The Game (6 page)

Yet, he’s out of breath…

…
he’s clutching at his
side.

Phantom pains, he thinks. I’m not the one
hurting. It’s whoever has control of my body.

Words float to him, a hazy memory from when he
first realized he was still alive. A woman’s voice, asking him
something—but what? Just when he thinks he remembers, the words
slip away like smoke in the wind. He tries to turn his thoughts
inward. If he is a puppet, then there must be strings, and if there
are strings, then there must be a puppet master controlling
them—controlling him.

“
Hello?” he says, testing the
theory. Silence greets him.

Silence! His body has stiffened. He’s holding
his breath as if listening. Excitement floods through
him.

“
Can you hear me?” he screams, the
sound of his voice bellows through his skull.

Finally, a breakthrough. Another voice fills
his minds, a voice that is not his own. It’s tiny and far away, but
clear and melodic. “Who are you?” it asks.

“
Oh, thank, God!” But that’s as far
as he gets. Pain shoots through his mind. Memories that are not his
own flash through his consciousness like a single-edged razor. His
own mind splits open and his memories pour like gasoline to a
flame—his screaming voice is not the only one in his head—the other
joins, creating a duo of undulating sound. Whatever is happening to
him, it’s happening to the puppet master too.

Then, just as it began, the pain stops and in a
moment of crystal clarity, the words he couldn’t remember come to
him and shine on his consciousness like neon light.

“
If you’re in there, please,
please go easy on the boy
.” It was the woman, Georgia Cobb. She
knew—rather, she suspects! She tried to warn him.

His body lies unmoving on the floor of one of
the plywood buildings—his eyes slowly close, enshrouding him in
darkness.

“
Paul? Are you there?” he
asks.

Yes
, answers the tiny, quiet voice. Rob
can hear the fear.

“
Do you know who I am? Do you know
what’s happened to us?”

Yes. I think so
. He pauses to gather the
new memories, to put them in some semblance of order.
You’re
Robert Daley. You were hurt while on military
deployment
.

“
Yes, that’s right. And now I need
your help.”

My…my help?

“
Yes. My body is dying but I want to
live.”

What can I do? I don’t know what to
do?

“
I’ve got a theory about that. Where
are you?”

I’m lying inside a game.

Rob already knows that—he knows the answer to
his next question too, but asks it anyway. He needs to keep the boy
talking. “Are your eyes closed?”

Yes. The pain…your memories…the light hurts my
eyes.

“
Paul, listen to me. I’m not going
to hurt you anymore. I think we’re both beyond that point
now.”

Are…are you sure?

Rob doesn’t want to lie to the boy, especially
if his suspicions prove wrong. “No, Paul. I’m not sure. I’m not
going to lie to you—but I need you to be strong for me and try to
open your eyes, okay? If what I believe is true, we both might be
in more danger if we don’t act fast.”

Da-danger?

“
Yes, Paul. I need your help. Open
your eyes for me.”

Light floods into his/Paul’s eyes, confirming
his suspicions. Somehow, their individual personalities and
memories have merged—molded together like Siamese Twins. Rob tries
something—he scratches his nose. Paul’s arm lifts and his finger
rubs along the bridge. The movement confirms Rob’s suspicion—he can
control Paul’s body just as if it’s his own.

My head hurts, Rob.

“
I’m sure it does, Paul. You’ve just
lived my entire life in the span of a few seconds.” This is a good
sign for Rob. If Paul is concentrating so much on his headache,
then maybe he didn’t notice when Rob took control for that brief
moment to scratch his nose.

He says, “We need to get out of here,
Paul.”

I can’t…I can’t. It hurts too bad.

“
I need you to Paul,
please.”

No. I can’t. You do it.

So much for him not noticing, but Rob can’t do
that—not without absolute confirmation that the kid doesn’t
mind—that he truly understands. “Are you sure?”

Paul’s head nods—of course, it’s not just
Paul’s head now—it’s
their
head. “I promise I won’t take
full control from you—if that’s even possible. But just till we’re
safe, okay?”

Yes, okay. I just don’t want to get in
trouble.

“
You won’t. I promise.”

Rob takes over. The transition feels almost
like changing places in line—at first, Paul is in the lead, but Rob
takes a mental step forward, pushing Paul’s consciousness
backward.

Rob scrambles to his feet and examines the
sphere around him. The door is to his left, cocked at an odd angle.
He takes a few steps to the right to turn the sphere and position
the door at a more user-friendly angle.

Singleton steps away from the observation
window to answer the phone.

A voice shouts into his ear, “Singleton! What’s
going on over there?”

He’s not sure what to say—why is Potter in a
panic? “What’s wrong, sir?”

“
What’s wrong? What’s wrong is I
have a dead stick over here.”

“
Dead stick?” Then it hits him.
Something’s happened. He rushes back to the window and looks down
at the glowing sphere below. As far as he can tell, everything
looks normal. The simulation is still running. Because of the
bright video playing across the globe’s surface, he can’t tell if
the boy is moving or not. As far as he knows, young Paul might be
lying on the floor unconscious—or dead. They warned him at the
beginning what might happen—what
did
happen to all the other
test subjects.

“
I’ll call you right back,” he tells
Potter. He sets the handset down, missing the cradle in his haste
to exit the observation booth. He takes the stairs two at a time
and bursts through the door and onto the main floor. He bypasses
the first sphere and rushes through into the other room.

“
Paul?” he calls, slowing to a walk.
He passes by the computer console at the rear and to the door,
which stands open like a doorway into an alternate reality. “Paul?”
he calls again, expecting to find the boy lying on the floor,
foaming at the mouth, eyes rolled back as his brain tries to
process the mental bond; but no, the sphere is empty.

