A Sinister Game (30 page)

And as
soon as Rose Tyrnan and Victor Black melded their powers and
defeated Game Control, the world would know it once more
.

Loki chan
ced a glance at Andromeda. A
s if she could fe
el the weight of his fiery gaze,
she glanced back. He smiled. It was a promise of a smile.

Pay him no hee
d
sweet one,
he told her
.
I’ll take you to s
ee your sister.

Odin’s one eye flew open and he pinned the fire god with
its
glare. “Y
ou think that just because I’m sitting here with my
good
eye shut, I can’t da
mn well see you?” Odin shouted.

The
gods in the room grew very still.

“I can
! And I can
damn well
hear
you too
!
For fuck’s sake
Loki, I’m the All Father! I know everything!” He shook his
big
head and sighed again, sitting back once more. Instantly
, the other gods relaxed too
.

“Oh very well,” he finally acquiesced. “
Go to your sister, Andromeda. But try not to give our champion a damn heart attac
k.” He paused and then added,
“Not that you will. I would know if you were going to.
I know everything.” He closed his eye
and
at last
seemed to rest.

Andromeda t
urned wide, golden eyes on Loki. He gave her a
reassuring smile.

At once, she smiled back
.
She was going to see her sister
after more than a decade
. He could feel her excitement, anxiety and anticipation
from across the
open
room.

Come my
love.
He sent the words into her mind.
Rose has been asleep long enough.

* * * *

Victor stepped over the bodies, his black boots
easily
clearing the small pools of blood that collected beneath them. Four
GC
guards had been waiting for him. It wasn’t enough. It was too easy.

There
were sure to be more, b
ut where?

Victor opened his mental feelers and searched for the signals of other minds.

The TGB was empty. Game Co
ntrol must have cleared it out and
sent everyone to their respective towers
. But why?

It hit him. They’d most likely done so
when Maxwell Blood reported in. He
was working for them after all.

He could understand GC’s concern. They
wanted to lose as few people as possible in this
impending scuffle,
and Victor
obviously
wasn’t
going to be
in the mood to go easy on anyone.
So they’d left a small contingent of guards at the transporter cube entrance, hoping it would be enough to take him by surprise. Everyone else, they’d protected by sending away.

Victor turned the corner into a second hall
.
This one
sectioned off Rooms one
through 22. The lights were out further down the aisle.
T
he Rooms were silent.

If Victor had been a
light leader, he would’
ve been capable of producing a flame to light the way.
But ice was a cold and dark boon
,
and he was forced to make his way through a corridor as black as his name.

He stopped
, sensing
something just up ahead.
Two
somethings, rather
.

It was t
wo minds,
their thoughts slowly opening
to him. He recognized them at once, and his brow furrowed in
frank
confusion.

A burst of light suddenly lit up the corridor, temporarily blinding Victor.

“Well it’s about damn time, Black,” John Storm drawled as Victor blinked the blurriness out of his vision.

“Storm
, what the hell are you doing here
?” Victor lowered his arm and found his team captain standing a few yards away. At his booted feet were half a dozen GC guards. In Storm’s hand was the massive double-sided hammer he always used in combat.
Victor felt bewildered –
g
rateful
– b
ut bewildered.

“Wow, you were right, Storm. That
was
easy.” Simon Roon, the Red team player, stood behind Storm
, eyeing the bodies on the floor
. He adjusted the
glasses he insisted on wearing
despite the fact that corrective surgery had long been available for poor eyesight. “Will they be okay?”
he asked.

“Unfortunately
yes,” Storm replied, nudging
one of the fallen men with his boot. “MRU healers are on their way right now.” The gray-eyed man looked up at Victor, who was still too baffled to say
much of
anything. Storm being there was surprising enough. Storm having arrived be
fore Victor
and taking out six guards on his own was doubly perplexing. But that he’d done al
l of this and, at the same time
befriended the Red team genius, was positively mystifying.

“You look a tad sick, Black.” Storm was smiling.
His
eyes flashed as if lightning had struck in their depths.

Victor looked from him to Simon and back again.

Finally, deciding that GC’s clearing of the premises and their posting of the guards had been a tip-off for Storm. And he also decided that he didn’t really
care
how or why Storm and Simon were there. He would pick his battles and count his blessings.

He straightened. “I take it you’re both in.”

