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All the king’s horses …

From: Talent Acquisition

To: Game Master

Subject: Candidate Evaluation 128

Name: Henrik Pettersson

Alias: HP

Age: 31

Height: 179 cm

Weight: 72 kg

Build: Slight

Hair: Medium blond

Eyes: Blue (see attached passport photograph)

Status: Unmarried

Family: One sibling (a sister with whom he has only sporadic contact)

Both parents deceased

Profession: Various, currently unemployed

Address: Maria Trappgränd 7, Södermalm, Stockholm, a two-room flat which he inherited from his mother

Number of completed assignments: 5

Total points: 2200

Current ranking: 23

Current level: 3

Method of recruitment: Recommendation

Education: 9 years of basic Swedish schooling, mixed grades

Started but did not complete 3-year course in economics in Swedish high school

Has twice started but never completed adult education courses

Other qualifications: None

Leisure interests: The candidate spends most of his time watching television and films, mainly American TV series, action films, comedies and erotica. He often plays Counterstrike without belonging to any particular group or clan. Less regular player of World of Warcraft where his avatars are usually Rogues belonging to the Horde.

Internet habits: thefragarena.com, various file-sharing sites for downloading films and music, the Block (a Swedish trading site often used to dispose of stolen goods), YouTube, as well as various pornographic sites. A frequent user of MSN. Has recently opened a Hotmail account under the name Badboy.128

Medical history: One broken arm and two broken ribs in relatively quick succession during the 80s. The case was passed on to social services on suspicion of child abuse. Appendix removed 1992. Latest medical examination 2007 (conducted during probation) showed no abnormalities apart from THC in his blood (the active substance in cannabis-related drugs such as hash and marijuana). No history of allergies, heart problems, impaired immune system or intolerance to any medication.

Social service records: After the referral from the health service (see above) the children were placed in care for the duration of the investigation. This decision was revoked a short while later and the case was dropped. Further instances of suspected child abuse followed, but the only result was a number of visits by social workers. One entry in the register refers to a police report, but this could not been identified.

Father deceased 1995 (stroke), mother 1997 (cancer). The records also mention the candidate’s use of narcotics (hash and marijuana), as well as truancy and disruptive behaviour at school. There is also a care-plan established after a district court judgement (see below).

Criminal record and police register: The candidate’s first conviction occurred shortly after his seventeenth birthday, and concerned numerous instances of minor narcotics offences and one instance of vehicle theft: he was given a probationary sentence under the supervision of social services.

Shortly after his eighteenth birthday he was convicted of aggravated manslaughter and sentenced to ten months in a secure young offenders’ institution. Later entries in police surveillance logs indicate minor narcotics offences, suspected trafficking in stolen goods, and minor larceny.

His most recent conviction was almost two years ago, for one case of dealing in stolen goods, one instance of aggravated unlawful driving and one instance of minor narcotics offences. As a result he received a probationary sentence and a fine.

Other official records: The candidate has five notifications for non-payment registered with the enforcement service, principally for unpaid household bills for his electricity and telephone, as well as unpaid standing charges for the building he lives in. It is worth noting that every case has been resolved before the bailiffs were called because his sister settled the debt.

Personal characteristics: All sources describe the candidate in similar terms. He is intelligent, quick-thinking and imaginative, but is also described as lazy, unreliable and self-centred. He usually prefers simple solutions to long-term engagement, has obvious problems with authority and has few serious friendships or family relationships.

Assignments: Apart from the trial assignment (scenario 12a), the candidate has successfully carried out four assignments (up to difficulty level C3).

He regularly watches his own film-clips, checks the comments often, and is quick to respond positively to invitations of new assignments.

So far the candidate has shown no signs of doubt or anxiety about possible consequences, either on his own account or such as the assignments might generate.

Recommendation: Candidate 128 demonstrates almost all of the qualities required by a successful Player. He is impulsive, intelligent and dynamic, whilst exhibiting little or no empathy for others.

The candidate appears to regard himself as an unfortunate victim or outsider. Someone who for reasons unknown is always being unfairly treated or is simply unlucky. He therefore believes that he has the right to do what is best for himself in all circumstances, usually at the expense of others or of society, and for the same reason, without having to take any responsibility for his actions.

The candidate has no family to speak of, has problems with long-term relationships and intimacy, as well as with trusting or being trusted by others.

