by J C Lane
The limo screeched to a halt on Addison Street, and that ended Charles’ investigation for the moment.
Once inside the ballpark, Charles again activated the proximity meter.
Runner is out of range.
He checked for the exact Home Base location, and realized it was on the opposite side of the stadium, within the outfield bleacher section.
He stopped a ballpark worker. “Quickest way to the bleachers?”
“Around this direction, just keep going, you’ll run right into it.”
Charles took off, walking as fast as he could without running, dodging slow-moving families, vendors, security guards, and even the team’s mascot, who took up a good bit of space. Every ten feet he checked the proximity meter, but each time received the same negative response. His heart pounded, and sweat rolled down his back. Had he underestimated his opponent so badly he was going to lose? Was she going to turn the tables, reach Home Base first and become It, so she would be chasing him? He would have been better off coming to the ballpark and waiting, after all.
No use scolding himself now.
He was rounding the corner when the crowd roared, cheering and screaming. The home run played on the screen, only to be replaced with the bleacher section and the scoreboard—girls in bikini tops, a guy playing a drum…and a huge African-American guy huddled in the aisle, head against the fence, arm held to his chest. Charles froze. On the screen, plain as day, he could see a very familiar smartwatch on the guy’s wrist. The guy was part of the Game.
Charles punched his proximity meter.
Runner is out of range.
But somebody else’s Runner had just reached Home Base.
Amanda
The cake was amazing, and X, Solo, and Amanda spent the time eating, instead of talking. The cake was also sweet. Amanda needed real food. X’s mom made Amanda an egg sandwich, which tasted about as amazing as an egg sandwich can taste. X and Solo watched her eat, and as soon as Mrs. X left the kitchen, told Amanda she should take a nap.
“I can’t sleep now,” Amanda said.
“I think you should.” Solo kept her voice quiet so Mrs. X wouldn’t hear. “You haven’t slept all day, right?”
“But the transmissions…”
“They’ll keep It occupied for a while,” X said. “Hours. It won’t know what’s going on. Believe me. You’ll be fine.”
Amanda wanted to believe him. Her eyelids, which drooped further and further, wanted to believe him. “Fine. A half hour. That’s it. After that, wake me up, and we can decide what to do.”
Solo and X’s eyes met briefly.
“Sure,” Solo said, “we’ll wake you in a half hour.”
Amanda frowned. “What was that?”
Solo’s eyes went wide. “What was what?”
“That look.”
“We’re just worried about you. Come on. I’ll show you the guest room.”
Solo got up, X watching like a skinny hawk. Amanda had no choice but to follow. Solo pointed out the bathroom in the guest room, closed the curtains, and opened the closet door.
“You spend a lot of time here?” Amanda asked.
Solo pulled out an afghan. “Tons. This is practically my room.”
“How come?”
Solo spread the afghan out on the bed. “You need anything else?”
Amanda waited, but Solo wasn’t going to answer her question. “No, I’m fine. A half hour. That’s all.”
“Sure.” Solo left, closing the door.
Amanda couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t as if she could turn off all the anxiety and relax, even if Nerys’ friends said she was safe. Because other Runners weren’t.
Besides, what if the re-routing hadn’t worked? What if DarwinSon1 was on the way there that very moment? What if It was already there, waiting for her to come out from the guest room, having killed everyone else in the house while she was lying there? She jumped from the bed and ran into the kitchen. Mrs. X wasn’t there, and neither were X or Solo.
Amanda thumped down the basement stairs, accompanied by Queen. This time a song about riding a bicycle. X sang along. When she appeared at the bottom of the stairs he and Solo gave each other another “look,” and X glanced at the clock.
“Okay,” Amanda said, “what’s the deal?”
“Nothing’s the deal,” Solo said. “We just thought you needed sleep.”
“I can’t sleep. What if our plan doesn’t work? Plus, there are more.”
“More what?”
“People being chased. Way back when I first got the Rules the Referee told me DarwinSon1 wouldn’t just wait at Home Base because It was playing against others. Whoever Tagged their Runner first would win. I didn’t think anything of it, because I didn’t know my actual life was at stake. I mean, it wasn’t, not at first. And once it was about my life, I forgot about the others. But now…”
Realization dawned in X’s eyes. “Other people are in danger, too. Other Runners.”
“If they haven’t already been Tagged.”
X and Solo turned toward the computers, like they were programmed to act at the same moment.
“Let’s save some folks,” X said.
They plugged Amanda’s watch into X’s non-Internet computer again and downloaded the entire memory. Once the information transferred, they disconnected the smartwatch, and X moved the data to his bigger machine.
“Won’t the Ref notice you’re digging around?” Amanda said.
“Not with this baby,” X said. “Well, at least not immediately.”
That didn’t make Amanda extremely confident. “So we have to work fast.”
“What are we doing?” Solo asked.
Amanda pulled a chair next to X’s. “May I?”
