Scavenger

1

The clouds thickened, darkening the valley.

“We don’t have much time. Do what I tell you.” Viv swung to survey the ruins. Her gaze lingered over her husband’s body and his crushed, bloody face. Then she roused herself into motion again. “There.” She pointed toward a fallen building where the walls and roof had landed in a crisscross pattern that resembled a pyramid.

Amanda hurried with her.

“Help me pull the boards from the middle,” Viv said. “We need to make a hollow.”

Amanda tugged the boards out, splinters jabbing her fingers.

“Put the boards on top. Overlay them so they cover gaps. We’re trying to make a roof.”

A cold wind pushed Amanda. Shivering, she glanced over her shoulder at the angry clouds roiling across the valley.

“Quickly.” Viv layered more boards.

Amanda worked harder. A cavity formed. As the wind nearly blew her cap away, she pulled and stacked.

Grunting with effort, Viv deepened the hollow. “Do you know what hypothermia is?”

“A drop in body temperature.”

“In the mountains, weather changes rapidly. Feel how cold that wind is.” Viv crisscrossed more boards. “If we get wet and chilled, we’ve got three hours before our core temperature drops so low that we’ll die. Basically, we’ll shiver to death.”

Amanda looked over her shoulder again, but this time not toward the storm: instead toward Ray. She saw him in an open area beyond the ruins, his green jumpsuit vivid against the dark sky. He stared down at something, obviously disturbed by it, but she couldn’t see what it was.

Viv whirled toward the wreckage. “That door. Help me with it.”

The door lay under part of a roof. It looked flimsy, three boards secured by cross boards. When they freed and lifted it, Amanda thought it might fall apart. The wind almost blew it from their hands. Struggling, Amanda glanced toward the open area two blocks away where Ray now faced the storm. He seemed so disturbed by what he’d found that only now was he reacting to the approaching weather.

They reached the shelter. Amanda saw Ray hurry toward the ruins. Then flying dust obscured him. Rain pelted the ground. Chunks of wood sped past her.

Amanda set the door flat. More rain hit the ground. She felt drops strike her back while she and Viv squirmed into the hollow. It smelled of mold and dust. She and Viv reached out and dragged the door in their direction, tilting it sideways against the opening. They left a gap on each end where they clung to the door’s edges.

The wind whistled against the gaps. Cold rain struck Amanda’s fingers.

“Don’t let go!” Viv’s shout was amplified by the small enclosure. Even so, the wind was so loud that Amanda barely heard. “Whatever happens, don’t let go!”

A hand grabbed the door and tugged.

“Let me in!” Ray yelled.

“No room!” Viv screamed.

“You’ve got to let me in!”

“Go to hell!”

Another hand grabbed the door. Ray yanked so furiously that he opened a gap at the top. His face leaned toward them: gaunt, beard-stubbled, eyes filled with rage. Rain streaked at him. Dust and chunks of wood flew past him. His gaze narrowed fiercely, suggesting he intended to drag Amanda and Viv out and take their place.

He seemed to debate with himself. Unexpectedly, he released his hold on the door. As the wind strengthened, almost veiling him in dust, he charged away.

Amanda got a tighter grip on the door an instant before the wind would have hurled it along the street. She and Viv pulled it over the shelter’s entrance. Rain struck the door’s edge, pelting Amanda’s fingers.

“Do you believe in the power of simultaneous prayer?” the voice asked.

“Shut up!” Viv yelled.

“Suppose a woman is seriously ill, and her church prays that she’ll get better. Hundreds of believers, all praying at once. What if the church’s pastor contacts churches all across the country, and those congregations pray at the same time also. Hundreds of thousands of simultaneous prayers. Do you believe those prayers will have an effect?”

The rain pounded the shelter’s roof so loudly that the Game Master’s words were faint through Amanda’s headset. Her fingers gripped the side of the door.

“Some studies suggest that if the sick person knows about the prayers, the psychological effect is so powerful that healing can occur. Now consider the power of a massively multiplayer online video game.”

“A massively what? You’re not making sense! Shut up!” Viv pleaded, gripping the door.

“One of the most popular massively multiplayer games is called Anarchy Online. A player pays a monthly fee for the right to assume the identity of a character on the alternate-reality planet of Rubi-Ka. It’s filled with exotic creatures in a spectacular locale with a humanoid culture.”

The rain became icy. When Amanda couldn’t move her fingers, she released her right hand from the door and blew on it, trying to warm it.

“No!” Viv told her. “Don’t let go!”

“Amanda,” the voice asked, “do you know what an avatar is?”

“Leave me alone!” Amanda switched hands, blowing on her left while her right hand gripped the door.

“Surely someone with a Master’s degree in literature knows what an avatar is.”

Again, Viv gave her an angry look.

“An avatar is a god in bodily form,” Amanda answered.

“Your education wasn’t wasted on you. In massively multiplayer games, the character a player assumes is called an avatar. An alternate identity. Sometimes a player wants to assume another identity because his identity in so-called real life isn’t satisfying. Maybe he’s overweight and has pimples, and he’s thirty years old, but he still lives with his mother while he earns a minimum wage in a fast-food restaurant. But when he functions as his avatar on the planet of Rubi-Ka, none of the other players knows what he looks like or how big a failure he is. On Rubi-Ka, he still needs to get a job in order to have a place to live and buy clothes and eat. But there, his mind is all that matters. He has a chance for a brand new start, nothing holding him back. Using his intelligence, he can improve his avatar’s life. Indeed, it’s amazing how failures in this life become achievers on Rubi-Ka, and it’s interesting that half the male players choose to switch genders and portray women.”

Blowing on her numb fingers, Amanda felt sensation seep back into them. She understood now what hypothermia was and how she could die from it.

“‘Anarchy Online is owned by a company called Funcom, which has an array of computers in Oslo, Norway,” the voice said. “They need enormous computing power because at any given time perhaps as many as two million people play the game. All around the world. Every country imaginable. Millions of people simultaneously assuming identities in an alternate reality, playing the game all day and all night, because their life here disappoints. A massively multiplayer online game. If studies show that there’s validity to the psychological power of massive simultaneous prayer, how much more validity is there to the force of a massively multiplayer game? Which is more appealing? The pimply face, the room next to his mother’s, the loneliness of masturbation because no female will go out with him? Or living an alternate reality as a female avatar in a virtual world where everyone has equal opportunities?”

As the wind howled, a few drops of water seeped from the roof and landed on the hip of Amanda’s jumpsuit.

“On Rubi-Ka,” the Game Master said, “avatars accumulate possessions the same as we do in our version of reality. Some are precious objects. Others are valuable tools or expensive dwellings. Players covet these. If their avatars don’t manage to gain these objects on Rubi-Ka, a player can sometimes buy them on eBay. In theory, these are imaginary objects, but they take on their own reality. On eBay, you can even buy and sell avatars, assuming new identities if the old ones no longer suit you. One reality merges with another.”

Shivering, Amanda noticed another drop of water dangling from the ceiling. “It’s seeping through.”

“As long as it doesn’t soak us,” Viv said.

Amanda told the Game Master, “I’ve got news for you. This is reality.”

“So you say. Perhaps this is a good time for me to tell you about Reverend Owen Pentecost.”

“Who?”

“The genius who created the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires. You survived another obstacle. You deserve more information. Ray, can you hear me?”

No answer.

“Ray?”

“I hear you.” Ray sounded bitter.

“How are you getting along out there?”

“Just fine.”

“Not too cold?”

“I’ve been through worse.”

Ray’s anger was palpable through Amanda’s headset.

“Well, as long as you’re comfortable,” the Game Master said. “Reverend Owen Pentecost. That wasn’t his real name, and he wasn’t a minister. His father was a minister, though, and after Pentecost was expelled from Harvard medical school, he assumed the mantle of a minister and left Boston, heading toward the frontier to spread the good word. He arrived in Avalon in April of 1899. There was a terrible drought, but Pentecost knew that it couldn’t last forever, so he encouraged the town to pray and keep praying! When the rain didn’t come, he told them it was because they hadn’t truly repented their sins. They needed to pray harder. Finally, when the rains arrived in June, they couldn’t thank him enough for helping to end the drought. But that was the only good news. The first sign of what was to come involved a shopkeeper named Peter Bethune, who was struck and killed by lightning as he ran from his wagon toward his store.”

