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.

Some time passed, then I heard some footsteps approach. A moment later, a face slid into view; a chap in his fifties, in an anonymous suit. Then he vanished again, and a metallic scrape suggested he’d sat down.

“If I unclamp your head,” said the voice I remembered from the motel, “Will you behave yourself?”

I gathered all the dignity that I could muster, and said “Just what do you expect to get from me?”

He sighed. “I’ll take that as a no, shall I? Look, Taylor, we found your car. In fact, I even retrieved your ID and communicator from that nasty little weasel you sold them to. I imagine you must have seen what happened to your office.”

“I saw what you did to Carrie Ransom too, you son of a bitch.”

“Carrie Ransom has been dead for three days.”

“Like hell.”

“We found her body stuffed into a suitcase, inside her closet.”

“Just what sort…”

“TAYLOR.” He sounded monumentally pissed off — and bloody loud, in my ear — so I shut it. “Better. Look, I understand that you’re feeling paranoid. You had the sort of day yesterday that would usually earn you several weeks of expensive, boring therapy time. Complete with group hugs and bright crayons. For Pete’s sake, man. If I was going to kill you, you would be dead.”

He was trying to sound reasonable, but that didn’t mean anything. “Yeah. You need me for something.” I couldn’t keep the sneer out of my voice.

“Yes, you stupid little prick.” Guess I’d annoyed him again. “I need you to pull get back to fucking work.”

It took me a long moment to get my voice working again. “What?”

“I don’t have time for you to go all basket-weaver on me, man. This is a crisis.”

“Wait. You’re legit? Who the hell were those freaks who blew up the office, then?”

“That was us,” he said frostily.

The penny dropped. “Oh. Oh, fuck. How many?”

“At last,” he said, the relief audible. “I was beginning to think you were going to be fucking useless. At least four. Ransom, George Cho, Martin Lucas, and one of the cleaners. For sure. No idea how many others. But not you. Although I had my suspicions, until the lab guys cleared you.”

“Who or what are they?”

“Absolutely no idea. Are you in?”

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Today’s photo is Faux plafond, vrai néon (False Ceiling, Real Neon) by Mll.