Even if money plays a part in his motivation, his main incentive is recognition and attention (so-called ‘cred’) from his peers. For someone who loathes authority, 128 allows himself to be led surprisingly easily, but only under the condition that he can perceive all choices and decisions as his own, and that everything is happening on his terms.

In light of this, the undersigned recommends that the candidate is raised to level two and that further evaluation take place after an assignment of level D1 difficulty.

Sincerely,

Donovan

Talent Acquisition

HP was fucking like he was in a trance.

He was Rocco Sifredi, Paul Thomas, and obviously the legendary Ron ‘The Hedgehog’ Jeremy, all rolled into one. This evening he was the Emperor of Fucking, and he twisted and turned his willing but still somewhat surprised partner in order to explore all imaginable variations of copulation.

The third shag within two hours or so, way beyond his usual average. They had already worked their way through a quick ride on the sofa, then a standing missionary fuck on the kitchen table with her long legs resting on his shoulders, and he was currently busy frenetically penetrating the lady in question from behind with such force that the entire bed seemed on the point of collapse.

His hands had a firm grasp of her broad hips. Breasts and arse bouncing in time with her moans of pleasure, as he speared her harder and harder with his rock-hard porn-star cock.

‘A bit more, a bit more, I’m almost there,’ she whimpered breathlessly. But he didn’t give a damn. Because he was the King of Fucking, the Prince of Penetration, the Ayatollah of Fuck’n’Rolla! But, more important than that, he was also Mr Clip of the Week, first Runner-up and number one hundred and twenty-fucking-eight! The coolest dude in the Game, and the thought of that made him considerably harder than his partner and her undoubted feminine charms could ever have done.

With a couple of final powerful thrusts he concluded his masterpiece, and at the moment he pulled out and sent a cascade of slushy love-joy over her sweaty back there was only one thought in his mind: he should have had the camera on!

She lay next to him in the darkness and glanced over at his sleeping silhouette. Maybe not the smartest guy in the world, exactly, but at least he was damn good in bed and this evening he had seemed unusually inspired.

They had known each other for about six months, after meeting in a bar somewhere in the city centre, and because she had been feeling particularly lonely and in need of physical intimacy she had, against all of her usual principles, gone back to his flat with him that same evening. The sex had been good right from the start and after that it had been difficult to stop.

There was something about him that appealed to her, that got her going. Not that he was especially handsome or exaggeratedly sexy, he was probably somewhere in the middle on both scales. Maybe it was simply the fact that he wasn’t a police officer but just a completely normal bloke who lived in the completely normal world that appealed to her most. Either way, they met up every now and then, usually when she was in the mood. She wasn’t after a relationship and he had never protested against the arrangement that had developed. But she still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was exploiting him. Rebecca suspected, or possibly hoped, that he already had a proper relationship, but she had chosen not to ask and he hadn’t felt obliged to tell her anything more about himself. Whatever it was they shared, it wasn’t about feelings but physical attraction, and that didn’t really call for any details, or at least that was what she liked to think.

Oh well, it probably didn’t matter. They were fuck-buddies, to be blunt about it, even if she wasn’t fond of that particular term. She stroked his back guiltily and heard him mutter something in his sleep.

The Game Master had promised him an entirely new world, and so far he wasn’t fucking disappointed! He could watch the clips any number of times, and by now he probably already had.

Assignment number four had been pretty neat. He had removed the wheel nuts from a Ferrari belonging to a sleazy lawyer while the victim was sitting ten metres away having an after-work drink with his hotshot friends at Sturehof’s pavement café. The car was of course parked in the parking bay for deliveries beside the concrete mushroom in the middle of Stureplan, so that everyone could see his flashy penis extension, but in spite of that no-one had noticed a thing.

The tools were waiting for him, neatly wrapped up in a plastic bag, inside the cistern of one of the toilets in the Sture Gallery, and once HP had got going it had taken him less than three minutes to remove the nuts on the wheels facing the street.

Even though it was Friday evening and the place was crowded, no-one reacted to what he was doing, not even the cop who strolled past just half a metre behind his back. It was actually bloody weird that people cared so little about what other people were doing, at least until Mr Sleazy Lawyer tried to do a wheel-spinning u-turn to head back up Kungsgatan.

Both wheels flew off more or less instantly and suddenly the stupid bastard got considerably more attention than he had been expecting. Apart from the hundred or so who stood there laughing and pointing in an outpouring of Schadenfreude, HP counted at least five others apart from him who were filming the beautiful car as it sat there straddling Sturegatan. The shiny and presumably absurdly expensive disc-brakes were properly embedded in the tarmac, and according to the report in the Dagens Nyheter the following day it had taken almost an hour for the recovery truck to get the vehicle cleared out of the way.