Something bumped against the door.

Amanda flinched. At first, she assumed it was Ray making another effort to get in. But the bump was accompanied by a cluster of quick, guttural breathing. She heard numerous paws splashing through puddles and recalled the German shepherd that attacked the rabbit. But now it wasn’t alone.

A snout appeared to the right of the door.

“If they pull it down—” Viv warned.

Amanda heard a snarl. “We can’t use our hands to hold the door. They’ll bite off our fingers.”

A snout appeared on the left now, teeth bared.

“They’re pressing against the door, holding it in place. But if they start pulling…”

“Our belts,” Viv said. “We’ll hook them to it.”

Amanda tugged at hers. “Mine’s sewed to the back of my suit.”

“Tear it loose.”

“No. We don’t dare rip the suits. Our boot laces.” Amanda freed one hand and squirmed to reach her boots. Fumbling with her cold fingers, she pulled a lace from one eyelet and then another.

The snarls got angrier. The next bump made the door tremble.

“I’ve got one free,” Amanda said.

“So have I.” Viv tied the ends, making a circle.

A snout shoved past the door.

Amanda banged it with a chunk of board. “Get the hell away!”

The dog jerked back.

Viv looped the lace around the door’s middle board. As the dog recovered from its surprise and lunged, Viv tugged on the lace, holding the door in place.

Amanda heard her own hoarse breathing. I sound like one of those dogs, she thought. She tied the ends of her boot lace, eased her fingers past the edge of the door, and looped the lace around the middle board. She yanked her fingers back just in time to avoid getting bitten.

Claws scraped the door. Snouts tried to wedge it free. The lace cut into Amanda’s palms. She prayed that it wouldn’t break. Then she feared that the door would break.

“We’re going to be all right for now,” Viv tried to assure her.

“Yeah, we’ve got them where we want them.” Amanda laughed strangely, hysteria seizing her. “Not eating us.”

“God help me,” Viv said, “what I wouldn’t give for something to eat.”

Amanda stopped laughing, suddenly cold sober. “It’s right outside.”

“What?”

“If I need to, I’ll kill one of those bitches and make Ray build a fire with his lighter so I can cook it.”

Viv stared at her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I never would have thought of that,” Viv said.

The snarling stopped. Paws splashed in puddles. The dogs retreated.

“Where are they going?” Amanda listened closely.

“Maybe they’ve gone after Ray. Ray? Can you hear me?” Viv asked into the microphone of her headset.

No answer.

“Ray, are you safe?” Viv sounded angry. “Don’t let anything happen to you. We need your damned lighter.”

The only sound was the patter of rain. Suddenly, the dogs started yelping insanely. They seemed to fight with one another, determined to get their share of the quarry, baying in a frenzy.

“Ray?”

One by one, the dogs became silent.

Sickened, Amanda relaxed her hold on the lace. Her palms throbbed for several minutes. Peering warily through the gap in the door, all she saw was the rain.

“Then a child drowned in a flash flood,” the Game Master said, “and a farmer fell from a hayloft and impaled himself on a pitchfork, and a family died from…”

2

“Hidden cameras?” Professor Graham couldn’t get over her shock. “Jonathan spied on me?”

“On us.” Balenger sat across from her in a coffee shop on lower Broadway, a few blocks from the university. “The son of a bitch wanted to monitor my progress in the game.”

“Game?”

“If he had cameras in your office, it’s logical to assume he put cameras other places as well. The theater. Outside the library. Outside your faculty building. In the building that was being renovated.”

“But someone would have noticed.”

