Scavenger

1

Amanda remained slumped on the ground, staring toward the boulder beyond which Viv lay dead.

“Let’s go,” Ray urged.

“I meant what I said. I can’t do this any longer.”

“No one leaves the game,” the voice warned through her headset.

“Who said anything about leaving?” Weariness muffled Amanda’s voice. “I’m just not playing anymore.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Ray said. “We need to see what’s in the reservoir.”

Amanda looked in that direction, toward the gap in the embankment and the emptiness beyond. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I can’t wait.” Ray walked toward the reservoir.

“Inaction is a form of playing,” the Game Master told Amanda. “It’s a choice not to win. What would Frank say?”

“Frank?” Amanda looked up. The name was a spark to her nervous system. “Leave him out of this! Damn it, what did you do with him? What sick way did you think of to kill him?”

“Leave him out of this? I don’t want to. In fact, I can’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Frank’s coming to play.”

The words didn’t make sense. Frank’s coming to play?

A gunshot startled her. It echoed back and forth across the valley, but as much as Amanda could tell, the initiating sound came from beyond the flooded area, from the mountains to the north. A second shot followed. Yes, from the north.

Coming to play?

With difficulty, Amanda stood. She heard another shot. Frank? Is that you? Coming to play? What’s that shooting about? She waited, listening hard, but there wasn’t a fourth shot.

Frank?

She looked toward Ray. Near the ruptured embankment, he, too, had turned, staring across the meager flow of water toward the northern mountains. As the air became still, his lean features toughened. In the harsh sunlight, he resumed climbing the slope toward the emptied reservoir.

Amanda started after him. Her legs ached from crouching to pull at the rocks, but urgency told her that if Game Master wasn’t lying, she needed to do everything possible to help Frank.

She reached the slope and climbed in a zigzag pattern, conserving energy as Viv had taught her. Viv. The shock of her death struck Amanda even harder. Keep moving, Amanda told herself. Get what Viv wanted. Get even.

Near the top, she came to the water bottles that she, Ray, and Viv had filled with melting snow. Their frenzy to breach the dam had made them so thirsty that they drank nearly all the water. A few swallows remained in one bottle. Amanda emptied it into her mouth, the water unpleasantly warm from the sun, and continued on.

She found Ray studying the reservoir’s muddy basin. Despite the force of the escaping flood, some objects remained embedded in the muck. Rotted tree trunks. The remains of a blackboard wagon. The skeleton of a cow. Something that might have once been a rowboat.

The basin was a hundred yards long, ten yards wide at its narrow end, and forty yards wide at the embankment, where she stood. Fish flopped in the puddles. A few snakes followed the meager flow of water across the mud.

“I don’t see any human bones,” Ray said.

“They might be under the mud.”

“But that cow skeleton isn’t. There’s nothing to prove this is where the townspeople disappeared. I don’t see anything that looks like a container, either, if that’s what we’re looking for.”

“Looks forty feet deep. A lot of area. Whatever we’re searching for could be anywhere.” Amanda looked across the mud toward the northern mountains, again wondering what the shots had been about. Frank, are you coming? she wondered, desperately hoping. Then she realized how wrong it was for her to look in that direction. She didn’t want the Game Master to think about Frank. She wanted him to concentrate on how she and Ray played the game.

Ray pulled out his GPS receiver and accessed the coordinates they’d found in the graveyard. The red arrow pointed across the basin. “We need to triangulate. Go along the bank. See where the needle on your receiver points.”

Amanda walked thirty feet and paused, looking at her receiver. The needle aimed beyond the horns of the cow skeleton toward something that protruded a few inches from the mud.

“What is it?” Ray asked.

“Not sure. It looks like it’s metal,” Amanda answered. “A rim of something.”

The object, whatever it was, seemed to be about four feet long by three feet wide.

“Worldly vanities,” Ray said. “That’s what the Sepulcher is supposed to contain. But that doesn’t look like it can hold much.”

“Reminds me of something, but I can’t remember where I saw it.” Nagged by the memory, Amanda stepped onto the reservoir’s slope. The ground was spongy but supportive. After she took a half-dozen steps, it became mucky, but its base was solid. A further half-dozen steps, and the mud rose over the toe of her boots.

“I don’t know how much farther I can go.”

The object was still thirty feet ahead of her. She waited until a snake wriggled a safe distance away, then took another step down the slope. Her right boot went into the mud.

She kept going. Gasping, Amanda watched as the boot sank completely, mud enveloping the ankle. It sank farther, throwing her off balance. In panic, she planted her left boot to steady herself, but the mud was like a mouth, sucking at her right leg, threatening to tug her forward. It was almost to her knee. She turned, landing on her left elbow. Mud flew. A snake hissed. She tried to crawl sideways, but her hands and elbow went into the muck and she had trouble pulling them out. The mass of her body kept the rest of her from sinking, but she was trapped.

Helpless, she peered at Ray, who watched from the basin’s rim. His lean, beard-stubbled face revealed no emotion, making her realize that his earlier effort to pull her and Viv off the collapsing embankment was the limit of his heroics for the day.

The angle at which her imprisoned leg was twisted caused such pain that Amanda worried about dislocating her knee or popping a tendon. Her lungs felt empty. She put weight on her shoulder and used it as a support to try to tug her right hand from the mud. Like a living thing, the mud resisted. She pulled harder, feeling the heat of adrenaline when the hand came free. She took several deep breaths, found herself staring at the cow’s skeleton, and understood why the animal hadn’t been able to escape the water. Its skull pointed toward her. She stretched her right arm, straining her shoulder. Her fingers grazed a horn. She groped farther, wincing from the pain in her wrist and elbow, managing to clutch the horn. She needed something solid to tug against and pull herself free, but the skull broke loose from the skeleton, and she jerked back.

She moaned. In desperation, she dragged the skull toward her. The horns gave her an idea. She turned the skull upside down and exhaled forcibly when she drove the horns into the mud. With a jolt, they touched something solid. Shoving her right hand against the skull’s bottom, she gained the purchase she needed and kept pushing against it, raising her elbow. The mud made a sucking sound as her left hand came free. Instantly, she propped that hand on the bottom of the skull, pushed, and with effort sat up, the mud clinging to her.

