Michelle Maddox - Countdown

I shook my head. "No, it couldn't have been that bad. You couldn't have been that bad."

He snorted. 'Trust me, I was. But then I had an idea. I created a game. Six levels. And I got people to volunteer to go on it. Then I got people to pay to watch it. I spent a ton of my father's money on developing this thing, but regular cameras weren't good enough. It needed better technology and a better edge. I sank more money into developing an artificial intelligence program."

"Wait… artificial intelligence? Like the robot from Level Three?"

He pressed his lips together for a moment and then nodded with a jerk of his head. "Yeah, almost got taken out by the same thing I helped develop in the first place. If that isn't irony, then I don't know what is."

I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. "Okay, keep going."

"Are you sure you want to hear the rest?"

I frowned at him. "No. But keep going anyhow."

He raked a hand through his dark hair and paced to the other side of the luxurious room. "We didn't do so well with the game in the beginning. There was too much competition from the other networks that were still on the air. Jonathan was my friend back then, and he was the head of the Ellis medical research department. It probably made my father feel better about his greed to put some money into something altruistic. Jonathan randomly suggested one day that I take things underground. Make it secret and exclusive, so that only certain people had access to it. Together we started to develop the cranium implants."

I touched the back of my head to feel the incision mark on my scalp. I didn't interrupt again. I sat on the edge of the bed and listened to him, the knots in my stomach getting tighter with every word he spoke.

His mouth twisted. "It was great for a while. Word of mouth spread about this supersecret game. My brother helped me out with the show and testing out the implants. We both got fitted with a prototype-that's the extra mark you found on my head-but they never worked properly. The next ones we developed did, though. We paid off the prison to let us use their inmates. If they won they got a reduction in their sentences. But then, one day, one of them was killed by accident on camera during one of the levels. I thought the incident would shut us down and that would be the end-I'd lose everything I'd worked hard to gain. But instead the show got even more popular, and the addition of the implants only made it cooler to the subscribers. But then they wanted more blood, more death, more everything."

He paced to the other side of the room. "I didn't even think I had a conscience until it was tested. I wasn't going to be the producer of a show that killed people for the amusement of others."

He turned to me then, as if expecting me to have a look of disgust on my face. When I didn't, he looked away again.

"It made me a little crazy, I guess," he said. "Late one night a little over four years ago, I started pulling the plugs on the network and breaking the computers. My brother was there and he tried to stop me, but I knocked him into a bank of computers and there was a power surge-a huge one that shut off the electricity citywide for a couple days. When my brother got up I thought he was going to see logic and maybe help me, but… he didn't. Instead he called the police and had me arrested. When I was in jail waiting for my hearing, I heard the newsbreak. Pictures of me, video captures-all fake- and the story was about the murders of those poor girls."

He rubbed a hand over his mouth, his eyes haunted by memories. "My brother turned his back on me. He disowned me. Then there was the trial, and the jury deliberated for all of ten minutes before they sentenced me to five hundred years." He let out a short, humorless laugh. "Here I thought Gareth never wanted to see me again, and yet he's dragged me back into the game after all these years. I don't know what the fuck he's playing at, but I don't find it funny at all."

He stopped talking and I just stared at him, trying to take in everything he'd just said. Process it. Figure it out and make sense of it.

"Your brother hated you that much?" My voice shook as I said it. "Enough to frame you to get you out of the way? What did you do to him?"

He frowned deeply. "Nothing. My brother and I got along just fine before that night. Fought like cats and dogs, sure, but that's just how brothers are." He shook his head. "The last time I saw him was when he had me arrested. He never showed up for any of the trial. Never to visit me. Nothing."

"I can't believe this."

He raised his gaze from the floor. "Believe it."

"Everyone thinks you're a rapist and a murderer."

"That's right."

I chewed my bottom lip. "When I read you, I did feel guilt. But you feel guilty about creating this game."

"It's all my fault," he managed. "All of these people who've died playing it. More than four years Gareth's been in charge, and it's just gotten worse and worse."

"Just to make money."

He shrugged. "I don't know anymore. Maybe he gets off on the violence, like the subscribers do. Maybe he likes seeing people who don't have a choice make the last mistake of their lives. He never used to be like that. Maybe he's just greedy. I guess he's a lot like me."

My jaw clenched. "I don't think he's anything like you."

He blinked at me. "How can you say that after what I just told you?"

I felt a line of anger move through me. "Because it sounds like you were a self-involved rich boy who was bored and created a game to entertain himself. That makes you an asshole, but it doesn't make you a monster."

"That's entirely debatable."

"Whatever's happened to this game in the last few years is Gareth's fault, not yours."

He shook his head. "No, it's not true. It's my fault."

I tried to think. "You need to talk to Gareth."

He laughed. "He won't talk to me. I've tried to contact him before."

"Do you know anything about the game that could help us get the hell out of it?"

"If I did, don't you think I would have done it already?" He shook his head and then looked at me strangely. "Why are you even still talking to me? I thought you'd want to kill me for what I've just told you."

"I don't want to kill you. Well, not too much, anyhow."

"Then you should hate me. As much as I hate myself."

He looked so despondent at revealing his deep, dark secret that I touched his cheek and stared up at him and felt a swell of emotion. I was surprised that I wasn't angrier about what he'd just told me. But I wasn't. All I wanted to do was take his pain away. He'd just revealed a hell of a lot to me. But it didn't make me hate him.

Not at all.

I placed my hands flat against his muscled chest, spreading the robe to the sides. He didn't pull away.

"What are you doing?" he breathed as I pressed myself against him. I felt his cock immediately harden against me. "Why would you even want to be close to me after what I just told you?"

I licked my lips. "Because when I look into your eyes I see sadness, and such a deep, aching loneliness that all I want to do is make it go away."

"Kira … please …"

I didn't say anything, instead allowing my hands to roam freely over his chest, his arms, his stomach. I pressed my lips against his shoulder-the wound he'd had at the beginning of the game that had already almost magically healed to a flat red mark-and along his collarbone to the center of his chest. He felt so warm.

I slid my hands down his sides to the sash of his robe and untied it, then moved my hands back up to his shoulders and pushed the robe off him, letting it fall to the ground.

He was fully nude in front of me, clean golden skin over tight muscle, and all I wanted to do was to touch him. God, he was beautiful. My heart filled with strange emotion for him, which had only grown since he'd told me his story. Shared his pain with me, thinking it would make me run away from him, when all it did was bring me closer.