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Excellent, HP!
Think carefully and then make your decision.
You have twenty-five seconds as of now.
Good luck!
The Game Master
The message vanished and was replaced by a countdown.
24
23
22
This was utterly fucking super-cool! Talk about his cup of tea! So which should he choose, the blue button or the red one?
Evidently they were both right, but it looked like only one of them would have any sort of real effect?
12
11
10
He could feel his heartbeat in his temples.
Play it safe or go all in?
6
5
Obviously there was only one answer.
Adventure without risk was fucking Disneyland! Time to find out exactly how deep this rabbit-hole really goes!
2
1
He pressed the red button.
The box clicked, then there was a faint rumble. The lights in the ceiling flickered.
HP held his breath.
When she had finished her report she took a stroll round the Crime Unit to see if any of her former colleagues were on duty. Her role in the personal protection unit was only a secondment, so she still had her basic post. But the corridor was empty, which wasn’t so surprising seeing as it was almost seven o’clock in the evening. The few poor bastards who weren’t off on holiday would at least have had the sense to finish work on time.
After her interview with Anderberg she had been driven home in a patrol car, leaving her bicycle down in the garage of the police station. The quickest way to reach it was through the lift in the custody section, so she took the stairs down to ‘the beige kilometre’, as some bright spark had christened the long corridor.
Down there everything was in full swing, as usual on a Friday evening. All the holding cells were already full and a couple of tired detectives were dashing between the numerous rooms where various patrols were giving their reports. One particularly troublesome drunk, escorted by two sturdy uniformed officers, took up most of the available space in front of the duty-officer’s glass cubicle.
Friday nights, all the drinking and fighting, had doubtless been useful experience, but she didn’t exactly miss it …
One of the uniformed officers nodded in acknowledgement as she passed and she returned the greeting. On the way out to the lift she could hear his police-radio crackle into life:
‘Control to all units!
Patrol cars to Hamngatan and the NK department store …’
Nothing happened. Not that he knew exactly what he’d been expecting, but still? Surely there should have been some sort of response. After the dramatic build-up, surely some flashing warning lights or wailing sirens was the least he could expect? People running along the corridor, maybe some angry banging on the door.
But this …? A whole load of nothing.
Disappointed, big time.
He waited another minute or so, then left the room dejectedly, slouching down the stairs, and it wasn’t until he crossed the street and made it as far as the trees in Kungsträdgården that he slowly began to get it.
‘… just stopped,’ someone was saying in surprise to another passerby, pointing up at the building that HP had just come out of.
‘Isn’t it usually lit up as well?’ he heard a couple of voices ask.
Then he saw people holding up their mobiles, and soon there was a mass of people taking pictures. He looked up in the same direction, high up above the copper roof, to see what had caught their interest, and instantly his disappointment was blown away and replaced by an entirely new, indescribable feeling that he had never come anywhere close to before.
His heart was doing backward double somersaults inside his chest. His feet almost left the ground and he felt his jeans tighten over his crotch.
This was so totally fucking brilliant! Talk about mission accomplished!
The huge, illuminated NK clock, which had rotated high above the city for fifty years almost without interruption, was dark and still.
The hands of the shadowy clock-face were pointing at seven o’clock precisely. And he understood the Game Master’s words: ‘the clock will stop on your old life’. A new age had just begun!
5 (#ulink_fb463907-c80c-590f-869b-5df6827604f0)
Playing the game (#ulink_fb463907-c80c-590f-869b-5df6827604f0)
Sometimes, usually when she was dreaming, she could still see his face in front of her, the way it looked the very last time their eyes met. First the fury, then surprise, and finally the terror in his eyes when he realized what was happening – that he was about to die.
