The Game Without a Master

The motel room smelled of mildew and bleach, the kind of place paid for in cash and forgotten by morning. Jessica sat on the edge of the bed the folder from Charleston open across her lap, the pages rippling slightly from the oscillating fan in the corner. Her hands hadn’t stopped shaking.

Leanna paced near the door, glancing through the blinds every few minutes. Olivia sat cross-legged at the foot of the other bed, working through a fresh scan of the documents on her laptop, the screen casting pale light across her face.

They were exhausted from the day's events and the hours at the hospital waiting in the ER for nothing more than a cleaning of her head wound and a recommendation to see a Neurologist.

Now they sat in a cheap motel room. No one had spoken in for what seemed like hours, but was probably only minutes..

The words on the top page were burned into Jessica’s skull:

Subject 13B. Gene therapy recipient shows signs of early neurodegeneration. Reclassification recommended. Asset no longer viable for long-term function.

Jason. He had been the test. The prototype. Vanguard’s first attempt at re-engineering a human mind—genetically, psychologically, ideologically. And he was failing.

Jessica turned the page. More notes. Charts. Timestamps.

“Recommend accelerated transfer to secondary vessel.”

“God,” she whispered. “He was already breaking down. That’s why they needed me.”

Leanna turned toward her. “They were losing control of him.”

“And his mother...” Olivia interjected. “Look.” She turned her laptop around. A scan of a consent form. Handwritten initials in the margin.

Margaret Carter.

“She signed off on the trials,” Olivia said. “She volunteered her own son. She was one of Hoffer’s zealots.*”

Jessica closed her eyes. “She gave him up. Believed in the mission so much she handed over her child. And when he started to fail…”

“She let them replace him,” Leanna said quietly.

Jessica pressed her fingers to her temples. “So they made me. Not to save him. Not to help him. To fix the mistakes. I was a product, Leanna. Not a person. An upgrade.”

No one contradicted her.

“But then why not destroy his body?” Olivia asked. “Why let it be found now?”

Jessica’s eyes snapped open.

“Because it was a message.”

“To you?”

She nodded. “Mr. Black might be dead, but the game didn’t end. Someone else moved the piece. They wanted me to find that body. They needed me to see how it started. So I’d follow the trail again.”

Leanna leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “So what now? Do we keep chasing the next breadcrumb?”

“No,” Jessica said. “Not yet.”

She looked up, and for the first time that night, there was something softer behind her eyes.

“We go to Florida. Coconut Grove.”

Olivia blinked. “Kevin?”

Jessica nodded. “If anyone knew Jason best, it was him. And… I need to see them. Kevin, Hannah. Jessica Marie. It’s been too long.”

Leanna tilted her head. “You sure you’re ready for that?”

“No,” Jessica said. “But we go anyway.”

Outside, the morning was beginning to bleed into the sky, soft pinks brushing against the bruised edge of night. They had less than four hours of sleep between them, but Jessica was already standing, folding the file back into her coat.

Leanna grabbed the keys. “I’m driving.”

Jessica didn’t argue. They didn’t look back as they left the parking lot. Whatever came next, whatever game was still being played, they would face it together. But first, they would go to Coconut Grove. They would remember who they were fighting for.

* A reference to Eric Hoffer who wrote the book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements