The Game (9 page)

Chapter 19

V
ince felt the fire in his belly and the flicker in his head that had been driving him all these years. He had been close to answers before, but nothing like since he started chasing Angus and his crew. Whatever these people were up to, it had something to do with his past.

Alexis had helped him more than anyone had before, and now he led her to the slaughter.

Candice pulled the note off the windshield and read it aloud. “If you want to see her again, get a new cell phone.”

Vince slammed the door and started the Jeep. “Get in!”

They tore away from the curb, dangerously swerving into the river of traffic on Amsterdam Avenue.

“Vince, I’m sorry.”

“This isn’t your fault.”

“But it is my fault. If I would have just given up they would’ve stopped chasing, and Alexis would be here.”

“It’s my fault. We have to find them before they want us to.”

“But how?”

“First thing we need to do is find out how they keep finding you.”

“How are they finding me?”

He glanced behind and quickly changed lanes. “I have a suspicion, and I know just the man to confirm it.”

Vince headed down to Greenwich Village and stopped in front of an old walkup brick building. The area had that familiar smell of fried foods and the unfamiliar smell of some unknown chemicals. The two aromas mixed to form an unappealing stench. The ambience came courtesy of the two flanking buildings, that housed Johnny Fry’s and Cobalt Synthetics.

Vince pushed in the old door with a creak. It was thick with many layers of paint and didn’t swing smoothly. They walked up a long flight of stairs and came to another door. Vince balled up a fist and pounded on the old wooden blockade.

“Who is it?” a man shouted from inside.

“Vince Markoe.”

There were some hurried noises behind the door, a clump and a bang, followed by a squeak. Finally, after a long few seconds, the door swung inward, revealing a small man with wild white hair and oversized eyeglasses.

“Vince! C’mon in, friend.” Adam Solestein stepped aside and closed the door behind them.

“Hey, Sole, how’ve you been?” Vince said as he stripped off his jacket. “This is Candice. Candice, this is Adam Solestein. Everyone calls him Sole.”

“Hi, Sole, nice to meet you.” Candice stuck out her hand. Sole shook it vigorously.

“The pleasure is mine. Wow, such a pretty girl! What’re you doing with this crusty demon of Metropolis?” Sole released her hand and led them into the main room. “Excuse the messy-mess, you know I’ve never cleaned anything. Is there something I can get for you two? I have soda or beer.”

“Sole, we need help,” Vince said as they congregated around the only clean area in the place, the kitchen and its center island.

The place was stacked with boxes and an endless train of computers in various states of existence. Some were whole, but others were just pieces in boxes. The place wasn’t dirty with filth, just clutter.

Sole tilted his disproportionately large head. “Sure, buddy, what’s the problem?”

“Well, it’s complicated.”

“Always is.”

“We need to know how you could track someone without a cell phone.”

Without much hesitation, Sole said, “RFID.”

Vince nodded. “RFID.”

“Radio frequency, very small, easy to hide under the skin.”

Vince looked to Candice. She shrugged.

Sole looked her up and down, then back to Vince. He was a very smart man and didn’t need things explained to him. That’s what made him so valuable when Vince needed help. Sole helped immensely when Vince was learning how to be a cop.

“Someone is tracking you?” He looked at Candice. “And you can’t figure out how?”

Candice nodded. “They’ve been finding me. I get a new cell, and they get the number. They found me at home, in the city, no matter what I’m doing or where I am, they know.”

Sole nodded thoughtfully. “SATPROP, most likely.”

Vince said, “What the hell is SATPROP?”

Sole hurried over to a desk in the corner, rummaged through a plastic crate, and returned with a tiny microchip. He handed it to Vince. “This is a SATPROP chip. Now of course, that’s a couple generations older. The new ones are a quarter that size. It’s a satellite relay proprietary uplink. It’s a fancy radio frequency interface device. It’s two way, so it can communicate, whereas traditional RFID can generally only track. This could be used to find anyone anywhere if this was on their person. As long as you’re around any type of WiFi, 3G, or 4G mobile network, I could get into any device close enough to the signal, which these days, is just about anywhere-slash-anytime on the planet. They could link up with this and straight into your phone.”

“Are you telling me,” Vince held up the tiny chip, “this thing could be inside her?”

Sole looked at Candice. “Have you had any medical procedures lately?”

“No.”

Vince moved across the kitchen, close to Candice. “Think, has anyone been poking around you?”

Her lips pursed, eyes searched, and then suddenly widened. She reached a finger up to her open mouth and touched her teeth. “I saw a dentist, a few weeks ago. He filled a cavity.”

