by Ian Bull
Larry shakes his finger. “Careful. You need me, Mr. Webb. The people on the phone insisted that I accept it. But I never take the money. I don’t need to.”
“So, you’ll run our story?” Trishelle asks. We stand with our drinks in our hands, waiting for an answer. I feel like a dumb kid at a nightclub again, hoping the girl will say “yes” to a dance.
Larry sips his drink and stares at the beach. “You call me names, and now you want me to risk my life for you. Because if what you’re saying is true, that’s what I’d be doing, right?”
“I apologize. We came back to you because you said if we came up with a new angle, you’d publish it. We hope that you can help us.”
He sticks his hands in his pockets. The bright lights of the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier turn behind him, matching the wheels turning in his head. The pause is so long I can hear kids screaming on the roller coaster.
“I like it. I can imagine an article asking what people want to see. Maiming and killing? Or struggle, escape, and triumph? Whichever game wins reveals what we prefer.”
“We believe in our better angels. Escape and triumph will win,” I say.
“But I can’t publish it. I’d rather not deal with the wrath of an international criminal cartel. But, I will feed the story to a rival. I’ll even write it.”
“Which rival?” Trishelle asks.
“You don’t get to choose.”
“I don’t get it. What’s in it for you?” I ask.
“Half their ad money for any click-throughs for that story on their site. I just embed a tracking pixel. We do it all the time. And, if ‘Steven and Julia’ contact me again to run another story contradicting yours, I may run that article too. We can get a story war going in rival publications. Get you even more eyeballs.”
“And you’ll make even more money,” Trishelle says.
“And even more people playing. That’s why you came to me, isn’t it?”
“I have an entire security company that will protect you,” I tell him.
“I can take care of myself, Mr. Webb. But, just in case we’re being watched, when we go back into the lobby, I’m going to laugh out loud and say that I refuse to ever work with either of you. You’re going to threaten me, and then I’ll hit you in the face. Then I’m going to storm out.”
“You’re serious.”
“If Bushnell and Swig are as powerful as you say, they could have people watching me 24/7. I need to protect myself.” He grins and sips his drink and grins.
“Okay, drama queen. I can take a punch from you.”
He turns to Trishelle. “And then I’ll throw the rest of my drink on you. That would be good for effect.”
“This shirt is silk. Can you aim for the pants?”
“I’ll try. Now that I feel safe, tell me everything about The Rescue Game so I can write the best article possible for you.”
30
JULIA TRAVERS
Kidnapped 79 hours ago
I wake up in the dark. My shoulders hurt. My breasts hurt. My legs hurt. Steven exhales in his sleep; he’s coming out of his last dream. He’ll be awake soon.
I smell the air. And salt. Or it could be dust. It’s warm and dry, like he said. A tiny bit of light is sneaking in from somewhere, probably dawn’s first light. I listen and hear birds far away—a seagull squawking followed by a sweep of birds chirping. We’re not in Los Angeles.
The sounds remind me of running through the underbrush with Steven at dawn on Elysian Cay, in the Bahamas. I heard birds then, too, and we were fighting for our lives just like today. That was the most scared I’d ever been. Until now.
But he was right about the air. And the seagulls. Maybe there is hope.
Steven jerks awake, then lies still, pretending to fall back asleep. I squeeze his hand three times, and our morning conversation starts. 1, 2, 3.
Love. Sleep?
Need more. Sore.
Hate myself.
Don’t. Get us out.
I will.
How?
People watching is good.
But Heyman, Swig, and Bushnell are watching, too, and Steven is no actor.
The overhead lights blast on. “Wakey wakey eggs and bakey.”
Heyman’s silhouette moves on the catwalk. Two buckets descend from the ceiling. One has water and food, the other toilet paper.
“You go first, I’ll eat,” Steven says, and pops off the mattress ready to run a marathon. He pulls a sandwich and water out of the bucket and eats facing the wall. I grab the piss bucket, plop it down in the corner, yank down my sweatpants, and empty my bladder. There’s blood in my urine and blood on the toilet paper when I dab myself. I want to look at all my bruises, but don’t dare.
“Done.” I yank up my sweats and stride away, fighting not to show pain. I eat my turkey sandwich and drain a plastic water bottle while Steven empties his bladder.
“Done,” Steven says, and the cord holding the bucket retracts back up.
His stare is angry. He saw the blood.
Fluid moves inside me. I hope it’s the water I just drank, and not blood flowing out of my kidneys into my abdominal cavity.
We trade looks again. My eyes are calm, telling him to behave the same way. He gives me a micro-nod, asking me to trust. Quid pro quo. Agreed.
“Heads up.” Two more scripts drop down from the rafters and hit the floor.
“Get busy memorizing.”
Steven and I pick up our scripts. It’s one hundred pages, which means more dialogue until we drop from exhaustion. I preferred the silly scenes—dangling from mountains and leaping lava streams. They were only physically exhausting. This script has more scenes with me speaking than getting punched, which is a relief. I may survive the day.
I shout at the ceiling. “Two days of talking in a row? What gives?”
“People like your mouth. It makes the producers money.”
