
face my cell. I crouched in one of the corners, just in case.
But suddenly, without rationality, I just launched myself at
her.
My manacles and chain-ball had long since melted off and I
was fearless. I decided that I’d rather risk death than stay
here, waiting for Grace to decide when it was time.
She didn’t even see me coming.
I sliced clean through the cell bars and watched as she was
swept off her feet. She crashed into B3ast’s cage and
slumped to the ground. She didn’t move.
Taking the opportunity, I took her wand out of her hand
and focussed my rage specifically at it.
I was met with a satisfying hissing sound and then
watched as the narrow strip of wood turned to ash.
That was that problem sorted.
Before Simulator, I might’ve thought I was good looking
but now I was hot in more ways than one. I heard Lily
groan at my terrible joke.
Realising I had limited time, I melted through the bars of
Lily’s prison cell. Sensing my thoughts, she found me,
grabbed my hand and also became engulfed in my
invisibility. I already seemed to have an element of control
over this flame – but I couldn’t keep it up forever, I could
feel myself begin to weaken.
“What about me?” B3ast called out as Lily and I began to
run for the exit.
I paused, briefly considering the dangers.
If I set him free, he’d potentially become a bigger risk than
Grace was. If I didn’t set him free, he’d be after me with a
vengeance.
Darting back quickly, I slashed through the bars of his
prison, kicking Grace in the ribs while doing so and then
returning to Lily to continue on our escape.
My eyes met with B3ast’s and it went unspoken that he was
in debt to me; he nodded a gesture of gratitude.
“I’m going to try find my computer, so don’t wait up or
anything…?” B3ast awkwardly trailed off.
“Yeah,” I said in an undertone to Lily, “we weren’t going to
anyway.”
We raced up the marble staircase that seemed to be
leading out of the underground prison but we realised
something was wrong when the stairs continued to reach
infinitely higher.
Looking to Lily, I realised she had noticed the same thing.
“Did you see any doors that led out of this staircase back
there?” I asked her.
“No,” she sounded anxious, “none.”
With no other choice we continued our ascent.
Suddenly there was a screech behind us.
“MY WAAANDD! I’M GOING TO GET YOU ALL!”
A gust of wind suddenly blew up the staircase and what
sounded like rocks bashing against metal echoed past us.
“HOW DARE YOU! B3AST, YOU ARE NO MATCH
FOR ME!”
There were more yells, Grace still screeching curses. She
was obviously awake and B3ast hadn’t managed to get far
enough away. We didn’t have much time.
With a renewed sense of urgency, Lily and I bolted to the
top of what felt like a never-ending staircase. We finally
reached it. Silence.
We were standing in a circular-stone room, lit with flaming
torches that were perched in metal brackets inlaid in the
wall. There was an opening through which daylight
streamed.
I went over to what I thought was a door.
I whimpered, “Impossible.”
Lily had processed my thoughts before she even came over
to look herself.
Our eyes met, both relaying fear to one another. It was a
window, so high above the ground that to jump would be
suicide.
Lily, without a second thought, climbed up onto the ledge.
“LILY NO!” I yelled out. She was going to kill herself.
Her only response was to reach out her hand to me.
To take it would be spelling out my death.
A shriek of triumph sounded behind me. Grace had arrived
and was evidently satisfied.
Death or Grace, death or Grace.
I took Lily’s hand and climbed up onto the window ledge.
A look of pure delight crossed over Grace’s face as she
realised we were going to willingly kill ourselves.
I looked to Lily.
“Trust me,” was all she said.
She jumped, I followed.