by J C Lane
“Who are you?”
“Laura, all you need to know is that I am the Referee. I am in control of this Game of Tag.”
“What game? Who started it? I don’t want to play.”
“I know you don’t. But it’s not up to you. Now, listen, you tried to call your parents.”
“They’re going to find me. It doesn’t matter if I call or not.”
“I wouldn’t expect them anytime soon. They don’t even know you’re missing.”
“I was supposed to be home hours ago, right after I was done babysitting.”
“At the Wengers’? That’s right. Such adorable kids. Wayne. Piper. And the little one. Melody, I believe?”
Laura sucked in her breath. “What do you know about the Wengers?”
“Not important right now. What is important is that your parents did expect you home after babysitting, but that was before the change of plans.”
“You mean my kidnapping?”
“Such a harsh word for it. It’s a game. And, no, I mean when you decided to go to your friend Rosie’s house overnight. She invited you, and your parents thought it was a great idea. As far as they know, you’re snuggled up at Rosie’s, talking about boys. Well, about Jeremy, at least.”
Laura began to hyperventilate, temporarily halting her hiccups. “Jeremy?”
“Of course. Such a sweet boy. Asleep right now, because he also thinks you’re at Rosie’s.”
“Rosie knows I’m not there.”
“Of course she does. She thinks you snuck out with Jeremy, and she’s covering for you.”
“She wouldn’t believe it.”
“You were very convincing.”
Laura gripped the edge of the bench. She was spinning. The world was spinning. If only she could get this person off the phone and call her parents.
“Look at the phone, Laura.”
“What?” She shook her head, trying to focus.
“The phone. Look at it.”
Laura turned her wrist. There, on the screen, was an image of the front of her house. The picture faded into an image of the back, and from there to the window of her little brothers’ room.
Laura lay on the bench so she wouldn’t fall over.
“How about this, Laura?” The Ref’s voice came out loud and clear over the phone’s tiny speaker, and the picture changed to another window, the one outside Jeremy’s bedroom. “I’m sure you can picture your boyfriend here. Sleeping peacefully, dreaming of you. Oh, wait, you don’t have to picture it. Here you go.”
A dark image came onto the screen, just light enough Laura could identify Jeremy lying in his bed.
“You’re in his room?”
“Of course not, silly girl. My camera is in his room. He has no idea about any of this, and he’s in no danger. Unless, of course, you insist on attempting to call him or your parents, or any of your friends. Remember, we have your old phone. We know who all of your Contacts are.”
Laura couldn’t see the screen anymore, since her eyes were filled with tears. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. You don’t have to. The only thing you have to remember is that you are keeping your family and friends safe by not calling them.”
“But what about me? Is somebody really trying to kill me?”
“Ah, yes. It all comes down to that, doesn’t it? What about me? Am I going to die? How could anyone hate someone like me? If I were you, Laura, I would take a good look at my surroundings and identify my options. You don’t have many, but the ones you have are each viable. Use them when the time comes, and you have a chance of reaching Home Base without being Tagged. Good-bye, Laura. And good luck. Because I am generous, I will not count this as your call to the Referee, and I will also not penalize your family for your indiscretion. But don’t let it happen again, or they will suffer for it. You don’t want that, do you?”
“No,” Laura whispered.
“Good girl. Now, get ready. The time is coming to Go.” The line went dead, and the screen said Call Terminated.
Laura grasped her arm to keep it from shaking, willing the phone to ring. Or to have a text. Send a picture. Something to explain why she was sitting alone, terrified, in a deserted train station in the middle of the night. She hugged herself, rocking on the bench, until she realized she didn’t want the phone to ring. If the phone rang, it meant someone was telling her to Go, whatever that was. And she wasn’t ready.
Suddenly, sleepiness wasn’t a problem. Now blood rushed through her veins, and her senses heightened. The Referee said she had viable options. She needed to find them, because this Game was happening, whether she wanted it to or not.