“Not after 9/11. Anybody wearing a uniform marked SECURITY doesn’t get questioned. We take video cameras for granted. They’re next to traffic lights, above building entrances, inside stores and hotel lobbies — just about everywhere. That doesn’t include cell phones with cameras, many of which have video streaming. It’s almost impossible to walk down any city block and not get photographed. With careful planning, he could have followed my progress.”

A waitress brought tea, coffee, and a ham sandwich for Balenger. Professor Graham didn’t have an appetite. Desperation had destroyed Balenger’s, but he warned himself that he was useless to Amanda if he didn’t maintain his strength. “Tell me how you met Jonathan Creed.”

“He showed up one afternoon, standing in the hallway outside the open door to one of my classes. He looked so pitiful, all I wanted to do was help him.”

“Pitiful?” Balenger knew the one thing Jonathan Creed wouldn’t get from him was pity.

“Short, thin, geeky. Frail voice. Wispy blond hair. He reminded me of pictures of Truman Capote when he was young. He was thirty-five, I found out, and yet he looked like a boy. ”Would you care to join us?“ I asked. He nodded, entered, and took a seat at the back. What attracted him to my class was its subject: the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires.”

Hearing the name again, Balenger shivered.

“I eventually learned that he’d suffered a nervous breakdown because of a new game he had in mind. Apparently he’d been catatonic for six months, with his mind trapped in what he called the Bad Place. He never described what it was, except that it was unspeakable. He said that, as he recovered, he decided to find Truth in anything except games.”

“He spoke like that?”

“It seemed natural coming from someone with an I.Q. of one hundred and ninety. He told me he wanted to acquire the education he never had the patience or time to pursue.” She stopped, waiting for another spasm of pain to go away.

Balenger glanced down, trying to give her privacy.

She breathed and continued. “Jonathan went to the philosophy department first, on the assumption, he told me, that Truth was most likely to be found there. He studied Heraclitus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Do you know much about philosophy?”

“A little from history books I read.”

“Some philosophers maintain that the buildings, trees, and sky around us are as insubstantial as shadows in a cave. Others believe that reality is as solid as the rock a person kicks in bright sunlight. Jonathan thought it was a pointless debate. It seemed obvious to him that those who believe the world is a dream are right. To him, the world of imagination was far more vivid than so-called physical reality, as any game designer and player knows.

“He tried literature next but felt that most literature teachers believe they’re adjuncts of the philosophy or political science departments. Nowhere did he hear anything about the hypnotic way in which stories transported him to a reality more vivid than the supposedly solid world around him.

“Then he tried history. Understand, he didn’t sign up for courses. He merely wandered the corridors and paused outside any classroom where something interested him. He told me he overheard lectures about the assassination of Julius Caesar and the Norman invasion of England and the murder of the princes in the Tower of London and the Hundred Years’ War and the almost million casualties of the American Civil War. He regarded none of this as fact. Every first-hand description of an event was biased, the secondary accounts more so. All were merely stories, he told me. Shadows. There was no way to prove they happened. But their plots were fascinating and transported him from his nightmares.

“He was prepared to walk more corridors and hear stories about the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and the chlorine-gas attacks of the First World War and the death camps of the Second World War when he paused outside my classroom and heard about the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires. His life changed at that moment, he said. He never explained why, but for the next three months, he attended my classes and visited me during office hours. We had breakfast meetings or took afternoon walks through Washington Square.”

Her face looked grayer, emotion making her pause.

“My husband had recently died. I never had children. I felt motherly toward him. Jonathan taught me that the fantasy world within a game could be more real than the grief I wanted to escape. Then I had my first cancer scare, and he taught me that games didn’t waste time but rather extended it. The speed of the countless choices they required subdivided each second and filled it to the maximum. In the end, after turning his back on games, he embraced them again. He entered what he called his next evolution and decided that games were the metaphysics that the philosophers failed to grasp. They were the Truth.”

Professor Graham took another breath and reached into her purse for a vial of pills. She swallowed two with some tea, then looked at Balenger. “He and his sister—”

Balenger straightened. “Wait a minute. He has a sister?”

“She’s taller, a brunette while Jonathan is blond.”

