The Game - 8. Chapter 8

The game goes on. Like chess when you lose a major piece you still keep fighting. Until the king goes down there is always a chance. But what do you do when the king disappears and you have no idea where to look? And what do you do when the king doesn’t even realise he’s the king so he can’t help you find him and when he happens to be your best friend in the whole world and you know him better than you know yourself and you know that he is going to be lost and frightened and confused, and maybe he is being hurt and you can’t even bear to think about it and no one seems to care and....?

You play the game. It was the game that put him in danger in the first place so it has to be the game that saves him. Play by the rules, play to win, and maybe, just maybe it will all be alright in the end.

Annie is good at playing the game. She has taken to it naturally. She has an idea that she has played before. Clues came in many ways, mostly in dreams and visions, and she kept them all in a small pink notebook which never leaves her sight. She keeps her mind constantly open, constantly switched on. It makes it difficult for the others, having to constantly screen her, constantly protect her from interference, and from the other side. She tells them it is because clues come at all times, from all directions, but really it is because she is still looking for Adam, still hoping that she will pick something up but he is closed down and that makes her more afraid than anything else.

She thinks about him all the time. She knows there have been others who have gone missing, others who are being used as pawns, who are being held against their will but she can’t quite care about them as much as she does about him. And it has nothing to do with the fact that he is the end player. She isn’t even sure that she quite understands what that is. It is only because he is Adam. How could she care about any of the others when they aren’t Adam?