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Kamryn scratched the bridge of her nose, then placed a second engineer token on the R&D section of her map. "Your move!" she said.

If my sister had assigned her researchers to a small project, such as a weapons upgrade, it wouldn't take her many turns to finish the project with two engineers.

"Alright," I said. A landscape of deserts and mountains populated with engineers and infantry sprawled before me and I evaluated my options. I could send a spy-piece across to peek at her secret-project, but I only had a single spy, and he could prove valuable later in the game. Instead I placed a mining token on the island of Ra'gesso. The added source of vitellium would almost double my cash-flow.

We had been studying the rules for Future Battalion since noon. They were not overly complicated, but the description for each weapon was extremely detailed, almost taking up half of the rules compendium itself. We skipped over most of it and went on to play the game.

After a few more turns, Kamryn turned over her project card; her engineers had completed the development of a Sonic Rifle.

"My secret project," she laughed. "I'm going hedgehog on you."

"Bring it on, sis."

That round, Kamryn obliterated my entire force at Ra'gesso. The next round, she conquered the mainland, and finally she pummelled into my home base and left it in ruins. My forces were virtually defenceless against her sonic troops and the game was over in less than thirty minutes.

Confused, we looked at each other.

"Did we miss something?"

"The game was really fun until that rifle came into play."

We read the instructions again and turned to the page on sonic weapons. Non-sonic units have no defence score against sonics.

We set the game up again, and started a new round. This time we both focused our efforts on developing a line of sonic weapons. I won the race by developing the cheaper Sonic pistol, and conquered her desert-based oil rigs. She responded by developing the sonic artillery, and soon we had wiped each other off the map. By the time every unit was dead, the game had lasted a full eighteen minutes.

"This game is no fun," said Kamryn. "From now on, everybody's just going to make sonic weapons in every game." She was right; the sonic weapons were overpowered, and made the game so unbalanced that it was almost unplayable. Kendall Duran had messed this one up real bad. Why he would try to promote it in this state was anybody's guess, and a price of 150 Euros was hopeless.

Kamryn studied the pile of cards representing the weaponry. "I don't think he was trying to sell the game," she said. "He was using the game to promote something else."

"Like sonic weapons? But they're not for real, are they?"

Kamryn shrugged. "The weapon reference in the manual mentions something called FAP -a Focused Accelerator Pulse, fitted in all the sonic weapons."

If he wasn't trying to sell the game, then what? On the back page, the developer credit was shared between two people: Kendall Duran and someone named Bill Holman. Duran had been shot and killed by the tall man in the convention centre, but I had a strong feeling that Holman might have been the third person in the basement - the one who passed me a magic wand. I hadn't thought much of it, being busy running for my life, but Dr. Burris had mentioned its importance. "Did it contain anything?"

What did you do with the damn thing, I wondered. I must have held it for less than a minute before two security guards helped me to my feet.

I drove back to the convention centre, where the maintenance crew was busy cleaning up after the attendees. Bin-bag upon bin-bag were being filled with game pieces, broken plastic militia and ketchup-stained napkins - the casualties of conventions. I grabbed a waste-bag and followed a crew member to a growing pile of refuse, next to the fire exit. This was the place, where I'd crawled two days prior, hands and knees with a chunk of lead in my leg and a magic wand in my hand. I had no idea what to look for, but it had to be here somewhere.

I could not trust my eyes, but my fingers had felt the magic wand, and my mind travelled back to the seconds where Holman had handed it to me. He shouted something and my eyes had seen the object as a short wooden rod, but my tactile memory disagreed: the object was too large for my fingers to wrap around. I remembered touching a cool metal cylinder with a screw top at one end. The top was slightly narrower than the bottom, which was flat and probably meant for standing up. My fingers had felt a slightly rough surface, as if a coat of paint was peeling off.

I dived into the pile of refuse bags, and worked my way towards the wall. Whatever the item had been, I must have thrown it away in panic and it would not be inside a bag. I scurried through discarded coke cans and food scraps like a rat for the better of an hour, before I found an object that was familiar to the touch. It was an aluminium drinking flask with a grey plastic screw-top; the type you carry along on a camping trip. The flask was decorated with the laughing face of Mickey Mouse, with the paint coming off in large flakes. Was this the magic wand?

Inside, I found six large photographic negatives of schematic drawings, curled up against the wall of the flask. The print was too small to read, but I was pretty sure that this was what everybody was after.

---

EnDurance Games was registered to an address in Warrington, fifty miles west of Oakenford. I searched the Internet for the address of anyone named Kendall Duran, and found three. One had a dentistry practice in Nerton, another was a real-estate agent from Padstoke, but the third shared address with EnDurance Games. Duran, it seemed, had worked from home. Alone, or with Bill Holman.