Balenger spoke quickly. “Does she wear her hair pulled back in a bun? Tight features? No makeup?”

“I met her only a few times, but yes, she tries hard to look plain. You know her?”

The memory of meeting her filled Balenger with rage. “She told me her name was Karen Bailey.”

“Karen is her first name. She and Jonathan look different from one another because they had different fathers. Their mother was promiscuous. The man who raised them wasn’t their father, but he lived with the mother for a time, and when she left him, she also abandoned the children. He kept them as bait, hoping that the mother would come back to see them and he could persuade her to stay.”

Professor Graham braced herself to continue. “The stepfather was a drunk. A violent one. Jonathan told me he never took his eyes off the man because he never knew when he’d fly into a rage. The stepfather also had an unnatural interest in Karen, who looked so much like her mother that she wasn’t safe alone with him. That’s why she tries hard to look plain, even though I suspect she could be attractive. She’s determined to avoid attention from men.

“Karen became a surrogate mother to Jonathan while he in turn protected her by making the stepfather angry and distracting him from Karen. They hid whenever they could. Out of spite, when he found them — in a closet or the basement, for example — he locked them in. Jonathan said he and his sister once spent three days in a cubbyhole their stepfather nailed shut. No food, no water, no toilet. In the darkness, Jonathan invented fantasy games, the equivalent of Dungeons & Dragons. He and Karen escaped into the alternate reality he created.”

Balenger’s forearm ached worse. As he listened intensely, he couldn’t stop rubbing it.

“The single positive thing the stepfather did was buy the children a video-game machine. That was in the late 1970s when the only game machines were the kind you connected to your television set. Jonathan was just a child, but he took the machine apart, learned how it worked, and improved it. Eventually, the stepfather died from liver disease, and the children were put into foster care, but they never stayed with any family for more than a half year. Something about Jonathan and Karen made their various foster parents uneasy. Basically, the children could relate only to one another and the games Jonathan invented.

“By the time Nintendo came out in 1985, he was programming for it, using the computer labs in the numerous high schools he and Karen went to. He took special pleasure in knowing that the bullies who made his life hell in school probably went home to play games he designed, without dreaming who created them. He pioneered many of the important advances in video-game technology. For example, the early games could only move up, down, right, and left. Jonathan was the first to add front-to-back motion. He was also the first to overlay scenery in the background. Both techniques contributed to the illusion of three dimensions.”

She paused, in pain.

“I know this is hard for you,” Balenger said.

“But I want to help. You need to understand about Infinity.”

“What?”

“In previous games, there was always a limit to the number of variations in which a player could move. The action happened within a predictable, closed space. But Jonathan designed a game called Infinity, in which two space ships chase each other throughout the universe. He told me he created it in reaction to the three days he and Karen spent in that cubbyhole. The game gives the impression that the space ships can keep going forever in any direction and find constant new marvels. He joked to me that he wanted a player to zoom around a comet and expect to see God.”

“Infinity.” The concept gave Balenger vertigo. “Sounds like a player could disappear into the game.”

“That’s what happened to Jonathan.” Professor Graham closed her eyes for a moment. “Game designers are obsessive. It’s not unusual for some of them to work as long as four days and nights without sleeping. They live on Doritos and Jolt cola. For variety, Jonathan told me, he drank strong coffee sweetened with Classic Coke.”

“But that long without sleep can make a person psychotic,” Balenger said.

“His sister watched over him when he was in these four-day visions. That’s apparently what they were: visions. Jonathan scribbled computer codes as if they were automatic writing. His royalties and patents earned him over a hundred million dollars. But he never cared about the money. What mattered were the games. In the industry, there’s a constant challenge to take designs to the next level and the level after that. Jonathan was determined to create a game so ultimate that no designer could ever outdo it. With Karen mothering him, he went into new visions that lasted even longer without sleep. Five days. Six. Until finally he had the breakdown that Karen always worried about.”

Balenger could no longer tolerate the burning, swelling sensation in his arm. He pushed up his jacket and shirt sleeves. An abscess startled him, angry red surrounding it.

