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I wasn’t sure what to do about his silence.
“Carrick, go to first aid,” Vaughn told him, his nose dripping blood onto the floor. “Guards,” he called to the two who stood at the front double doors, “take him to the holding rooms.” He nodded at Laurence, who also seemed to accept his fate as well. “And you.”
This time, I was addressed. I was in a similar state to Laurence, rendered speechless. We both knew what needed to be done, and now I understood his silence. We couldn’t risk drawing any attention to what we had planned.
“You’re coming with me.”
Vaughn led me out, and I glanced once more over my shoulder at Laurence, who was already looking at me. We exchanged a long look before Vaughn took me out the doors and into the jungle, toward the processing center.
“What did you pull in the gala hall?” he asks curtly.
I debate answering, then settle on having nothing left to lose. “I wrote on the podium in lipstick, ‘The steers win when the bulls have no balls’.”
Vaughn appeared contemplative as he repeated, “the bulls have no balls” under his breath. “The Sun Also Rises?” he asks.
“Familiar with it?”
“Intimately. It’s one of Terrence’s favorites.”
How ironic that a book about male insecurity and the destructiveness of sex isthecorrupt, head honcho’s favorite book. I can’t help but laugh, a loud crack of it that bounces between the canopies of the palm trees. “You have to be joking.”
“I’m not,” he says placidly, and the rest of our journey through the jungle is silent. Eventually the shape of a very bland building comes into view. It’s rectangular, grey, and lined with few windows. It looks like a prison, or a really horrible office building.
Vaughn holds the door open for me, and a rush of air conditioning hits me in the face, immediately cooling me. There’s nothing but a front desk in the empty main room, and the guard there greets Vaughn with a nod of his head. Vaughn otherwise ignores him as he takes me through another door.
My hands begin to shake, but I don’t let him see it. I clasp them behind my back as I’m led through another door, the room lined with uniforms. Vaugh wordlessly grabs a green set of what basically look like scrubs. They’re so ugly I could throw up just based off the principle for having to wear them.
Handing them to me, I take them, the shakiness of my hands covered by the scratchy fabric in my palms. Vaughn looks me over, ever the expressionless hardass as he assesses me, then says, “From now on, you’re known as five hundred one.”
The five hundred and first player to be disqualified from the games.Fivehundred. These games are far older, and probably far more influential, than I gave them credit for.
And now I’m just another piece in their corrupt system of blackmail.
I repeat to myself, like a mantra,The steers win when the bulls have no balls, and put my trust in Laurence.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Laurence
The Lost Generation
My fingers tap on the tabletop to the rhythm of the old aircon rattling in the ceiling. I’m once again locked inside the room where Blue and I were forced to perform her lie detector test. I stare at the empty chair across from me and remember her flushed cheeks, her smile, that spark of rebellion in her eyes as she concocted calling out the very billionaires who attempted to entrap her here.
By now, she’s at the processing center, nothing more than a number. There’s a part of me that worries for her, of course, but also a part of me that worries for anyone who tries to stand in her path. She’s a force of nature, an asset I never anticipated having when I arrived on this island.
The door opens and Vaughn walks in. He closes the door behind him and stands in front of it, seeming to contemplate what he’s about to say next.
Vaughn, after all, is the person that recruited me. He was a trusted peer and business partner. My company, a cybersecurity firm that writes software for protecting sensitive information, was the perfect pair for his company that specializes in security equipment for government buildings. He has the perfect guise. No one would suspect the clean cut, respectful CEO of a security company to be orchestrating a system of blackmail, kidnapping, and illegal betting.
Unfortunately for him, my company’s specialty will be what puts the nail in the coffin of the Echelon Society. I just fear that my nail won’t be enough to fully bury them.
“When I met you,” Vaughn began, shoving his hands into the pockets of his perfectly ironed grey dress pants, “I thought, ‘This is a guy who knows what he wants, who knows how to command a room’. You’re tactile, calculated, private, can harbor sensitive information…” He gives me a pointed look, but I’m unaffected by whatever tactic he’s trying to pull here. Flattery never worked on me, even if all he’s stating is true. “I thought, ‘This is a guy I canrelyon’. So,” Vaughn runs a hand over his jaw, where stubble has grown in, “when I watched your interrogation game with your Player, I had an inkling, asuspicion, if you will.”
Walking over to the table, Vaughn places his hands on the back of the chair across from me and leans in. He looks like he doesn’t want to say what he’s thinking, and I pray he doesn’t. My plan isn’t over yet. I was so,soclose to accomplishing what I came here to do.
But Vaughn is as tactile and calculated as me.
“We don’t have time for that explanation, though. Terrence wants to see you.” Vaughn straightens again, stepping toward the door. When I don’t move, he says, “Vale, you can follow me, or I can have the guards haul you out. Carrick might be easy pickings, but the guards… not so much. Unless you’re itching to receive a shiner yourself.”
“Not really.”
