The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble. Литагент HarperCollins USD

raced out into the walled yard without slowing down, and took aim at the carpet-beating frame off to one side. The gorilla was gaining on him, he was literally at his heels, so close that he could hear his laboured breathing.

      HP leapt up onto the frame and from there jumped up towards the top of the wall high above. He managed to grab the edge with both hands, and kicked wildly with his legs against the wall to get his upper body up to the top.

      It worked!

      He struggled hard to get to the strip of tin crowning the wall, and managed to swing one leg over. But just as he was about to pull up the other one he felt someone grab hold of his trouser-leg and he was left sitting astride the wall, clinging on for dear life.

      From the corner of his eye he could see his pursuer and could feel the man trying to get a better grip around his ankle.

      Panicking, HP started to kick his left leg wildly in an effort to get free. Suddenly his foot hit something solid and he heard a grunt, and the grip on his ankle let go. It came as such a shock that HP lost his balance and tumbled helplessly into the flowerbed on the other side of the wall.

      He landed face down and got a mouthful of soil.

      When he got up a couple of seconds later and began to stagger towards a gateway that he guessed must lead out onto St Eriksgatan, he could still hear the gorilla roaring on the other side of the wall.

      Once he was out on the street he decided against the closest underground station and sprinted off instead along Karlbergsvägen towards Odenplan. When he reached the entrance four minutes later and reduced his speed, he realized that his whole body was shaking.

      Congratulations, HP!

      the screen said once he had sat down in an underground carriage and got control of his trembling hands.

      You have successfully completed

      your third assignment, worth 700 points.

      I have also decided to award you 100 extra points for an accomplished performance. Your film clip is expected to be ready in 23 minutes.

      Greetings from

      The Game Master

      So in other words he would just have time to get home to watch everything repeated, and wallow in the love of the fans. Fuck, this was seriously cool!

      When the door of the flat closed behind Rebecca she was almost too tired to go through her new routine. For a moment she toyed with the idea of not actually bothering this time, that everything was good enough as it was. But then her anxiety took over and she spent almost three minutes locking, unlocking, and then relocking all of the four locks that were attached to the door.

      When she was finally happy, sufficiently convinced that everything worked and that the flat was secure, she threw her soaking wet gym clothes in the little washing-machine, staggered into the living room and collapsed on the sofa.

      ‘Hello!’ she said in the direction of the bedroom, but no-one answered.

      It had been a long time since there had been anyone there.

      Yet she couldn’t help saying something, anything, so as not to feel so alone.

      ‘Hello …’ a voice suddenly answered, and her heart skipped a beat before she heard it continue and realized that she was listening to her own voice.

      ‘… you’ve called Rebecca. I’m not home right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’

      She threw herself at the phone and just picked up the receiver before the answer phone bleeped, but whoever it was who had called had already hung up.

      Hell! She’d put the phone on mute while she was doing yoga the previous evening and must have forgotten to reset it.

      Oh well, they’d call back if it was important.

      The odds were fairly short that it would be a call from work about some overtime, something which for once she didn’t feel inclined to do.

      The intense training of the past few days had left her worn out and tonight she just wanted to sleep. She might do a short session in the gym tomorrow, but she was planning to spend the rest of her day off catching up on a bit of well-deserved rest.

      She went through her messages. The following were all reminders from herself:

      ‘Rebecca, remember to book a time in the laundry-room and pay the Nespresso bill, it’s due on the twenty-fifth.’

      ‘Step up the training regime with the Sig, Normén.’

      ‘This evening there’s that documentary about serial killers that you ought to watch. Discovery, eight o’clock.’

      She gave a wry smile at her own orders as she deleted the messages. It was odd how strange her own voice sounded when she heard a recording of it. Almost like another person on the tape. A distant relative with a few common features, but more stern and cold. But then the sound quality wasn’t very good. She actually thought it was rather a silly habit to use the machine like this. Maybe it was time to get a new mobile? Then she could type up her reminders instead of carrying on with all these endless calls. A suitable project for the next time she had a few days off.

      She picked up the phone and reset the ringtone, and fought a sudden impulse to call Henke. She actually missed him, more than she cared to admit. But that would have to be tomorrow now, or sometime over the next few days, she promised herself before she put the phone down and switched on the television.

      A few minutes later she was lost in a deep, dreamless sleep.

      The clip exceeded all expectations! It looked as if someone had set up a camera on the landing, because he couldn’t see a single movement that suggested a human hand behind the images which had been posted alongside his own under his profile. Even though the events had only taken place an hour or so before, everything actually seemed even more dramatic than he remembered it.

      The door shaken by the gorilla’s shoves, the terrified girl poking her face out, and not least his own masked figure tagging the entire door. He looked at least as cool as twenty-seven had done when he sorted out that cop-car!

      And the text on the door looked pretty damn good:

      REMEMBER

      RULE

      NUMBER

      ONE!

      That was a message the grass inside was guaranteed never to forget. A little reminder from the Game Master about what the rules were, basically. Silence is golden …

      Bloody hell, he was a body-builder or something, because he looked pretty fucking solid when he came storming out onto the landing.

      The sequence from the yard was almost as good. Because he’d only been half-lying on top of the wall, the camera had been pointing in the right direction and he could get a better idea of the effects of his kicking.

      You could make out a powerful lower arm and parts of a furious face sliding in and out of shot, then his own size forty-three Nike landing in the middle of the gorilla’s face before everything became a mess of sky and soil when he fell down the other side of the wall.

      At a guess, the orc had been too pumped up on steroids to get over the wall.

      Too bad, sucker!

      Time to cut back on the anabolics.

      He grinned broadly and pressed repeat one more time.

      The fans liked it when you fried rats. The comments had already started to appear and his average rating had crept closer to four stars. With a bit more exposure he should have passed the boundary to ‘good’ by the morning.

      And why not? After all, he was pretty much born for this. A hitman in the service of the Game Master!

      The jacket had been a stroke of genius, the new clip was a hell of a lot better than the previous ones. You could even watch the run down Karlbergsvägen