The Game - 37. Chapter 37

The first thing I see when I open my eyes is Annie’s face. It is as beautiful as ever, as dear to me as anything on earth. Her eyes are wide, shocked, terrified. I could stare into her eyes forever but there is something else I need to do, someone else.... someone.... I let my eyes slide past Annie and I turn my head so that I can search the faces that surround me until I find it, until my eyes rest on the calm grey eyes, now sparkling with tears and I smile.

Shaun looks as stunned as Annie did, shocked and frightened. Why? Oh yes, of course. I had forgotten.

“I’m not dead.” Now that they are spoken the words are.... ridiculous, banal, foolish... They had sounded so right in my head, simple true.

“But... but you were... you were.... weren’t you?”

“I might have been. I think I... I might have..... I think it’s possible that... well, okay yes, yes I was, I was but now I’m not.”

“But... how...?”

“Frankly? I don’t know. We won the game. I suppose that’s how.”

“Won the game?”

“Won the game... that’s impossible.”

Simon and the other man, the one who had led the other team spoke almost simultaneously and it makes me smile. I am so going to enjoy this. Carefully moving Annie aside I sit up. For the first time I notice that I am not in pain, not anywhere, not any more. I glance at my arms and am sidetracked by the wonder of them. They are whole, clean, not just healed but uninjured, unmarked. It was as if the wounds had never been.

“Wow.” It took me aback. It’s not as if returning from the dead wasn’t wierd or anything but this... I mean this is evidence, real, hard, undeniable evidence... and it kind of freaks me out.

Realising that everyone is looking at me I pull myself together, tearing my eyes away from the sight of my own arms.

“Didn’t you know? Haven’t you felt it? You should have. Oh... not you,” I turned to the other man “You were already out of the game. You lost before I won.”

“It’s impossible. You can’t have.”

“No. It’s not impossible, it can’t be. If it was impossible it wouldn’t have happened would it?”

“But... but how....?”

“I’m afraid you fell right into my trap.”

“What trap? What are you talking about?”

“The moment you refused to hand me back to my team you broke one of the fundamental rules of the game. When you told the Professor to proceed with the.... treatment... it was game over for you, you were disqualified. I knew you were going to do it, in fact I was relying on it. I had to work quite hard on that one.

“Once you were out of the game it was faced with a serious problem because another of the fundamental rules is that there have to be two teams. And so I made sure that there was another team... my team. I called them together and... here they are.... and we won.”

“But.. but how... how did you win? What did you do?”

“I died.”

“What?”

“It’s what the end move is...always. The role of the end player is to be a sacrifice. Their only choice, only move, is to choose for whom they wish to sacrifice, if anyone. If they make a choice to enter willingly into the sacrifice their reward is entry into the source of power, of energy, of whatever it is that disintegrates your body into tiny motes of energy and puts it back together again, kind of smoothing out all the imperfections as it goes.”

I have a thought and touch the inside of my lip with the tip of my tongue, as I expected the hole for the long forgotten lip ring is gone. Damn... some things are better left unfixed... now I am going to have to go and get it done again, and Annie is going to make that difficult and it is all hassle. Despite myself I smile. If that is the only hassle in my life after this I will be a very lucky boy.

“So you are telling me that you hatched this... plan and you got us disqualified at the last minute and substituted your own team, who has not even been in the game, and you gave them the power?”

“In a nutshell.... although I feel obliged to point out that I had nothing to do with your disqualification, other than being the instrument of it. You could have complied with the rules, you could have handed me back, you could have stopped what you were doing to me. You could not have killed me.”

“But how could you have planned all this? How could you have worked it out? How could you have called together a new team? How... how could you have done any of it in the condition you were in? How could you have pulled together enough awareness, enough.... how could you have risen above the drugs; the conditioning? I don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t. You never did. None of you did. I was the end player. You should have researched what that actually meant and not made assumptions that turned out to be very wrong. I did try to tell you, before you killed me. I did tell you that the choice was mine, but you chose not to believe me. That was a fundamental gentlemen, something that could not be avoided, could not be submerged, could not be controlled.

“I give it to you... you played a good game.... from a certain viewpoint, not from mine of course. I was with you right up to the point you kidnapped me and handed me over to the kindly professor here to royally fuck up... which he duly did.”