X gestured for her to go ahead, and Amanda read through the code on the screen, pointing at certain patterns. “Okay, I talked with the Ref here…and here.” That morning, when the Ref had killed PG13, and later, when Amanda had been informed of the deadly change in the Game.
“Holy crap,” X said. “Look at that chaos.”
For that’s what it was. Twist upon twist, shadows, clone lines, re-routing, dead ends, fake paths, like a rat leaving a trail through an insane maze.
“Who is this Ref?” X said, his voice filled with awe. “Because that stuff is crazy good. Could any one person even build a network of this size?”
Amanda’s heart sank. “It would take a year to get through all that.”
“Even with the three of us working together.”
“Well…” Solo said.
X glanced up at her, and away.
“Well, what?” Amanda said. “And look. You guys are starting to tick me off with these creepy exchanges.”
X blinked a whole lot and stared at the screen, cracking his knuckles. Queen sang in the background about not wanting to be President.
Solo chewed her lip. “It’s just…you’ll see soon.”
Amanda shoved her chair back so hard it fell over, making X jump. She poked her finger into Solo’s chest. “I have been chased, threatened, annoyed, starved, and exhausted this entire day. I am not in the mood for any more secrets. Tell me now.”
The door at the top of the basement stairs opened, and footsteps descended. Amanda’s heart raced, and she searched for something she could use as a weapon. She grabbed a light saber from a Star Wars game and held it like a baseball bat. She wasn’t sure if it was Skywalker’s or Obi-Wan’s, but she figured it didn’t matter at that point.
The footsteps came closer. X stood, and Solo turned toward the stairs, but neither of them seemed afraid. In fact, they looked eager. When a teenage guy appeared in the doorway, Solo clapped her hands and laughed. X put on a serious face and strode forward, hand out. He and the guy shook hands and gave each other one of those “man hugs,” hands still together, s
lapping the other’s back. Solo bounced on her feet, then rushed forward to jump up and throw her arms around the guy’s neck, wrapping her legs around his waist. They laughed, and the guy swung her around.
“You’re good?” He set her down.
“Great.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Finally, he let her go, and turned toward Amanda. She looked up, and up. Her head would maybe reach his shoulder if she stood next to him. She stared at his shaggy blondish hair, his golden brown eyes, his faded Mario Kart T-shirt, and his worn, tight-fitting jeans. His nose canted to one side, and he wore dark brown boots and diamond stud earrings. An interesting mix of hot and strange.
Amanda found her voice. “Who are you?”
His smile grew. His teeth were white enough, with a space between the two front ones. “Hello there, Love Goddess. I never thought this day would come, but seeing you in person is even better than I visualized. I think you might even be hotter than PG13.”
Her mouth dropped. “Nerys?”
He held out his arms. “In the flesh.”
Amanda stepped forward, and punched him in the stomach.
“Whoa! Hey!” X and Solo jumped in, separating the two.
“What was that for?” Solo shrieked. “He saved your life!”
Amanda couldn’t take her eyes from her archnemesis, who was just now standing back up. “You came here? Why?”
He winced, holding a hand to his stomach. “Why do you think?”
“You didn’t have to. X and Solo took care of it.”
“All of it?”
“Well, I’m safe now.”
“Are you? Is everybody? Are they?” He indicated X and Solo.
“They said so.” But as the three of them had already acknowledged, Amanda knew how these things worked. Eventually, assuming the Ref was as smart as she thought—as evidenced by that complex routing system—the Asian dudette would work through their little group’s hacks and find the source.
“Come on, babe, you know better than that.”
She poked her finger toward him. “You still can’t call me that, even in person. Especially in person.”
X and Solo shared another look.
“You have got to stop doing that!” Amanda shrieked at the two of them.
Solo shook her head. X backed up, his hands in the air.
“Come on,” Nerys said. “Sit.”
“I don’t want to sit.”
“Please?” He clasped his hands in prayer position.
Amanda considered it, then took the stool she’d used earlier. Unfortunately, she couldn’t take her eyes off Nerys.
He smiled and waggled his eyebrows. “Take it all in.”
She jerked away. If only he wasn’t so…cute.
“So.” Nerys sat in one of X’s gamer chairs. “X and Solo tell me you have plans to take down these losers who want to kill you.”
Her gaze returned to Nerys. She still couldn’t believe that after all those times she wanted to annihilate him he was sitting three feet from her. “How did you get here so fast? Where do you live?”
“Now, sweet thing. It goes against the rules for you to ask me that.”
“It goes against the rules for you to be here. We’re supposed to stay out of each other’s lives.”
“Then I guess you went against the rules to ask me for help. And I suppose I should have let It kill you, so you wouldn’t be mad at me.”
She swallowed her reply, because he was right. It was her own fault the two of them were in the same room. No. It was the Ref’s fault. It was DarwinSon1’s fault. It had put her in this stupid Game. It had threatened her life. It had forced her to call upon someone she’d hated almost as long as she’d known him.
“Fine. I won’t ask anything else about you.”
X and Solo stared at her. Nerys smiled, his golden eyes sparkling.
