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  “I don’t know.” I grit my teeth, the adrenaline pulsating through my tense muscles. I am ready to fight. “These people. They—they need to leave. They are trying to kill me.”

  “Are you freaking delusional?” She steps back, her eyes growing wide as she looks at me.

  “Trust me.” I glance around, paranoid that one of the figures in the shadows will try and sneak up on me from behind. “I would explain, but I don’t even know the answers myself. These people are evil, that’s all I know. And I want to talk to them.”

  “Well, I’m coming with you.” She inches closer to me, a flicker at the core of her black eyes. She wants to see what is about to go down.

  At her words, I walk forward, directly across the one-lane road that is devoid of cars for the moment. These fuckers will have to cut their games now. I’ll make sure of it.

  I glance at Riva, sensing that she is scared, as she should be, but something about my confidence makes her feel safe.

  Except I have no reason to be confident.

  With a few steps I can see past the shadows and make out the vague features of what appear to be two men and one woman in their late twenties. They see me too. And the second our eyes connect, the glimmer of a metal blade pierces through the blackness.

  They have a knife—a sharp one. I have my fists.

  Screw my instincts.

  It is too late to walk away, but my heightened levels of adrenaline have already spurred me into an all-out panic.

  It’s game on. This time for real.

  Chapter 13

  All three figures stare at me, and as they stand there silently, I battle between shitting myself and yelling at them.

  This must be them. I try to remember what the men looked like from that house the night I was kidnapped, until I remember that they were killed right in front of me.

  As long as I don’t end up like them, I’ll be fine. I glance at Riva. She is definitely feeling the same vibe I am. A new darkness seems to preside over the night as a sinister tightness forms in the air. These people brought an energy with them and a clear danger in their silent stares.

  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who they are after. Their eyes have not deviated from me for a second since I emerged from the restaurant, and now it is time for me to force them to look away.

  “Stop right where you are.” The voice is chilling, yet none of the mouths seem to move.

  I listen, and so does Riva, our legs coming to a halt right before we are about to enter the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. We are about a dozen feet away from them, their facial features discernible, even in the darkness swathing the landscape from the foreclosed shop behind them. All of them are wearing all-black outfits, and their faces are all young and hardened. They look much different from the men who showed up to the game earlier, and my initial suspicion of them being connected to the group trying to extort me falters.

  “I’m so confused,” I whisper to Riva as we both step up onto the curb out of the way of any cars. At my statement, she has both a fearful and belligerent expression on her face. I can tell that if we weren’t currently standing a few feet away from a group of three people, one of which has some fearsome knife, she would slap me.

  I should run, right now. I know that. The smartest thing for me to do is to grab Riva and sprint back into that restaurant, or into a dark alleyway (okay, no, this one is a bad idea too), but my gut tells me to stay.

  “We are safe, don’t worry,” I whisper, low enough so that the group of people who are still staring at us, unmoving, cannot hear. I am hedging my bets, and my life, on the fact that these people are a part of the secret organization or whatever it is and not some members of one of London’s notorious gangs.

  I’m too valuable to them. I take another step forward, this time Riva staying back, likely battling with the desire to watch or run away as fast as possible. They won’t hurt me. They need me. They depend on me.

  “I know exactly who you guys are.” I take another step forward, coming within arm’s reach of the woman holding the knife in front of me. She still keeps its long, metallic blade at her side, refusing to raise it even as I inch within distance of being able to take it right from her.

  “Twenty-three days,” the woman says, spit flying from her mouth to land on my face. The men on either side of her remain silent, their figures shorter than her, yet their chests about five times larger. I tense my fists in an attempt to focus the energy inside me into my hands, so I can look as confident as possible.

  “Excuse me?” I look at her, trying to figure out if she is insane, joking, or trying to warn me about something.

  “Twenty-three days,” she repeats herself, a cool breeze that sends a chill down my spine following her words.

  The second time she says it, everything clicks in my mind. I am right about these people. They somehow must be in connection with the ones who kidnapped me. Maybe they are even working for them. And I know what she is telling me. I have twenty-three days to get them the patents Chimera owns or else I die. I have twenty-three more days until my life totally blows up.

  What a pleasant reminder. No sentence has ever made me more frightened and angrier at the same time.

  “What are you doing here?” I take another step forward, this time so that my nose is inches from her. I want to intimidate her, want her to feel the heat of my breath against her dry skin and face, which looks deceptively trusting.

  “Twenty-three days.” She repeats it a third time, both men on either side of her standing still, their eyes locked in on my movements.

  I pause for a second, not knowing how to respond, as I have clearly hit a brick wall with this lady. Part of me wants to force an answer out of her, to take her knife and threaten her own life. But I know that’s impossible. The two men likely have even larger knifes of their own, and there’s no way I can take both of them on with just me and Riva.

  I take a step back, suddenly realizing that a group of people are walking towards us on the sidewalk, staring at us in confusion and fear. They likely think this is some sort of fight about drug money or a stupid bar fight gone wrong, and the last thing any of us need is the police called.