Paul is gone.

Singleton sits in the chair behind a cheap,
metal desk. He rises, paces a few times, then returns to his seat.
The phone rests on the desk before him, taunting him, daring him to
either use it, or run. He told Potter he would call him back, but
he still has not done so. He’s afraid what might happen, what
Potter might do.
Then again, it really doesn’t matter now, does
it?
The boy is gone. It wouldn’t be hard to find him, even in a
city this size. George might even have the boy’s home
address.

But that’s not his call. All that would fall on
Potter’s shoulders. He reaches for the phone, rests his hand on the
smooth surface. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, lifts the
receiver, and dials the number.

“
Where have you been?”

“
Looking for the boy.”

“
So he’s gone?”

“
Yes.” He lets the word hang in the
air, waiting for Potter to reveal his intentions. He can almost
hear the General’s wheels turning through the phone.

The General asks, “How old is he?”

“
I don’t know—sixteen, maybe
seventeen.”

“
How long’s he been
gone?”

“
Thirty minutes, at least.” Potter
silence is unnerving. “So what happened, General?”

“
I wish I knew. The good thing is
the kid survived. It’s the most progress I’ve had so
far.”

“
Do I need to find him?”

“
No,” says Potter. “If he comes
back, that’s all well and good, but I have a feeling we’ll not be
seeing him again.”

Potter couldn’t have been more wrong. Here’s a
seventeen-year-old boy with all the memories, experience, and
knowledge of a thirty-year-old warrior—to say he was scared is an
understatement, but once Paul overcame the mental shock of
absorbing Rob’s consciousness, the planning began—Rob didn’t have
to press the issue either.

The first problem Rob encountered was that the
boy is thin and weak—a scrawny thing with no endurance, much less
muscle-mass. He had a hard time believing Paul was really a senior
in high school. His body is completely underdeveloped—forgoing most
physical activities for computers and gaming consoles.

Rob remembers the simulated fight. At the time,
his body ran, jumped, ducked, and dodged through the plywood city
of its own volition. Once his consciousness merged with Paul’s, he
got the whole picture. He could recall and replay Paul’s memories
the same as he could his own, and he saw the things Paul
experienced from his end of the simulation. It was no wonder the
boy tired so easily—it explained why his own body panted and
wheezed in the plywood city. Paul couldn’t keep up with the
physical demands of the simulation, his body tired, and Rob’s body
mirrored him at the other end of the mental connection even though
his own body’s conditioning could withstand the physical
exertion.

For a time, Rob keeps to the shadows of Paul’s
mind, only coming forward when the boy has a question or comment,
something that he doesn’t understand about Rob’s memories and
experiences added to his stream of consciousness. Days become weeks
and Paul becomes noticeably more comfortable with Rob. They carry
on entire conversations in silence.
So this is what it feels
like to be schizophrenic?
Paul asks.

Rob can’t help from laughing. It’s contagious
and overflows from Paul’s mind and out his mouth—right in the
middle of an important Algebra test. A stern look from his teacher
puts a lid on his outburst.

Finally, the day comes when Paul tells Rob,
What they did to you was wrong. They should have just let you
die.

Rob is silent for a minute and Paul quickly
adds,
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way
.

Oh, that’s okay. I know what you
meant.

Then came the question. The one that Rob wanted
to hear from the beginning of this mental adventure.
So what are
we going to do about it? Those people need to pay
—
well, at
least Singleton and Potter
.

Rob is actually surprised at Singleton’s
name—but then again, the man did knowingly trick the boy into
participating in an experiment that, at the very least, could have
left him in a vegetative state—at worst, could have killed
him.

Rob consoles the boy but in the end, he tells
Paul that Singleton, although his intentions seemed bad, might just
have been in the same situation they were in—manipulated against
his will to help Potter develop the weapons technology. Rob’s metal
voice says
, I think we can use Singleton to get to
Potter.

It’s Paul’s turn to be silent. He stews over
the information for a long while as Rob waits. If there’s one thing
he’s learned these past few weeks, its patience. Something else is
that Paul isn’t like any other teenager he’s ever encountered. He
remembers his own thought processes as a child, but they are
nothing like Paul’s mental response to external situations. The boy
thinks problems through rationally and meticulously—coming to
decisions more like an adult than a teenager.

What do you have in mind?
Paul asks, and
Rob tells him.

What do I need to do?
Paul asks—Rob
tells him that too.

It’s going to be a long road ahead of us. Five
or six years at least. You sure you want to do this?

Paul nods his head. Yes. Absolutely,
yes.

Five years later-

The house is empty except for Singleton.
Outside, rain drops tick, tick, tick off the eaves and splash into
growing puddles. Thunder growls and shakes the little wood-framed
home while a peal of lightning splits the sky. The storm matches
Singleton’s mood.

Even through the roar of the storm, he hears
the sound of a slamming car door. It’s too close to be the
neighbors. He pushes himself out of his rocker, shuffles to the
small foyer, and peeks out through the mini curtain covering the
tiny window in the door.

A young man in a heavy grey trench coat
approaches. Rain pours from above but the man is in no hurry—he
ambles from the street as if he’s taking a leisurely stroll through
a park on a sunny, cloudless day. Singleton wonders if the man’s
car has broken down. He has no friends and no family within four
hundred miles, so he’s curious as to who this man might
be.

Lightning strikes in the distance, temporarily
turning the approaching figure into an eclipsed silhouette—a black
stain moving against a dark night.