The Home Base she needed to find was in the phone’s GPS. That’s what the Rules said. She navigated to the GPS and looked up the location. Downtown Chicago, Water Tower Place. A mall.
“How do I get to Water Tower Place?” she asked the phone. Her voice fell dead in the plastic shelter.
The phone didn’t answer.
The GPS gave ideas on how to get there by walking—way too far for that—by rail, and by road. Laura sat up. By road. She stuck her head out of the shelter, studying the two cars. They crouched there, dark and silent. Taking a deep breath, Laura left her shelter and walked toward them, skirting the edge of the pavement. There could be someone in one of them, watching her.
Every few feet she stopped to make sure there wasn’t any movement in the cars, but all she could see was the light reflected from poles dotted throughout the parking lot. Soon she was beside the closest car, but she felt better going to the other one first. She didn’t want to be checking out one vehicle, wondering if someone was behind her, watching.
She crept up to the old silver Toyota. It was all banged up, with several bumper stickers declaring the driver a Liberal in many ways. Laura didn’t care about that. All she cared about was whether that Liberal was in the car at that moment. She sneaked up behind it, but saw only darkness.
Could she do it? She had to. Counting to ten, she made herself move, and shone her phone’s light into the interior of the car. She let out her breath in a rush. Nothing there but fast-food trash, CD cases, a jacket, a sock…and no keys in the ignition. Not that she was really expecting them.
She tried the doors. All locked. She felt around the wheel wells and bumpers, hoping for one of those hidden key pouches. She even lay on the ground and focused her phone’s light on the car’s undercarriage. Nothing. She got up and brushed herself off, disappointed. You’d think someone as messy and liberal as the car’s owner would at least have forgotten to lock one of the doors.
Approaching the second car was easier, having gotten over her fright with the first. This car was newer, a Ford of some kind. The interior was spotless, and not even one sticker graced its bumpers. Again the doors were locked, and no keys were hidden anywhere she could find them.
Deflated, Laura trudged back to the shelter. The Ref had said there were options. Not just one. Laura punched the name of the Manhattan, Illinois, train station into her phone, and a schedule appeared. Aha. The first train of the morning would be coming at four o’clock. Ten minutes. It would take her directly into the city, only blocks from Water Tower Place. She had no way to purchase a ticket online, with only cash in her pocket and no access to her parents’ credit cards, so she would have to pay the conductor directly. She assumed she could do that. She couldn’t imagine a conductor throwing a teenage girl off the train in the middle of the night for not having a ticket.
A pair of headlights lit up the side of the shelter, and Laura jumped. Could that be It, chasing her down already? She checked her phone, but there had been no signal that the Game had begun. The car parked, and two men wearing suits got out, carrying briefcases. A very early start to the workday. Laura frowned. But it was Saturday. Did people really go to work before dawn on a Saturday? What was wron
g with them? Or were they with the Game? Were they part of the whole thing?
The men didn’t hide their surprise at finding her in the shelter.
“You okay?” one asked her.
Her mind flashed to the Rules, which stated very clearly that any person she involved in the Game would be in danger. She couldn’t do that to anyone, especially since she figured she was being watched here, where the Game began.
“Do you know if I can buy a ticket on the train?”
“Sure. The conductor can do that.”
“Okay, good. Thanks.”
The men glanced at each other, obviously not sure if she was a runaway, or what.
“I’m fine.” She forced herself to smile. “Really. Just…catching an early flight to go visit my grandma.”
The men nodded and smiled, but looked skeptical, glancing at the bench and floor beside her. She realized how strange it would be for a teenage girl to take a trip without any luggage. She ducked her head, pretending they weren’t there. She couldn’t get them involved. They had wives, families, pets, lives. She couldn’t sacrifice them. Not to save herself.
hic
A train whistle sounded, and the men headed out onto the platform. Laura stood, ready to follow.
Her phone rang.
