Game: A Thriller

by Anders de la Motte

  Father deceased 1995 (stroke), mother 1997 (cancer). The records also mention the candidate’s use of narcotics (hash and marijuana), as well as truancy and disruptive behavior at school. There is also a care plan established after a district court judgment (see below).

  Criminal record and police register: The candidate’s first conviction occurred shortly after his seventeenth birthday, and concerned numerous instances of minor narcotics offenses and one instance of vehicle theft: he was given a probationary sentence under the supervision of social services.

  Shortly after his eighteenth birthday he was convicted of aggravated manslaughter and sentenced to ten months in a secure young-offenders’ institution. Later entries in police surveillance logs indicate minor narcotics offenses, suspected trafficking in stolen goods, and minor larceny.

  His most recent conviction was almost two years ago, for one case of dealing in stolen goods, one instance of aggravated unlawful driving, and one instance of minor narcotics offenses. As a result he received a probationary sentence and a fine.

  Other official records: The candidate has five notifications for nonpayment registered with the enforcement service, principally for unpaid household bills for his electricity and telephone, as well as unpaid standing charges for the building he lives in. It is worth noting that every case has been resolved before the bailiffs were called because his sister settled the debt.

  Personal characteristics: All sources describe the candidate in similar terms. He is intelligent, quick-thinking, and imaginative, but is also described as lazy, unreliable, and self-centered. He usually prefers simple solutions to long-term engagement, has obvious problems with authority, and has few serious friendships or family relationships.

  Assignments: Apart from the trial assignment (scenario 12a), the candidate has successfully carried out four assignments (up to difficulty level C3).

  He regularly watches his own film clips, checks the comments often, and is quick to respond positively to invitations of new assignments.

  So far the candidate has shown no signs of doubt or anxiety about possible consequences, either on his own account or such as the assignments might generate.

  Recommendation: Candidate 128 demonstrates almost all of the qualities required by a successful Player. He is impulsive, intelligent, and dynamic, while exhibiting little or no empathy for others.

  The candidate appears to regard himself as an unfortunate victim or outsider. Someone who for reasons unknown is always being unfairly treated or is simply unlucky. He therefore believes that he has the right to do what is best for himself in all circumstances, usually at the cost of others or of society, without, for that reason, having to take any responsibility for his actions.

  The candidate has no family to speak of, has problems with long-term relationships and intimacy, as well as with trusting or being trusted by others.

  Even if money plays a part in his motivation, his main incentive is recognition and attention (so-called cred) from his peers. For someone who loathes authority, 128 allows himself to be led surprisingly easily, but only under the condition that he can perceive all choices and decisions as his own, and that everything is happening on his terms.

  In light of this, the undersigned recommends that the candidate is raised to level two and that further evaluation take place after an assignment of level D1 difficulty.

  Sincerely,

  Donovan

  Talent Acquisition

  HP was fucking like he was in a trance.

  He was Rocco Siffredi, Paul Thomas, and obviously the legendary Ron “The Hedgehog” Jeremy, all rolled into one. This evening he was the Emperor of Fucking, and he twisted and turned his willing but still somewhat surprised partner in order to explore all imaginable variations of copulation.

  The third shag within two hours or so, way beyond his usual average. They had already worked their way through a quick ride on the sofa, then a standing missionary fuck on the kitchen table with her long legs resting on his shoulders, and he was currently busy frenetically penetrating the lady in question from behind with such force that the entire bed seemed on the point of collapse.

  His hands had a firm grasp of her broad hips. Breasts and ass bouncing in time with her moans of pleasure, as he speared her harder and harder with his rock-hard porn-star cock.

  “A bit more, a bit more, I’m almost there,” she whimpered breathlessly. But he didn’t give a damn. Because he was the King of Fucking, the Prince of Penetration, the Ayatollah of Fuck ’n’ Rolla! But, more important than that, he was also Mr. Clip of the Week, first runner-up and number one hundred and twenty-fucking-eight! The coolest dude in the Game, and the thought of that made him considerably harder than his partner and her undoubted feminine charms could ever have done.

