The Danger Game

by Ian Bull

  “Douglas shakes his head. “Tina, fill them in, please.”

  The boys listen to my explanation of The Rescue Game, then each of them reads the article from Variety Premier. Douglas eyes me the entire time.

  “Crazy. Is this our game too?” Min asks.

  “No, it’s not our game too!” Douglas shouts.

  Min twists his face up like a bad dog who just shit the rug.

  Douglas points at Elliot. “You. You’re head of security. Examine The Rescue Game. Get inside.”

  “Yes, sir.” It takes Elliot ten seconds to find The Rescue Game online and download it onto his computer. He scrolls through it. “It’s a basic site. It encourages you to submit clues about their location, which they will go through. They also ask you to submit spoiler stories to The Danger Game and to alert them, which they also don’t list. They promise rewards for the best spoilers, but they don’t say how that works either.”

  “That’s it?” Douglas asks Min. “That can create millions of submissions?”

  Min shrugs. “Yes. Thus, we have to assume any story submission that’s about survival and escape is a spoiler submission from A Rescue Game player. And that’s now already most of our submissions.”

  “That’s a huge jump. Can we find these spoilers?”

  The boys look scared.

  Elliot answers, “We would have to compare their email list to ours. They may be attracting defectors from The Danger Game. Even then, their site insists people create new email addresses for each submission, to avoid detection.”

  “Get inside their game. Find out what they know.”

  “Yes, sir,” they all say.

  “Gentlemen, I have a question,” I say, and it takes a second for all of them to look at me, Douglas included.

  “What about Quintana blinking in the last episode? Any progress?”

  Elliot shakes his head. “It seems to be Morse code, but it’s random. There could be a deeper pattern, but I’m not a forensic math expert,” Elliot says. “It’s nonsense unless we can find a definitive start point within the randomness.”

  “Just running the game keeps us super busy,” Min says.

  “Episode three dropped yesterday,” Ismael says. “We never leave the consoles.”

  “If millions are playing The Rescue Game, they may spot a pattern first,” I say.

  Douglas shrugs. “What could Quintana share? That he’s been kidnapped? And Heyman is planting doubt. If they betray each other, that’ll be a better story than any submission. Until then, every submission makes me money. I’ll know when to fold.”

  I cross my fingers that they turn on each other. I want this game to end.

  32

  CARL WEBB

  Thursday, March 14, 12:00 p.m. (PST)

  The gray Pacific Ocean is still outside the kitchen window. I need to get back to the Atlantic, which is a real blue. A squadron of six pelicans drop down from the sky and fly in single file formation right over the surface of the water, riding the air between the swells. The Pacific still doesn’t care about Steven or Julia or Mendoza and Marsh.

  Trishelle touches my face, breaking my gaze. “You’re a good man, Carl Webb.”

  “I hate feeling helpless.” I glance over at our trio of military cyber-experts, typing in the dining room. “They could be playing solitaire in there.”

  “Any news from Wisconsin?” she asks.

  “We’re still rolling calls. There are sixty rivers and hundreds of motels in Wisconsin.”

  We stare at each other. Besides some meditation music coming out of Darna’s portable Wi-Fi speaker, there’s no noise in the house except their typing.

  “Touchdown!” Glenn yells, which is followed by a round of applause.

  We rush back into the dining room.

  Darna raises her fist. “A Rescue Game player cracked the code. Steven is sending us messages in episode three. He’s using the Fibonacci sequence to hide it.”

  “Fibonacci sequence?” Trishelle asks.

  “It’s a sequence of numbers, where the next number is the sum of the previous two numbers,” Darna says.

  “0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89,” Glenn recites.

  “It’s a sequence often found in nature, in everything from the number of leaves on a twig to whorls in a seashell. It’s always a Fibonacci. The ratio of two consecutive Fibonacci numbers tends to the golden ratio as the sequence increases,” Rafael explains.

  “Wonderful. So what?”

  “Look at this,” Glenn says. He turns his monitor towards Trishelle and me, and then scrolls to the start of the third episode.

