The Great Game

If you’re new to the Great Game, please have a quick look at the blurb to your left, where you’ll find a short catch-up introduction!

“I got the information, anyway,” I say. “We need to speak to a guy called Sinclair. He has people in the hall. People called Grey, dressed in grey. I’d like to hunt down one of them.”

Alice nods. “Me too. We’re here already, after all.”

We get up, and start threading our way towards the main entrance to the hall. I feel good, relaxed and confident, which should make me suspicious and cranky but doesn’t quite manage it. I have to settle for a firm intention to think three times before committing to anything.

It takes about twenty minutes of pushing through the boneyard where movie extra characters go to die — I’m sure that one guy was holding a real 1920s Tommy gun, which is impressive — but eventually Alice spots a Grey. She’s a girl in her 20s, grey leather jacket and jeans, grey baby-doll T-shirt, no slogans, no logos. She has tumbling back hair, with a jagged grey streak shot through it. Even her big, strange eyes are grey, and her face is oddly neutral, the sort of expression you end up with when you have to be very patient for a long time. She’d be pretty, if she didn’t look so… disconnected.

We make a beeline for her, and she turns to watch us approach through the crowd. Her expression doesn’t waver, even when we arrive in front of her.

I dredge up a smile. “Ms. Grey, I presume?”

“Echo,” she agrees.

“We…”

“Need to see David Sinclair. Yes. I know.”

Well, fair enough, I guess most people who approach her do. I want to ask her if it’s dangerous, if we should be scared of this guy, but I can’t think of any way to do it that doesn’t sound stupid. That doesn’t stop her answering the question anyway, which is off-putting.

“Of course he’s dangerous. I could tell you what to look out for, where the biggest risks are. But I’m not going to.” She’s still eerily calm.

“Thanks,” says Alice.

Echo nods. “This way.”

She leads us to a side-door in the hall. It opens on to a quiet, dimly-lit hallway, and going from the throng of reception back into the emptiness of the main hotel is a surprisingly nasty shock to the system. I suddenly feel isolated and vulnerable, even though ten seconds ago I was feeling hemmed in. The hallway is fairly narrow, panelled in oppressively dark wood and carpeted in dark green. It’s not helping. Echo leads us down it wordlessly, and I’m a little surprised to note that there aren’t any doors — it’s just a corridor.

The hallway ends in a big, ugly steel door. It’s dulled with age, stained and streaked and pitted, and looks like a survivor from a nuclear power plant catastrophe. It takes up the entire wall, adding to the blast-door effect. If I squint at it, I’m almost certain I can see things swimming in it, as if the metal was somehow a pool. I deliberately avoid looking at Echo, terrified she’ll confirm my vision, telling myself I can’t actually feel her amusement.

“Knock,” Echo says.

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Today’s picture is Tulpa by Santa is Drowning.