  With a couple of final powerful thrusts he concluded his masterpiece, and at the moment he pulled out and sent a cascade of slushy love joy over her sweaty back there was only one thought in his mind: he should have had the camera on!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  She lay next to him in the darkness and glanced over at his sleeping silhouette. Maybe not the smartest guy in the world, exactly, but at least he was damn good in bed, and this evening he had seemed unusually inspired.

  They had known each other for about six months, after meeting in a bar somewhere in the city center, and because she had been feeling particularly lonely and in need of physical intimacy she had, against all of her usual principles, gone back to his flat with him that same evening. The sex had been good right from the start and after that it had been difficult to stop.

  There was something about him that appealed to her, that got her going. Not that he was especially handsome or exaggeratedly sexy; he was probably somewhere in the middle on both scales. Maybe it was simply the fact that he wasn’t a police officer but just a completely normal guy who lived in the completely normal world that appealed to her most. Either way, they met up every now and then, usually when she was in the mood. She wasn’t after a relationship and he had never protested against the arrangement that had developed. But she still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was exploiting him. Rebecca suspected, or possibly hoped, that he already had a proper relationship, but she had chosen not to ask and he hadn’t felt obliged to tell her anything more about himself. Whatever it was they shared, it wasn’t about feelings but physical attraction, and that didn’t really call for any details, or at least that was what she liked to think.

  Oh well, it probably didn’t matter. They were fuck buddies, to be blunt about it, even if she wasn’t fond of that particular term. She stroked his back guiltily and heard him mutter something in his sleep.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The Game Master had promised him an entirely new world, and so far he wasn’t exactly disappointed! He could watch the clips any number of times, and by now he probably already had.

  Assignment number four had been pretty neat. He had removed the wheel nuts from a Ferrari belonging to a sleazy lawyer while the guy was sitting ten meters away having an after-work drink with his hotshot friends at Sturehof’s pavement café. The car was of course parked in the parking bay for deliveries beside the concrete mushroom in the middle of Sture Square, so that everyone could see his flashy fucking penis extension, but in spite of that no one had noticed a thing.

  The tools were waiting for him, neatly wrapped up in a plastic bag, inside the cistern of one of the toilets in the Sture Gallery, and once HP had got going it had taken him less than three minutes to remove the nuts on the wheels facing the street.

  Even though it was Friday evening and there were loads of people around, no one reacted to what he was doing, not even the cop who strolled past just half a meter behind his back. It was actually bloody weird that people cared so little about what other people were doing, at least until Mr. Sleazy Lawyer tried to do a wheel-spinning U-turn to head back up King’s Street.

  Both wheels flew off more or less instantly and suddenly the stupid bastard got co
nsiderably more attention than he had been expecting. Apart from the hundred or so who stood there laughing and pointing in an outpouring of Schadenfreude, HP counted at least five others apart from him who were filming the beautiful car as it sat there straddling Sture Street. The shiny and presumably absurdly expensive disc brakes were properly embedded in the tarmac, and according to the report in the Daily News the following day it had taken almost an hour for the recovery truck to get the vehicle cleared out of the way.

  But by then HP was long gone. He hated Sture Square, more than ever at weekends, and didn’t want to spend any more time there than was absolutely necessary.

  The last he had seen of the car’s owner was the man standing there crying like a little girl, leaning on the boot of his ruined darling car, but HP hadn’t felt the slightest bit of sympathy for his victim. Mr. Sleazy must have deserved the treatment, you could tell just by looking at his stuck-up face, his slicked-black hair all greasy with Rogaine, and his flashy suit. With a car like that, you were practically asking for trouble, and that’s precisely what HP had provided.

