Литагент HarperCollins - The Complete Game Trilogy - Game, Buzz, Bubble

A narrow corridor with a sloping ceiling, flickering lights and a series of more metal doors along one side. Much less stylish than on the floors below. So what happened next?

Just as he finished the thought the mobile started flashing again – almost as if it were reading his mind. Kind of spooky!

He pulled the mobile free from his belt and was about to read the message when a voice made him jump and he dropped the phone on the concrete floor.

‘ Ladies and gentlemen, the shop will be closing in five minutes. Thank you for your custom. We are open again at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. The food hall will remain open until eight o’clock. ’

Christ, it startled him! He must have been standing right under one of the loudspeakers. Almost time to change his underwear.

Muttering, he picked up the mobile and checked the message.

Third door on the left.

The white rabbit worked for the third time and suddenly he was standing in a bare concrete room full of humming boxes, cable runs and other equipment. There was a smell of electricity and warm metal.

Far wall, black box,

press Ready when you’re in position.

There were loads of boxes, but as luck would have it there was only one black one. An old thing made of Bakelite that stuck out badly among all the other anonymous grey metal boxes. Two plastic-covered buttons on the front, one blue, one red.

He pressed Ready.

Well done, HP!

For tonight’s assignment you get to choose between the buttons. When the countdown reaches zero I want you to press one of them.

If you choose the blue, everything will carry on as usual, you will get your money and further tasks of the more basic sort. A steady, secure income, spiced with just enough excitement.

But if you choose the red button the clock will stop on your old life and you will enter an entirely new experience, the like of which you have never even dared to dream of.

The risks are greater here, but so too are the rewards, of course. Only a very small number of people are qualified for this level. The question is: have you got what it takes?

The choice is yours, neither of the options is wrong, and regardless of which choice you make, you will have passed this evening’s assignment.

Do you understand?

He clicked Yes.

Excellent, HP!

Think carefully and then make your decision.

You have twenty-five seconds as of now.

Good luck!

The Game Master

The message vanished and was replaced by a countdown.

24

23

22

This was utterly fucking super-cool! Talk about his cup of tea! So which should he choose, the blue button or the red one?

Evidently they were both right, but it looked like only one of them would have any sort of real effect?

12

11

10

He could feel his heartbeat in his temples.

Play it safe or go all in?

6

5

Obviously there was only one answer.

Adventure without risk was fucking Disneyland! Time to find out exactly how deep this rabbit-hole really goes!

2

1

He pressed the red button.

The box clicked, then there was a faint rumble. The lights in the ceiling flickered.

HP held his breath.

When she had finished her report she took a stroll round the Crime Unit to see if any of her former colleagues were on duty. Her role in the personal protection unit was only a secondment, so she still had her basic post. But the corridor was empty, which wasn’t so surprising seeing as it was almost seven o’clock in the evening. The few poor bastards who weren’t off on holiday would at least have had the sense to finish work on time.

After her interview with Anderberg she had been driven home in a patrol car, leaving her bicycle down in the garage of the police station. The quickest way to reach it was through the lift in the custody section, so she took the stairs down to ‘the beige kilometre’, as some bright spark had christened the long corridor.

Down there everything was in full swing, as usual on a Friday evening. All the holding cells were already full and a couple of tired detectives were dashing between the numerous rooms where various patrols were giving their reports. One particularly troublesome drunk, escorted by two sturdy uniformed officers, took up most of the available space in front of the duty-officer’s glass cubicle.

Friday nights, all the drinking and fighting, had doubtless been useful experience, but she didn’t exactly miss it …

One of the uniformed officers nodded in acknowledgement as she passed and she returned the greeting. On the way out to the lift she could hear his police-radio crackle into life:

‘Control to all units!

Patrol cars to Hamngatan and the NK department store …’

Nothing happened. Not that he knew exactly what he’d been expecting, but still? Surely there should have been some sort of response. After the dramatic build-up, surely some flashing warning lights or wailing sirens was the least he could expect? People running along the corridor, maybe some angry banging on the door.

But this …? A whole load of nothing.

Disappointed, big time.

He waited another minute or so, then left the room dejectedly, slouching down the stairs, and it wasn’t until he crossed the street and made it as far as the trees in Kungsträdgården that he slowly began to get it.

‘… just stopped,’ someone was saying in surprise to another passerby, pointing up at the building that HP had just come out of.

‘Isn’t it usually lit up as well?’ he heard a couple of voices ask.

Then he saw people holding up their mobiles, and soon there was a mass of people taking pictures. He looked up in the same direction, high up above the copper roof, to see what had caught their interest, and instantly his disappointment was blown away and replaced by an entirely new, indescribable feeling that he had never come anywhere close to before.

His heart was doing backward double somersaults inside his chest. His feet almost left the ground and he felt his jeans tighten over his crotch.

This was so totally fucking brilliant! Talk about mission accomplished!

The huge, illuminated NK clock, which had rotated high above the city for fifty years almost without interruption, was dark and still.

The hands of the shadowy clock-face were pointing at seven o’clock precisely. And he understood the Game Master’s words: ‘the clock will stop on your old life’. A new age had just begun!

Sometimes, usually when she was dreaming, she could still see his face in front of her, the way it looked the very last time their eyes met. First the fury, then surprise, and finally the terror in his eyes when he realized what was happening – that he was about to die.

She always relived the moment as a film running in ever slower slow motion. The way he hung there almost weightless between heaven and earth, between life and death, while his arms moved slowly in circles, flailing, initially to regain his balance, then to grab at salvation. But for a short while physics seemed to have made an exception and allowed him to balance on the edge even though he ought to have fallen already. As if the law of gravity had suspended itself long enough for Rebecca to have time to see the terror and accusation in his eyes. She on the floor, just a metre or so from his feet, close enough to be able to reach, to stretch out a hand to rescue him.

Like so many times before the sequence of events slowed until at last everything was entirely still, almost like someone had pressed a pause button. And for a single intense moment it was actually there, for real, the chance for her to reach out her hand and try to undo what had been done. Save him. If she wanted to.