  “Start? Do I start?”

  “Action means start, moron! It’s your third day!”

  Wait, stop. I can’t remember! I have to start over!”

  “Then do it, idiot.”

  They included Steven’s bad start, complete with cartoon music, just to make him look stupid, which makes me hate them more.

  “Did you notice the blinking?” Glenn asks.

  “Guys, I’ve seen the episode. He blinks through the whole damn thing. He’s nervous because he can’t remember his lines, he just said so.”

  Glenn shakes his head. “Steven Quintana remembers everything.”

  Damn, he’s right. My heart picks up.

  Glenn smiles. “After Steven says the word start, he blinks Morse code for 0,1,1,2,3,5.”

  “And then he says the word stop,” Darna says. “That’s his first message. He’s telling us to watch for Fibonacci numbers.”

  Trishelle and I both lean on the table, crowding five heads around one monitor. “This is his second message,” Rafael says, and hits the space bar, starting the video.

  “The things we did have never ever been worth anything. Let’s not kid ourselves that we can change. I have napped through my life like a sleepwalker. But I’m awake now. Nothing can rescue us.”

  Steven blinks throughout. I shrug. “Rafa, I just see blinking.”

  Rafael takes it back to the beginning. “Watch his hands right here,” Rafael says, and he pauses the screen. Steve twists his finger into the palm of his other hand. “That gesture means ‘start’ in American Sign Language.”

  “Fantastique,” Trishelle says.

  “Start what?” I ask.

  Glenn takes over. “Start paying attention. Steven blinks after the third word, and then after the fifth word, then after words eight, thirteen, and thirty-four. All Fibonacci numbers.” Glenn points at his second monitor. “I did some fast editing to include only those words.” He starts the video again.

  Steven moves in jump cuts onscreen. “We-have-been-kid-napped-rescue.”

  Trishelle grabs my arm so hard her fingernails dig into my flesh through my shirt.

  “Now watch this,” Glenn says and fast-forwards to when the Peter Pan idiots descend and zap Steven until he collapses. Julia cradles Steven’s head. Steven speaks: “We…we are trapped…we’re somewhere in hell. South of hell. No…it’s of…no…below hell. Worse than hell. No border. No door. No way to escape. No way out.”

  “He looks like he’s having a seizure,” I say.

  Glenn clicks on the cursor and takes it back to the beginning of the scene. “This is his third message. Look right there.” Steven twists his finger into his open palm of the opposite hand. “That means start. He then blinks after the words that are in the Fibonacci sequence.” Glenn points at the monitor. “Again, I did some editing for you.”

  He hits play.

  “We-are-trapped-somewhere-south-of-border.”

  Glenn grins. “They’re in Mexico.”

  Trishelle claps her hands and bearhugs Glenn. He cringes. She heads for Rafael next; he’s already recoiling. Darna stands up and winces, knowing she’s next. Trishelle lifts her off the floor. Darna pats her on the back, like a wrestler tapping out in a fight. Trishelle puts her down and wipes tears from her eyes. ”How did you do it?”

  Glenn shrugs. “It wasn’t us. We have ten million players, and someone
named Too Cool for School sent in the solution hours ago, and we’ve been analyzing it to confirm.”

  “Larry Naython’s article paid off. Ten million people playing The Rescue Game—that’s good,” I say.

  “And more keep joining. The Army of Light is strong,” Darna says.

  “How did you find this solution out of ten million submissions?”

  Rafael and Darna hold their hands up. “We plead the fifth.”

  Glenn coughs and shifts in his chair. “We’re using some of the NSA computers at the Utah Data Center. We have friends there who play Nightstream with us. They helped us data crunch the submissions. Too Cool for School seems to be our man.”

  “Or woman,” Darna adds.

  “Later in the episode, he tells us he hears gulls. They’re close to saltwater, too.”

  “How much do Bushnell and Swig know?” I ask.

  “We don’t publish results. They have no idea how much we know,” Darna says.

  Glenn nods. “And now our players are flooding their game with requests to give Steven and Julia a fighting chance.”