  My dad will kill me, and so will these creepy assholes.

  I try to pacify my demeanor, making myself seem cool and relaxed even though I’m angry and mortified that this group of people could be following me around the world, trying to take my life away.

  “Don’t think you can get away with this.” I make sure there is a passive-aggressive iciness to my tone. I don’t need to cause a scene, at least not yet. Instead, I wait for the group of thirty-something-year-olds, all of whom are a bit tipsy, to walk by, their laughter breaking the tension in the air for a moment.

  “Your father is lying to you.” She smiles, revealing the features of her gorgeous face. I do have to admit, although there is a slight chance this girl will kill me, she sure is attractive. Now that she has actually spoken a few words, I’m able to recognize her distinctly British accent, and I’m certainly a fan.

  “You don’t know a thing about my father.” I step forward again. This time the two men react to my movement, their own bodies stepping towards me and their hands shifting to their back pockets. They are prepared to kill me if they have to.

  “Your father is lying to you.” Her smile dissolves from her face. She closes her eyes, leaving their blue irises closed off from the world as she seductively (at least it was seductive to me, but I’m not hard to excite) runs a hand through her curly red hair.

  After a moment of silence, she opens her eyes again. “Listen to me. Trust me. Twenty-three days and we will reward you with all the riches you could ever want. You have to listen to what I say.” She edges closer to me, her lips moving in a way that is both hot and creepy.

  “No.” I step back from her lips, which are inches from mine. “Screw off. You and everyone else needs to stay away. You’re not gonna scare me.”

  She chu
ckles at my words, her saliva spraying against my face, which makes me confused on whether I should use my right hand to first wipe it off my face or push her away.

  “You have no idea what’s in store for you. Just wait. You think you’re scared now?” She bats her eyelashes at me, which given my pitiful body language skills when it comes to females, confuses me. “Soon the fear will be burning inside you.” She finally takes a step back so that her back is once again up against the metal barred door behind her. “Soon you will listen. Or die.”

  She stops speaking, all emotion receding from her face instantly.

  The two men turn to face her, both of them pulling out machetes with foot-long blades that were strapped to their backs. Then, before I can leap out in protest, two blades simultaneously tear through the girl’s neck.

  She dies in an instant.

  Blood gushes onto the sidewalk, but no one notices. She dies in silence and darkness, all life escaping from her eyeballs as the blood gushes from her neck. One of the men holds up her head, looking me in the eyes, as if to send a warning of my own fate. Meanwhile, her body falls to the ground, her clothes swamped in blood.

  And then just as smoothly as they ended her life, the two men open the barred door behind them, which has already been unlocked, and drag her decapitated body and lifeless head into the darkness. The door shuts in a resounding thud, and in less than thirty seconds the two men had killed the woman and forced her body from the sight of the world forever.

  For a moment I stand frozen still on the empty sidewalk. I can feel their stares still digging into me, even with them out of sight, and sense the looming threat of death even after their presence fleeted.

  My eyes fixate on the pool of blood and subsequent trail that leads to the door. It is all the world will ever have left of her, and one rain shower will wash it all away.

  I turn around to see if Riva is even still here, or if she managed to escape.

  I see her silhouette slumped over on the edge of the sidewalk, her hair seeming to glimmer in the faint light of the city. I sit down next to her, sighing as I hug her.

  She is crying.

  Chapter 14

  Riva insists on calling the police.

  I don’t protest.

  I try to explain everything to her in a rant full of curses and anxiety. I begin with how I was kidnapped a week ago, and this mysterious group of people have been stalking me ever since. I tell her how they know everything about me, and that they are more powerful, or at least appear to be, than any of us can imagine. They will make sure the cops won’t find any evidence, any investigation into all of this being useless. She is appalled when I tell her that even my own dad refused to get the police involved with my case, in fear of sparking federal regulators to pry into his own business ventures.

  I explain to her why this is all happening, or at least the little information I am aware of, that I question whether it’s true or not. She is scared and shocked as I tell her. She isn’t surprised that the world is capable of housing such monsters, but she is surprised that I happen to be caught in the middle of their wrath. It all makes sense to her when I finally mention them wanting me to destroy my dad’s company and give them the patents to his new product that hopes to revolutionize the way people think about living.

  She is a great listener, able to stay attentive for the entire five-minute rant. Most people don’t even listen for that long ’cause they get bored, and most of the time I never talk with anyone about how I feel. But with her, things feel different. Things feel safe. And although she can’t save me from this secretive group, the warmth of her body against mine as I tell her everything in her hotel room makes me feel better.

  But in the end, it doesn’t matter.

  I go back to my own room soon after, immediately calling my dad on the way there, in which our conversation proceeds to go nowhere. He manages to dodge each of my questions with the aptness of a junior senator, and he assures me that it will all be okay despite the fact that I possibly have only twenty-three more days to live. I want to scream at him; in fact, I want to punch him in the face, but instead I listen, eventually giving up at winning over a man who only decides to see the side of the story that makes him happy—or keeps him from feeling guilt.