I turn to the professor and he has gone white as a sheet, not as pale as I am though, I know that. His eyes are wide and he looks terrified. Of me? I smile. “I should tell you that your research sucks. Really, it sucks. It is too crude, too brutal. You would never be able to get any subtlety out of it and the drugs are..... fuck, if you hadn’t killed me they would have, eventually. You should check up on the rest of your former subjects. I would be surprised if any of them are alive and, unlike me they are not going to be coming back to tell you how wrong you were... you have to find that out all by yourself.”

“I... I.... I was only... only....”

“Following orders? Oh how many tragedies, atrocities would have been avoided if people were a little more responsible with their ethics. It doesn’t excuse you, you know. Just because you were ordered to abuse me, to destroy me, to kill me.... does not make it any easier. You hurt me.... and you were excited by it.... not by the pain, that was just a by product, you didn’t care at all about pain, or about the fear, the confusion, the anxiety, the wasted time, the endless nausea and disorientation .... no all you cared about, what excited you was the power. The ability to change the way that someone thinks, acts and behaves. To take away the most precious thing that anyone could possess... memories.

“You stole my life in more ways than one and you would never have given it back... you would have destroyed my mind utterly before you allowed me to remember and that is unforgivable... that you would be prepared to do that to anyone. It is worse than taking their life, it is making their life unbearable.”

“But.... I.... I never meant to hurt you. I did everything I could not to hurt you, to make sure you were taken care of, that you were.... were....”

“Alright? I was never alright. I was not ill, not sick in any way, but you brought me here and you made me ill, you took away my memories and you poisoned me, my mind and my body... then you sent be out there with more poison to make sure that my memories did not come back. When they did you hurt me again and again. If I had been different, if I had been anything other than what I am you would have destroyed me. As it was you damned nearly did. For the love of god... you killed me.”

“But I didn’t mean to....”

“Oh, so it’s alright then. You didn’t mean to so that’s okay.”

“No, I... I didn’t mean...”

“I know you didn’t. I know that.... but you did. End of.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Do? Well I am hardly going to go to the police am I? What am I going to say? That man killed me, but it’s alright I’m alive again now? I can imagine the response. And I can’t even report the abuse because they would need evidence and there is none. There is not a drop, not an atom of your drugs left in my system, no evidence of abuse or ill treatment anywhere. I am perfect. Better than perfect. You have no idea how much better than perfect. So what can I do but forgive you. Forgive.... but never forget, never that. Now go... get out of here, all of you. Leave me with my team. We have a lot to talk about, a lot of planning to do.”

“No! I won’t accept this. All the planning; all the hard work. Do you have any idea how many people have died for this. There have been millions spent, millions and for what? I will not accept that some snot nosed kid comes sweeping in here at the last moment and takes it all away from me. I can’t be like this. No one could do what you say you have done.”

It is so funny. The posturing, the bluff, the stupid attitude. I laugh. I know I shouldn’t but I just can’t help myself. I get off the bed, glorying in the strength that courses through my body. The energy is still fizzing and popping all through me and I feel as though I can do anything. Damn if I needed to I could fly.

I feel everyone’s eyes on me as I walk slowly towards the two men who are now drawn up close together, one slightly behind the other who has his hand resting on his left breast. Underneath his jacket is the unmistakable bulge of a gun. I laugh again. Are they trying to frighten me? Or are they really that freaked out and scared? Either way it’s funny.

When I am close I look him full in the face and smile, allowing the golden glow to intensify in my eyes, to flow from me in a golden stream, rather like I had with my own team but with a very different purpose and form. As the glittering motes surge and flow around them both men go still, their eyes widening and their jaws slackening. I play with them for a while and then withdraw.

“Do you still have doubts gentlemen? Are you still wanting to continue playing the game? Do you still not believe that it is over and I have won?”

“No. No I don’t. I don’t understand but I don’t doubt.” He looks at me as though he hates me, both of them do and it makes me smile. Their hatred can’t touch me, nothing they do can hurt me now.

“I think it’s time you left now.”

The man looks as though he was going to say something but, instead he pushes roughly past his bodyguard and storms out of the room. After a glance towards me which is returned with a passive intensity that leaves no room for doubt, Simon and his ‘friend’ also leave. And that leaves two.