But by then HP was long gone. He hated Stureplan, more than ever at weekends, and didn’t want to spend any more time there than was absolutely necessary.

The last he had seen of the car’s owner was the grown man standing there crying like a little girl, leaning on the boot of his ruined darling car, but HP hadn’t felt the slightest bit of sympathy for his victim. Mr Sleazy must have deserved the treatment, you could tell just by looking at his stuck-up face, his back-slicked hair all greasy with Rogaine, and his flashy suit. With a car like that, you were practically asking for trouble, and that’s precisely what HP had provided.

HP had never liked lawyers anyway. The only time he had ever been stupid enough to employ a law-twister, it hadn’t exactly helped him. The bastard had been completely incompetent, hadn’t done his homework, kept calling him Håkan and stank of drink masked by mints in court. HP should have known better than to accept the first name suggested by the court, but he had only just turned eighteen and even if he knew all the signs of heavy drinking backwards, it would take a bit longer before he had the same sort of grasp of the legal system.

Everything had been a complete fucking mess that time.

Ten months in a secure young offenders’ institution had been the result.

Public defender, my arse! More like ‘public defiler’, as he recalled.

So now at least he got the chance to deliver a bit of payback to the sleazy ambulance chasers, and it felt pretty damn good!

Suck my cock, you stuck-up Stureplan wankers!

And crooks, he thought to himself, to judge by Mr Crybaby’s ridiculously expensive ride.

As per his instructions, he had the wheel nuts couriered anonymously to the law-firm the following week, and for the first time it dawned on him that everything, the whole deal with the Game, was a hell of a lot bigger than he had imagined.

Because what was really the point of sending the wheel nuts back to Mr Sleazy? It was almost like doing him a favour, probably saving him a few thousand kronor on the repair bill. Why not ditch them in the waters of Nybroviken and have done with it?

The only answer he could think of was that someone wanted to see the look on the lawyer’s face when he got the package. And that was when the penny finally dropped. That there were actually other players like him out there, not just in the USA, but here in Sweden, and probably in other countries as well.

He had already worked out that the gorilla on Birkagatan was involved somehow, and that the stupid fucker hadn’t kept his mouth shut and had blabbed about the Game. That was obviously what the text he had sprayed on the door had been about. And it probably wasn’t Lewis Carroll himself who had left the passcard in the book or worked out how to switch off the clock on the NK roof …

But the bigger picture still didn’t really sink in before he realized that someone had been selected to conclude the assignment with the lawyer. That someone would stand there filming as the GQ-reading little wanker opened the parcel and went red upon discovering his own missing wheel nuts. Someone just like himself, with an assignment to carry out, a camera to document it with – and the same applied to whoever it was who managed to come up with a Ferrari spanner and hide it in a toilet-cistern in the Sture Gallery. So at least three little assignments and the same number of Players, all that organization just to give Mr Sleazy a weekend he’d never forget.

The thinking involved was fucking refined, he had to take his hat off to whoever it was who organized all this.

The assignment had given him 1,000 points, and the next morning he had found a foreign credit-card on his doormat. This time he guessed the pin-code correctly first time.

In total the account turned out to contain 2,300 US dollars, which matched the number of points he had on the list. He just had to stick the card into the nearest cashpoint and withdraw what he wanted.

It had been more than enough for the Sopranos box-set he had been dying to get his hands on, and a family-pack of best Moroccan from his friendly neighbourhood dealer. Then he had settled back on the sofa, puffed the magic dragon and blown the heads off some rookies in Counterstrike. Then home-delivery pizza and a bit of male-bonding with the boys in the Jersey mafia. Life was pretty sweet!

But in spite of all this, it was the fifth assignment that was the really cool one. The one that transformed him into Mr Clip of the Week, first Runner-up and, a few hours later, the Omnipotent Pope of Pussy-pranging.

As well as a permanent hard-on, task number five left him with 2,500 nice new dollars in his account, but to his own surprise the money was becoming more and more like an agreeable by-product. Considerably more important than the cash was all the love he was getting in his comments section: ‘128 FTW!’, ‘all d kings horses couldnt stop u ;-)’ or ‘W00T onetwoeight!!1!’, to list but a few. He had an average rating of 4.8 stars and he had received a personal message of congratulation from the Game Master himself.

Not bad for a rookie!

He was flavour of the month!

He was in the zone!

He was on his way to the top!

She woke up early, slid out of bed and, without waking him, silently gathered up her clothes and put them on. She didn’t really like staying the night but she had fallen asleep for once, exhausted by all the training and by the previous evening’s activities.

Ever since that first evening they had met in his flat, which suited her fine. She liked him, absolutely, but it didn’t feel right to let him inside her flat. It would be sending out the wrong signals, giving him false hope. Much easier to meet like this, get it over and done with, then go home. Blame having to get up early, the way she always did.

He was actually a decent guy. A bit scruffy maybe, his flat could do with freshening up and it wouldn’t hurt him to get his hair cut more often.

But fundamentally a good bloke, considerably better than she deserved.

She really shouldn’t have fallen asleep.

He moved in his sleep and for a few panic-stricken moments she thought he was going to wake up. What would she say if he did? How could she explain that she was about to sneak out like a thief in the night, without even saying goodbye? Or, even worse, what would happen if he tried to pull her back into bed for a morning cuddle? Snuggle up together and exchange secrets?

She felt her pulse racing.

Calm down now, for God’s sake, Normén!

Then he settled down and she could tell from his breathing that he was sleeping soundly.

Thank goodness!

Time to go. Had she got everything?

She did a quick check of her jeans pockets.

Keys – yep, police badge – yep, mobile phone – missing …

She looked quickly around the dimly-lit bedroom, eager to get going. There it was, on the desk. Relieved, she picked it up, noticing that his mobile was next to it. A smart design, all thin and brushed steel, no bigger than the palm of her hand, with nothing but a touchscreen. A little flashing red light was the only indication that it was switched on. She couldn’t remember ever seeing one of that model before, or this one in particular, come to that. He must have only just got it. Probably cost a fortune, she thought as she carefully closed the front door behind her.

When HP opened the left-luggage locker at Central Station at first he didn’t realize what he was staring at. The green, cylindrical object reminded him of an aerosol-can and for a moment he almost felt disappointed. Was there another rat who needed a reminder of rule number one? He’d been expecting something better.

He stuffed the object into the bag he’d brought with him, and because the underground was full of people he wasn’t able to take a closer look at it until he’d shut the door of his flat behind him. He felt like he’d been taken for a ride, the assignment had started so promisingly with the key to the locker taped under a table in a branch of Wayne’s Coffee on the steep part of Götgatan. Sitting there among all the unsuspecting latte-slurpers, it was classic spy-film stuff, the anxiety of feeling under the table, and the excitement when his fingers touched something hard.

He already had an idea of what the key was for before the mobile told him where to find the lock it fitted.

So why all this James Bond cloak and dagger shit, just for a can of spray-paint?

But now that he had the chance to inspect his find, everything suddenly got more exciting. He perceived almost at once that it wasn’t an aerosol. It was actually a bit ridiculous that he’d ever been thinking along those lines. You only had to see the handle halfway along one side and the pin at the top to know that this was far more dangerous than a can of paint. And suddenly his pulse started to race with anticipation.

‘M84 Stun Grenade’ it said in military lettering, and a quick check in Wikipedia was enough to confirm what something like that was used for. The grenade, which was also known as Flash & Bang, was a so-called ‘non-lethal weapon’. For anyone who didn’t understand faggy military speak or play Counterstrike, it was a weapon that was not used primarily to kill people.

Unlike ordinary hand-grenades, the M84 didn’t fire out shrapnel that mutilated and killed those around it, but instead it produced a hell of a big bang and a flash of light that made the sun look like a 15-watt light-bulb. The point of the grenade was to knock out your enemy by blinding and deafening him and making him crap himself long enough for you to pick him up alive. Most anti-terrorism and police forces in the civilized world seemed to have M84s in their arsenals, and the descriptions of the grenade’s effectiveness were overwhelmingly positive: ‘very powerful’, ‘extremely useful’ or ‘highly efficient’ were some of the glowing reviews that various users had given the M84, and now HP suddenly had one of his own.

A real one!

The only question was: what did the Game Master want him to do with it?

From: Game Control

To: Game Master

Subject: Extracts from police report 0201-K246459-10 (candidate 128, assignment 1006-09)

On the above date, patrol car 1054 with Police Inspector Janson and Police Constable Modéer was ordered to the junction of Kungsträdgårdsgatan and Arsenalgatan as a result of an as yet unclassified incident involving the Horse-Guards. A number of patrols and ambulances were despatched simultaneously to the same location and Police Inspector Janson was appointed as acting head of the police operation.

