He bit his lip from the pain. Something black appeared. Small. Thin. Square. Metallic. He squeezed until it reached the surface. He put it on his index finger and held it up to the overhead light.
Son of a bitch, he thought. He didn’t know anything about electronics, but he could imagine only one reason the object had been embedded in him. To track his movements.
Furious, he put it in a handkerchief and shoved it into his jacket. He set to work soaping the hole in his arm. He rinsed. He soaped again. He didn’t think he’d ever feel clean.
3
Professor Graham had her head down when Balenger returned to the table. She looked up, her expression weary. “Your arm?” she asked.
Trying to sound calm, Balenger took the BlackBerry from his pocket. “I washed it, but that only made the infection look worse. You’re right. As soon as we finish, I’ll go to a hospital.”
He studied the BlackBerry. It was silver, with a gunmetal gray front. Its screen was larger than on a conventional cell phone. In addition to the many number-and-letter keys, it had a button at the top as well as a wheel and a button along the right side. He was certain now that it was equipped with an eavesdropping device. Maybe a tracking device also, he thought, a backup to what the bastard put in my arm.
“How do I turn it on?”
He tried the button on the top. Instantly, the screen glowed. The coffee shop’s overhead lights made the icons on the screen hard to see, but he discovered that by tilting the BlackBerry away from the glare, the screen was vivid. On the upper right part of the screen, a red arrow flashed. A few moments later, a green light pulsed.
“Looks like I can receive calls.”
The BlackBerry rang.
Balenger tensed. Two of its buttons had phone icons, one red, the other green. Green for go, Balenger thought, and pressed that button.
“Where’s Amanda?” he insisted into the phone.
“Do you know what an avatar is?” a man’s voice responded, sonorous, like an announcer’s.
Balenger’s rage almost overpowered him. After so many obstacles, he finally spoke to the man who abducted Amanda and was responsible for so much pain and fear. He thought of Ortega, the blood seeping from his dead mouth. He wanted to scream obscenities, to vow to get even in the crudest way possible. But all his military and police training warned him that everything would be lost if he didn’t keep control.
“An avatar?” Balenger repeated bitterly. “Afraid not.”
“Amanda knows what that is.”
Balenger kept steady. “Is she hurt?”
The voice paused so long that Balenger worried the phone transmission had failed. “No.”
“Where is she?”
“That’s what you need to find out.”
“To win the game? Then you’ll set her free?”
“You’ll need to do more than find Amanda to win the game.”
Sickened by the rush of his heart, Balenger realized that Professor Graham might be able to identify the voice and confirm that it belonged to Jonathan Creed. He held the phone between them.
“You mentioned an avatar,” Balenger said. “Tell me what that is.”
“A god in bodily form.”
Professor Graham listened.
“You are my avatar,” the voice declared.
“Does that mean you’re the god?”
“I’m the Game Master.”
Balenger felt his head throb.
“Scavengerthegame-dot-com,” the Game Master said.
“What about it?”
“You understand that a BlackBerry can access the Internet? Use the wheel on the side to scroll down to the icon shaped like the world. Press the wheel, and you’ll have access to the web. Your BlackBerry has high-speed capability. You should be able to enter the website quickly.”
“Internet? Website? What are you talking about? What am I going to see?”
The transmission became silent, the connection broken. Balenger pressed the red phone button to discontinue his end of the call.
“That isn’t Jonathan’s voice,” Professor Graham said.
“No. It’s got to be. Everything points toward—”
“I told you Jonathan has a thin, frail voice. That voice sounds like it belongs to someone who reads the evening news on television.”
Balenger couldn’t believe he was wrong. “Maybe it’s been distorted. Amplifiers and filters can do a lot to change a voice.”
He followed the directions he’d been given, accessing the Internet. It took him a frustrating couple of minutes to familiarize himself with the controls. The BlackBerry used an hourglass icon to tell him it was processing the information he typed into it. The symbol reminded him of the hourglass half-filled with blood on the cover of the game case for Scavenger.
That game case now appeared on the screen. Abruptly, its hourglass changed to a series of still photographs that showed Amanda in pursuit of another woman. Pressure made Balenger’s veins feel swollen. He’d never stared at anything more intensely.
Amanda wore a blue jumpsuit and baseball cap. The other woman wore gray. They were outdoors, with mountains beyond them. Amanda’s mouth was open, as if yelling in desperation.
A red blur filled the screen. Balenger took a startled moment to realize that the photograph showed an explosion. Chunks were suspended in mid-air. Body parts. A hand. A section of skull. Blood. The effect was all the more surreal because there wasn’t any sound.
Ice seemed to line his stomach. My God, is that a photograph of Amanda being blown apart? he thought. A new image showed her gaping at the explosion. Relief swept through him, even as the horror on her face became his horror.
What am I seeing? he thought.
The screen went blank. A moment later, words appeared, telling him THIS SITE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.
Balenger’s fingers ached from the force with which he gripped the BlackBerry.
“What’s the matter?” Professor Graham asked. “What did you see?”
“Hell.”
The BlackBerry rang.
He pressed the green button. More than ever, he wanted to express his rage. Instead, he forced himself to be silent.
“Thanks to technology called Surveillance LIVE, you’re able to see those webcam photographs. They were taken several hours ago,” the voice said.
Balenger felt breathless. “Hours? In that case, I have no way of knowing if Amanda is still alive.”
“She is.”
“Suppose you’re not telling the truth.”
“Then the game would be flawed. The rules are absolute. One of them is that I do not lie. Here’s another rule. It’s very important. From now on, no police, do you understand?”
For a moment, Balenger couldn’t make himself answer. “Yes.”
“No FBI, no law enforcement, no military friends, nothing of the kind. At the start, it was natural for you to go to the police. But not anymore. We’re at another level in the game. You’re on your own. Understand? Say it.”
The words felt thick. “I understand.”
“You are my avatar. Through you, I take part in the action. I cheer for you. I want you to win.”
“Bullshit.”
“But I do. I want you to rescue the kidnapped maiden and struggle to the final level where you find the secret.”
“The Sepulcher of Worldly Desires?”
“And everything it represents. I don’t exaggerate when I say it’s the meaning of life. If you rescue the maiden and find the Sepulcher, you are worthy to know the secret. I already know that secret, but I want to feel its discovery one more time. Through you.”