  HP had never liked lawyers anyway. The only time he had ever been stupid enough to employ a law twister, it hadn’t exactly helped him. The bastard had been completely incompetent, hadn’t done his homework, kept calling him Håkan, and stank of drink masked by mints in court. HP should have known better than to accept the first name suggested by the court, but he had only just turned eighteen and even if he knew all the signs of heavy drinking backward, it would take a bit longer before he had the same sort of grasp of the legal system.

  Everything had been a complete fucking mess that time.

  Ten months in a secure young-offenders’ institution had been the result.

  Public defender, my ass! More like “public defiler,” or possibly “proper defrauder,” to judge by Mr. Sleazy’s ridiculously expensive ride. So now at least he got the chance to deliver a bit of payback to the ambulance chasers, and it felt pretty damn good!

  Suck my cock, you stuck-up Sture Square wankers!

  As per his instructions, he had the wheel nuts couriered anonymously to the law firm the following week, and for the first time it dawned on him that everything, the whole deal with the Game, was a hell of a lot bigger than he had imagined.

  Because what was really the point of sending the wheel nuts back to Mr. Sleazy? It was almost like doing the guy a favor, and probably saved him a few thousand kronor off the repair bill. Why not ditch them in the waters of New Bridge Bay and have done with it?

  The only answer he could think of was that someone wanted to see the look on the guy’s face when he got the package. And that was when he finally understood. That there were actually other people like him out there, not just in the USA, but here in Sweden, and probably in other countries as well.

  He had already worked out that the gorilla on Birkagatan was involved somehow, and that the stupid fucker hadn’t kept his mouth shut and had blabbed about the Game. That was obviously what the text he had sprayed on the door had been about. And it probably wasn’t Lewis Carroll himself who had left the pass card in the book or worked out how to switch off the clock on the NK roof . . .

  But the bigger picture still hadn’t really sunk in before he figured out that someone had been selected to conclude the assignment with the lawyer. That someone would stand there filming as the GQ-reading little jerk opened the parcel and went red when he discovered his own missing wheel nuts. Someone just like HP, with an assignment to carry out and a camera to document it with, and the same probably applied to whoever it was who managed to come up with a Ferrari wheel wrench and hide it in a toilet cistern in the Sture Gallery. So at least three little assignments and the same number of participants just to piece together the whole and give Mr. Sleazy a weekend he’d never forget.

  The whole thing was fucking refined; he had to take his hat off to whoever it was who organized all this.

  The assignment had given him 1,000 points, and the next morning he had found a foreign credit card on his doormat. This time he guessed the pin code correctly first time.

  In total the account turned out to contain $2,300, which matched the number of points he had on the list. He just had to stick the card into the nearest ATM and withdraw what he wanted.

  It had been more than enough for the Sopranos box set he had been dying to get his hands on and a family pack of best Moroccan from his friendly neighborhood dealer. Then he had settled back on the sofa, puffed the magic dragon, and blown the heads off some rookies in Counter-Strike. Then home-delivery pizza and a bit of male bonding with the boys in the Jersey mafia. Life was pretty sweet!

  But in spite of all this, it was the fifth assignment that was the really cool one. The one that transformed him into Mr. Clip of the Week, first runner-up, and, a few hours later, the Omnipotent Pope of Pussy-Crashing.

  As well as a permanent hard-on, task number five left him with 2,500 nice new dollars in his account, but to his own surprise the money was becoming more and more like an agreeable by-product. Considerably more important than the cash was all the love he was getting in his comments section: “128 FTW!,” “all d kings horses couldn’t stop u ;-),” or “W00T onetwoeight!!1!,” to list just a few. He had an average rating of 4.8 stars and he had received a personal message of congratulations from the Game Master himself.

  Not bad for a rookie!

  He was flavor of the month!

  He was in the zone!

  He was on his way to the top!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  She woke up early, slid out of bed, and, without waking him, silently gathered up her clothes and put them on. She didn’t really like staying the night, but she had been so exhausted by the recent days’ training and by the previous evening’s activities that she had fallen asleep for once.

