A Game Called Chaos (12 page)

“Royal cut you out of the jackpot, didn't he?” Frank said, trying to keep her talking. “He'd made sure that he controlled who got paid when the game finally came out.”

“After all the work I did . . .” Sakai said, smoldering.

“Ha!” Royal said. “You didn't do any work on Chaos Three, but I still paid money to your estate—or rather
you
—for it. It's only fair that I get that money back on the new game. I paid you for the work you've already done, but I won't share the profits. It's only fair.”

“Doesn't seem fair to me,” Joe said, slowly standing. He had the snake in his hand but was careful to keep it hidden behind his body as he stood.

“So, why'd you do it?” Frank asked, drawing Sakai's attention back to himself. “Why did you fake your own death?”

“Tax trouble,” Sakai said. “And fans who just wouldn't leave me alone. When that McLean woman found me in the Caribbean, I knew that I had to drop out of sight permanently. If she could find me so easily, the IRS would have no trouble. And I owed them big time.”

She seemed to enjoy telling her story, so Frank and Joe let her go on. They exchanged a secret glance, hoping Royal would keep his big mouth shut for a while.

“But with me ‘dead' and the money in a Swiss account . . . problem solved.” She smiled.

“How'd you pull it off,” Joe asked. “It must have been tricky.”

“Child's play,” Sakai said. “For someone with my computer skills, creating a new identity was easy. Amazing what a passport computer will do if you just know how to ask it. The plane crash wasn't any harder. I parachuted out long before the plane hit and then rafted back to the island where I assumed my new life as Regina Cross.”

“McLean saw you,” Frank said. “But she assumed you were a ghost.”

“She's never been very stable,” Sakai said, smiling.

“Neither have you!” Royal said. He was nervous and sweating profusely.

For a moment it seemed as though Sakai would shoot him on the spot. Then Joe said, “I disagree.
You've got to be pretty together to pull off all of this. What I want to know, though, is why you decided to do another game.”

Sakai frowned. “The money ran out. I'd spent a lot of it buying what's left of this town and the local amusement park. And living in Switzerland wasn't cheap, either. That's why I gave it up and moved home. The only thing Cross Enterprises has left there is a computer hookup in a one-room flat.

“Plus”—and here her eyes narrowed angrily again—“I didn't get as much money from Chaos Three as I thought I would.”

“You shouldn't have gotten any at all,” Royal said. “You didn't actually work on the game.”

“But I created the series,” she said. “That entitled me to my cut. And then you had the gall to try to cut me out of this one as well.”

“A dead woman would have had a hard time going to court to collect, I imagine,” Frank said. “Is that why you did it, Royal?”

“Yes . . . No! She owed it to m-me,” Royal stammered.

“You see why I had no trouble luring him up here,” Sakai said to the Hardys. “Greedy and vain, through and through. His only real talent is self-promotion. You know, I was happy in Switzerland. If Forest of Chaos hadn't been such a flop, I would never have come back—except to see my
Scavenger.” She scratched the wolfdog behind the ears and whistled. The animal barked and stared up at her.

“Did you know I picked the town in Switzerland where I lived because it was near where Ian Tochi grew up?” she asked Royal. “He told such wonderful stories about the place. He was right about it, too. But Switzerland, just over the border, was better for me because of my—tax situation.”

She sighed nostalgically. “Such a nice guy, Tochi. He had
way
more talent than you, Steven. I should have hooked up with
him
as a partner.”

As she spoke, Frank got a good grip on the back of the chair Royal had been tied to. He and Joe exchanged glances.

Sakai smiled a cold smile. “Maybe I
will
hook up with him after this,” she said. “See, I had planned to ruin Steven's reputation and then let him go. I'd assume a new identity and start over again; no one would ever believe him. Such an absurd story. Now, however, I'm afraid I'll have to kill you all.”

Sakai's finger tightened on the trigger of the crossbow.

Before she could pull it, though, Joe lashed out, using the mechanical snake like a whip. The snake smashed into the crossbow, yanking it from Sakai's hands. Joe brought the snake back on the rebound, hitting Sakai in the ribs. She gasped in pain and surprise and staggered to one side.

Scavenger leapt forward to protect his mistress, but Frank was ready for him. The elder Hardy, moving like a lion tamer, shoved the chair that Royal had been tied to into the wolf's face. Scavenger tried to bite Frank through the chair. Frank pushed the chair and twisted, trapping the wolf's head between the chair's legs.

Scavenger yelped and jumped in the air, trying to get the chair off. The back of the chair came off in Frank's hand. Frank gave the seat of the chair a shove with his foot and the wolf skidded into a corner of the room. He sat there, yelping and trying to get his head out of his wooden prison.

Before the Hardys could stop her, Sakai picked up the crossbow and fired.

Frank whipped the chair back in front of his chest and the arrow thonked into it. He flung the wooden fragment at Sakai before she could fire again. It hit her and she fell backward.

Moving quickly, Frank and Joe yanked Royal through the secret panel Sakai had used to enter the room.

For a frantic moment Joe looked around. Then he reached up and pulled a lever to one side of the door. The secret panel swung shut. A crossbow bolt thudded into the closed door.

“Chaos Two,” Joe said by way of explanation. “A lot of the doors in that game were operated by levers.” He took the mechanical snake and jammed its remains against the bottom of the panel as a doorstop. “That should keep her from following us, at least for a while,” he said.

At the end of the secret passage, the three of them found a spiral staircase leading up. They
took it. The stairway led to another secret panel that emptied into the mansion's library.

“I don't know how to thank you guys,” Royal said.

“Just keep quiet until we're out of this mess,” Frank said.

“I hear footsteps,” Joe said. “Looks like we didn't slow her down for long.”