I drove to Warrington and arrived at Kendall Duran's late 1940s bungalow. Here I parked my car in an abandoned barn close to the property. Both the front and back garden were overgrown with bishop's weed, nettles and elderberry trees - a clear sign of the owner taking little interest in gardening. I was alone on the property with no neighbours in the immediate vicinity. Off the path, a $115 grey resin zombie was clawing its way through the topsoil. Genuine, hand-detailed eyes were turned skyward and it's mouth forever frozen in a Tor Johnson grimace. I recognised the figure from browsing an in-flight issue of SkyMall mail order. The figure had looked so large in the catalogue, but in reality it looked like a micro-cephalic midget losing a tug of war with mother earth. So where did you put the the North American cougar statue? I thought. The one that will crouch in your garden to surprise and delight visitors with his stunning realism? I found him thirty feet further up the path, where his phosphorescent green gaze casually greeted the random visitor approaching the locked front door. I felt an almost guilt-ridden obligation to ring the doorbell, then knock on the door when nobody came to answer it. I knew that Duran was dead, but I was still trespassing on his property. Irritated, I stomped the ground. Coming this far only to face a locked door under the resinated scrutiny of a zombie and a cougar was frustration from concentrate, but truthfully, I didn't know what I had expected when I left for Warrington. So, break a window or what? I pondered, and looked around for a suitable rock. Then I recognised it, and laughed out loud. It was the $10 Hide-a-key realistic rock, also from SkyMall. So realistic it looks like any other rock in the garden -provided that they are made from grey plastic. Here was one guy, who made most of his shopping from an airplane.

I retrieved the key and let myself into the home of an avid collector of games. Shelves were stacked with piles of board games, role-playing systems in several volumes, and cartridges from discontinued consoles. Two computer games had recently been unwrapped and lay on the kitchen table, still in their original shrink wrap: Action 52 for the NES system and Plumbers don't wear Ties for the Panasonic 3DO. Both were sought after collectors items, but the consoles for playing them were nowhere to be found in Duran's house. He struck me as a man who was driven by an obsessive attention to detail while being tugged along by sudden and impulsive whims. Three of his own games, Droid Disaster, Terra Nova and, Bombs over Baghdad were piled on top of a shelving system next to dusty stacks of National Geographic. The design for every game was credited to Kendall Duran. Only for Future Battalion he had collaborated with someone else. I needed to find out who Bill Holman was.

I was overcome by a sudden flash of nausea and my vision dimmed. Another episode, I realised, this time with some disinterest. I had gotten so used to the sudden onset of schizophrenic breaks over the past few days, that they were almost second nature to me now and I decided to roll with it. The noise of tires on gravel reached my ears, and when I looked out of the window a black BMW pulled up to the house. Three men in matching suit and crew-cut got out. They looked around, then one of the men lit a cigarette and stayed with the car while the two others passed through the front door without opening it. Yep!, I thought. I'm hallucinating a-gogo. The visions were not scary or threatening. In fact, they seemed entirely disinterested in me. I've always found it scary as fuck when a hallucination moves right into your face and disappears, so I moved out of their path whenever they got too close.

The two men flitted in and out of the various rooms in the house examining everything, while I watched. Part of the time they were solid to watch, and at other times I could see through them. It was like watching a faded VHS being projected onto reality. One of the men opened a wooden cabinet and took out a red ring binder. He browsed through the papers inside and his mouth moved, as if he was saying something. The other man joined him and nodded, then they left the way they came, carrying the ring binder.

The veil of nausea lifted and my vision cleared. With the hallucinations gone, I was able to continue my investigation. The wooden cabinet that the visions had searched was real. It stood in his study, next to his PC and was still closed. I was curious to see what was inside. Maybe I should have been surprised when I discovered the red ring-binder inside, but it felt only natural that it existed in reality. I don't know what I had expected to find in the binder; something marvellous perhaps; definitely something worth killing for, but all the binder contained was a bunch of monthly bank statements going back two years. He had received impressive royalties for his games every six months, in December and July, and his spending pattern was pretty simple. Most of his daily shopping was done at the local supermarket in Warrington. The only thing that stood out was a series of large sums being transfered to an account registered to Van Scoyk Enterprises. The first transfer was for a hundred Euros, but transfers grew more frequent, and the sum increased until he transferred several thousand Euros every months, right up to the last statement posted two weeks before the Con in Oakenford. At this point, his account was almost drained. At his current expenditure, Duran would have gone bankrupt within two or three months.