She always relived the moment as a film running in ever slower slow motion. The way he hung there almost weightless between heaven and earth, between life and death, while his arms moved slowly in circles, flailing, initially to regain his balance, then to grab at salvation. But for a short while physics seemed to have made an exception and allowed him to balance on the edge even though he ought to have fallen already. As if the law of gravity had suspended itself long enough for Rebecca to have time to see the terror and accusation in his eyes. She on the floor, just a metre or so from his feet, close enough to be able to reach, to stretch out a hand to rescue him.
Like so many times before the sequence of events slowed until at last everything was entirely still, almost like someone had pressed a pause button. And for a single intense moment it was actually there, for real, the chance for her to reach out her hand and try to undo what had been done. Save him. If she wanted to.
But even though she tried to convince herself that she loved him, that she regretted it and certainly didn’t wish him any harm, it didn’t help. Because deep down inside her, in a place that reason couldn’t reach, either awake or dreaming, she still wanted – even though more than thirteen years had passed since that night – nothing more than for him to fall. That his face should be smashed beyond recognition, that his arms and legs be broken like matchsticks, and his hands, the soft hands that she had loved and feared more than anything else in the whole world, crushed to bloody fragments against the solid ground far below.
And at the moment when the hatred once again broke free inside her, someone pressed play and her wishes came true.
Often that was when she woke up, at the moment when he disappeared from sight, and she avoided having to hear the sound of his body hitting the ground five floors below.
But not always.
Not today.
The muffled, soft sound was still echoing in her ears as she gulped down a quick breakfast by the kitchen sink. It was almost drowned out by the sound of traffic as she cycled fast along Rålambsvägen, but was still echoing weakly at the back of her mind as she made the mountain bike jump the curb on Drottningholmsvägen, and still hadn’t vanished completely by the time she pulled up breathless beside the guard’s box by the cellar entrance at Fridhemsplan.
She stopped at the barrier, showed her police badge to the guard inside the box, who waved her past absent-mindedly, evidently more interested in the mobile phone he was fiddling with instead of concentrating on his job.
Yet another incompetent idiot, she thought angrily before she rolled down through the tunnel beneath the Kronoberg complex, its cool darkness effectively shutting off the outside world and all of its sounds.
‘Come on, put a bit of effort in, for God’s sake! This isn’t a housewives’ exercise-class!’
Sweat was pouring from the six bodyguards. Five men, one woman. Down on the floor, ten push-ups, quickly up on your feet again, ready, kick, punch, punch. Then down again. Twenty sit-ups and back up into position again. Ten reps in total, then switch with your partner. A firm grip round the waist, kick, punch, punch.
Her sparring partner was strong and his blows almost penetrated the padded shield in Rebecca’s arms.
Bang, bang, bang.
Three more, then change again.
The self-defence instructor was living up to his name today. Peter Pain hadn’t got his nickname simply because he was British.
The first training class for the rookies in the Alpha group. Evidently Vahtola had requested a serious session to challenge the newcomers to her group. Rebecca could see their boss watching them from the glass passageway above the self-defence room.
Approximately forty-five minutes had passed and the tempo had been relentless so far. Even though they were all in good shape, more than one of them was starting to flag.
‘Okay, stop, gather round.’
Peter Pain beckoned them all over. There was a collective sigh of relief and Rebecca noticed to her delight that several of her male colleagues had to rest their hands on their knees to catch their breath. She was tired, but not as tired as the biggest of the men.
‘That’s the advantage of having a bit less muscle, boys, it takes less oxygen to keep it going,’ she smirked silently before Pain’s new orders interrupted her.
‘Restraint and release, groups of three, two holding, one trying to get loose. Questions? Okay, get going, and I want to see some speed! Go, go, go!’
She ended up with two big blokes that she knew slightly already. Stefan and Dejan, the former a muscle-bound bloke about one metre ninety tall, the latter only a bit smaller.
‘I’ll start,’ Dejan said and gestured to Rebecca to grab him from behind while Stefan took up position to lock Dejan’s arms from the front.
‘Ungh …!’ Dejan twisted loose easily with some sort of advanced martial arts technique as he let out a loud roar.