Sole moved back to his desk, picked up a strange looking device. “Come.” He took Candice by the hand and led her over to a leather chair in front of a computer system so large it should have been the datacenter of a multinational corporation. He sat Candice in the chair and shined a huge light on her face. “Open wide.”

Sole attached a USB cable to a wand device and then to the computer, pulling up a software program. He then held the wand and eased it into her open mouth. The graph on the screen bowed a large red line, and flashed. “Ho-ly shit,” Sole said. “There it is.”

He pulled the wand out of her mouth, and looked at Vince. “This is serious technology. You don’t get this stuff at the local electronics store, this is expensive.”

Candice’s eyes had grown enormous. “What the hell is it?” she asked. “Get it out of me.”

“Relax, honey,” Sole said. “I
can
get it out.” He looked to Vince.

“Do what you gotta do. This is life and death here.”

“Okay, but it’s not pleasant. We can hope the easy way works, but if not…” He trailed off. “Well, let’s not go there. I think the easy way will work unless they sealed it, but I doubt that. As long as they didn’t pack it inside a silicone shell, we’re good.”

Sole scurried out of the room.

Vince could see the upset in her face, he felt for her. She had been through a lot. He could tell she was trying to be strong but the fear was there, teasing at the edge of her cutely curved lips. He knew at that moment he was falling for her. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t fight it, either. Something about her drew him in. She had that something that made you want to look at her, that movie star quality which makes you keep watching. “It’s going to be okay,” he assured. She nodded but didn’t speak.

Sole returned to the room with a clear bottle filled with a blue liquid. “Okay,” he said as he went back to Candice. “Here’s what we have to do. You’re going take in a mouthful of this blue stuff.” He pulled a probe from a box. “Then I’m going to insert this into our mouth. You have to be very, very, very,
very
careful not to swallow any of this stuff, it’s deadly. You’ll die before we get you to the hospital to pump your stomach. The best way to do it is to lean over to face the floor so gravity won’t screw us up. That way, if it leaks, it will go out rather than down your throat. So don’t tip your head back, whatever you do. Do
not
tip it back. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” she said.

“We have to hope this way works.”

Candice audibly sighed. “I thought you said this was the easy way?”

“It is the easy way. The hard way is I have to pump enough electricity through your body to kill the electronics and hope it doesn’t stop your heart.” He took out several bottles of chemicals. “Now give me a few moments to mix up the formula.”

Candice held the bottle of poison in her hand. Her stomach did flip-flops at the thought of what she was about to do. She wasn’t really happy with the idea of putting a deadly liquid in her mouth. One false move, one hiccup and she could aspirate the junk or swallow it, or both. The blue death juice looked like drain cleaner. It would kill her just as quickly.

She twisted the top off the bottle and let a mouthful flow in past her lips. The stuff tasted like acid, it was horrible. She wanted to spit it out. Quickly she tilted her head forwards and looked at the dingy brown carpet.

Trying not to gag, she just closed her eyes and concentrated on smooth breaths.
Just get through these few moments of hell and maybe this mess would be one step closer to done.

“Okay, here comes the probe,” Sole said, and she felt the metal slide in the corner of her mouth. “Hold, on. Just a few seconds.”

Candice felt a tingle in her mouth, like the liquid was trying to creep down her throat, but she was leaning over and it couldn’t fall up. It was all in her head.

It took every bit of concentration not to gag. She felt a sharp stab in her tooth. It made her jump, but she dared not scream or react too much. After what seemed like ten minutes, but was probably only one, he slid the probe out and told her to spit out the liquid. She spat into a tall plastic cup he’d given her.

“Oh God.” She kept spitting every drop of saliva, letting the drool fall into the cup. “That’s horrid.”

“Here, rinse and spit with this a few times.” Sole handed her a bottle of mouthwash. She ran over to the sink because she had to vomit first. A few bursts of stomach bile made its way into the sink.

The taste was so vile. She rinsed and spit several more times. Then she chugged the whiskey and beer chaser Sole handed her to kill the taste. The beer tasted great, and she didn’t even really like beer that much.

“Did it work?” she asked, shaking off the lingering flavor.

“Sure did. It’s dead.”

“But, is it still in there?”

“Oh no, that solution you just had in there ate it up. You might get some tiny plastic bits come out here and there, but look in the cup.” He handed her the cup she spit into, and there she saw bits and pieces of something. It was virtually unrecognizable as anything other than debris.

A hot wave of relief came over her, followed by a cold shiver that raised goose bumps of flesh on her entire body. She hugged herself, and wanted to vomit again, but there was nothing left in her stomach.

Chapter 20

A
ngus rolled his lips inward, and bit them almost hard enough to draw blood. He stared at the map on the screen. The red dot was gone. Somehow, he’d lost track of Candice.

