Page 25 of Corrupt Game

This didn’t bode well for my hungry stomach. I’d gone a couple of days before with little to no food. It had been years, but I knew that I could deal with a few hunger pangs.

He had no clue how determined to survive a child raised in the foster system could become. If winning this game was a matter of inner strength, then Ian Holdt was in for a surprise. I took pleasure in that idea. He seemed to be a man who was always in control. Well, he’d have a battle with trying to control me. If foster parents and the system couldn’t do it to me as a child, how would somebody be able to do it to me as an adult?

Memorization was a tool I’d learned during my college years. It was why I easily walked the room and paced off the steps needed to get to each space.

While librarians were given a lot of crap for knowing useless information, I had never found that to be true. Nothing was useless when properly categorized. You just had to know the difference between something vital and something that wasn’t needed in a dire situation.

It wasn’t a comfort to know things though, but it was all I had for the moment.

I flopped onto the couch after examining all the features of the room. Most of the items were bolted to the floor or screwed down.

My shoes hit the floor at the end of the sofa. If I were going to be a prisoner of some sort, I might as well be comfortable with it.

Whatever game this man was playing I was more than willing to beat him at it.

I compartmentalized my memories of Andy and my grief. Needing to find out what made this man tick had become even more important. This was no longer only about justice and revenge, the game had expanded to survival.

***

Hours had passed since I’d walked into Ian Holdt’s office. It was rapidly approaching the time when I’d normally go to bed.

I could tell because I was tired in addition to hungry.

My body would adjust to a new schedule, but I still wasn’t sure what kind of time frame I was looking at either.

Mr. Holdt—I wouldn’t think of him as Ian, that would give him too much power over me—hadn’t mentioned when my job duties would start during the interview or the contract signing.

Really, now that I was thinking about it, he hadn’t mentioned much of anything.

He had asked all sorts of crazy questions, but hadn’t said much about the job itself.

What if there wasn’t really a job? What if he only wanted me for an experiment?

A test subject. Although I hadn’t heard any sort of rumors about Holdt Tech doing those types of tests, the subjects might not have survived.

Money could buy anything. Live test subjects weren’t that far out of the realm of possibility. Disposing of said no longer living test subjects would be just as doable.

What if Andy had only seen the dollar signs and volunteered for this type of research thing?

Nah, he couldn’t have been doing research because we wouldn’t have found his body with a bullet hole in it. They would have disposed of the evidence in a much different manner.

Either way was murder, but being shot in the head was meant as a statement. Something to teach a lesson to others, either ‘this is a punishment’ or ‘stay away from our turf.’

Maybe that’s what Andy was doing with Holdt Tech. Trying to shine the light on illegal practices. That would explain why he’d been murdered after he talked to Ian Holdt.

This situation could go wrong in so many ways. I just needed to be prepared mentally and physically for whatever type of tests I was going to be put through.

After eighteen years in the system, I was a pro at passing tests and making do with what I was given. Learning to anticipate others had been drilled into my head since before I could walk. It was the only way to survive without severe punishment.

Without anything to wear to bed, I peeled off my clothes. I’d slept in panties and a bra before. I could do it again.

The blanket on the bed seemed overkill because it was a temperature regulated room. Still, I did enjoy the lovely texture of the cover and sheets.

Smooth to the touch, which probably meant some high thread count. A luxury I’d rarely experienced.

I’d never understood why people wanted them. Those types of sheets caused the person on them to slide off. Unless there was a trick to staying on the bed I hadn’t discovered, this was going to be an adventure in sleeping.

Leave it to Ian Holdt to challenge me while trying to get some rest. He probably thought that everyone wanted to have the luxurious feeling of sleeping on sheets like this.

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