The pressure on her right knee became less painful. She used her hands to scoop the mud from around her right leg, throwing handful after handful away. A lot poured back in to the hole she fought to make, but she kept digging. One more tug, and her leg was free. But if she tried to stand, she knew she would sink into the muck again. Turning, she grabbed the bottom of the embedded skull and pulled herself on her stomach across the mud. She tugged the skull free and plunged it into the muck closer to the basin’s rim. She dragged her body higher, touched ground that was spongy, and managed to stand.

Ray kept watching. “There was no point in both of us getting trapped,” he said.

“Sure.”

“If I thought I could help, I would have. But I’m heavier. My boots would have sunk in deeper than yours.”

“Of course.”

“I want you to understand.”

“Believe me, I do.”

“Not that it matters,” Ray said. “We’re as good as dead anyhow. There’s no way to reach that thing down there, whatever it is, and learn about the Sepulcher.”

“Wrong.” Amanda hoped that her next statement, combined with her crisis in the muck, would distract the Game Master from Frank. “I know how to get down there.”

2

Balenger stared at the gully. Water flowed along its bottom. It was five feet deep and ten feet wide — too far for him to jump across.

He glanced to the right and left, noting that the streambed extended to each end of the valley. He would take too long trying to find a way around it, he decided. But all his instincts warned him not to step into it.

Maybe it’s just what it seems, he tried to assure himself.

But he couldn’t take the chance. He needed to assume it was a trap. Were explosives hidden in it? If so, they couldn’t be pressure activated. Animals drinking at the stream would set them off. The only alternative was for the Game Master to detonate them electronically when the cameras revealed that Balenger was in the stream bed.

Another good reason to destroy the cameras, Balenger thought.

Time, he thought. Forced to make a decision, he concluded that hiding mines all along the streambed would require an enormous amount of explosives. Not easy to acquire. There was too great a risk that law enforcement agencies would notice the shipments. Would the Game Master take that gamble?

So if not explosives, what’s down there? Balenger thought. What else is equally deadly but easily hidden in the gully?

Something about the words “detonate them electronically” nagged at him. As a suspicion formed, he glanced toward the forest a half-mile behind him. He wondered if it was possible to drag a dead tree to the gully and use it as a bridge, but he decided that, even if he managed to do so, it would exhaust him and take too long. Midnight was rushing toward him.

He noticed rocks on the ground, picked one up, and tossed it into the gully. He did this again and again, building a footbridge across the water. He needed to work quickly because the rocks formed what amounted to a dam, and as the water rose, it spilled over the rocks. He couldn’t allow his boots to touch the water because he increasingly believed there was an electrical cable underneath. Most of the time, the Game Master would leave the power off, preventing animals from dying when they came to drink. But as soon as cameras told the Game Master that Balenger was in the valley, the electricity would have been activated.

Balenger worked fast, dropping more rocks into the water. But the water kept rising, flowing over the barrier. He wasn’t accomplishing anything.

Amanda, he thought.

He saw a much larger rock and shoved it. Not used to the altitude, he grunted with effort. Hurry! he thought. He gave a final push and watched the rock tumble into the gully, where it rolled to a stop in the shallow water below the dam he’d unintentionally built.

But water splashed the top of the rock. If Balenger was right about the electrical cable, he didn’t dare step on the wet rock. He needed to wait until it dried. Noting that the stark sun had dried the bank after last’s night rain, he eased down the slope, careful to press his weight against it so he wouldn’t lose his balance and fall into the water. The rock’s top started drying. The water smelled deceptively pleasant.

To occupy the frustrating minutes, he studied the walls of the gully and tensed when he noticed a box built into the wall. About fifty feet away, it was carefully placed so that it wouldn’t be noticed from above. In the box was a video camera. No doubt, there were others positioned at regular intervals along the gully.

Balenger put the Kleenex back in his ears. He raised his rifle, superimposed the red dot over the target, and blew the camera to hell. In his pants pocket, the BlackBerry vibrated. He didn’t bother answering it.

The rock was sufficiently dry now. He slung his rifle over his shoulder, took a long step, and braced his right boot on the rock. He gasped when he felt a shock. Even without water to conduct it, the electricity remained powerful enough to come through the rock. It wasn’t enough to kill him, but it was so painful that he almost lost his balance and fell into the water, where he certainly would have died. He jerked his left boot off the bank, stretched that leg over the water, and jumped to the other side. When he pushed from the rock, it shifted beneath his boot, almost dumping him into the water, but he threw his arms forward, the weight of his knapsack giving him momentum, and he landed on the bank. But he almost rolled back into the water. Chest cramping, he dug his fingers into the earth and stopped.

Carefully, he came to his feet, reached for the gully’s top, and pulled himself up, kneeing against the dirt. As he raised his head over the edge, teeth snapped, saliva spraying his face. Gasping, he let go and slid down the bank.

A dog was up there. At once, it leapt.

Balenger rolled to the side, feeling the rush of air when the dog struck his right knee and hurtled down. It landed on the bank, avoided the water, snarled, and charged. On his back, weighed down by the knapsack, Balenger kicked, banging the animal’s nose. He didn’t have time to unsling his rifle. Even if he’d managed, the fight was too close for him to be able to aim. Kicking again, he grabbed the knife clipped to his right pants pocket, flipped the blade open, and worked to raise himself so he could swing.

Another snarl came from behind him, a second dog stretching its head from the top of the bank, snapping at him. Simultaneously, the first dog lunged past Balenger’s boots, teeth aimed toward his groin. Balenger slashed, catching the snout above the nose. As blood flew, the dog lurched back in shock, hit the water, and wailed, its body contorting from the force of the electricity. It jumped from the water, but damage to its nerves took away its strength. Hitting the water again, it thrashed in a death convulsion. Its wail became frenzied grunts that turned to silence, the dog lying still.

The second dog, too, became silent, startled by what had happened. Balenger turned and slashed upward, cutting under its jaw. With a yelp, the dog skittered backward, retreating out of sight beyond the top of the bank.

Balenger surged to his feet and ran to the left along the bank, in the opposite direction from where the dog on top seemed to have gone. Feeling a sharp pain in his right knee, he glanced down and saw blood. The damned thing bit me! he thought. My God, was it rabid?

He reached a spot that looked easy to climb but jerked his hands back when teeth snapped at them. Two dogs lunged into view, foam dripping from their jaws. One had a cut under its jaw. The other was bigger, the size of a German shepherd.

