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Damn it. I didn’t get far before getting outed.
“And you are?” I asked without turning. Quickly, I fastened my mask on my face.
The last thing I fucking needed was a goddamn fan club. Viewer attention was good, but if I wanted to get the Ghosts, I would need to move quickly and without any baggage.
In the last couple years, I’d declined more press opportunities than I accepted, but I could never avoid the game-day coverage. The ‘Where Are They Now’ segment was important for the image of the games, after all.
Hard to turn civilians into murderous psychos if you couldn’t promise for them to be filthy rich, famous, and allegedly happy with a white picket fence and two point five kids.
I turned to see a pair of unmasked boys and a girl looking at me with mixed expressions of excitement, awe, and mistrust.
“I knew it,” one of the boys said, nudging the guy next to him. “Their father is likesuperfamous. It’s practically a given that everyone after him will join. I mean, how could they not? Their dad is a Leg—”
The Devil’s Playground theme song blasted through the speakers, abruptly cutting off the chatter.
Thank god. Ignore them and move on.
People swiveled their heads to try and catch sight of the noise, excitement crackling through the atmosphere like the beginning of an electric storm in the tense silence.
It’s starting.
“Players! Please make your way to the starting area!” a cheery computer-generated voice called through the speakers.
I was the first to push through the crowd toward the back entrance. The group that’d tried to talk to me followed close behind.
Fucking Perfect.
Just what I need, a bunch of no-name shadows.
Even if I hated coattail riders, I couldn’t deny that I was in sore need of allies. If they were proficient in any aspect of the game… they could have value.
They continued to chatter behind me as if I wasn’t even there. Going on and on about my father’s accomplishments and nothing about the games that were about to start.
As I ignored them, they started to distance themselves. One guy lingered but shrunk away when I glared at him.
They wouldn’t last. If money did things to people in the normal world, in there it was a thousandfold.
They’d turn on each other the second racking up points became more difficult.
Dozens of footsteps cut through the music along with excited murmurs, but all of that stopped when we reached the starting area.
It was a small half-circle paddock with a stage and screen set between two large steel doors. The telltale lights, sounds, and smells of an amusement park drifted toward us over the tall fences.
The sky was darkening and the fog that had fallen over the entire arena was clearing up just enough to make out the starry sky above. The area filled quickly, many rushing to take in the area up close for the first time.
Fucked up. But apt, I guess.
I could just make out a few of the taller rides, but besides that hint, inside was a mystery to be unearthed once I had no way back out. And beside the light music playing around us, there was an eerie absence of the normal joyous screams of an amusement park.
If I strained I could hear the creaking of the rides, the rush of wind, and a crackling, demented sounding carnival music.
It caused something heavy to sit in my chest.
Just beyond was a dead, soulless, amusement park that would soon be crawling with Seekers readying their weapons and slitting the throats of helpless Ghosts.
In that moment, I stopped being aSeeker. As I looked around me, I saw the other players for what they were.Killers and Ghosts.
Property of the game.