Tyrese
It was pitch black out there, wherever he was—in Illinois, if Roth, or whatever his name was, was telling the truth about his location. No vehicles had come by since he’d been thrown out of the car, which made sense, since it was the middle of the night. No moon lit up the sky, and no buildings or streetlights appeared anywhere in his line of sight. Tyrese re-read the Rules, along with the statement that either he or It would end up dead.
It. Who would possibly want to kill him?
Actually, there was a rather long list. Rivals at school. Rivals on the court. Girls he’d dumped or cheated on, or both. Guys he thought were his friends but weren’t. Members of a gang in Gary, which Tyrese had refused to join. His father, an undiagnosed psychopath he hadn’t seen since eighth grade. There were more than enough violent options to choose from. He’d thought he was getting away from that world. He’d worked so hard to escape it all. Honing his body to the practically perfect machine it now was. Throwing himself full-force into basketball, whatever it took. Living with his grandma and staying away from drugs and alcohol and stupid pranks and losers who would bring him down.
But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was the Game. He was told to wait for the signal to Go, but he had the coordinates of Home Base, and no one to keep him from running. Sure, there were the Rules of the Game, but he’d been taught to play hard and fast until the official told him to stop. So that’s what he would do.
He wouldn’t call his grandma or Squeak. What could they do? He’d scare his grandma, Squeak would freak out, and the whole world would know. Besides, according to the Rules, Squeak or Tyrese’s grandma would die. He had to do this on his own. He wasn’t ready to defy the specific Rules that threatened the people he cared about. Not when he was better equipped than any of them to win the Game.
The compass on the phone pointed north, the direction Tyrese needed to go. He started out with an easy jog before taking a faster pace, not sprinting, but moving pretty well. Up ahead a pair of headlights shone in the distance. Could that be It already? Had he triggered something when he ran? He scoured the darkness for a place to hide, but there was nothing. Harvested cornfields, flat land, empty horizon. A ditch.
Tyrese ducked into the ditch, which he was glad to find dry. He could hear the vehicle approaching, and see the headlights lighting up the night. He kept his head down so his eyes wouldn’t reflect the light and give him away. The sound grew louder and rushed past, the tone changing as the vehicle continued south. Not Roth’s Caddy. Too loud.
When the air had gone quiet, Tyrese searched as far as he could in both directions. No more headlights. He climbed out of the ditch, and just as he began to run, he received the text he’d been waiting for.
4 a.m.
Hello, Runners. This is the Referee. It is time.
Get ready.
Get set.
Go.
Amanda
Stupid HotNerys666. He was going to pay for messing with her. Making some stupid game he’d thought she was stupid enough to go for. Taking over her TV, her game system, even going so far as to send the stupid phone. It was an awesome phone, but still…
After receiving the text telling her to Go, she ran downstairs to contact Nerys and rip him a new one. He still proclaimed innocence, annoyed she didn’t believe him. All part of the act.
She marched back upstairs, hungry and crabby. Like she would ever Go, just like that, even with more information. She wasn’t running around in the middle of the night, pretending to play Tag, just to make some egomaniac cyber-acquaintance happy. She never wanted to make Nerys happy to begin with. More like, she wanted to kill him. Virtually, of course.
She pulled up the childish text and studied it while she heated up some Hot Pockets. She wasn’t hungry for ice cream anymore. She needed something more substantial. When they were ready she grabbed a Red Bull and lugged everything to the basement, where she would figure out once and for all how to burn that arrogant, sexist douchecanoe, Nerys. Her only regret was she’d have to find a new archnemesis, once he was out of the picture. But this time he’d taken it too far.
She set her food on the end table and sat back to think, but her eye caught on something new on the TV. A clock. It was ticking down. 23:48 minutes. 23:47. 23:46. What the heck? Was Nerys really expecting her to feel threatened and do something desperate because of a countdown?
She unplugged the TV again, sending the screen to black, and headed to the computer to bring the ceiling down on Nerys. The watchphone buzzed. She hesitated, then picked it up. A timer had popped up. 23:36. 23.35. Holy crap, had that buttmuncher taken over every piece of technology in her house?
“Nerys, you android, I am so coming for you.” She plugged in his info, but this time the computer didn’t connect. What kind of virus had he planted in her system? Some cyberterrorism software, probably. She should’ve known. It had only been a matter of time until that lowlife used his knowledge for evil.
She dropped her chin into her hands and stared at the screen, trying to remember why she’d gotten involved with Nerys in the first place. They’d met online during a multi-player game. It had been an all-star event, played with ten of the country’s top scorers. She and Nerys had been the last ones standing because they’d teamed up early on, once they realized they were each smarter than all the others put together. They’d wiped out every other contestant. Sort of like The Hunger Games, how some kids would team up to kill the weaker ones, even though they knew it would come down to all but one of them dying.
So she and Nerys got to the end of the game, and Amanda had thought her temporary avatar and Nerys’ had made a great team, that they would go out co-champions, and maybe become friends in real life. Or at least cyber-friends. Turns out, Nerys didn’t feel the same way, and the first chance he had, he decimated her avatar without a warning shot. Just bam, she was dead.
Of course the gaming world is vicious. Of course she should have seen it coming. But she hadn’t wanted to. She’d finally found an opponent who thought like she did, who appreciated the creative and often bizarre nuances of the games. She’d been devastated, and more alone than ever.
Amanda was smart. The smartest person she knew, which was unfortunate. She’d spent most of her childhood trying to appear dumber than she was. Hiding the grades on her papers, even purposefully making mistakes, until the teachers called her on it, and her dad pulled the guilt strings. How was he supposed to afford college if she didn’t live up to her potential? A single immigrant dad, working entry level jobs—two or three at a time—to give her what she had. She needed to do her part so she could get the edu
cation she deserved. Or at least the education he thought she deserved. Which meant she needed perfect scores and superior testing. Her superior ratings already meant offers of full rides to multiple institutions, but still he and her teachers rode her butt.
She hated her IQ. What she wouldn’t give to be a normal, mid-level intelligence girly-girl, happy if she had a ton of shoes and a date for Saturday night. But that world wasn’t for her. She’d made her place in the gaming culture, eventually. Guys found it hard to accept her, since they tended not to be fans of Geek Girls, unless the girls were wearing Uhura’s skirt. Amanda figured that just like anywhere, guys were intimidated by smart girls. The gamer guys were geeks, for sure, but they were still ruled by testosterone. Well, sort of. It’s kind of hard to take a guy seriously when he’s wearing Thor’s outfit, but looks more like Quark.
So she did her schoolwork to make her dad happy, and hung out in the cyber world the rest of the time. There it didn’t matter if the science teacher made an example of her—supposedly a positive one, which only got her in trouble in the real world, or more ignored than usual—or if she had jewels in her eyebrow, or if she dyed her hair neon purple. Or if she had a 4.2 GPA and aced the ACT on her first try, when she was a freshman.
After the gaming contest, where Nerys stabbed her in the back, Amanda dove back into her usual online haunts, from the newest FIFA, beating people from all over the world, to Halo to Assassin’s Creed. Every opponent bored her, every game turned sour after she achieved one hundred percent within hours of purchase, and she found only flaws in games the whole world loved. Even the Batman franchise, Game of the Year winner, left her wanting.
She traveled the cyber world in many different guises. Elves. Ghosts. Nursery rhyme characters. All in an attempt to make her life more fun, or at least less dull. All time wasted, because boredom overwhelmed her. Finally, she created PeruvianGoddess13. PG13 became Amanda’s complete alter ego. Flashy, athletic, devastatingly beautiful but unflinchingly modest. And, of course, unbeatable. Amanda finally felt like she had something to work with, something that gave her purpose. She built her avatar from day to day, creating her own worlds, moving around the cybersphere wherever she could go. PG13 became Amanda’s closest—perhaps only—friend.