Balenger dropped his knife, unslung the rifle, and risked a quick look to make sure that dirt didn’t plug the barrel. Both dogs darted back. He aimed, ready if they showed themselves. Even with the Kleenex in his ears, he heard growling beyond the top of the bank.

He eased to the left along the stream, staring toward the top, hoping to outflank the dogs. A snarl above him warned that they kept pace with him.

Maybe I can scare them off, he thought. He fired, hoping the sharp noise would drive them away.

For a moment, there was silence.

Then the growls resumed.

The dogs were big but scrawny. Balenger wondered if they were crazy with hunger. He slipped out of his knapsack. Holding his gun with one hand, he opened the flap and pulled out two energy bars. He hurled them to his left over the bank. When he heard movement, he grabbed his knapsack and ran to the right, picking up his knife and clipping it into his pocket as he hurried. He passed the dead dog in the stream and kept running.

He climbed a gentle part of the slope, peered over the top, didn’t see a threat, and scrambled up. The two dogs were a distance away, snarling at each other, fighting over the energy bars. The bigger dog grabbed a bar, swallowed it whole, wrapper and all, and attacked the other dog before it could get to the remaining bar.

The BlackBerry vibrated in Balenger’s pocket. Ignoring it, he stalked toward the reservoir.

3

“Stack them on!” Amanda urged. In the ruins, she held out her arms while Ray set board after board onto them.

“Too many!” he said.

“Give me more!” The strain made her wince. “Okay, that’s enough!”

Amanda headed toward the drained reservoir. She heard another gunshot. It, too, came from the north, but it sounded closer. Frank? she thought. Is that really you? What are you shooting? At once, she feared that Frank was the one being shot at. Don’t think that way! she warned herself. Frank’s coming! I’ve got to believe that!

The weight of the boards hurting her arms, she staggered onward, finally reaching the basin. With a clatter, she dropped them. Her mouth felt dry, as if it had been swabbed with cotton.

Ray plodded to her and dropped what he carried. He squinted at his watch. “Twenty to two.”

“The time goes fast when you’re having fun,” Amanda said. She grabbed two boards and set them next to each other on the muddy slope.

“Or slower,” the Game Master said through her headset. “Time is relative in video games. It all depends how it’s divided.”

“Go to hell!” Amanda told him. She and Ray hurried to place more boards in the mud.

“Many games have time counters, but in games that deal with the development of virtual civilizations, the counters indicate months and years instead of seconds or minutes. Indeed, a month might last only a minute. Conversely, some games pretend to measure conventional time, but a minute on their timers might actually last two minutes in so-called real time. The player exits the game and discovers that twice as much conventional time elapsed than the game indicated. The effect can be disorienting.”

Amanda continued making a walkway, trying to shut out the voice.

“Then, too, as you discovered, a game’s subjective time can be different from clock time. A friend who’s dying from cancer learned that the intense speed of multiple decisions many games require gives a fullness to each instant and makes time appear to go slowly. For some players, the forty hours that the average game takes can be the equivalent of a lifetime.”

Another shot echoed from beyond the drained reservoir. Amanda stared toward the mountains to the north.

“You can bet Frank feels it’s been a lifetime,” the Game Master said.

“Don’t believe him. He’s jerking your chain,” Ray said. “Those shots are probably from hunters. If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll find us.”

But what could they do to help us? Amanda wondered. We’re walking bombs. For that matter, what can Frank do to help us?

“I never lie,” the Game Master said. “If I tell you those shots indicate Frank is coming, you can take my word for it.”

“You never lie? Hard for me to know.” Ray glared toward the sky. “But sure as sin, you never told the complete truth.”

Don’t think that way! Amanda warned herself. Frank’s coming. He’s got to be. Just keep trying to distract the Game Master. She put the last board into the mud and hurried to get more.

4

Balenger reached a solitary pine tree, the only elevated object around, and found, as he anticipated, a video camera mounted on its trunk. He aimed his rifle, steadied the red dot, and blew the camera to pieces.

Lights out, he thought.

He put a fresh magazine into the gun and reloaded the partially empty one. All the while, he glanced to his right, where the two dogs watched him, maintaining a distance of thirty yards. He resumed walking. So did they. He paused again. They did also.

The pain in his knee made him look down. His camouflaged pant leg was stained with blood. The dog’s teeth had torn the fabric. He saw puncture wounds and worried about the saliva he’d seen at the dog’s mouth.

What’s the time limit for getting anti-rabies shots? he wondered.

He set down his knapsack and leaned his rifle against it, making sure the barrel didn’t get fouled with dirt. As the sun intensified, he removed the first-aid kit and the duct tape. He glanced toward the dogs. Their attention was riveted on him.

Shoot them, he thought.

But although his knapsack was heavy with ammunition, he needed to use it sparingly. It was better to blast the cameras apart… or kill the Game Master, he thought… than shoot two dogs he maybe didn’t need to. Later, he might want to give anything to get those two shots back.

Let’s see how smart they are.

He lifted the gun and aimed at the bigger dog, the one that looked like a German shepherd.

It raced away, its partner following. He tracked the bigger dog, tempted to squeeze the trigger, but hitting a target that got smaller and lower as it receded in the distance wasn’t easy, and he finally set down the gun.

He untwisted the cap on a bottle of water, sipped the unpleasantly warm liquid, and poured some over his knee, wiping away blood and dirt. The puncture wounds were circled with red, probably already infected. He opened his first-aid kit, took out an antiseptic packet, and tore its edge. The sheet inside smelled of alcohol. He rubbed it over the holes and winced from the pain. He tore open a packet of antibiotic cream, smeared it over the holes, and covered them with gauze. Finally, he used his knife to cut strips of duct tape and secured the gauze to his knee, creating a pressure bandage that he hoped would stop the bleeding. Duct tape. He remembered what some of the security operators he’d worked with in Iraq called it. The gunfighter’s friend.

He scanned the grassland, looking for more cameras.

When the BlackBerry vibrated again, he pulled the Kleenex wads from his ears and pressed the green button.

“Stop destroying the cameras,” the voice said.

“I thought the idea was for me to be resourceful.”

“Except for the vandalism, you’re doing everything the way I imagined I myself would.”

“Then why don’t you get down here and play the damned game yourself?”

No reply.

“Come on!” Balenger shouted into the BlackBerry. “Be a hero!”

“But someone needs to be the Game Master.”

“Why?”

Again, the voice didn’t reply.

