Dangerous Games (6 page)

That was an easy one. ‘We help to keep the world balanced between chaos and stasis,' I said.

‘Wrong,' Finn said. ‘What's going on out there between us and the white circle, that's not balance. That's war.'

I had just taken a big bite of burger and it got stuck on the way down. ‘War?' I squeaked, when I'd cleared my windpipe.

‘You've already encountered your first agents,' Finn said. ‘What did they do to you?'

‘Hunted us down and tried to neutralise us,' I admitted.

‘That's right,' Finn said. ‘Five of them. Organised into a hit squad, with the sole purpose of tracking down people like us and eliminating us. But it doesn't stop there. They're part of a much larger organisation which exists to seek out all the sources of disorder in the world and remove them. Perfect order is their ultimate goal and they'll stop at nothing to achieve it.'

‘You make them sound like an army,' I said.

‘They are an army,' Finn said, ‘and they're vast. The agents you've seen, they're just the shock troops. Most of the agents, you'll never see them and you'll never know what they do. They have thousands of people working full time monitoring everything from the weather to the environment to politics. They keep track of traffic flows and the global money market, world commodity prices. They're monitoring the number of fish in the sea. They monitor everything, looking for those little anomalies that might mean a destroyer at work, and then they hunt them down and they take them out. They're looking for you right now, Mel.'

I've never liked it when people call me Mel. Usually I correct them and say:
it's Melissa
. Soph was allowed to call me Meliss, which was as far as I was willing to go on the name-shortening thing. But somehow, when Finn called me Mel, I didn't mind it so much. There was something so cosy about the way he said it, as if we were old friends who'd known each other for years.

Distracted by the fact that he'd called me Mel, it took me a moment to take in what he'd actually said. But when I did, all the fear I'd felt four months ago came back in a rush. ‘But they already found me once,' I said. ‘How come they haven't come back for me?'

Finn shrugged. ‘Maybe it's just luck, maybe they have some longer term plan for you. But you can be sure of one thing: they will come for you.'

I thought about my final confrontation with the three remaining agents of order who'd come after me and Ben. We'd managed to neutralise two of them, but one of them had got away, and the look of terrifying hatred he'd given me before he fled was etched on my memory. He was still out there somewhere, biding his time, waiting for his chance. Ben and I had managed to convince ourselves that he wouldn't come after us again in a hurry, but now I began to wonder whether we'd been kidding ourselves.

I had a powerful urge to run home and hide under the bed for the next 70 or 80 years.

‘But what can I possibly do with all that stacked against me?' I asked, feeling a finger of panic stirring the contents of my stomach. Suddenly my burger didn't seem so appetising.

‘When your enemy outguns you ten to one you can't hope to win by tackling them head on,' Finn said. ‘You've got to be cleverer than them, you've got to study them, watch them, get to know them, learn what their weaknesses are, hit them where you can and then get out, fast.'

‘You mean like a guerrilla war?'

‘Exactly.' Finn paused. ‘The thing you have to understand is, we're losing this war.'

‘We are?'

‘The white circle have been cutting a swathe through the destroyers for years. There are only two of you in this town. A place this size, there ought to be dozens. Hundreds. But there aren't.'

He paused. ‘A lot of the destroyers I meet are hung up on the old way of doing things: find your own way, follow your own path, blah blah blah. I'm here to tell you, that way is killing us. If we want to find a way of striking back at the white circle we're going to have to change our tactics: stick together, take the fight up to them, hit them hard and then get out. Now, I know what you're thinking: I didn't start all of this, I don't want a war, I've been okay so far, I'd rather just keep my head down and hope that it all works out. But believe me, one day soon, the white circle are going to come looking for you and it's going to be like nothing you've seen before.'

He paused, fixing me with his bright grey-green stare. ‘I came to this town because I'm looking for allies. People who'll join me in the fight. Are you up for it?'

‘Hey, if you need help, me and Ben are there for sure,' I said.

‘I don't want to know about Ben, I want to know about you,' Finn said. He was still gazing at me intently. ‘Are you with me?'

My heart turned over and a part of me said
yes
! But there was another part of me that wasn't so sure about getting involved in guerrilla warfare, so I said, ‘Maybe.'

‘You don't know the half of what you can do yet,' Finn said, in a serious voice. He leaned forward, so that his dazzling eyes were on a level with mine. ‘Just between you and me, not all destroyers are the same. Some of them are amazingly powerful and some of them are … well, ordinary. You – I've never met anyone like you before.'

And as soon as he said that, I was gone.
He's never met anyone like me before! He likes me!

‘Are you serious?' I stammered, pink with pleasure and embarrassment.

‘I never joke about the forces of destruction,' Finn said, and grinned. ‘You need training, obviously. I can help you. But if we're going to do this, I need you to be with me a hundred per cent. You're going to have to do things my way. And there are going to be people around you who aren't going to like that.'

‘You mean Ben?'

Finn nodded, gazing at me with an assessing look on his face. ‘I know you guys have a history. But I have to tell you, I think he's holding you back.'

‘No he's not,' I said, offended on Ben's behalf. ‘He's probably doing the best he can,' Finn said, ‘but he's never going to be able to take you much further than you've already gone.'

I didn't know what to say to that. Ben was my guide.

He'd taught me everything I knew. But more than being my guide, we were partners. It had never occurred to me that I could team up with somebody else.

Finn sat back in his seat, reaching for his drink. ‘Think about it,' he said. ‘You don't have to make up your mind straight away. But don't leave it too long. I don't know how long I'll be around.'