Professor Graham viewed it with alarm. “You’d better go to a hospital. That looks like blood poisoning.”

“It feels as if something’s…”

“Something’s what?”

Under the skin, he thought in dismay. “Wait here for a minute.”

He made his way past tables to a door marked MEN’S ROOM. Inside, he saw sneakers under the closed door of a stall. At the sink, he took off his jacket and draped it over his right shoulder. He rolled his left shirt sleeve all the way up, took a breath, and squeezed the swelling.

The fiery pain made him groan. Yellow liquid popped out. He kept squeezing. Now the yellow oozed, followed by red. Good, Balenger thought. I need to get this thing bleeding. I need to find what’s festering in there.

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.”

“I thought the game was over. I thought it took forty hours and ended at five this afternoon.”

“No. For you, Scavenger began at ten this morning. You have less than thirty-one hours remaining.”

“Scavenger.” The word carried the chill of death. “What happens if I don’t rescue Amanda and find the secret within the remaining time?”

The connection was broken.

4

Outside the coffee shop, buildings obscured the setting sun. The sky had an orange tint, but lower Broadway was sufficiently in shadow that cars had headlights on.

Balenger put the BlackBerry in his pants pocket and tapped his hand against it, preventing the Game Master from hearing what he asked Professor Graham. “How do I find the valley you mentioned? Where’s Avalon? Where’s the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires supposed to be? You mentioned Wyoming and the Wind River Range.”

Professor Graham looked exhausted. “Avalon no longer exists. To call it a ghost town gives it too much stature. Cottonwood doesn’t exist, either. Even with the help of the Wyoming Historical Society, it took me a month to identify the valley Reverend Owen Pentecost visited.”

“Where is it?”

“Lander is the nearest large community. The valley is fifty miles north along the eastern edge of the mountains.”

Balenger kept tapping his hand against his pants pocket and the BlackBerry inside. “How will I know I found the right place?”

“In that area, it’s the only valley with a lake. Any hiking or hunting store in Lander has terrain maps for the local area. You won’t have trouble finding it.”

“Did you go there?”

“Seven years ago. I spent all of July trying to find the Sepulcher. Sometimes, I wonder if it existed only in Donald Reich’s fevered brain. Jonathan tried to find it also.”

“And?”

“I’m sure he’d have told me if he located it.”

Maybe, Balenger thought.

He put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Thank you.”

Her shrug was wistful.

He kissed her cheek.

She might have blushed, it was hard to tell. “No one’s done that in a long time,” she said.

“Then I’m proud I took the liberty.” He waved for a taxi and gave the driver twenty dollars. “Take care of my friend.”

He watched the taxi disappear into the busy traffic along lower Broadway. The street had numerous businesses crammed next to each other. He walked to an ATM machine, inserted his card, and got the maximum amount of cash he was allowed: five hundred dollars.

He marched up the street to a phone store. Inside, he again tapped the phone in his pocket so the Game Master couldn’t hear what he said, “Do you sell BlackBerrys?”

“Sure do.” The male clerk had a ponytail and an earring. “Over there.”

Balenger took one that matched the type the Game Master had left for him.

“Good choice,” the clerk said. “The latest model. It’s three hundred dollars, but we’re giving a hundred-dollar mail-in rebate.”

“As long as you activate it right now, I don’t care.”

“No problem.”

No problem? In what universe did that apply? Balenger wondered.

“I need to make sure it can handle a webcam program called Surveillance LIVE.”

“That’s a special download. Costs extra. You do it through your home computer, then transfer it to the BlackBerry.”

“But I’m going on a trip where I won’t have access to a computer,” Balenger said. “I’ll pay you a hundred dollars cash to download it for me right now.”

“Definitely no problem. Why do you keep tapping your pants pocket?”

“A nervous habit.”

Ten minutes later, the clerk presented Balenger with his BlackBerry. “Fully loaded. You’ll need to charge the battery pretty soon. Right out of the box, it’ll be low. Here’s the charger cord, the carrying case, and the rest of the stuff it comes with.”