  “—To get them out of that green room. So they can be outside,” I interrupt.

  “Yes. And they’re making a lot of money from our submissions. If they want to please their audience, they’ll pick a storyline that the players are demanding.”

  “Or he could just kill them,” Trishelle says. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “That won’t happen, Ms. Trishelle. Bushnell will keep playing. It’s in his nature to want to win. He wants to beat us, both at his game and ours.”

  “Has he figured out Steven’s code within a code?”

  “Not yet. But people are forming subgroups on Reddit and different gaming sites and posting about both games. With this many people playing, it’s only a matter of time before everything comes out.”

  “Especially if Too Cool for School goes online and brags,” Rafael asks.

  “Can we find Too Cool for School ourselves?” I ask. “Maybe we can keep him quiet. Even hire him to be part of our team.”

  Glenn tilts his head. “Or he could turn around and go to The Danger Game and offer to sell them everything he knows.”

  Darna raises her fist again. “We still need to find him. If he brags, it could be a death sentence for him and Steven and Julia.”

  Rafael chimes in. “We’ll scour social media. If he makes noises, we’ll find him.”

  “I use a special ops force from Brazil when I do rescue work in Mexico. I’ll call them in and get them prepped. If Steven gives us enough details, I can swoop in.”

  “Can you just do that? Invade Mexico?” Trishelle asks.

  “Hopefully, we’ll have time to go through the proper channels. But if they’re someplace remote, the rule of law may not apply, or can be purchased.”

  “Can’t we get U.S. law enforcement to help now? These clues he’s sending up are solid,” Darna says.

  On cue, my phone buzzes with a text from the office: Found a motel on the Pine River with a female guest who doesn’t want to be disturbed until Sunday. Manager hasn’t seen her come out of her room.

  I haven’t spoken to Mendoza in five and a half days. I can fly to Milwaukee and drive through the snow to the Pine River and be banging on that motel door before dawn, but I’m afraid of what I’ll find.

  I show Trishelle the text. “Looks like I’m going to Wisconsin.”

  33

  JULIA TRAVERS

  Kidnapped 88 hours ago

  The day happened. I felt apart from it, and stayed floating deep inside my brain, watching myself and Steven perform our lines. The work must have been adequate since we weren’t punished. Steven didn’t change any words. Nothing kicked me out of the zone. Heyman’s offer that I betray Steven doesn’t earn a second thought.

  We survive. Then, we are done.

  Metal falls from the ceiling and hits the cement floor, taking out a green chip as it bounces. It’s a pair of black garden shears for pruning roses. A bucket descends next.

  Steven moves fast. He pulls out towels, medical tape, an elastic bandage, alcohol, and long strips of gauze. Once empty, it rises fast back up into the rafters.

  Steven lays out a towel on the floor and arranges the bandages and the alcohol and gauze on the terrycloth like he’s prepping for surgery. I remember that he’s a trained Ranger medic, and flash back to Elysian Cay when we removed a bullet from Carl’s thigh and saved his life.

  Steven pours alcohol on his hands and on the garden shears, and then rubs them clean with another towel. He nods at me, but my body stays frozen in place.

  “Remember my offer, Julia.”

  “Screw him,” Steven whispers. “Do it.”

  I fall to my knees on the other side of the towel. He grabs my hand and forces it onto the garden shears, and then pushes his pinkie fingers in between the blades.

  “From this moment, only one of you will survive. You choose.”

  “He wants me to betray you.”

  “He made me the same offer. Snip fast, then hand me a towel.”

  “I love you.” I press hard and feel it crunch through.

  He screams.

  34

  STEVEN QUINTANA

  Kidnapped 112 hours ago

  My finger flips in the air and lands on the towel, like a twig snipped from a tree. Nausea hits me as electric pain rushes up my arm. My mouth screams, but it’s like my mind is viewing the moment through a long, cardboard tube.

