Countdown

I met his gaze and held it, while my head continued to throb. 'You said yourself that you're guilty as hell of something I probably wouldn't forgive you for. And I just felt it right then. It's eating you alive inside. Whatever this is, you hate yourself for it, and you think I will, too. And if it isn't the rape and murder of innocent women, and if it isn't killing my family, then I don't know what else it could be.'

He tried to look away, but I grabbed his collar again.

'Tell me,' I said, firmer. 'We're not going anywhere until you do. And I don't want to use my flex on you again, because my head just might blow up next time.' I frowned.

'What is it?'

'It's just… just that I've never heard the person I'm reading before. It's always just been flashes of insight. Moods or feelings or… I don't even know how to explain it. But with you, just then, I could almost… read what you were thinking down deep.'

He raised an eyebrow. 'And what was I thinking?'

My cheeks warmed. 'You were thinking that I'm beautiful.'

He made a barking laugh noise. 'Now that she's all bathed and shampooed, she's gone conceited on me.'

I just looked at him.

He cleared his throat. 'Well, that's a given, really. You're gorgeous, and I'm sure you damn well know it. How can I not notice that? So what else did you mind-read on me?'

'That you want revenge on somebody so badly you want them dead. And that you feel deeply responsible for something horrible that happened. That's happening.'

His jaw tensed and he didn't say anything.

I stood up from the floor and moved toward the spread of food again, thinking hard. 'You know, ever since this game began, you seem to have known a hell of a lot about it. Little insights and little helps that I wouldn't have guessed. I mean, right at the beginning you knew that the room we were in had collapsed on itself, remember? But you didn't actually see that. How could you know?'

His throat worked as he swallowed. 'Kira … just forget it.'

'No, I'm not forgetting it. You said you came from Saradone. But how do I know that's true?'

'It's true.' There was no more lightness in his voice. 'I was in there for four goddamned years. Don't tell me that you're doubting me again. I thought we established that I'm not lying to you.'

'No, but you're not telling me something. That's different from not lying.'

'Just forget it. Trust me, Kira. You don't want to know.'

There was silence between us for a moment.

'Do you know somebody named Gareth?' I asked suddenly.

His face went as still and expressionless as stone. 'How do you know that name?'

'Jonathan told me that he's the producer of The Countdown.' I crossed my arms. 'Jonathan told me a lot of things, and even though I now know he's a liar, it doesn't mean everything he said was untrue. I'm just wondering how connected you are with this game. Why did this Gareth guy pick you? Why did they try to injure you at the very beginning so you wouldn't last long? What's so damn special about you if you were just in jail for something you didn't even do?'

His expression had darkened considerably. 'You ask a lot of questions.'

'And I'm not done yet. Tell me who this Gareth guy is.'

He studied me for what seemed like an hour but was probably no more than a minute. 'Gareth is my brother.'

CHAPTER TEN

I stared at him. 'What did you just say?'

Rogan's throat worked as he swallowed. 'You heard me.'

'But… but how is that even possible? Why would your brother put you in this game? Does he even know you're here?'

He hissed out a long breath and went to stand in front of the display screen with the fake view of that perpetually setting sun. The warm colors reflected against his handsome, scarred face. 'He knows. It's … it's complicated.'

'How could you have a brother who would create a game like this that kills people for the amusement of the subscribers?'

He laughed then, and it was a hollow, soulless sound. 'See, now you come to the true secret, Kira. The one I would rather you'd never found out about me. You really want to know how fucked-up my life is? Maybe then you can go back to hating me.'

'What are you talking about?'

He still refused to look directly at me. His arms were tightly crossed in front of him. 'My brother didn't create The Countdown. I did.'

My eyes widened. 'What are you talking about?'

'Look at me, Kira.' He turned to face me completely. 'Do you see this ruin of a man in front of you? I wasn't always like this. Ten years ago, when my parents died, I was one of the richest people in the world. Have you heard of Ellis Enterprises?'

I blinked, trying to process what he was telling me. Have it make some sort of sense. 'I… I think so. Sure. I have. It's the huge company that used to make all the computers.'

He nodded. 'Yeah, among other things. I took the money that my father had built up over a lifetime. Shit, the man made money even during the worst days after the plague. Nobody made money then. But he …' He shook his head, his expression pained. 'He managed to squeeze out every penny he could. And when I inherited his fortune, did I do any good with all that money?'

'Rogan … are you serious about all of this?'

'Yeah, I'm serious. You've wanted to know more about me since we met. Well, guess what? You're going to get the fast-forward in the Rogan Ellis School of Losers right now. I had billions of dollars, Kira. Billions. I could have made such a difference to the world with that kind of money. But I just spent it on selfish things. Entertainment, cars, property, women.' He spat out the words. 'Forget Kerometh, I got to try all the fancy drugs that didn't have any side effects. But none of it made me happy. I was so bored with my life that I couldn't think straight.'

I shook my head. 'No, it couldn't have been that bad. You couldn't have been that bad.'

He snorted. 'Trust me, I was. But then I had an idea. I created a game. Six levels. And I got people to volunteer to go on it. Then I got people to pay to watch it. I spent a ton of my father's money on developing this thing, but regular cameras weren't good enough. It needed better technology and a better edge. I sank more money into developing an artificial intelligence program.'

'Wait… artificial intelligence? Like the robot from Level Three?'

He pressed his lips together for a moment and then nodded with a jerk of his head. 'Yeah, almost got taken out by the same thing I helped develop in the first place. If that isn't irony, then I don't know what is.'

I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. 'Okay, keep going.'

'Are you sure you want to hear the rest?'

I frowned at him. 'No. But keep going anyhow.'

He raked a hand through his dark hair and paced to the other side of the luxurious room. 'We didn't do so well with the game in the beginning. There was too much competition from the other networks that were still on the air. Jonathan was my friend back then, and he was the head of the Ellis medical research department. It probably made my father feel better about his greed to put some money into something altruistic. Jonathan randomly suggested one day that I take things underground. Make it secret and exclusive, so that only certain people had access to it. Together we started to develop the cranium implants.'

I touched the back of my head to feel the incision mark on my scalp. I didn't interrupt again. I sat on the