Dangerous Games IX

The next day Luke brought me down my tray of food, looking very nervous and tense. He didn’t say anything to me, and he had a black eye, I guess Isabelle had got him. On my tray though was the important bit, a new journal, so he had got my note and followed it.

Once Luke was gone I lay down on my cot, with a pencil and my new journal. I opened up the journal, pencil at the ready, the first few pages were already full of Luke’s neat writing. Pretending to write on the already filled page, I started to read. Always on camera, that was a problem.

Alice had taken my place, of course, with all of her information. She was now one of the important ones. She and her husband now lived in the house with Mother rather then in their mother’s house, in my old room.

Isabelle had gotten rid of Dan when Dan had tried to get rid of her. Dan had always pushed too much. Isabelle had thrown him through the second story window; he was now living with Al, since Dan was too young to live alone. That meant it was just Isabelle, Ben and Alice.

Luke had also written about himself. I don’t know why he had thought his update belonged with the ones about Isabelle and Ben but he seemed to think that it did. He was, he didn’t tell me why, still considered my underling. That’s why he brought me food, it was his job. I was his job. He had been marked. He didn’t say so but I could guess he was only a little better off then I was. He could go outside, I hadn’t liked outside until I could go. I now loved outside.

I flipped through the blank pages of the journal and almost dropped the book on the floor once I came the last hundred pages or so. I had thought the journal was a bit heavy. Now was not the time for quiet or sneaky. It was the time for fast action, no plans were needed. I grabbed the blot cutter from where it had been hidden in the journal and took care of the bolt on my cell. Right now Alice would probably notice me doing this and I would get in trouble, but maybe not. She couldn’t watch everywhere at the same time. Maybe if I really got in trouble they would actually kick me out of the game, rather then keeping me in the cell. That was a thought.

Luke was waiting for me in the kitchen, that’s where the stairs to the basement came from. He looked scared but was steadier then I would have thought he would be. Luke wasn’t strong like some people, Luke was weak. But he had gotten me out of my cell, and he was waiting for me.

“I talked to Mother,” was the first thing he said to me, no hello. “I asked her to let us get a house somewhere in the real world, outside of this place. This isn’t a good place for us anymore.” For the first time he wasn’t asking me what to do, he had decided what to do; the problem was I didn’t like it.

“I like being in the game, I’m not going to lose,” I told him. We didn’t have a lot of time but I wasn’t going to be told that I had lost.

“They aren’t going to let you leave if you don’t leave now,” Luke told me. “They want to keep you in that cell forever, until you die. I would have to bring you food forever, until I died. They don’t like you, so they’ve thought of a worse fate then losing for you.”

To be continued...