“And here’s your hundred dollars. It’s good to meet someone who knows his business.” Balenger gave him a check for the equipment and went outside. Only then did he stop tapping the BlackBerry in his pocket. He took it out. “Hey, are you listening? Make a note of this phone number.” He dictated the number for the new BlackBerry.

Then he put the Game Master’s BlackBerry into a trash bin, trying not to inhale the smell of old French fries. He took out the handkerchief that contained the location-marker chip he’d removed from his arm. He watched a homeless man push a cart of bags and old clothes along the sidewalk.

“Here’s twenty dollars,” Balenger told him. “Buy yourself something to eat.”

“I don’t need your charity.”

“Yeah, but take it anyhow. Save it for a rainy day.” He tucked the twenty-dollar bill into the homeless man’s shirt pocket, along with the miniature tracking device. “Have a good night.”

“Yeah, I bet they saved me a suite at the Sherry-Netherland.”

Balenger hailed a cab and got in. “Teterboro Airport,” he said.

“I do not know where that is,” the turbaned driver said.

“I don’t, either. It’s in New Jersey if that helps.”

The driver muttered.

“I’ll pay twice the fare if you get me there quick.”

The driver reached for his two-way radio.

5

Teterboro is a so-called “reliever” airport, taking pressure off the major commercial airports in the area by providing runways and hangars for corporate and private aircraft. That was all Balenger knew about it, but during the twelve-mile drive from Manhattan, he used the BlackBerry’s Internet connection to learn a great deal more.

He suspected that no commercial flights went directly from JFK, La Guardia, or Newark to Lander, Wyoming. The websites of several airlines proved him right. He would need to make a connecting flight in cities like Chicago or Denver, but there wasn’t a seat on those flights until the morning. Moreover, Lander didn’t have a commercial airstrip. The nearest airport for airlines such as United was in Riverton, about a half-hour drive from Lander. The soonest he’d reach Lander would be early afternoon, and probably much later. Too much time lost.

Most of his remaining thirty-one hours — correction: thirty hours now — would be wasted.

There was only one choice. The taxi went through a security checkpoint and let Balenger out at the terminal for Jet Aviation, one of Teterboro’s large charter and aircraft-storage facilities. The sky was dark when he gave the driver his promised bonus and walked under arclights toward the shiny, five-story building.

The glowing interior resembled a first-class lounge at a major airport.

A pleasant-looking man in a suit came over. “Mr. Balenger?”

They shook hands.

“Eric Gray. I charged the flight to the credit card number you gave me on the phone. The jet’s being fueled right now. Just to be clear, the cost is three thousand dollars an hour.”

“That’s what we agreed.” Balenger had expected questions about why he needed a jet in a hurry and why he didn’t have luggage, but now he realized that the people who could afford this kind of luxury weren’t accustomed to explain.

“We ran your name through a security list.” Eric smiled. “You’ll be pleased to learn that you’re not considered a terrorist or on any law-enforcement wanted list.”

Balenger managed to return the smile. “Good to know.”

They went through glass doors and faced a tarmac bordered by hangars on every side. Eric pointed to the right. “That’s your jet over there. The Lear 60.” It was small and sleek. “They’re almost ready for you.”

“Thanks.”

The BlackBerry rang. It had rung several times earlier while Balenger drove to the airport, but he’d refused to answer it. Now, in the glare of the tarmac’s lights, he removed it from the case on his belt.

Eric stepped into the terminal, allowing him privacy.

“Like that website you sent me to, I can give you only a minute,” Balenger said bitterly into the phone.

“You managed the impossible — to stay in one place and yet keep moving at the same time,” the voice said.

“The rigged BlackBerry you arranged for me to have is in a trash can. The location marker you put in my arm is in the pocket of a homeless man, walking down Broadway.”

“But how can you be my avatar if I can’t track your progress? I want to know where you are.”

“And I want to know this. Why Amanda? Why us?”

“The Paragon Hotel.”

“We didn’t suffer enough? You decided to put us through more?”

“I needed players worthy of the game, people who proved they know how to survive. You and Amanda have amazing strength and resources. The prototype of Scavenger can’t succeed without you.”

