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her belly.
He turned to peer down at her as they walked. I m listening, he prompted, pulling her a
touch closer with the hand that held hers.
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Heather Killough-Walden
Okay, she started, hesitantly. Here s the deal&
- 113 -
The Game
Chapter Ten
You didn t run a team on the playing Field for four hundred years and not learn a thing or
two. One of the many things Victor Black had learned was how to extract codes from various
computer consoles located throughout the Field.
Doing it while invisible was an added measure of security. Doing it while invisible and time
had been temporarily stopped around him ensured that he was virtually undetectable.
So, it didn t take long for him to retrieve the code he wanted to get into Arthur One s private
lab.
As soon as the sun had gone down on that day, Victor had flown into action, calling in his
contacts throughout the Field. Within minutes, he had received word that Victoria Red was last
seen with Game Control s head tech, making her way to the TGB transporters.
The strange thing was no one knew where she was now. It had been just over three hours
since she d stepped into a transporter cube with Arthur One, and no one had seen Victoria since.
Was she foolish enough to have remained with Arthur One in his lab? Would she seriously
think that she was safe from Victor there?
Black doubted it. She wasn t that stupid.
So, where was she?
Now, Victor stepped into yet another transporter cube and let the doors slide shut behind
him. He entered the code to Arthur s private lab and waited. The cube whirred to life, blurring
around its edges as it skated through space to bring him to his destination.
When it stopped and the doors slid open again, Victor faced a vast empty lab and a wall on
the other side, completely covered in stacked furniture and computer parts.
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Heather Killough-Walden
What the bloody& His brow furrowed and he scanned the area beyond, not only with his
emerald eyes, but with the feelers of his power.
Arthur One was in the room beyond that blocked wall and doorway. Black could sense his
mind, like a terrified bird, flitting about in a flight of hysteria. The man was not well.
At once, Victor was on alert, his body and mind ready to fight. Something had gone
extremely wrong here and the last person to be seen with Arthur One was Victoria.
With one strong gesture of his gloved hand, Victor waved every item, large and small, away
from the wall across the room and sent it flying to the side, where it slammed loudly against the
adjacent wall. Some of the items split or cracked before they fell to the marble floor below;
others shattered completely. Victor paid them no heed. With a few long strides, he was across the
room and standing before the double sliding doors that led to the inner sanctum of Arthur One s
lab.
He reached out and grabbed hold of the man s mind with his power once more, ruthlessly
extracting the code from its depths. As he did so, snippets of other images raced through his
thoughts, a side effect of his search through Arthur s fevered brain.
What he saw and heard there caused his starkly handsome visage to darken into a dangerous
mask.
Victoria&
Victor bared his teeth and punched in the code on the pad to his left. The doors slid open.
Arthur One was curled in a ball on his side beneath a single, white leather chair, rocking back and
forth. He was mumbling about fire and crazy bitches.
Victor strode to the chair, knocked it aside so that it went sailing back into the wall, and then
he reached down and lifted Arthur One from the floor by the lapels of his white jacket.
You think you re scared now, mate? Victor hissed.
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The Game
Arthur stared down at him, their faces so close, and a whimper escaped his throat. Wh-
what? he stammered, his brown eyes too wide, his breathing too quick.
Victor smiled a dark smile. Wait until I m done with you. With that, he focused his energy
on Arthur s wild eyes and delved deep.
He was fast and furious and merciless. Every terrifying image he could muster, he sent
hurling through the man s brain, forcing the waking nightmares to take form with terrible detail.
He built upon them and dug deeper; the maws of laughing demons grew bile-dripping fangs,
bottomless waters darkened with the swimming forms of giant, waiting sea creatures, the walls of
Arthur s mind dripped with blood. Somewhere in the recesses of the techie s subconscious, he
was running from swarms of snakes, insects, and spiders. Ghosts inhabited his robots, changing
them from the inside out; the faux women s fingers sharpened into claws, their hair became a
mass of flames that melted their skin, and their perfect vaginas developed rims of slicing, razor-
sharp blades.
At length, the light of sanity drained entirely from Arthur One s eyes and they unfocused,
still open but staring at nothing. His breathing became the mumbled mutterings of irreversible
psychosis and his body went slack where Victor held him several feet off of the ground.
When drool pooled in the corner of Arthur s open mouth, Victor let him drop. He took a step
back from the prone form of Game Control s now useless head tech and tried to get himself back
under control.
He closed his glowing green eyes and took a deep breath. His head was aching and his hands
were shaking. The connection he d shared with his victim had inadvertently filled his own mind
with the images of Victoria s demise.
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Heather Killough-Walden
And the barely tamped fury that now rushed through his veins like liquid fire was nearly
painful. He opened his eyes again and glared down at the fallen techie. It wasn t enough.
Madness wasn t enough. He wanted to do it all over again.
How dare he touch her? How dare he hurt her?
The things he had been planning to do to her helpless form&
With a roar of rage, Victor spun around and shattered every glass screen on the floor-to-
ceiling console of the TRF s mainframe computer. The console began to spark and hiss, and
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