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

4

       Safe or all in?

      She needed new clothes. Even though the blood would probably come out if they were dry-cleaned, she had thrown her jacket and trousers in the nearest bin as soon as she got them back from Forensics.

      Runeberg had understood.

      ‘Make sure you get a receipt and we’ll sort it out, Normén,’ he had said, so she had just spent the past hour or so in the outfitters in Östermalm that supplied their uniforms. Getting measured and trying things on, marks in white chalk and pins. It felt like a luxury to be able to try on clothes like this, and in work-time as well.

      The sales assistant knew what she was doing. One size larger than normal gave enough space for the bulletproof vest and the equipment carried on their belts. Just shorten the arms a bit and take in the shoulders.

      The uniform had to sit well without getting in the way. It wasn’t supposed to look like a hand-me-down.

      Runeberg may have told her to take the rest of the day off, but according to the rota she was supposed to be working that afternoon. She didn’t have any other plans so it made sense to get the uniform sorted straight away.

      Runeberg was okay. If you could just look past his blokey attitude he was a decent boss, possibly even one of the best she’d had. And decent bosses didn’t exactly grow on trees in the force. Length of service and connections were often more important than competence.

      Even so, she liked being a police officer, she really liked it. The feeling of doing something important, meaningful. Doing something for society.

      But ‘Protect, help, see that justice is done’ was only one aspect of what attracted her to working in the police. Another important aspect was the feeling of being chosen. Someone who had been hand-picked more than once in the course of her career, who had passed countless tests and exams and had shown that she was made of the right stuff.

      As a woman within the force it wasn’t enough to pass the entrance exam. You also had to prove that you weren’t a UW – a uniformed witness who was no use at all when things kicked off. You had to prove you could deal with critical situations on your own.

      That was why the business with the security guard at Rosenbad still annoyed her. Without the car she had been stuck, felt almost paralysed, and if their attackers had chosen to carry on they would have been in a tricky situation. She couldn’t quite shake the insidious thought that it was the guard on the door who had saved the day rather than her. That she didn’t really deserve her place in the Alpha group.

      Maybe it sounded like something from the Stone Age, but the police force was to a great extent still run according to male rules. Regardless of anything that equal-rights legislation might have to say about the percentage of women in the force, 95 percent of all criminals were men. And if a woman wanted to join in properly and not tuck herself away on some cosy office chair the moment the opportunity arose, you had to show that you had what it took. That you weren’t bothered about getting filthy and beaten up. She had no problem whatsoever with that, but it had been hard learning to take control of the situation and hit back. But a number of years on patrol had certainly helped.

      She had read somewhere that the body replaces practically all of its cells over a seven-year period. Even if that sounded made up, the thought appealed to her, that she was literally a new person after everything that had happened. That she was a different, much better person than she had been then.

      The identity she had assumed with the job played a large part in that change.

      She was proud of her job, and the rectangular police badge that she took everywhere with her, no matter where she was. Its metal shape had even left an impression on the outside of the pocket of her jeans, just like the little tubs of chewing tobacco did with ice-hockey lads. She couldn’t really explain the feeling she got when she held it out and introduced herself as ‘Normén, Police’. She couldn’t imagine life without it. So why didn’t she feel completely happy?

      Are you really sure you want to Play, HP?

      Hell yeah, he was sure. Absolutely certain! It was a complete no-brainer. Getting paid for running around the city and mucking about – who the fuck wouldn’t want to be part of something like that?

      And then there was the whole thing about being filmed.

      He couldn’t really explain why, but seeing himself on film like that was … exciting, in the absence of a better word. Not exciting in a sex way, no, this was a completely different feeling. Or was it?

      But it wasn’t really the thing about watching himself do cool stuff from loads of different angles that appealed most. Even if he still liked the idea, the initial intensity of the buzz he got when he relived the theft had had time to fade a bit. Sure, he wasn’t about to deny that it still made his pulse go up when he watched it over again, but it was no longer top of the list.

      No, what appealed to him even more was the discovery that there were other people out there who could see what he was doing, watching his clips and even rating his performance.

      He hadn’t really sussed what was going on the first time he was on the site, but after a couple of days of messing about and checking out the various functions he had a better grasp of what it was all about.

      To start with, the Game wasn’t live in the way he had thought at first; it was more like an Alternate Reality Game. A sort of mixture of computer game and reality where the two worlds merged together, according to the definition in Wikipedia, and so far that description seemed to fit pretty well.

      But apart from the participants there were a load of other people watching. An audience who, if he understood correctly, even paid to be allowed to watch!

      It was pretty logical, really, because why else would you set up something so advanced if you weren’t going to make some money from it? Where else would they get all the dollars that were paid out in prize money and paid for at least one hundred and twenty-eight pretty advanced mobile phones with built-in webcams?

      Whatever, these viewers could watch, rate and comment on what the participants were doing. He’d already got a couple of comments himself: ‘Cool man!’, ‘Like the shouting!’ and ‘Nice start, adding you to my favourites’ had all been added to the little comment section attached to each player’s high score ranking. His viewers had given him an average of three stars out of five. Total strangers who had clicked on him, watched and liked what they saw. Giving him cred for what he’d done. It was just so fucking cool!

      The comments he’d got were gnat’s piss compared to what people had written about number fifty-eight, who was still at the top of the list. ‘58 For The Win!’, ‘You rule’ and ‘58 rocks!!!’, as well as a shitload of smileys and other stuff which meant that fifty-eight’s comments section was actually several pages long. Five stars out of five, top marks, in other words. Cred and love from a whole cyberworld, what a fucking kick that must be!

      But HP didn’t actually know what Mr Five-Eight had done to deserve all the praise. As a Player he could only see his own clips. A shame, but maybe there would be a way round that later on … There was one exception, though. At the top of the page, just above the leader-board, was a link to what was called ‘Mission of the Week’, where they evidently posted a successful task for everyone to see.

      This week the clip was of Player 27 who was currently in fourth place. HP had watched it at least twenty times already. The clip showed a bloke in a balaclava smashing the windscreen of what looked like an American police car, then emptying a foam fire-extinguisher into the vehicle. The whole thing was filmed on the mobile fixed to twenty-seven’s chest, but also by another cameraman standing further away. What made the mission extra cool was it took place in broad daylight, in the middle of an unidentified big city with a load of stuffy pedestrians around the car. The clip had also been professionally