“That means people want to watch me fight more than watch me suffer.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s because I beat you once before. And I will again.”
“No, you won’t.”
“You shoot everything we do. I dare you to put what I just said in the next episode. If you don’t, it will be proof that I do scare you.”
“I’m already scared.”
I read. Me yelling spontaneous lines from Shakespeare and Euripides must have hit a nerve with the internet audience because now I fight back.
A wife berates her husband, a femme fatale tempts a hapless suitor, a queen sentences a criminal to death, a witch casts a spell…. I can tell they’re from different authors. Two of them are from women. My character is smart, and I challenge Steven as an equal. In the femme fatale scene, however, I must wear high heels, red lipstick, a red dress, and I must offer Steven great sex as long as he promises to kill my husband. Obvious alert: a man wrote that one.
Time disappears. Pain fades. Having a script with lines to study is an escape. Even the bad scenes are worth it, as I try to find a way to make them real.
Whatever I’m doing must be making them a profit because we’re still alive. I’m doing my job. Is Steven really doing his?
I look over. He’s on the last page already, and his face is white. Of course, he’s already on the last page; he’s got a freak memory and knows all his lines already. But, what’s so scary? A monologue? I go to the last page. There it is in bold: Steven cuts off Julia’s left pinkie finger with garden shears.
My heart pounds in my chest. The end game starts here.
“You’re sick, Heyman!” Steven screams at the ceiling.
“Don’t blame me. The producers know you’re up to something. This is your punishment.”
“I won’t do it!”
“Drop five.”
The lights go out. The ninjas drop and poke Steven with their cattle prods. Sparks flash each time they jab him, and I can see him fighting them in the strobing light. The shocks overwhelm him, and he hits the floor.
The ninjas fly up as the lights turn on. Steven has bad burns on his face and hands. I kneel and hold his head in my lap. “He’ll do it. Just don’t shock him again.”
Steven forces his upper body off the floor and props himself on an elbow. “No.”
“We expected that. I will give you another option.”
Steve pushes himself onto his knees and spits blood on the floor. “I have an option? That’s funny.”
“Quintana must do a good job acting. No more blinking. Travers must behave. No backtalk. Accomplish this and the final scene will be Travers cutting off Quintana’s finger instead.”
Steven’s eyes widen as the color drains from his face. My skin feels clammy, and the room tilts. He grabs my hand, steadying me. He squeezes out the message: you can do it.
“The producers want a guarantee that you will deliver good work.”
“So, I’m supposed to bleed to death? Is that it?”
“You will be given alcohol and bandages.”
“What about his pain?” I ask.
“He’s trained to withstand pain. Your mental pain will be worse, and we’ll have a dozen cameras on you. Accept or reject this option now. We start filming scene one in five minutes.”
Steven heaves himself into a sitting position and hugs me. I hug him back, not caring who in the world is watching this. He pulls away. His face is stern, without fear. “Only if we get a shower and clean clothes.”
“So be it.”
The ninjas drop and corner Steven, as the small door in the wall magically opens. I go through and follow the maze of wooden walls to the bathroom and shower. There’s a breeze coming from where the ceiling should be. Above me are the dark catwalks and bright lights and the eyes that are always watching.
The shower feels good and gives me time to prepare. Can Steven handle this? Can I? I drive away the fear of what is coming and focus on the first two pages of dialogue.
“Julia,” someone whispers.
I jump so fast, I bang my skull on the showerhead. There’s a tiny speaker embedded in the tile. They’re filming me in here, too.
“Don’t trust him. He planted the bombs for money, because he was jealous of your success, and then we turned the tables on him.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Betray him. Stab him. Kill him. Do something…and you live.”
My mind wants to scream, but my body resists. My face goes blank as my arms and legs put on the clothes laid out for me. No emotion for them. Not until I’m acting.
I walk back. The little door opens. I hunch over and step back into the green room. Steven is already there, clean and showered and wearing fresh clothes.
He gives me a thin smile. “Let’s do this.”
31
TINA SWIG
Thursday, March 14, 7:00 p.m. (CET)
The captain dropped anchor an hour ago, and Reckoning now floats in flat warm water, baking in the sun, a half-mile offshore from a city that was founded in 580 BC. That should be intriguing enough for any teenager as smart as Devon to enjoy.
“I don’t want to,” his Paul Newman voice says through the closed door.
“It’ll be fun. I want some mother-son time.”
“I can’t,” he says.
“Devon, unlock the door. It’s demeaning to talk to you through a piece of wood.” That’s the agreement we have. I respect his privacy, but we always speak face-to-face. He triggers the automatic lock via computer, and the door opens. He backs up his cherry-red wheelchair into the middle of the room.
The shades are drawn, which he also controls electronically from his wheelchair. It’s too dark, even for a sullen teenager. I yank the curtains open, revealing Porto Empedocle and Agrigento in the distance. The town is yellow, with green trees and the water is as flat and blue as the sky.
“It’s beautiful out there. Come on. It’ll be an adventure.”
He spins his wheelchair so he’s facing away.