His highly accurate tracking software showed no signs of her. Switching networks from WiFi to a mobile 3G tracking, he waited for a ping. He curled his fingers in anticipation. It made no difference. She’d gone dark.

He took a deep breath and started running back through the algorithm to make sure it wasn’t a glitch. It wasn’t unheard of to lose contact for this long. If she were far enough outside the city to find a dead spot, where the cell towers couldn’t reach her, he would have seen her heading that direction. But she somehow went from Manhattan to nowhere in a second.

The problem with his tracking devices was only in their size, and, of course, power. They didn’t have the same powerful antenna as a cell phone, so the tracker needed to be much closer to a tower to pick up a signal. It was easier to track her via WiFi networks, which were all over the place these days. He could hop from network-to-network in a flash and keep tabs on her, but they were also easier to get away from because as prevalent as they were, they still weren’t everywhere.

The 3G and 4G mobile networks were much tougher to escape, but with the limited power of his receivers, simply being underground in the subway system was enough to keep the subjects dark for extended periods. Parking garages and anywhere else a cell phone might lose signal would thwart him.

It was no problem. He would simply send out a constant ping and wait for them to pop up again. They all popped up again eventually. No one had yet been able to figure out how to get away from his tracking. In most cases, the tracked individual started going crazy simply because he kept finding them, in spite of their cunning attempts to ditch their cell phones.

It was ironic that he’d learned all this while being punished for his supposed crimes against humanity. The doctors saw it as a sign he was rehabilitating his life. They were too blind to know they were creating a monster that was only now starting to realize his potential.

He turned to the large wall monitor that showed what was happening at the Iron Stone Mountain facility. All his actors were huddled in their cells, awaiting their fate. He switched cameras from cell to cell. On his screen, each appeared with their names and a small bio that he would use in the upcoming program.

Angus noticed one of the captives was too still. With the arrow keys, he zoomed the camera in on her face, but she was clearly not responsive.

He picked up his cell and thumbed through his contacts until he reached Caleb. “I need you to check on cell two.” He waited as Caleb made his way down to the cells from the main office at the facility. Caleb stayed at Iron Stone and kept a close eye on the players. It was a good place for Caleb to bring his other toys to play with.

He watched on the monitor as Caleb opened the cell door and walked up to the blonde girl sprawled on the floor next to the small bed.

“She’s dead,” Caleb said into his cell phone as he looked at the camera and shrugged.

“How?” Angus replied.

Caleb rolled the body over, inspected it. Then he pried open her clenched hand and revealed a bag of white pills. He held the bag up to the camera. “Looks like she had these on her.”

“What are they?”

“Looks like ecstasy.”

“How did we not find that on her?”

“Dunno, maybe we need to consider body cavity searches.”

Angus shook his head. “Well, get her out of there. Dump the body and leave the drugs in her pocket.”

He hung up the phone and looked at the data on that cast member. Her name was Carole Klingberg. She was only supporting cast, so it wasn’t a big deal. He’d had a feeling she was too fragile to make it to the game, but she’d passed the tests. Now that he thought about it, maybe she was high during them, which would explain why she was mentally able to make it though without cracking. Now if he could just get his lead character into the mix, it was nearly time to start the show.

The plan was to bring her in right after the ride with Mark. But obviously something had gone wrong. Mark was dead and these people had helped Candice get away. And now he’d lost track of her.

He switched his screen back to the tracking software, but Candice still hadn’t come back onto the grid. It had been over three hours and he was starting to worry a bit. The last time this happened, the subject had died, jumped in front of the subway or fell, no way to know. Caleb eventually found her at the morgue.

He switched his screen again, pulling up his cast of characters. With the death of Carole, he was down a player. Thanks to Candice giving him Alexis, he had an extra player, so Carole’s death didn’t matter. He could put Zyanna in the game, but that was risky. She and Candice were too close, and that could add an element he might not want. He wanted the players to be willing to throw the other ones to the wolves to save themselves.

Weakness didn’t come across well on screen. People wanted a strong hero. It was best to weed them out with extensive mind games. In this case, since this was his big network debut, he needed everyone to be perfect. In the past, his broadcasts had been only for his own pleasure and that of a few loyal Internet followers. The last game had almost twenty viewers. Back then, it didn’t matter who they abducted or lured into the game. The audience weren’t long-term players. In this episode, the audience would be participating.

He needed players who could go the distance. He needed a survivor that people would fall in love with, because no matter how it all went down, only one was getting out alive. He hoped that one person would be Candice. There was a lot of time, effort, and money invested in her ability to rise above the common. She was the strong hero he’d been waiting for that had the right combination of inner strength and sex appeal the viewers would love.