‘Nice, Savic, but drop the Karate Kid bullshit!’ their instructor said from the side of the mat.
Rebecca glanced up at the glass passageway. Vahtola was still watching, and it looked like the head of the unit was focusing particularly on her trio.
‘Ungh!’ Dejan was free again, this time even more easily.
Shit, she’d lost her concentration and Pain wasn’t the sort to let it pass.
‘Get a grip, Normén! If you want to belong to the elite you need to step it up!’
The third attempt, and now she knew pretty much how his tactics worked. Dejan took a quick step to the side before twisting free, so what would happen if she kneed him at the back of his knee in the middle of the step?
The answer proved to be that he fell backwards into her arms, and that she and Stefan could easily spin him round and lay him out on the mat.
‘Good, Normén, that’s how it’s supposed to look!’ Pain clapped his hands and Rebecca couldn’t help throwing a smug glance up at the glass passageway. Vahtola’s expression hadn’t changed.
‘Let’s switch!’ Dejan said tersely. He was red in the face and clearly not happy about being bundled over in front of their new boss.
‘I’ll take the back.’
Before Rebecca had time to react he’d taken up position behind her and got her in some sort of headlock. Both arms round her neck, his right arm over her throat locked onto the other arm, his left hand clasping the back of her neck.
It felt like she was in a vice.
She quickly tried to get at the arm across her throat, but Stefan, standing in front of her, caught her wrists and held her arms tight. She struggled and jerked, trying to get free, but Dejan evidently wasn’t about to let that happen.
It was payback time, and instead of loosening his grip to give her a chance, he tightened it. Her feet were almost off the ground.
‘Come on, Normén,’ he snarled in her ear. ‘Show us what you can do!’
Rebecca could feel her eyes starting to flutter. His grip was so tight that both her airway and blood-supply were being cut off. She tried to get free again, this time more frenetically, but Stefan was still holding her wrists tight, not appearing to notice that everything was on the point of spiralling out of control.
Her field of vision was shrinking and she could feel herself on the verge of panic. She was stuck, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move; she was immobile and in another person’s power, someone who wished her harm. Exposed. Helpless. And all of a sudden she was no longer in a gym in Kronoberg but in a flat in one of the southern suburbs and the man holding her was no longer a colleague whose pride had been wounded.
‘I’m going to kill you, you little bitch,’ the man snarled in her ear, and she could tell from the tone of voice, the one that terrified her so, that he meant every word. This time she would die for sure!
The panic she usually kept such a firm grip on welled up and filled her head, pumping adrenalin into her fading muscles and taking command of her body. And suddenly she felt a new burst of life.
She let herself fall towards the floor like a sack, and when the grip on her neck relaxed a couple of millimetres she launched up with both feet and thrust backwards and upwards with such force that they all three almost toppled over.
Rebecca felt the back of her head hit something hard, felt something break, and when she kicked out in front to strike a different target, the force of the kick altered their centre of gravity and then they collapsed onto the mat.
For a moment everything went black, but her sight gradually came back.
She was sitting on the floor with her back against the flattened Dejan with his legs on either side of her. A few metres in front of her Stefan was curled up, clutching his stomach. In a flash she was up on her feet, turning towards Dejan who was still lying down. His hands were over his face, but to judge by the trickles running between his fingers, more than that was needed to stem the flow of blood.
‘What the fuck, you crazy or what, Normén?’ he squeaked as he stared at her, sounding simultaneously suspicious and accusing.
She didn’t quite know what to say.
‘I …’ she began uncertainly, but Peter Pain interrupted her.
‘Damn fine work, Normén, that’s the way to bring them down! Savic, you were asking for that so you’d better take yourself off to the nurse to get yourself patched up. Wikström, do you need to go too?’
Stefan waved his hands dismissively as he got heavily to his feet.
‘Just lost my breath, nice hit, Normén.’ He nodded towards her.