Simon pushed his glasses high up on his nose, his hazel eyes bright and intelligent behind the glass. “Storm told me what was going on. I’m on your side, Black. I haven’t trusted Game Control for some time.”

Victor considered him for a moment.
There was no deception in Simon’s mind. “Very well,” Victor said. “
We need to get to the Medical
Research
Unit and then to the TRF. Blood’s gone after Victoria and G
ame
C
ontrol
is backing him.”

“Aye, th
e shit’s hit the fan
then
, hasn’t it
?” Storm laughed a hearty
, booming
laugh
that seemed louder than
normal
and jammed the ha
ndle of his hammer back into the
leather loop on hi
s belt. “This ought to get interesting.
”

Victoria came awake with a start, the memories that flooded her mind feeling like a nest of bees
in her head. They swarmed and pulsed
with every beat of
her heart. She was out of breath, covered in sweat. Confused.

Scared
.

In the back of her mind, there was that voice like dead
leaves scratching across a dry grass landscape. Victoria remembered the woman now. She opened her eyes and turned a terrified gold gaze on t
he shriveled old lady. She
knew
well
who the woman was.

“Beth
,
” Victoria
whispered, her
own
voice nearly as
dry as her nanny’s
had become.

Elizabeth smiled gently, showing that at least her teeth were still go
od. Her once-blue eyes had lost their vivid hue
and
were
rimmed with the red of
many
shed tears. Her ancient form
quivered
with emotion.
“Don’t fuss little Rose. Stay put
dear.” She touched a damp rag to Victoria’s forehead and brushed tangled, golden locks from her face. Victoria
tried to swallow away
dry lump
that had formed in her throat. I
t went down grudgingly
, forcing her to cough
.

“Here, d
rink.” Elizabeth put down the rag and picked up a metal goblet. Victoria
caught
the faint scent of wine as the old woman lifted the glass to her lips.

S
he drank; she was too thirsty
not to.
As
she had trouble getting the liquid into her mouth without spilling
it
,
she realized that she too
was trembling.

She was shaking because of those bees
, t
hose incessant buzzing
memories
that throbbed and gathered and whirred. They were making her crazy
.

I can’t hold it all
,
she thought.
It’s too much.

And suddenly,
without warning,
she was sobbing
. They were
big
,
hard,
soul-shattering
sobs. She
broke
there in that bed,
beneath the weigh
t of the past. She shattered under the immense pressure
of her sister’s death, of her mother’s screams, of the pain that had wracked her body as the machines of Game Control relentlessly wiped her mind.

Elizabeth
put down the goblet
and let her cry.
Her own tears were the silent kind that came wi
th age and the luxury of
having
already
had the time to mourn. So
Victoria cried out
enough for the both of them.

That pain stretched from her mind to her soul, ripping a deep and jagged chasm across her very
being
. She saw her
twin
sister
with
blood spilling fro
m the side of her throat and
gold eyes that would never open again
. She witnessed
the unnaturally still body that she knew was no longer breathing and that housed a heart no longer beating.

And at once, Victoria wanted her
own
heart out of her body. She wanted it gone; it hurt too much. She
tossed the covers off of her and
threw back her head
, howling
at t
he ceiling of the small cottage. She
screamed
at the heavens beyond, railed
against the agony that was claiming her, holding her fast in
its
vicious, unforgiving claws.

“I could have healed her! If they would have let me go, I could have healed her!”

It went on forever.
Forever and ever a
nd longer, still. She
cried until her body was raw and her mind was a
strange
and blessed
blank.
T
hen
, at last,
the wailing stopped.

Elizabeth
held her in her ancient, withered arms,
rocking her
slowly
back and forth.

At length, Victoria realized she was mumbling, murmuring, crying the same words over and over into Elizabeth’s tear-soaked dress.
“Meeda….” It had been her nickname for Andromeda.

Elizabeth smoothed her hair
and
silently
allowed the anguish to leak away as it was meant to do.

It was a long while before Victoria was at last able to p
ull away from her nanny and again look into her old and weary eyes. It didn’t hurt any less now, n
ot
really. But Victoria was
tired and empty
, and
for now
that would have to do.

“M
y sweet child,” Elizabeth said.
“I never thought I woul
d see you again. I am afraid I’
m alr
eady dead a
nd this is a dream.”

Victoria made a sound half
laugh
and half sob
that cracked because she had little voice left. She shook
her head. “Me too, Beth. Me too
.”