‘Why, where are you going?'

‘I go where the road takes me,' he said. ‘This might be your only chance to follow your destiny.'

I
had a lot to think about after Finn dropped me home. Me? Amazingly powerful? Could it be true? And if it was true, what would that mean?

All my life, I'd been absolutely ordinary – ordinary at school, ordinary at sport, ordinary at everything. Not good, not bad, just ordinary. The forces of destruction had made me different, and I was still getting used to that idea. And now Finn had told me I wasn't just a destroyer, I was some kind of super-destroyer.

And I know I should have been horrified – I mean, who wants to be the world's most destructive person? But instead of worrying about whether it was actually true, and what it might mean for me if it
was
true, all I could think about was Finn. Finn thought I was a super-destroyer! Finn thought I was special! Finn wanted to train me! I started to daydream, inventing happy scenarios where the two of us drove around in his car and he taught me everything he knew about destroying, and the more time we spent together the more impressed he was with me, and the two of us found ourselves in all these dramatic and dangerous situations, and he rescued
me from certain neutralisation, and sometimes I rescued him, and after we got out of a particularly perilous situation he turned to me and said, ‘I thought I'd lost you, Melissa,' in a hoarse, emotional voice, and then we kissed and kissed and kissed –

And then the phone rang and interrupted my daydream.

‘Hey, where were you today? Are you sick?' It was Soph.

‘I wagged school,' I said.

‘No way!'

‘Is it that surprising?' I asked, slightly offended.

‘Yes. So where were you?'

‘Secret destroyer business,' I said.

‘Oh,' Soph said, her voice a shade cooler.

‘It's the most amazing thing,' I said. ‘I've met a new destroyer. His name's Finn and he's just – I don't know how to describe him, he knows so much and he's really smart and there's so much I can learn from him and he's just – amazing!'

‘So is he hot?' Soph asked.

‘What's that got to do with it?'

‘So he
is
hot. What does Ben think about him?'

‘Ben can't stand him.'

‘I bet he can't,' Soph said, and sniggered.

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘“He's just so
amazing
!”' Soph said, exaggeratedly mimicking me.

‘It's not like that,' I said.

‘Of course not.'

‘It isn't!'

‘Sure.'

‘He knows stuff that me and Ben don't, that's all.'

‘Right,' Soph said. ‘So did all three of you wag school together today?'

With a pang, I realised I had never once thought to ask Finn where Ben was. ‘No,' I said.

‘Well, there you are then,' Soph said.

‘It wasn't like that,' I insisted.

‘Yeah yeah, I know, your relationships are different,' Soph said, in a bored voice. ‘They're all secret and special and I wouldn't understand. So are you planning to tell Ben you snuck out with this new guy today, or what?'

‘It's not a secret,' I said.

‘That's good,' Soph said. ‘'Cause believe me, the last thing you want to do is start sneaking around behind your boyfriend's back.'

‘
Ben is not my boyfriend!
' I said, for the millionth time.

‘Whatever,' Soph said, and hung up.

Soph knew it drove me nuts when she said things like that. Ben wasn't my boyfriend. What we had wasn't romantic. We were friends, that was all. I mean, sure, I saw Ben most weekends, and we did stuff together, and I spoke to him every week, and there were things I could tell him that I couldn't tell anybody else. But it wasn't because he was my boyfriend. We were partners in destruction, and at times we could almost read each other's thoughts. (Literally – you could do that with the snake bracelets.) It was hard to remember that there'd ever been a time when I didn't know him, he seemed like such an essential part of my life. But he was not my boyfriend.

And as for Ben being jealous of Finn – well, that was just crazy. For one thing, Ben didn't feel that way about me. And for another, there was nothing to be jealous about. I mean, sure, I thought Finn was amazing, and yes, he was incredibly good-looking. But what Soph didn't understand was that this wasn't your typical boy-meets-girl type situation. It was a destroyer-meets-destroyer type situation, and I could learn a lot from Finn. Ben would understand that. I'm sure he would.

As I was thinking all this, my phone rang again.

‘Hey Melissa. I just wanted to let you know I won't be coming to your place to watch the game this Saturday.'

It was Ben.

‘Yeah? How come?' I asked, trying to sound casual, although a guilty-feeling blush was stealing across my face.

‘We got into the semi-finals.'

‘Of the hockey or the lacrosse?'

‘Hockey. We're playing on Saturday afternoon.'

‘Hey, that's great. Bash some shins for me.'

‘I will.'

And we chatted for a minute or two about other things, and then Ben said, ‘I don't suppose whatsisname got in touch with you, did he?'

And that would have been the moment for me to say:
actually I saw him today and this is what we did
. But for some reason I couldn't quite bring myself to say the words. I know I should have just told Ben all about it, but when Ben pretended not to remember Finn's name it seemed way too charged with significance and I found myself sliding away from the question.

‘Why,' I said evasively. ‘Did he get in touch with you?'

‘Nope,' Ben said. ‘Not that that's a surprise.'

‘I think he could tell you didn't like him,' I said.

‘He'll get over it,' Ben said dryly.

‘Good luck on Saturday,' I said.

‘Thanks,' Ben said.

And that was the end of the conversation.

Why had I stayed silent?
I wondered, as soon as I got off the phone. This was all Soph's fault! Putting doubts into my head, so that something that hadn't been weird suddenly seemed weird. My day out with Finn had been perfectly innocent. But now that I'd not mentioned it to Ben it was all going to be difficult and strange.

Next time we spoke I was going to tell him. Definitely.