  I finally decide that Riva is right. Her only piece of advice, given the fact she hasn’t exactly been through the phase in which international secret organizations threaten her life, is that I should, “trust myself and expect the worst from everyone and everything else.”

  The thing is, I don’t trust myself. The only person I have ever truly trusted in this world was my mom, and after her death, my dad became that person. After all, my mom trusted him with her everything, and so I could do the same. My dad has and always will be my idol, the man I’m simultaneously jealous and proud of, and the man I fear I can never be. Of course I always listen to him; he’s all I truly have in this world besides Jake, and even though he always hurts me, I can’t help but love him.

  Except I’m not sure he loves me back.

  After all, seeing this organization’s tactic failing to work so far is a testament to it. They don’t want to try and develop their own product. Instead, they would rather kill me to get to it instead. What they don’t realize is that my life has no power over my father—I’m not sure what does anymore. All I know is that they are hell-bent on destroying my life (the constant threats have made that abundantly clear), but everything else about them and my dad remains a mystery.

  My dad wants to change the world and selfishly wants his own legacy to be unrivaled by that of most humans in world history, but I know he is hiding something deep beneath his emotionless glance. He is lying to me. He has been for years, and I can’t let this continue. My life is now at stake, and I have to know how I can save myself before it’s too late.

  But no matter how much I beg him to tell me the truth, and no matter how much I try to find what to believe, I always come up empty and in pain.

  This is connected to something huge. There must be a reason no one is telling me the truth; this must be some top-secret intel. I can’t end up dead for being in the middle of this mess. I sigh, trying to knock the flurry of thoughts from my mind, but after last night, it is impossible. They, whoever they are, have infiltrated my mind at the deepest level. They have penetrated every nerve in my body with pure terror.

  Every movement I make, I fear one of their agents is lurking behind my back. Every time I tried to sleep last night, I lay awake, paranoid they would somehow haunt my dreams like they hacked into my Deadwave game with Jake, and cause me even more pain.

  Riva: How are you doing?

  Her text flashes across my hologlasses, and at first, I hesitate to respond. I find myself actually caring what she thinks of me, which means I have to put in more effort than just responding with one-word answers. I want to show her I care.

  Me: After last night… let’s just say I have had better nights of sleep.

  Riva: Same. OMG same. Yeah, I’m still like shook from it all.

  Me: Yeah, me too. It’s one thing to watch someone die in Deadwave, but when it happens in real life feet away from you, it’s insane.

  Riva: That’s, yeah, very true.

  I wait as the three dots signaling she is composing her next message appear. I take the moment to glance out the window, the city landscape morphing into a suburban one that is littered with neighborhoods full of beautiful manicured lawns, followed by a strip of forest. It is a deceptive view, of course—a few miles ahead, in the next zone of development is a massive span of housing and businesses that have been foreclosed and are falling apart, the issues of London no different than the ones in the U.S.

  Except the economic plight of this area brought me and Jake the opportunity to engage in one of our favorite pastimes—exploring the forgotten landmarks of the past. And the stop on today’s list is the Spiders World amusement park, named after the iconic twentieth-century rock band, that shut down a few years ago.
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  “We’re five minutes away.” Jake rolls down one of the car windows, taking in a breath of fresh air. “This is gonna be so sick.”

  “I know, man, I know. This is what I need right now.”

  I sink back into the leather seat behind me, allowing my neck, which always strains me, to get as much support as possible. Riva’s text flashes across my eyes a second later.

  Riva: If you ever need me to talk to, I’m always here. I know we are competitors and everything, but there is more than winning to the game. I didn’t join the Deadwave World Tour to be in social isolation for seven months (that’s exactly what has happened), so I’m serious, like you seem like a great guy and I’m worried about you. So never be afraid to reach out.

  I reread her text several times before I even believe what it says. Yes, I know it says nothing groundbreaking. She isn’t confessing her love for me, she isn’t bringing forth any egregious revelations, but her stating to me that she is there for me is something no one has ever said to me.

  Wow. My fingers tremble as I try to type on the holographic keyboard that is projected into my retina, the sensor picking up my movements in front of my eye. I finally give up on responding after a solid two minutes of typing a few jumbled words and deleting them, to only retype the same sentence over again.

  To put it lightly, I am taken aback. I have lived my whole life in a world so closed off from any of this. I have spent my entire life so disconnected from the world, that I have never connected to anything—the people around me, my past, or even myself. The only thing I have ever truly valued is winning; it’s the only thing I have at the end of the day, because like my dad, I refuse to feel anything else.

  But that story is too simple. That story would be a lie, because I do feel things. I feel them all the time—I feel sad, angry, regretful, but most of the time I find it easier to switch that steady stream of thoughts off and focus on my sole goal: winning.

  I never thought that the closer and closer I get to victory, I’d realize that I’m losing myself. Riva is the only one who makes me want that back—and that is dangerous. So, I shut it off. I let my thoughts drift into the land of me picturing my grandiose future, one full of a world of abundance for all. A future that I will build, one that always runs further and further out of reach of where I am today no matter how far I progress.