  Ever since that first evening, they had met in his flat, which suited her fine. She liked him, absolutely, but it didn’t feel right to let him inside her flat. It would be sending out the wrong signals, giving him false hope. Much easier to meet like this, get it over and done with, then go home. Blame having to get up early, the way she always did.

  He was actually a decent guy. A bit scruffy maybe, his flat could do with freshening up, and it wouldn’t hurt him to get his hair cut more often.

  But fundamentally a good man, considerably better than she deserved.

  She just shouldn’t have fallen asleep.

  She really shouldn’t have fallen asleep.

  He moved in his sleep and for a few panic-stricken moments she thought he was going to wake up. What would she say if he did? How could she explain that she was about to sneak out like a thief in the night, without even saying good-bye? Or, even worse, what would happen if he tried to pull her back into bed for a morning cuddle? Snuggle up together and exchange secrets?

  She felt her pulse racing.

  Calm down now, for God’s sake, Normén!

  Then he settled down and she could tell from his breathing that he was sleeping soundly.

  Thanks goodness!

  Time to go. Had she got everything?

  She did a quick check of her jeans pockets.

  Keys—yep, police badge—yep, cell phone—missing . . .

  She looked quickly around the dimly lit bedroom, eager to get going. There it was, on the middle of the desk. Relieved, she picked it up and saw that his cell was sitting next to it. A smart design, all thin and brushed steel, no bigger than the palm of her hand, with nothing but a touch screen. A little flashing red light was the only indication that it was switched on. She couldn’t remember ever seeing one of that model before, or this one in particular, come to that. He must have only just got it. Probably cost a fortune, she thought as she carefully closed the front door behind her.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  When HP opened the baggage locker at the Central Station, at first he didn’t realize what he was staring at. The green, cylindrical object reminded him most of an aerosol can and for a moment he almost felt disapp
ointed. Was there another rat who needed a reminder of rule number one? He’d been expecting something better.

  He stuffed the object into the bag he’d brought with him, and because the subway was full of people he wasn’t able to take a closer look at it until he’d shut the door of his flat behind him. He felt like he’d been taken for a ride; the assignment had started so promisingly with the key to the locker taped under a table in a branch of Wayne’s Coffee on the steep part of Goth Street. It was classic spy-film stuff, sitting there among all the unsuspecting latte slurpers, the anxiety of feeling under the table, and the excitement when his fingers touched something hard.

  He already had an idea of what the key was for before the cell told him where to find the lock it fitted.

  So why all this James Bond cloak-and-dagger shit, just for a can of spray paint?

  But now that he’d had the chance to inspect his find, everything suddenly got more exciting. He guessed almost at once that it wasn’t an aerosol. It was actually a bit ridiculous that he’d ever been thinking along those lines. You only had to see the handle halfway along one side and the pin at the top to realize that this was far more dangerous than a can of paint. And instantly his pulse started to race with anticipation.

  “M84 Stun Grenade,” it said in military lettering, and a quick check on Wikipedia was enough to confirm what something like that was used for. The grenade, which was also called Flash and Bang, was a so-called non-lethal weapon. For anyone who didn’t understand faggy military-speak or play Counter-Strike, it was a weapon whose primary use wasn’t killing people.

  Unlike ordinary hand grenades, the M84 didn’t fire out shrapnel that mutilated and killed those around it, but instead caused a hell of a big bang as well as a flash of light that made the sun look like a 15-watt lightbulb. The point of the grenade was to knock out your enemy by making him blind and deaf and making him crap himself long enough for you to pick him up alive. Most antiterrorism and police forces in the civilized world seemed to have M84s in their arsenal, and the descriptions of the grenade’s effectiveness were overwhelming: “very powerful,” “extremely useful,” or “highly efficient” were just a few of the positive reports that various users had given the M84, and now HP suddenly had one of his own.