“Think about it a different way,” Balenger said. “We talked about a flaw in the game, the fact that you couldn’t keep track of me. How about the flaw in the universe?”

“The game and the universe. Both the same. What flaw are you talking about?”

“God became lonely and created other beings, magnificent ones, angels, and that’s how evil got started because some of those angels betrayed Him. Then God became lonely again, but He thought He’d learned His lesson and created lesser beings, humans, so insignificant that they couldn’t possibly have the pride to betray Him. They betrayed Him, nonetheless. Is that your problem?”

“That people betray me?”

“That you’re lonely? You want someone to play with?”

In the distance, a hawk cried while the phone became silent.

“We’d be delighted to play with you,” Balenger told the Game Master, “as long as you don’t kill us.”

“Sometimes,” the voice said.

“Yes?”

“You confuse me.”

Balenger felt a surge of hope.

“How can I possibly come down and play with you? You’re not real.”

The transmission went dead.

“The rounds in this Mini-14 are real,” Balenger murmured. He put the BlackBerry in his pocket, looked for more cameras to destroy, and moved forward.

5

Hands bleeding, Amanda lifted the door at one end, Ray at the other, and helped carry it from the shelter that she and Viv had built the previous night. She recalled Viv sharing water with her and saying that they needed to work together if they were going to survive.

And now Viv was dead.

The shock remained numbing as she worked with Ray to carry the door. Her knees felt limp, her boots heavy. Hunger made her sluggish, but she wouldn’t allow herself to give in to weakness. Not long ago, she’d heard yet another shot, still closer, and if Frank was coming, as the Game Master promised, she wouldn’t let Frank see a quitter. She would do everything she could to help. She would work until she dropped.

That almost happened. Her boot struck a rock. She nearly fell with the door, but she regained her footing and plodded on, coming to the walkway she and Ray had constructed in the mud.

“This ought to do it,” Ray said.

He moved backward down the slope, holding his end of the door. Amanda followed, taking short steps that helped her stay upright on the downward-tilted boards.

When they reached the precarious bottom, they lowered the door to the walkway, setting it on its side so that Ray had room to shift along it, moving higher, reaching Amanda. The boards below them wavered on the mud. Around them, the stench of decay was nauseating. They upended the door so that it stood on its bottom. They walked it forward to the end of the boards, shoved it, and let it flop in the mud. Muck flew. Twenty feet away, a snake hissed.

The door landed next to the mysterious object whose rim was the only part that was visible.

The boards beneath them wobbled. Amanda and Ray held out their arms for balance.

“Too much weight.” Amanda bent her knees, trying for a low center of gravity. “We can’t both be in the same area.” She stepped onto the door, which settled but held. “I’m lighter. I’m the logical one to do this.”

Ray stepped onto higher boards.

Gradually, what they stood on became steady.

Amanda pivoted toward the rim of the object embedded in the mud. Four feet by three feet. Muck was inside it. “I still have no idea what this thing is.”

She knelt and peered warily into it, making sure a snake wasn’t inside. “So what am I supposed to do? Scoop out the mud and see if anything’s buried?”

She tugged out one of the rubber gloves. She put it on her right hand, hesitated, then sank the glove into the mud. She didn’t feel anything and groped deeper. The pressure of the mud rose almost to her elbow, reaching the upper limit of the glove’s sleeve.

“Find anything?” Ray asked.

“A lot of goo.” Afraid she might fall in, she knelt farther forward. “Wait a second.” Her fingers touched something hard. Round. The edges were rough. She closed her gloved fingers around it.

“Careful,” Ray said. “For all we know, there’s a trap inside. Something sharp.”

“No, feels like a…”

She strained her arm to pull the object free. The suction almost pulled the glove off.

“A rock,” she said, looking at the object in her hand. “Just a rock.” But she knew that seemingly insignificant objects often turned out to be important in the game, so she tossed it onto the bank. “I felt a lot of other rocks in there, also.”

“Maybe something’s under them,” Ray suggested.

“But I don’t know how to reach under them to find out.”

Ray checked his watch. “Twenty after two. Less than ten hours to go. We’ve wasted more time.” He frowned at something below her. “On the rim in front of you. The mud’s drying. Does it look like something’s engraved in the metal underneath?”

Amanda looked where he pointed. She rubbed the drying mud. “Numbers.” Although she tried to sound triumphant, her voice had the tone of the crust she broke away. “Two sets. LT before one. LG before the other.”

“Map coordinates,” Ray said.

Amanda wiped mud off the rim to the right and left. “Same thing here. I bet the numbers are on the opposite rim also — to guarantee we saw them, no matter which side we approached from.”

“Read them to me.” Ray programmed them into his GPS receiver. He studied the needle on the receiver. “Points west. But I don’t know where exactly. The reservoir slope’s in the way.”

Amanda staggered up the boards. “Let’s find out.”

6

Balenger’s earlier suspicion was accurate — the rumble he’d heard was the sound of the dam being breached. As he reached the muddy basin and peered down at the devastation, he was puzzled why the muck seemed to move, until he realized there were snakes. Appalled, he shifted his gaze toward the deepest section and was startled to see two figures across from him. They were on a makeshift walkway that led down to a rectangular metal object in the mud.

One figure was a lanky, beard-stubbled man in a dirty green jumpsuit. The other was a shorter figure in a blue jumpsuit and cap smeared with mud. That figure’s back was turned, but with a surge of excitement, Balenger instantly knew who it was.

Overjoyed, he opened his mouth to shout “Amanda!” But the emotion shooting through him seized his throat shut. The sight of her made him dizzy.

On the opposite slope, the man noticed Balenger and blurted something to Amanda. She whirled. Her face was as muddy as her jumpsuit. But there was no mistaking it. Balenger’s heart pounded so fiercely that he thought it might break.

Amanda took a moment, as if she didn’t dare hope that the person she saw was actual. Then she stood straighter, and her smile — in the midst of her muddy cheeks — was dazzling.

Balenger managed to get his voice to work and ask the most important question. “Are you hurt?”

“Lots of small stuff, but I’m still moving!” She pointed. “Your leg! It’s bleeding!”

“Dog bite!”

“What?”

“I’ve got the bleeding stopped. Your hands!”

“Lost some skin. Broke some nails. My hands were never my best feature anyway!”

Balenger swelled with love for her.

The man shouted, “Have you got food?”

“Yes. And water!”