Was he being blackmailed, I wondered. 4G reception was decent in the area, so I did a GOOGLE search for Van Scoyk Enterprises on my smart-phone. The company showed up as the registrant for almost twenty websites: Mi Amigo Cash Casino, Atlantis Winnings, Champion Casino, Surefire Bets among others -all of them were sites related to betting and casinos. Kendall Duran wasn't just a reclusive gamer - he was a compulsive gambler.

I returned the binder to the cabinet and closed it behind me. Then I heard a noise that I'd already heard once that day - that of car tires on gravel. I peeked out of the window, and saw the car I had hallucinated pulling up once again - only this time it was for real.

I had fifteen seconds to act, while the men got out of the vehicle, looked around and lit a cigarette before they were in the house. I made a quiet escape through the rear door and kept low in the bushes behind the house. From their first visit, I knew that the men would stay inside for approximately seven minutes before leaving by the front door, and I knew that I'd be safe in the backyard.

Once they had driven off, I returned to Kendall's study and checked the cabinet. This time the ring binder was missing, and I realised that what I had experienced was not a hallucination - I had seen a future event.

---

Did it contain anything? The words of Dr Burris echoed in my mind. Only two people knew that I meant to return to the con: Chief inspector Amari Quinn and Dr Burris, my assigned psychiatrist. Only Burris had shown any interest in the contents of the magic wand, so I decided to pay him a visit in his private practice. It was a non-descript building near the harbour in Oakenford. Property was cheap here and it wasn't the most obvious place to set up a practice. I double checked the business card he'd given me. Burris, Dr. Psych, Maritime Rd 31; fifth floor, then a telephone number. No email and no website. I climbed the staircase, then reality began to slip the moment my feet touched the third step.

Queasy, dreamlike and dark; my episodes always start like that and I rested my forehead against the wall, trying to assemble my thoughts. Then I saw them: first only as moving shadows out of the corner of my eye. Then, one by one they invaded my field of vision. Serious looking men in dark suits coming and going, some carried electronic equipment and devices with microphones and antennas, and all wore short haircuts and long ties. A steady stream of shadowy government people went about their business paying me no attention. This one is new, I thought and made a brief stop on the second landing. The strange visions headed to a floor further up and I had never observed my hallucinations to be this controlled. Usually I'll just see something standing lifeless in a corner, or maybe the stray cat scaling my wall. Everything about this was novel, so I decided to follow the busy people up the stairs. The stream of people continued all the way to the fifth floor, here they poured in and out of one particular door, never bothering to open it before they passed through. The sign on the door read "Burris, MD." I couldn't help smiling; was it a coincidence that my visions all pointed to my intended destination?

I didn't even bother to knock before entering. Burris looked slightly surprised, as if my timing was bad. He shook my hand and pointed to a leather chair. I smelled alcohol on his breath. It wasn't the rounded scent of yesterdays drink that he had just burped. The scent was sharp and fresh; he'd been drinking only moments ago. His handshake was firm but slightly sweaty.

I inspected the office from my chair while Burris took out a manila folder from the top drawer in his desk. My journal was at the top; apparently I was his only client. The practice was as clean as his patient file: he kept a bookcase, but no sandboxes, miniature figurines, plushies or picture puzzles -there was nothing here to inspire the imagination, nothing to play around with. The whole office was as generic as a movie set. It was too perfect, too stereotypical and too neutral. I didn't need any voices to tell me that this was a setup.

"So," said Dr Burris. "How are you progressing?"

"The wand?"

"Indeed, the wand symbolises magic and transformation; maybe even the cure to your condition."

"I've found it."

"Congratulations, you're getting close," he said. "This calls for a drink, don't you think?"

Burris opened a cabinet that contained several bottles of booze. He took out a bottle of Farvale Bourbon and two tumblers. It was two-thirds full, and a the label was slightly moist from a recent splash of bourbon.

He's drinking to calm his nerves, I thought and accepted the tumbler with some hesitation. I recognised the smell from Dr. Burris' breath.

"Don't worry," he said when he noticed my hesitation. "It's not poisoned". His laugh was unconvincing.

"Of course not. You need me around until you have the negatives."

"The negatives?". Burris took a sip from his drink. Then he opened the canteen. "They're not in there, are they?"

"Does it really matter?" I asked. "You know I'm unreliable. I might just have hallucinated them."