  My finger lies there on the white towel like a piece of raw turkey with the bone still in it. My left hand has three fingers and a thumb, not four. I stare; it’s weird that my hands are no longer symmetrical. Then, a stream of blood squirts out of the hole and shoots four feet across the green floor. It squirts again and again in time with my pulse.

  Julia tosses the garden shears, sending them skittering. She clamps a towel over my wounded hand, rubbing exposed nerves, giving me yet another pain I’ve never experienced before.

  I grab the towel from her and wrap it tight around my left hand. All my previous injuries flash through my brain. I’ve been shot, punched, kicked, stabbed, had my teeth knocked in, been burned…none come close to the pain I feel right now.

  “Pour on the alcohol.”

  She pours half the bottle over the towel, soaking it. The alcohol reaches my wound with a searing sting.

  The pulsing is still happening. I don’t want to bleed to death. “Send down one of your men!”

  “Why?”

  “I need the cattle prod on my hand to cauterize the wound.”

  “I like you bleeding.”

  “The cauterizing will burn me. You can torture me even more.”

  “Drop five. Four to hold him, one to burn him.”

  Julia backs away as five pajama boys in black drop from the rafters, one with a cattle prod. Four of them slam me against the green wall. The fifth one rips off the towel, exposing my bloody left hand. He pushes my wrist against the cement. The wound spurts again, in time with my heartbeat. He jams his electric cattle prod against the raw stump where my finger used to be. A blue, electric spark jumps from the tip. The pain moves through me like ocean waves now, rippling every muscle.

  My mind separates from my body, floating above the scene, intrigued by how much pain my body can endure.

  The smell of burning flesh brings me back.

  Two of them snicker.

  “¿Te gustan las perras gays follarte en tus pijamas? Te gusta meter esas cosas en el culo de cada uno, eh? Putas.” You guys like to fuck each other in your pajamas? You like to stick those things up each other’s asses, eh? Whores.”

  One slams my head against the cement while another knees me in the balls, giving me two new waves of pain, which I welcome. The new pain helps override the first.

  The fifth one drops his cattle prod and falls to his knees, twisting and screaming. Julia has plunged the garden shears into his back. She puts her foot on his shoulder and yanks hard on the shears, p
rying them out. Blood squirts out of him in a fountain bigger than the one from my finger, and she plunges it back down again. He howls and falls on his face, clawing at his back, trying to reach it. The other four release me and rush her.

  “Julia!”

  She sweeps up the loose cattle prod and does a round-house kick that catches the first guy right in the mouth. Some of his teeth go flying.

  Julia kicked me in the teeth once, and my mouth remembers the power that her long, muscular legs can generate. He drops, unconscious. She jams the prod into the next guy’s crotch, and his eyes jiggle as she delivers 20,000 volts. The last two guys corner her. Two more cattle prods fall from the rafters. They grab them and poke at her, shocking her.

  The electric winch whines so much it hurts my ears, and Kidney Boy, the Toothless Wonder, and Jiggly Eyes fly back up into the rafters, their blood raining down on us and staining the floor. More will come, once they re-harness, so I have just seconds.

  My left hand is cauterized and no longer spurting blood. I scoop up the elastic bandage waiting on the white towel. I shake out the roll, grab an end with each hand, and run across the room. I flip it around the neck of one of the last two Pajama Boys from behind. I yank it tight and roll him back onto the floor, turning him into a choking, flailing crab. My wound opens up again, and blood gushes all over his face.

  “¿Dónde estamos?” I whisper in his ear. Where are we?

  He shakes his head, and I make sure my blood flows into his mouth. “¿Dónde en México?” Where in Mexico?

  The whine of winches starts again, and three new Pajama Boys with cattle prods descend. They surround Julia first, poking her, but she fights back. I tighten my grip on the elastic bandage. “Dilo, y te dejo respirar.” Say it and I’ll let you breathe.

  Julia goes down. They poke her again and again, sending up little sparks until she convulses on the ground. They’ll turn to me next. I tighten the bandage, then let it loose just enough for him to breathe. “Dilo.” Say it.

  He gasps, and then exhales a word that is almost all air. “Baja…”