“Thank God!” The man climbed the walkway.

Balenger watched Amanda follow him. Making her way up the boards, she looked repeatedly over her shoulder, determined to keep her eyes on him as much as possible.

For his part, Balenger never took his gaze off her all the while he hurried toward the shallow end of the basin.

“I thought you were dead!” Amanda shouted, moving parallel to him.

“I thought you were dead!” Balenger yelled back.

“What happened to you?”

“No time!” Balenger shouted. “I’ll tell you when we’ve got the chance!”

Getting closer, Balenger saw that both Amanda and her companion wore headsets with microphone stubs. They reached the narrow end of the basin, where an old bridge spanned the creek that fed the reservoir. On the opposite side, Amanda rushed toward the bridge.

“Stop!” Balenger warned, his instincts alarming him. “Stay off the bridge! It might be a trap!”

Amanda and her companion faltered.

“Food!” the man shouted. “We’re dying over here!”

Balenger took off his knapsack, removed two energy bars, and hurled them over the bridge. He was shocked by the desperation with which Amanda and her companion ran to them. They tore off the wrappers and chewed frantically. He was reminded of the two dogs who’d attacked him and how the energy bars had driven them into a frenzy. He tossed two bottles of water into grass on the other side of the creek.

Amanda and her companion lunged to them and twisted off the caps.

“ Slowly!” Balenger yelled.

“We know!” The man’s eyes flashed a warning, as if he hated being told what to do.

“The last time we ate was yesterday afternoon,” Amanda said. “A few chunks of canned fruit.”

Knowing cameras were focused on him, Balenger tried not to show how enraged he felt. Jonathan, he thought, for a rare time using the Game Master’s name, you’re going to pay.

He peered under the bridge. The shadows were thick. He took his flashlight from the knapsack, moved closer to the bridge, and knelt, aiming the light. Strapped to a shelf, a dark, rectangular object had a smaller object attached to it.

“A bomb,” Balenger said.

Amanda and her companion stopped chewing the energy bars. They stepped back.

“The bastard,” the man said. “I should have thought.”

“Because you’re starving,” Balenger said. “Those energy bars will help.” He went down to the creek and decided that the water couldn’t be electrified if the snakes survived in it. He splashed through a shallow section and climbed to the other side.

Amanda hurried to him, holding out her arms. Balenger couldn’t wait to embrace her. But she surprised him by abruptly stopping. “Stay away.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“He planted explosives on us.”

“What?”

“We don’t know if they’re in our boots, our headsets, or these GPS receivers.” She pulled a unit from her pocket and showed it to him.

Now Balenger understood the image he’d seen on his BlackBerry: the woman exploding.

“The microphone on the headset also functions as a video camera,” the man explained.

“Yeah,” Balenger said acidly, “the Game Master likes cameras.”

The man lowered his bottle of water. “You know about him?”

Balenger nodded. “I don’t think he’s going to blow us up now that he finally got us together.”

Balenger walked to Amanda, touched her muddy face, and grinned. “I can’t tell you how much I missed you.”

When they kissed, it went on and on. He didn’t want it to end. Although midnight loomed, he needed to hold her forever. But at once she broke the kiss and pressed her cheek against him, shuddering.

He leaned back, not bothering to wipe away the mud that had brushed from her cheek to his. “We can do this. We can get out of here.”

Her eyes changed focus, as if she listened to a distant voice. “The Game Master says to tell you to put on Derrick’s headset. He wants to talk to you.”

“Derrick?” Balenger frowned. “How many others are there?”

“We started with five.” For a moment, Amanda couldn’t bring herself to speak. “Three are dead.”

“Three?” Balenger felt stunned. “Where’s the headset?”

“I’m not sure,” Amanda said. “It must be over where…” She looked at her companion, who in turn looked away. “It must be there.” She pointed behind her, toward the ruins of a town.

“Show me.”

As they walked, the man said, “I’m Ray Morgan.”

“Frank Balenger.”

They shook hands.

“Yeah, the Game Master talked about you,” Ray said.

“I’m sure it was flattering.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any cigarettes.”

“Afraid not.”

“It figures.” Ray had an edge in his voice. “I ate the energy bar slowly, like you said. Got any more?”

Balenger opened his knapsack and pulled out two more bars and two more bottles of water.

This time, Amanda and Ray weren’t frenzied when they tore open the bars.

“I was sure we’d lost so much strength from hunger and thirst that we couldn’t win the game,” Ray said.

“Scavenger.”

“You know about that, too?” Amanda asked in surprise.

“The Game Master and I had some heart-to-heart chats,” Balenger said.

“When I saw you, I wondered if I was hallucinating.” Ray gestured toward Balenger’s tan camouflage suit. “You look like you stepped out of Iraq.”

Something about Ray’s bearing made Balenger ask, “You’ve been there?”

“Marine aviator.”

“I was a Ranger in the first Iraq war. Proud to know you, Marine, although I wish to God it was under other circumstances.”

“Roger to that.”

Amanda pressed a hand to her headset. She sounded puzzled when she turned toward Balenger. “The Game Master wants to know if you’ve heard of the Doomsday Vault.”

“No, but I bet he’s going to tell me.”

They entered the ruins of the town. Balenger saw a pile of boards in the middle of the weed-studded street. The smell from it told him something dead was under there.

When he glanced at Amanda, expecting an explanation, she gave him a warning look. Ray appeared uneasy. Balenger didn’t raise the subject.

“Where’s the headset?” he asked.

Amanda listened to her ear buds. “The Game Master says…” She pointed. “There.”

Balenger walked to the edge of a collapsed building and found the headset among more boards. He picked it up and examined it. Specks of dried blood were on it. Remembering the cautionary look Amanda had given him, he didn’t ask about the blood. The sturdy headband was thin. The ear buds and microphone/camera were compact. He opened a small battery case on the left side of the headband.

“I don’t see any space for a detonator,” he said. “There doesn’t seem room inside the headband or the ear buds for plastic explosive. Maybe in the microphone/ camera. But I think the more likely place for a bomb is in your boots or your GPS receivers.” He glanced down at Amanda’s mud-covered boots. “Did they get wet?”

“Soaked.”

“The detonator would need to be awfully water tight not to short out. I could be wrong, but I think the GPS units are the bombs.”

Amanda listened to her ear buds. “The Game Master says, put on the headset.”