“Prototype? For God’s sake, don’t tell me you think you can license this thing?”

“In 1976, there was an arcade game called Death Race. Players drove to a haunted cemetery. Stick figures appeared on the road. They were supposed to be ghosts, and the object of the game was to win points by hitting them, causing a cross to appear on the screen. A woman caught her son playing it and was so horrified that she started a campaign against violence in video games. 60 Minutes and other major news programs added to the outcry. Local governments passed laws about where video arcades could be located, all because of some stick figures that turned into crosses. And what was the result? Video games became more popular.

“By 1993, a game called Mortal Kombat was so bloody it allowed the winner to reach into the defeated character’s throat and yank out its skeleton. Congress investigated the video game industry, insisted on a rating for all games, and tried to impose censorship. Not that it mattered. The uncensored Mortal Kombat sold three times the copies that the censored version did. Today’s action games are even more graphic. Players can steal cars, hit pedestrians, shoot policemen, and beat up prostitutes. The U.S. Army commissioned two vivid combat games, one for recruiting and the other for training.”

“Your minute is up,” Balenger said.

“Ever see the movie Network? In 1976, audiences thought it was a satire with an exaggerated storyline. Peter Finch plays a network news anchor named Howard Beale. His ratings are in the basement. In despair, he threatens to commit suicide during his broadcast, and suddenly everybody wants to watch him. He switches from presenting the news to ranting and raving. His ratings go higher. Meanwhile, the network’s entertainment division takes over the news department, and the news gets manipulated to make it more dramatic. Television becomes dominated by loudmouths shouting at each other on talk shows.”

“All right, I get the point. You just described most of the news programs on cable television.”

“Do I think I can license Scavenger? Not today or tomorrow. Not next year or the year after that. But I guarantee one day I will. Because the line between reality and alternate reality becomes ever more blurred, and things always get more extreme.”

In the background, a jet roared, taking off.

“What’s that noise?” the voice asked.

“Me coming to get you.”

Balenger broke the connection.

6

The surge of the Learjet off the runway made Balenger think he was in a sports car. The noise from the twin jets was muffled. He peered from a window on his right, seeing the lights of New Jersey’s Meadowlands. In the middle distance, lights reflected off the Hudson River. Beyond was the brilliance of the Manhattan skyline. Under other circumstances, the sight would have thrilled him, but now it only emphasized how far away Amanda was. When the jet headed west, he plugged his BlackBerry’s charger cord into a specially designed receptacle and leaned back in his seat. He felt small and alone.

Not hungry, he forced himself to bite into a turkey sandwich that he’d brought from the terminal. Eat whenever you can, he reminded himself.

And try to rest. The cabin lights were dim. He felt as if he’d been on the run forever. Allowing himself to admit exhaustion, he removed his shoes and tilted his seat back. He glanced at his watch: 9:14. He’d been told that the flight to Lander was a little under five hours. That would get him to Lander around 2:14 New York time, 12:14 Wyoming time.

Time, he kept thinking, reminded of the text on the back of the game case. Time is the true scavenger. If the game started at ten a.m., as the Game Master suggested… His name is Jonathan Creed! Balenger thought. Use his damned name. But Balenger couldn’t resist calling him the Game Master… then more than eleven hours had elapsed. Twenty-nine to go. Endgame would be at two a.m., the day after tomorrow.

No, Balenger told himself. The fearful symmetry of the true deadline abruptly occurred to him. He was thinking in New York time. But in Wyoming, with the two-hour time-zone difference, the endgame would be tomorrow at midnight.

He closed his eyes, knowing he needed to sleep. But he couldn’t clear his mind of the shocking image he’d seen on the BlackBerry screen — the woman in the gray jumpsuit, the explosion, red mist, flying body parts, Amanda’s look of horror.

I’ll be there soon, he thought, straining to project his thoughts to her. Don’t give up. Keep fighting. I’ll get there. I’ll help you.

Chilled, he folded his arms across his chest. Unable to do anything now except wait, he couldn’t stop trembling.