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

Then the plane was gone. HP rolled over onto his stomach again. The remnants of the shredded stick lay scattered a few metres away.

Must have hit the propeller, he thought as he struggled to his feet again.

The plane had started to climb again. But this time the engine didn’t sound quite so angry. It was rising and falling as if the engine was running unevenly, and HP could clearly hear a whistling sound that must be the damaged propeller.

The pilot was clearly having trouble, but HP didn’t wait to see how he was going to deal with it.

Instead he set off at full speed towards the bus stop which was now visible up ahead. As he got closer he saw a bus just passing the stop and he changed direction in an attempt to intercept it. He might just make it …

Then he caught sight of something from the corner of his eye and realized that the pilot had changed tactic. Instead of diving from a few hundred metres up, the plane was sniffing across the field, and HP could see the undercarriage almost touching the stubble.

This time it wouldn’t do any good to dive, he’d get his skull crushed either by the wheels or the bar between them.

Terrified, he speeded up even more. He raced towards the road, seeing the bus come closer, and exerted every last bit of strength to beating it. The noise of the plane getting louder spurred him on.

He put one foot in the ditch which made him lose his balance, but he was running so hard that he carried on, stumbling up onto the side of the road, just in front of the roaring bus.

Then a shriek of brakes, a squeal of tyres and the aeroplane roaring overhead.

An instant later he was knocked over and everything went black.

‘Hey, man, are you okay?’

The voice was coming from far away and HP sat up with a jerk. For a panic-stricken moment he thought he’d gone blind, that he’d got brain-damage or something like that, and was condemned to a life of eternal darkness. But gradually his senses returned and he managed to open his eyes.

‘You okay, man?’ A young man in a uniform that was too big for him was leaning over him, and beside him he saw the faces of a couple of anxious old ladies.

‘You came out of nowhere, man, I hardly had time to brake but I don’t think you got much more than a knock.’

HP didn’t answer, just trying to get up was an effort.

The driver, an immigrant of about thirty or so, gave him a hand.

He did a quick check of his limbs, with satisfactory results.

‘We ought to call an ambulance,’ one of the old ladies trilled. At a guess, she must have been on the bus.

‘… and the police,’ the other one chimed in. ‘That plane …’

‘No ambulance!’ HP interrupted. ‘I’m fine!’

He was, too. Apart from the scratches to his face and hands, and the fact that the wind had been knocked out of him, he felt fine. The last thing he needed right now was a load of nosey cops.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled to the driver. ‘I misjudged it, my bad!’ he managed to say as his voice started to work again. ‘I’m fine, really!’

‘Great!’ the driver said in relief. ‘Maybe we should get going?’

He called out loudly, for the benefit of people still in the bus, ‘No damage done, ladies and gentlemen.’ Then he added, ‘Everyone on board!’ though there were just the two ladies standing anxiously next to him.

As he brushed the grit from HP’s back he whispered:

‘You’re not going to file a complaint, are you, man? I’ve already got one charge for speeding, and I need this job, you know?’

‘No worries!’ HP replied, starting to get a grip again. ‘Don’t worry, just let me off without paying and it’s all forgotten.’

‘No problem, friend!’ The driver smiled in relief and gestured invitingly towards the door of the bus.

‘You should just make it to the train, but it’ll be tight.’

HP nodded and collapsed in the nearest seat.

‘Did you see that plane, man? God, it was flying low!’

He could hardly remember the journey home. HP had completely exhausted himself running across the field, and if you add to that his close encounter with the bus, it wasn’t so surprising that he was shattered. He did actually try to stay awake and check to see if he was being followed, but it had been impossible. His eyelids just kept drooping and he dozed off. He ended up all the way out in Älvsjö and had to take the train back to his place.

When he eventually made it back to Slussen he was awake enough to do the secret agent trick to shake off anyone following him. But by the time he reached the little allotment cottage he was wide awake.

His heart was racing and adrenalin was rushing through his body and it was like he was reliving the whole thing again. For a few minutes he actually believed he was about to have a heart attack, that he was going to die out there in the cottage and his ant-eaten corpse wouldn’t be found until auntie showed up to close the place up for winter.

But then his galloping pulse finally calmed down and the fog in his head began to lift.

What in the name of fuck had actually happened?

Had it really happened, IRL, or had he just dreamed it all?

It only took a quick glance in the mirror to write off the dream theory. Filthy, covered in scratches and the bottom of his jeans left in tatters by the sharp stubble in the field. It was a damn good job he hadn’t been wearing shorts!

The pilot of the plane really had been trying to bump him off, and he’d probably have succeeded if he hadn’t made it onto the bus. His pulse started to race again and he felt sick, and it took a few minutes and several litres of water before he felt he was back in control again.

His thoughts were churning wildly in his head, the tumble-dryer in there seemed to hit some sort of hyper-speed.

The Game, the assignments, everything that had happened to him – it was all just a betting game for bored rich bastards?

They’d pressed all his buttons, pushed his boundaries and got him to play along merrily. Was he really so fucking easy to deceive?

The alternative was obviously that Erman had been lying, and had just been talking a load of crap.

Okay, he was clearly a nut, but he didn’t seem like a liar. The hillbilly obviously believed one hundred per cent in what he had said, and most of it also fitted in with HP’s own experiences. The problem was that he just couldn’t take it all in, it was too much.

But if he split the story into two, it worked better. If he bit the rotten apple and accepted that he’d merely been a crazy puppet leaping happily into action whenever the Game Master pulled the right strings, and if he bought all the stuff about betting and the way the Game was set up …

If he did that, then the first part of what Erman had told him pretty much explained everything he had been through.

Even if it stung badly to accept that he had been some sort of court jester in a virtual casino, the explanation made sense, unlike the rest of the story. At least it kept more or less on the right side of crazy.

But he was still having trouble buying the conspiracy theory.

The idea that the Game spanned the whole world, took on all manner of dirty jobs and also had ears and eyes everywhere – that was impossible to take in!

Erman himself had said that he had reached those conclusions all on his own, not based on anything he had seen or experienced directly. Possibly one result of too many lonely hours spent out in that cottage with no contact with the civilized world. You really had to feel sorry for the poor bastard. Even if Erman had practically scared the shit out of him out there in the forest, HP still felt some sort of weird connection with Erman. They actually had quite a lot in common. The Game Master hadn’t exactly been particularly lenient towards either of them. Tracking them down, making them feel special and then, once the Game had had enough of their talents, dropping them like they were yesterday’s news.