“And…thank you. For saving me.”
“You’re welcome. Now, if we’re done with all that mushiness, we need to talk about what’s next.”
Amanda glared at him for a few more seconds before turning to X and Solo. “I’m sorry. Thank you. You saved my butt.”
X eyed her warily. “You’re welcome.”
“Yeah,” Solo said, “it was no big.”
“Uh, yeah, it was.” Amanda clenched the seat of her stool. “I’ve been a jerk. I’m sorry. Again.”
“Well,” X said, “you were going to die, and all. It’s understandable you’d be a little…cranky.”
The air crackled with tension as they waited for her response. And then she laughed. X and Solo relaxed enough to laugh, too. Nerys sat back in his chair, surveying them all as if he were their dad. Or their king.
Amanda spoke before he could. “It’s clear what we have to do. We have to take down the Ref and DarwinSon1 before they kill us, and before any other Runners are Tagged. We have to shut down the Game.”
“First up is DarwinSon1,” Solo said. “Where is It?”
“Probably at Wrigley Field,” X said. “At least, that’s where It thinks the goddess is right now.”
“Amanda,” she said. “Call me Amanda. And we need to find It.”
“Big place, Wrigley,” Solo said. “No way to find It there.”
“So we orchestrate another meeting place,” Nerys said.
“It will have to think I’ve left Wrigley,” Amanda said, “without getting to Home Base.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Maybe I never got in. When It received the last transmission I was supposedly still on my way. So maybe I haven’t actually entered the park yet.”
“Transmission again in five minutes,” X said. “If we’re going to change things, we need to do it now. I already programmed it to broadcast from inside the park.”
“Do it,” Amanda said.
X looked at Nerys, who nodded.
Amanda pushed down her irritation. Obviously these two worshipped Nerys for some reason. She’d have to find out why later. And not kill them in the meantime.
X’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “Done. It will think you’re still close, but not inside. Probably figure you’re scared, taking your time.”
“Does It have a car?” Nerys asked.
“Don’t know.” Amanda wished she did. “It’s been getting around fine, but could be taking a cab. Can we find It through the phone?”
X pulled up a screen with lots of data. “We have to assume It’s close to Wrigley, right? Because It thinks you’re there.” He typed some more, and numbers and codes flew by.
“Look,” Amanda said. “A signal almost identical to mine.”
“There’s a few of them. Not a lot of people have that version of the watch yet, but I’m seeing more than one.”
Nerys leaned over Amanda’s shoulder, and she couldn’t help but smell him. A good smell. Kind of…woodsy, maybe? She kicked herself. Not what she was supposed to be thinking about while trying to save lives.
“Can we tell which signal is It’s?” Nerys asked.
X shook his head. “Sort of impossible.”
“The GPSes,” Amanda said. “We can hack into them, and find out which is which. We could tell by the pattern of movement.”
“See?” Nerys said. “Told you she was brilliant.”
Solo snorted.
X triangulated one signal and pinpointed it to a section in the third base stands. Another came from the outfield bleachers. Another, it looked like, was on the move on the promenade.
“That’s It.” Amanda pointed at the third one. “It’s going for me.”
“No way to be sure,” X said. “It’s a gamble. If we go for that one and we’re wrong we’ll be wasting time when we could be analyzing another one.”
Amanda looked up at Nerys.
“Your call
,” he said. “But I think you’re right.”
“That one,” she said.
X typed some more. “Okay, I’m isolating the signal…zooming in…zooming in…bingo. Look at that.”
A transmission had been traveling to his location every half hour. Followed back to its origins, the signal led directly to Amanda’s phone.
A chill raced up her spine. “We got It.”
X’s fingers hovered over the screen. “Now what?”
Amanda leaned forward. “Reverse the signal. I want to know where It is every half hour. Can we do that?”
“And keep it secret?” X’s hands stilled. “Not sure about that.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore,” Nerys said. “We want It to find you now. Right? So It can help us stop the Game?”
“Hard to believe, but yes.”
Nerys grinned. “It’s going to be so pissed. Dragged to the stadium and sent away without a Tag.”
X hit Return. “Okay. In less than a minute It should be heading to the new spot, out of Wrigley.”
Amanda stood up. “We need to meet It there.”
Nerys glanced at the clock on the computer. “Can we get there in time?”
X pointed to the map. “It’s not that far.”
“Looks far to me.”
Amanda looked up at him. “Have you ever been in a car X is driving?”
“No.”
“We’ll be in good time.”
“If we leave now,” X said with emphasis. He handed Amanda a laptop. “It’s synced with the big one. You can work on the way.”
2:30 p.m.
Robert
Robert’s legs went to rubber when his smartwatch flashed:
Tag, you’re NOT It.
He’d lost. Tyrese had arrived at Home Base. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. This Game was supposed to change Robert’s life.
The coordinates to your new Home Base are in your GPS.
Ready, Set, Go.
Tyrese was It now? Chasing him? He was the Runner?