Frank picked up a leather-backed library chair and threw it through one of the big windows of the room. “Everybody out!” he said.

They hustled Royal out the window first and then followed. Frank brought up the rear. As the elder Hardy's feet hit the uncut lawn outside, a crossbow bolt whizzed over his head. “Keep running,” he called to Joe and Royal.

Royal stumbled as they reached the street. Frank and Joe had to pull him up and, as they did, Sakai put a crossbow bolt into Joe's backpack.

“Joe!” yelled Frank.

“I'm okay!” Joe said. “It didn't get through the pack.”

They ran into the town, trying to put buildings between them and the deadly crossbow. They darted down alleys and cut through deserted structures, dragging Royal with them. Every time they thought it was safe to catch a breather, another crossbow bolt would whiz by.

“She knows this town better than we do,”
Frank said, panting. “We need to come up with a plan.”

“I've got an idea,” said Joe. “With a little luck, we can take her out.”

A few minutes later Joe rounded a corner and came face-to-face with Sakai. She fired at him, but he ducked back and the arrow hit a building. Joe took off at top speed, angling for the old warehouse. He knew that sooner or later she'd hit him if he gave her many more chances.

Sure enough, another shot whizzed by just as he turned into the alley behind the warehouse. Giganto loomed high overhead, mute witness to the deadly chase. But as Joe reached the far end of the alley he tripped. He looked back the way he'd come.

Anne Sakai came around the corner walking slowly, like a hunter closing in on her prey. She took careful aim at Joe as he lay in the alley.

“Now, Frank! Now!” Joe yelled.

“Now, Frank! Now!” Sakai repeated mockingly, closing the distance between them for a better shot.

Just at that instant, Giganto sprang to life. The ape bellowed his rage and his fist came crashing down. Sakai looked up, too late to get out of the way. The ape's fist grazed her with enough force to crush her to the ground. The
crossbow slipped from Sakai's hand as she lay unconscious.

Joe breathed a sigh of relief. The ape stopped moving. Frank and Royal stepped out of the warehouse.

“Good thing you got that relay cable fixed when you did,” Joe said to Frank. “Another minute and I'd have been shishkebab.”

“Hey, I've always been as good at fixing things as breaking them,” Frank said, smiling.

Royal looked overjoyed. “You did it! You got her!” he said.

Joe got up and dusted himself off. “Oh no,” he said. “We didn't get her. 'Twas the beast that felled the beauty.”

• • •

A day later the Hardys found themselves back in the offices of Viking Software.

It hadn't taken them long to find Sakai's SUV behind the mansion. They tied up the woman and sat her in the back of her car. Then they went back to the basement and locked Scavenger in the room where Royal had been held. The wolf proved no trouble this time. Struggling to escape from the chair had exhausted him.

After securing the bad guys, the Hardys and Royal hightailed it back to Benson. Once there, they turned Sakai over to the local police and called the SPCA to deal with Scavenger. Then
they—and Royal—spent a long night explaining the whole adventure to the cops.

Royal returned with them to Jewel Ridge, but decided to take a long vacation after turning over the real master game disk to the Hardys. He'd had the disk on him when Sakai captured him. She had told him to bring it when she lured him to Sullivan's Point. She claimed she'd found a major bug in the program.

Fortunately, the Hardys and Royal had found the disk when they searched the mansion for Sakai's car keys. It had been in the topmost tower, along with Sakai's computer and the keys.

“Of course,” Joe said to Chelsea, Phil, and Dave, “there was no bug in the game. But Royal hadn't done enough of the programming to be sure. Looks like Sakai really
was
the brains of that partnership.”

“And, as we suspected, Sakai did have her own program within the university computer. When we went poking around, the program activated, sending us the clue. That's how she knew when to go to Kendall State Park with Scavenger and roll the rocks away from the cave entrance,” Frank said.

“I bet she has taps in the company system, as well,” Phil said. “She probably knew every move we made as we were making it. We'll have to do a careful sweep to make sure we've got all of Sakai's bugs out of the Viking computers.”

“So sad,” Chelsea said. “To waste all that talent on a game of revenge.”

“I'm not sure that Royal didn't deserve at least some of what he got,” Phil said. “It's just too bad that the rest of you got dragged into it.”

“I talked to our lawyers and they said they think that they can sort this mess out,” Dave said. “It may take a while, but Viking Software can hang on until then. And the publicity from all this will make A Town Called Chaos an instant bestseller.”

“Just as long as they keep Sakai in jail for a long time,” said Joe.

“I don't think there's any doubt about that,” Frank said. “She's still got tax troubles, she faked her own death and forged a passport, she kidnapped Royal, plus she tried to kill us. I'm sure she broke a half-dozen other laws as well. The police will probably give Royal a good looking over, too. Maybe they'll scare some sense into him.”

Joe smiled. “Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. I know you Viking guys need his game to succeed, but he really is a jerk.”

“Jerk, genius,” Dave said, shrugging. “Sometimes the two go together.”

“Present company excepted,” Phil said, and they all laughed.

“You know,” Chelsea said, “this whole adventure
has given me an idea for a game of my own. Maybe you guys could play-test it.”

“Just so long as it doesn't have any wolves,” Frank said.

“Or giant apes,” added Joe.

“A giant ape?” Chelsea said. “I think that's been done to death.”

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First Aladdin Paperbacks edition August 2002

First Minstrel Books edition March 2000

Copyright © 2000 by Simon & Schuster Inc.

ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster

Children's Publishing Division

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All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

THE HARDY BOYS and THE HARDY BOYS MYSTERY STORIES are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

ISBN: 0-671-03870-2

ISBN-13: 978-0-671-03870-0

ISBN-13: 978-1-4814-0199-9 (eBook)