Balenger took off his hat. Under the weight of the sun, he adjusted the headset to his ears, then replaced the hat. “So what’s the Doomsday Vault?” he asked the Game Master. He scanned the wreckage, looking for a camera.

“You’re supposed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,” the voice said.

“I am. I’ve got a fan club of psychiatrists to prove it.”

“But you don’t show weakness.”

“I’m goal-oriented. Give me a task, and I focus on it so hard I forget I’m a psychological mess.” Balenger continued to survey the wreckage. “And believe me, I’m a mess. Can’t sleep without a light. Can’t stand closed doors. I have nightmares about a guy who wants to cut off my head. I tremble for no reason. I wake up screaming. The bed sheets are soaked with sweat. After this is over, after we win, I guarantee I’ll fall apart.”

“You’re confident you’ll win?”

“Anybody who plays a game and doesn’t intend to win has already lost. I have a question for you. How did you know where the headset was?”

Noticing what he searched for, Balenger pulled out his ear buds and inserted the wads of Kleenex. He raised his rifle.

“What are you doing?” Ray asked in alarm. He and Amanda stepped quickly to the side.

The camera was concealed in a jumble of boards. Balenger imposed the holographic red dot on the camera’s lens and squeezed the trigger. Crack. Absorbing the recoil, he was vaguely aware of the empty shell flipping through the air. Amid the smell of burned gunpowder, he lowered the rifle and regarded with satisfaction the catastrophic damage that his bullet had inflicted on the camera.

He took the wads of Kleenex from his ears. “That’s another Peeping Tom we don’t need to worry about.”

“Now listen to me carefully,” the Game Master said. “That’s the last time you destroy an essential part of the game.”

“Oh?”

“If you do it again, I’ll detonate the explosive in Miss Evert’s GPS receiver.”

I’m right, Balenger thought. That’s where the bombs are. “Even at the expense of ending the game?”

“Without the cameras, there isn’t a game. Do you believe I’ll do it?”

Balenger turned toward Amanda, who looked terrified. “Yes.”

“Then leave the cameras alone and play the damned game.”

“Okay, we’ll play the damned game.”

The tension in Amanda’s body subsided.

“Any other restrictions?” Balenger asked. “You claim you want us to be resourceful, but when we are, you complain. If we don’t have a chance, tell us now, and save us a lot of trouble.”

“Scavenger can be won. I don’t create unfair games.”

“Right,” Balenger said. “I’m late to this level. Somebody bring me up to speed.”

“We found map coordinates engraved on whatever that thing is buried in the reservoir.” Ray indicated his GPS receiver, which he handled with considerable misgiving. “The needle points that way. West.”

“Toward those mountains,” Balenger said.

“Or whatever’s between the mountains and us,” Amanda said. “I also found rocks in that thing in the mud.”

“Rocks?”

“I threw one onto the bank.”

Balenger touched her shoulder in a way that he hoped communicated reassurance. “Show me where.”

7

They passed the pile of boards from which the smell of death rose in the afternoon sun. Amanda stared at Ray. Again, Balenger didn’t comment.

“The Doomsday Vault,” he said to the microphone. “You still haven’t told me about it.”

“The ultimate time capsule,” the Game Master replied. “It’s a chamber in a mountain on an island in the Arctic Circle. The island is called Spitsbergen. Norway owns it.”

They reached the outskirts of the wreckage of Avalon, from which King Arthur would never rise, Balenger thought, recalling the myth.

“What makes it the ultimate time capsule?” Ahead, Balenger saw the rim of the breached reservoir.

“Because it literally contains a form of time. The chamber is immense: the size of half a football field.”

“A form of time? What’s inside: an atomic clock? Whatever it is, it must be gigantic.”

“Actually, the reverse. Most of the objects are very small.”

Balenger paused on the rim of the drained reservoir. “Small?”

“Millions of them.”

Balenger peered toward the metal rim of the rectangular object hidden in the mud. “What makes them a form of time?”

“They’re seeds.”

“I don’t understand.” Balenger felt a rising apprehension.

“For every type of edible plant on Earth,” the Game Master said. “Those seeds contain ten thousand years of experimental breeding. When humans started practicing agriculture, the process was trial and error. They took wild plants and tried to domesticate them. Many of the grains and vegetables were small and didn’t hold anywhere near the nutrition we now take for granted. Maize, for example — what we call corn — was a wild grass with ears only a couple of inches long and just a few rows of kernels. Several millennia of careful breeding resulted in the large plants we have today.”

“Why are these seeds being put in a chamber in a mountain in the Arctic Circle?”

“Because a number of scientists and countries are worried about the ability of human beings to survive,” the Game Master answered. “It’s not only global warming that frightens them. A nuclear holocaust poses an increasing risk. Or suppose a virus makes unprotected seeds sterile? Or what if an asteroid strikes the earth? There are near hits that we’ve never been told about. These days, though, it’s not nature but ourselves that we need to fear. If clusters of humans manage to survive global devastation, the Doomsday Vault will provide them with the seeds necessary to grow food.”

“First, people would need to know where it is,” Balenger said. “This vault isn’t exactly common knowledge.”

“Its location needs to be kept secret to protect it. Barriers and vacuum-locked doors prevent its contents from being stolen.”

“So even if I knew where to find this thing, I couldn’t get in.”

“Those in authority know where it is and how to unseal the doors.”

“Suppose they’re killed in the disaster they’re afraid of.”

“You’d better hope they aren’t. Without the Doomsday Vault, a global catastrophe would force humans to regress ten thousand years to the dawn of agriculture and begin the process of selectively breeding seeds all over again. That’s why it’s a time capsule. Preserved in the cold sleep of the Arctic, it sends ten thousand years to an uncertain future.”

“Cold sleep?” Balenger frowned. “If global warming’s a fact, the Arctic Circle will melt, the temperature in the vault will rise, and the seeds won’t be preserved.”

“If global warming’s a fact? Nothing’s a fact.”

“This game is a fact. The dog bite on my knee is a fact. Amanda’s cut hands are a fact.” Balenger looked at her. “Where’s the rock you took from whatever that thing is in the reservoir? Where did you throw it?”

“Over here.” Amanda picked it up. Caked with dried mud, the rock was the size of a fist, its surface uneven.

Balenger felt its heaviness. He returned to the stream and rinsed it. The rock was gray.

“There’s another color,” Amanda said.