Rebecca’s perfume hovers in the air. Maybe she’s still here, hiding in his bathroom. I look out the window instead. “This part of Sicily is so ancient and wonderful. We can even drive inland. There’s a fortress town, Enna, which has castles.”
“Castles? I’m not five, Mom. And I’m making progress on the Hodge conjecture.”
“That’s wonderful. Tell me about it.”
“It’s complicated, Mom, you wouldn’t understand.”
“You get your math genes from me. Try me.”
“I believe that by using more than three projective lines—x, y, and z—all intersecting the complex shapes of a geometric cycle, we can predict the details of any geometric shape, assuming the factors x and y and z are numbers that can be complex, rational, or irrational but not imaginary. This requires creating an algorithm that will use variations of three unknowns, but all together will predict shapes of any three-dimensional object of unending complexity. I’m halfway through writing the code for the algorithm.”
“I like the idea. Almost like satellite triangulation for determining location, but over an infinite number of points so that it can reveal shape and form, like a multi-variable vector calculus equation.”
“Show off.”
“How long do you think it will take?”
“Rebecca showed me an email from Professor Carlton, saying my approach is solid, but we need to crunch a lot of numbers. We have to work backward from simple shapes we can actually determine. We can start running our first tests in a few days.”
“I’ll tell Douglas that you want to send more emails to Professor Carlton so that Rebecca and the crew are ready to encrypt and send them for you.”
“Thank you.”
Calculations fill his computer screens. This is a better use of his time, and less risky than cruising the internet. “I feel an advanced degree coming. Do you need anything?”
He smiles. “Lots of pizza,” he says with his Paul Newman voice.
“I’ll tell Rebecca to tell the chef. We’ll keep the pies coming, my wonderful son.” I kiss him on the forehead and leave.
“How is he?” Douglas asks as I step out on the sundeck. He walks away from his view at the railing to meet me at the breakfast table. A light wind ripples his silk shirt.
“He’s making progress. One of the planet’s Einsteins may be onboard this yacht.”
“Good. It’s one less thing to worry about,” he says with a sharpness he’s never used with me before. He pushes his electronic tablet across the table, between the croissants. “This article dropped ten hours ago.” On his tablet is a news article in Variety Premier:
The Rescue Game Challenges The Danger Game
Written by Evelyn Bouchey
Julia Travers and Steven Quintana’s interactive story-telling app, Tales by Travers, with their series, The Danger Game, is the fastest growing app for mobile devices since it dropped Monday, March 10, with projected profit from both the app and the story submissions topping a half-billion dollars in less than a week. But a rival app, The Rescue Game, designed to be a “game spoiler,” quietly dropped today, and is already getting half as many daily downloads as The Danger Game, with no marketing efforts on any platform or in any media. It’s also free, which may explain its quick surge in popularity . . . . It is not clear who is behind The Rescue Game. Jeanne Riley, who writes for OnLineGamer.com, says there is online chatter that Julia Travers and Steven Quintana are behind this game as well. Since both games encourage purchasing and playing The Danger Game, Quintana and Travers will continue to profit as long as both games remain popular.
Trishelle Hobbes, Julia Travers’s producing partner, and The Griffin Agency all declined to comment for this article.
Douglas shoots me a suspicious look. He thinks I’m involved.
“Is Naythons behind this article?” I ask.
“If he is, he’ll regret it.”
“We should have insisted that he take the money.”
“Too late now. What about Hobbes and Webb? Are they
behind this game?”
“The last I heard from Walter, they were still holed up in Malibu.”
Douglas strokes his chin, with a faraway look in his eye. “Interesting.”
Let’s pull the plug now. I’m happy with half a billion,” I say. “Heyman thinks he can mindfuck Julia Travers into killing Quintana herself. That would be a great ending.”
He smiles and shakes his head. “I’d rather keep playing.”
“Why risk it?”
“Because we’re making money faster than ever.”
“I’d rather disappear and build a new game. Or find Einsteins in the Third World.”
“I never leave money on the table. I also never fold when I have decent cards until I can tell if my opponent is bluffing or has a better hand than me.”
The swell from a passing cargo ship makes Reckoning rise and fall, and Douglas widens his stance to maintain his balance, but doesn’t uncross his arms.
I shrug. “Let’s go ask the boys then. We’ll see how much money is on the table.”
We go inside.
“Talk to me, boys,” Douglas says.
Min, in the first chair, spins to face us. “The game dropped four days and three hours ago, and we just passed the eight-hundred-million-dollar mark. Downloads are way up. We’re going to hit a billion dollars in just downloads within a day.”
Douglas points at Ismael, who sits up straight. “What about story submissions?”
They’re up two hundred percent over yesterday.” He turns to his monitor. “Ten percent of submissions suggest castration, dismemberment, and torture. However, ninety percent want us to move them outside. Players want to see them running between real trees, wading through real water. Comments on the message boards say that players are tired of the green screen room and want to see them battle real elements.”
“Elliot? What kind of chatter is out there? Any serious threats?” Douglas asks.
Elliot shrugs. “No. Some people chase their own submissions, trying to get inside, but I ping them around the world.”