Burris reached into the flask and pried out the strip of film inside with two fingers. He held it to the sunlight pouring in from the window. It was a beautiful day outside, but not as beautiful as the sudden look of frustration on Burris' face. Then he clipped the film onto a light-box, intended for viewing X-rays. From my position I couldn't see the pictures, but I knew that right now he was trying to make sense of a series of photos showing smiling people with cyan coloured faces playing beach ball against an alien landscape of black sand and a magenta sky. He looked at me, dumbfounded.

"What IS this shit?" he cried.

"Holiday snapshots. I bought a handful of negatives at the flea market before I came here."

Burris coughed and his voice turned strained. "When did you find out?"

"I've seen so many psychiatrists over the last seven years that I know to spot a fake." I nodded at my tumbler, still with its contents untouched. "Any real psychiatrist knows that alcohol is a strong trigger for schizophrenic breaks. You would never serve it to a patient."

Burris smiled and sat down. "Alright, Mr Wolf. Where are the real blueprints?"

"In a secret place. Call it my life policy."

" I expect that you wish to be compensated for your troubles."

"I only want the truth" I said. "Who are you and why did you kill Kendall Duran ?"

Burris shrugged. "We're part of National intelligence. We keep the nation safe from outside threats - and for this we need to upgrade our weaponry now and then."

"And Duran had something you wanted?"

For the first time, Burris' laugh was genuine. Short, hateful and bursting with spite.

"Duran had nothing, but Holman had an invention."

"Sonic weaponry?"

"A sonic accelerator to be precise. It focuses the audio wave into a singularity, much like a laser concentrates a light beam. We believe Holman invented the accelerator when he worked for the French."

With every mentioning of Holman's name, Burris eyes grew cold, and now and then the tip of a forked tongue flicked from his mouth. He was relieved to vent his disgust for the inventor. Holman knew that his invention was worth more than the salary the French intelligence paid him, so he kept his progress hidden, and made himself impossible to work with. Eventually, the French grew tired of him and laid him off. Then he took the blueprints and contacted Duran, who needed money to pay his gambling debts. The two struck a Faustian deal: they knew that every army in the world would buy Future Battalion for training purposes, so they used the game to promote the blueprints on the black market. The high price-tag kept the casual gamers away, but national intelligence would snatch it up whether it cost one hundred or a hundred-thousand euros. FBI, MI5, the KGB, Islamic State, North Korea; everybody wanted the latest in weapons technology, and Holman was happy to deliver.

-"and you won the bid?" I asked.

"The Russians came close, but we have a better reputation."

"Why the shooting?"

"Duran was always a liability. He panicked during the trade and wanted us to destroy the blueprints - he thought that the world was not ready for sonics.

"So, you killed him?"

"There is more at stake than the life of a single civilian"

"-or two?"

"Mr. Wolf; civilians disappear every day for the sake of national security."

"So when I went back to the convention centre, you sent the tall man to make me disappear?"

Dr Burris' spat out an unpleasant dry laugh. "Agent Bruckner wasn't there to kill you. Why would we kill the golden goose who had been in touch with the microfilms. Bruckner was there to protect you, and he almost lost you to the Russians.

"The kebab cook?"

"Boris Sokurov, Russian intelligence. He spiked your drink with sodium penthotal to knock you out."

That would explain the kebab and blood I'd seen on the sign.

"And the book vendor?"

"Léopold Deniaud, French intelligence. They were at the con for Holman. He worked for them in their R&D department when he invented the sonic accelerator. He's a bright inventor, but greedy."

"So he's alive."

"We've taken him to a safe place -in very pleasant company."

"I suppose that pleasant is to be taken as an ironic remark?"

"Not at all, Mr Wolf. In fact, I believe you are familiar with his fellow guest.

Burris took out a sturdy looking mobile phone, and showed me a photo of a middle aged man with a round face and a short salt-and-pepper beard. Even though the person was unfamiliar to me, I vaguely recognised him as the one who gave me the blueprints in the fire-escape. He knew that he and Duran had played the game they had invented, and had just lost by their own rules. So, in the final round I was introduced as a joker. The voices in my head had been concerned for me, and rightfully so. It was too dangerous, and I shouldn't have been there.

The person standing next to Holman was all too familiar to me.

"That's my sister Kamryn."

Burris nodded. "We too, know how to take out a life policy."

We were playing a game of our own now, and we both held good cards. I had feared and hated the voices in my head for the better of seven years, but now I realised that they had only been telling me the future, the way they saw it. Holman was alive, but the issue of White Dwarf at the con had read Unusual death for a low-level traitor." while the Valkyrie was sandwiched in between a dragon and a barbarian warrior. The killings had just begun, and my sister and myself were caught in the middle.

---

TO BE CONCLUDED