“Worldly desires, worldly vanities.” Balenger’s voice was hushed.

“My God, is that…” Ray took the rock from him and turned it over. “Gold! Holy… A vein of gold straight through it.”

The gold’s yellow was pale and dirty. But it had a primordial allure, all the same. Balenger’s gaze lingered on it. Then he looked across the valley, in the direction that Ray’s GPS needle had pointed, toward the mountains to the north.

“The mine,” Ray said.

Amanda indicated the object buried in the reservoir’s mud. “Finally I think I know what that thing is. It’s a mining car.”

“With ore in it,” Balenger added.

Ray murmured. “The Hall of Records.”

“What?” Balenger was troubled by the sudden change of topic.

“The Game Master gave us the clue, but we didn’t recognize what it was. Mount Rushmore. The Hall of Records.”

“I still don’t get it.”

Amanda explained, “The Game Master told us that when they started to carve the presidents on Mount Rushmore, the Great Depression was at its worst. The monument’s designers got so worried that riots would destroy the country, they built a chamber under the monument. The idea was that crucial documents such as the Declaration of Independence would be protected there. But then the Depression ended, the risk of social chaos disappeared, and the only documents eventually sealed there described the history of the monument.”

“Under the mountain.” Ray’s voice strengthened. “Damn it, he gave us the answer, but we didn’t know it. The Sepulcher’s in one of those mountains! In the mine!” Ray looked frantically at his watch. “It’s almost three-thirty.” He studied the needle on his GPS receiver, splashed across the stream, and hurried through the scrub grass toward the mountains.

Balenger waited until Ray was out of earshot. Then he took off his cap, wiped his brow, and removed the headset. He took off Amanda’s headset as well and tapped the microphones against his leg so Ray wouldn’t hear their conversation.

“What didn’t you want to tell me?”

“That pile of boards,” Amanda answered.

“What about it?”

“There’s a body underneath.”

“I smelled it.”

“I mentioned a man named Derrick. Ray beat him to death.”

“Beat him to…?” Balenger felt choked by the unstated word.

The BlackBerry vibrated in his pocket. Emotions swirling, he answered it.

“Put the headsets back on, or I’ll set off the detonator,” the voice ordered.

Balenger directed his answer toward the sky. “Jonathan, did you enjoy that part of the game?”

“Don’t call me ‘Jonathan.” I’m the Game Master.“

Amanda looked amazed that Balenger knew the Game Master’s name.

“Did you enjoy watching someone get beaten to death?” Balenger asked.

“Nothing in the game is planned. No one could have predicted that the beating would occur.”

Balenger pressed the BlackBerry to his ear. “But did you enjoy watching it happen?”

Silence lengthened.

“Yes,” the Game Master said. “I enjoyed it. Put on the headsets.”

“I’m standing so close to Amanda, you’ll kill both of us if you detonate the explosives. You’re cheering for me, remember. I’m your avatar. It’d be like killing yourself.”

“Killing myself? Are you an analyst now? Because you went to all those psychiatrists, do you think that qualifies you as one?”

“You have an interesting concept of human character. I wonder if you ever went to an analyst.”

“One last time. Put on the headsets.” The voice was tight with anger.

Balenger quit tapping the microphones against his pants. He gave Amanda her headset, then put on his own.

Ray’s voice instantly intruded. “What were you talking about that you didn’t want me to hear?” He stood a hundred yards away in the grassland, staring at them.

“We were just discussing some finer points of the game,” Balenger said.

“Like what?”

“Actually, it was private, some guy-girl stuff we didn’t want to embarrass you with.”

“Bull. She told you what was under that stack of boards.”

“Hey, we’re all in this together. There’s no point in keeping secrets,” Balenger said.

Ray didn’t reply. Even from a distance, his anger was obvious. He turned and continued to the west in the direction that the needle on his GPS receiver indicated.

8

As they followed Ray, Amanda ate another energy bar. She told Balenger what had happened since she’d wakened in the bedroom. The concern Balenger felt was matched by hers when he described what had happened since he’d wakened in the ruins of the Paragon Hotel. Throughout, he kept glancing to his right, where the two dogs, having returned, moved parallel to him about fifty yards away. He raised his rifle. They scurried off.

Ahead, Ray peered down at something in the grass. Whatever he found excited him enough to make him walk faster toward the mountains. When Balenger reached that area, he stepped into the deep furrows of an old wagon road.

“For the mine,” Amanda said.

They started along it, noting how the furrows stretched toward the mountains. Balenger could almost hear the rattle of wheels and plod of hooves from the countless wagons that came and went, bringing supplies to the mine and carrying away gold. The road seemed to lead toward a middle mountain. After an hour’s walking, the peak loomed. The dogs came back but kept a wary distance.

Ray stopped and waited for them. He pulled his lighter from his jumpsuit, clicking it open and shut. “Why are you staying back? Does your knee hurt?”

“Nothing I can’t deal with.”

“If it’s giving you trouble, I need to know. I can’t waste time waiting for you to catch up.”

“I can manage.”

“I mean if you can’t keep pace with me, maybe I should take the rifle so it doesn’t weigh you down.”

“The rifle’s not heavy.”

“I could use more water.”

Balenger gave him a bottle. “Only five left.”

“Not enough.”

“We can make it last till midnight. The main thing is, keep a positive attitude.”

“I heard enough about a positive attitude when I was in the Marines.” Ray opened and shut the lighter again. “Amanda gave you the wrong idea.”

“Wrong idea?”

“What happened back there was self-defense.”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see it.”

“He came at me with a rock.”

Ray didn’t give the corpse a name, Balenger noted. “A man needs to defend himself.”

“Damned straight.” Ray put the lighter away.

They followed the old wagon road toward the mountains. Balenger felt a premonition, wondering why the town hadn’t been built close to its principal customers.

Amanda pointed. “I think I see the mine.”

While the slopes on either side were grassy, the one straight ahead was denuded. Only chunks of rock covered the incline. Balenger saw what appeared to be railroad tracks at the bottom, in a line with the road, emerging from the rocks.

Ruins came into view, a chaos of boards where several large buildings had collapsed. A breeze blew dust.

“No grass. Not even weeds,” Balenger said.

“The gold made a wasteland.” After a long absence, the voice was startling. “The ore was sledge-hammered, drilled, and blasted from the tunnels. Exhausted men filled mining cars and pushed them along tracks. Emerging into sunlight, they used the brakes on the cars to keep them from running down the slope. In what was once a building on your left, steam-powered grinders reduced the ore to bits. The result was mixed with liquid poison, a solution of sodium cyanide which separated the gold from the pulverized rock. But cyanide isn’t the only reason for the sterility around you. Sulphuric acid was another ingredient used to separate the gold from the rock.”

“Is that why the town’s a distance from the mine?” Balenger asked.

“The fumes from the acid could be smelled for miles,” the Game Master replied. “A lot of the miners died from lung diseases.”

The sun descended beyond the mountain. A shadow brought a chill.

“Where’s the entrance?” Amanda wondered. “It’s got to be in a line with the railroad tracks.”

They walked to where the tracks angled uphill. A landslide had buried the upper part of the tracks.

With Amanda and Ray on either side of him, Balenger climbed the slope, his boots dislodging rocks. He stopped on a level area and faced a wall of rock.

“This is where the entrance probably was,” Ray said. “Where we’re standing.”

“The tunnel must have collapsed,” Balenger said. A suspicion made him add, “Or else it was buried for the game.”

Amanda peered down at her scraped fingers. “There’s no way we can clear it by hand.”

The shadow they stood in lengthened, becoming cooler.

Balenger thought about the possibilities. “The Game Master wouldn’t give us an obstacle unless there’s a way to get around it.”

“Explosives would do it,” Amanda replied.

“But where the hell are we going to find them?” Ray gestured in exasperation. “If Mr. Positive Attitude here was thinking, he’d have brought the explosives from under the bridge. But now it’s too late to go back for them.”

“Would you have risked carrying them?” Balenger asked. Ray avoided his gaze. “Anyway, we don’t have a radio or know the frequency that would set off the detonator.”

Amanda studied him. “You can’t set off explosives without a detonator?”

“Nitroglycerine’s so unstable you can blow it up simply by dropping it. But explosives that are safe to handle need a jumpstart.”

“And only a radio signal can set off a detonator?”

“Or a pressure switch or a fuse attached to a blasting cap. There are several ways, but the Game Master seems to prefer a radio signal. What are you getting at?”

“What about an impact?” Amanda asked.

“Impact?”

“A bullet. Would that set off the detonator?”

“Yes.” Ray sounded like he spoke to a child. “A bullet would set off a detonator. In Iraq, sometimes unexploded bombs blew up if something banged against them while they were being dug out. But that doesn’t change the fact that the explosives and the detonator are miles behind us, back in town.”

“I wasn’t thinking of those,” Amanda said.

“Then, for God’s sake, what are you talking about?”

Amanda showed them her GPS receiver.

They stared at it.

“He’d never let us try it,” Ray said.

“If we don’t try it, we’ll still be on this slope at midnight, and this is probably what the Game Master will use to destroy us,” Amanda told them.

They didn’t move. They didn’t even seem to breathe.

Balenger asked Ray, “Can you think of an alternative?”

“No.”

“Game Master, do you truly want us to be resourceful?”

The Game Master didn’t answer.

Balenger set down his rifle and started lifting rocks.

“But we don’t have time to dig our way in!” Ray said.

“I’m making a hole for the GPS unit. The deeper it is, the more force the explosion will have.”

Immediately, Amanda and Ray helped him.

“Angle the hole so it points down the slope,” Balenger said. “I need to see the receiver from down there.”

Amanda and Ray made the hole a couple of feet deep. Balenger noticed that Amanda’s hands started bleeding again. He saw too that nervousness made her tremble when she set her GPS unit into the hole.

Once more, Balenger peered toward the sky. “Game Master, if you’ve got a problem with this, tell us now.”

The voice remained silent.

“This could be the last moment we know we’re alive,” Ray said.

“I prefer my positive attitude.” To the sky, Balenger said, “It’s awfully lonely being God if you have no one to talk to. You enjoy our conversations with us. Why end the entertainment when there’s more to the game?”

The voice continued to remain silent.

Balenger picked up his rifle. “Then let’s do it.”

Rocks clattered as they descended. Needing cover, they went to the largest pile of wreckage.

Balenger waited until Amanda and Ray lay flat. “Put your hands over your ears,” he told her. “Open your mouth to relieve the pressure.”

He shoved the Kleenex wads in his ears, then knelt on his good knee and aimed the rifle. The gun’s stock was solid against his shoulder. But the GPS receiver was difficult to see, gray against the rocks. The shadow of the mountains didn’t help.

“Problems?” Ray asked.

“Just making sure.”

“Let me try.”

Balenger squeezed the trigger.

The roar of the blast jolted him, its concussion shoving him back. He dropped to the ground, landing on his right side, holding the rifle off the ground. Debris pelted around him. He felt the impact of a rock landing near his head. Despite the Kleenex wads in his ears, he heard ringing. Dust blew over him, acrid with the smell of detonated explosives.

The echoing rumble lessened. He looked toward Amanda, relieved to see that she wasn’t injured. She rose to a crouch and peered toward the slope. Ray came to his feet. So did Balenger, who surveyed the slope, pleased to see a huge opening. He took the Kleenex from his ears and stepped from the wreckage.

Amanda hurried toward the slope. “I see a door!”

They scrambled up the rocks and reached the opening. A barrier of old gray wood was visible at the end, jagged from flying rocks.

Balenger saw hinges, a handle. “Yes, a door.”

The force of the explosion had knocked it askew. They stepped over rubble and pushed, toppling it inward. Dust made them cough.

Amanda and Ray leaned inside.

“Can’t see much,” Ray said. “Let’s widen this opening.” He shoved boards away.

Daylight probed twenty feet into the tunnel. Railroad tracks went down the middle. Posts held up roof supports.

“Looks solid,” Amanda said.

Balenger aimed his flashlight, revealing more of the tunnel. But deeper inside, darkness confronted him. Closed spaces, he thought with a shiver.

Ray hesitated. “Do you think it’s safe to go in?”

“Do we have a choice?” Amanda asked.

Balenger studied the walls and saw a small video camera attached to a roof beam. “We’re in the right place. The tunnel’s monitored.”

“I don’t see any container, anything that might be a time capsule,” Ray said.

Balenger gave Amanda the flashlight. “Stay just behind me and point the light. I’ll take the lead.”

He ejected the magazine from his rifle, pulled a box of ammunition from his knapsack, and again reloaded.