The blonde man is smiling at me. That strikes me as strange because, before, all he ever did was scowl and I had the impression that he hated me. On reflection maybe it was what he was being required to do to me that he hated. That thought warranted a smile back at him and when I do his eyes widen and so does his smile. I have no idea what I look like but, given the way that everyone is looking at me it must be pretty strange. I wonder what it is that is so shocking. I know that my eyes are filled with that strange sparkly golden light and that I must have subtle changes from where all the imperfections have been smoothed out and made new.... oh, and of course I have just come back from the dead so that must make the whole thing a little weird.

“I think the Professor needs to lie down now. Would you please be so good as to help him to somewhere quiet. I wouldn’t bank on working in here again. I think the equipment might suddenly be developing some irreparable faults.” As I spoke, Ben, who was closest to the equipment reached out one of his big, hard hands and brought it down with shocking force on the keyboard sending it spinning across the room shedding pieces as it went.

He then reached into the bowels of the bank of computers and took a handful of wires yanking them out in a hissing, sparking handful. Having made his point he subsided and so did the Professor who had, at one point, seemed to be on the verge of fighting back. Now he just looks on the verge of tears, a broken man.... good. The blonde man helps him from the room and I have never been so glad of anything as to hear the door shut tight behind them.

At last we are alone. Now that the moment has come I feel strangely shy. What am I going to tell them? How can I possibly explain? I scan their faces and, in every one is a look of shock tinged with wonder. Maybe I don’t have to explain. Maybe the Game has done that for me.

I find familiar eyes and stare deeply into them. Annie is crying but she does not seem to be aware of it. At the least she is ignoring it. She is staring at me, her beautiful blue eyes wide and sparkling with... what? Pride? Shock? Wonder? Love? Yes, of course. I am barely aware of moving, it is almost as though I just glide across the floor without touching it. But somehow I am before her, looking down. She has tilted her face upwards so that she can look into my eyes even though doing that seems to be somehow painful to her.

“Annie.” Her eyes wide she reaches out to touch me, gently, hesitantly, as though she is not quite convinced that I am real.

“Adam.” Her voice is a hoarse whisper. Golden light spills from her lips along with the sound. It makes me smile, and suddenly I am lit up from within, so happy, so excited I can’t keep it all contained any more. Pulling her into my arms I spin her around whooping with joy and suddenly the room erupts. The weird silence is gone, everyone is talking at once and I stand, with my arm around Annie’s shoulders, pulling her tight into my side as I try to answer as much and as many as I can.

Apart from Annie none of them has even heard of the Game. It is hard to describe it, to explain what it is all about, what has happened and why. It is easier because they have felt it, every one of them has felt the power, the energy. It is coursing through them even now, even as I stumble over explaining... badly... what it is, what it means.

Suddenly I find that I am looking into deep grey eyes and the expression is one of wonder and .... something else... something which as I recognise it makes my stomach tighten and my heart beat faster. It is as though the world falls away and there is no one else in it. Unconsciously I let my arm fall from Annie’s shoulder and I barely feel her move slightly away.

“Got any cigarettes?”

“Surprisingly I do. Do you want one?”

I shake my head. “Later. Do you still think of me as weak and vulnerable?” He shook his head, his eyes never leaving mine, his face glowing with the golden light that was swirling and flowing around us. “I’m not your patient any more. I’m just..... me. I...um.... I could....” I take a step towards him and we are almost touching. He is as tall as I am, our eyes are on a level and his are burning.

Shaun shakes his head. He is breathing hard, his eyes turning scared and uncertain. “I... I....you promised... you promised you wouldn’t do this.” His voice is soft, unsure. He is looking for reassurance.

“No. I promised that Daniel wouldn’t do it, and Daniel isn’t. Daniel is dead.” He flinches and I reach out my hand, laying it on the side of his face. His eyes widen but he does not pull away. I can feel his energy and it is light and beautiful, it nourishes me, it will always nourish me and I will nourish him. “Hello Shaun. I am Adam. It’s so very nice to meet you.” Before he can say anything I lean forwards and kiss him. I can feel him trembling and he is so tense that for a moment I think that he might pull away but he doesn’t. Quite suddenly he relaxes and responds to my kiss. I am hardly aware when his arms come around me and he pulls me to him, hard, desperate, hungry.