At the location the patrol met Lieutenant Arne Wolff from the Svea Life Guards’ dragoon battalion who told them the following:

Wolff was ordered to form a mounted escort, comprising twelve officers and a total of forty conscripts, for a cortège from the Royal Stables to the Royal Palace. This was an official event on the occasion of the state visit from Greece.

The cortège contained the President of Greece and his wife, as well as Their Majesties the King and Queen.

Wolff reports that they left the Royal Stables in the following formation:

First went two mounted police officers who were primarily responsible for dealing with any traffic issues. Then came the head of the escort and his adjutant and the colour guard (2 + 4 men), then the first troop of the escort (2 + 20 men), of which Wolff was acting commander from a position at their rear.

Behind Lieutenant Wolff followed the first carriage of the cortège containing the President and His Majesty the King, then the second carriage with the President’s wife and Her Majesty the Queen. Behind the royal carriages came two further mounted police officers and then the second escort troop, this too consisting of two officers and twenty soldiers.

Usually the route would follow Nybroplan, Hamngatan, Regeringsgatan, reaching Norrbro bridge via Gustav Adolfs torg, then Skeppsbron to the Palace. But because the bridge is closed for repairs an alternative route was chosen, via Kungsträdgårdsgatan and crossing the water by Strömbron instead.

When HP had finally received his instructions, he knew at once that this assignment was more difficult by an order of magnitude than any he had carried out before. There was a risk of him getting caught, and if he did he would have considerably more trouble with the judicial system than for switching off a clock, spray-painting a door or removing a few wheel nuts. This here was some serious shit, and he didn’t exactly have an unblemished criminal record to fall back on. He’d end up behind bars for this if anything went wrong …

Really he should have turned it down, but he could already feel the excitement bubbling inside him. This would provide fucking good pictures. World class stuff, maybe clip of the week material! He’d never heard of anyone doing anything like it, so he’d be the first. And he couldn’t just back out of a challenge like that.

An offer you can’t refuse …

It would be important to plan the operation carefully. Complete the assignment, get good pictures and find some way of getting away without anyone working out who he was. He thought he had a pretty good idea of how it could work but he needed to get a few things together.

When the first escort troop was level with Wahrendorffsgatan, Wolff noted from his position in the procession that an object was rolled out towards them from somewhere in the crowd of onlookers along the left-hand pavement. The object appeared to be some sort of metal cylinder, somewhat reminiscent of a can of spray-paint, and it stopped in the middle of the front part of the troop, whereupon a number of horses jerked and caused some anxiety in the ranks.

The Goat’s moped was a stroke of genius. HP had borrowed it before and his amiable neighbour and court supplier had never been interested in what he wanted it for.

‘Just take it, no problem, here’s the key,’ was as usual the response he got, and half an hour later he nicked a decent black helmet with a dark visor from a motorbike parked in the square down at Medborgarplatsen.

He’d checked the route of the cortège on the net, then he went down to do a recce and came to the conclusion that the end of Wahrendorffsgatan was the best place to carry out the assignment.

The whole cortège would have made it into Kungsträdgårdsgatan by then, and with a bit of luck both the Kong and Her Mayonnaise the Queen would get to enjoy a proper funfair ride when his new M84 friend went off. Then he could head back up Wahrendorff, be at Nybroplan before you knew it, then up Birger Jarlsgatan and hard left into the Klara Tunnel, and from there he’d have plenty of options.

He’d be back on safe territory on Södermalm before the suspect’s details had even got out, and by then he’d have ditched the black helmet in the water, and would have taken off his jacket and just be wearing a white t-shirt and the Goat’s basic red moped-helmet.

No chance of anyone connecting him to the description of the suspect, and even if they did, so what?

How much evidence would they have?

Suddenly there was a powerful explosion and a flash of blinding light which together caused total chaos in the cortège. Most of the horses in the first troop, including Wolff’s, bolted at once, either along Kungsträdgårdsgatan or directly into Kungsträdgården itself.

Wolff describes himself as a very capable rider, but the flash of light and explosion left him so stunned that he, along with the majority of the dragoons, was thrown off his horse at once and left lying on the pavement by Kungsträdgården.

When he came to his senses a few moments later he observed that the horses pulling the carriage of His Majesty the King had reared up and were about to bolt. Instinctively he grabbed hold of the snaffle of one of the horses to help the driver calm them. This however did not succeed at first, and the carriage raced some twenty metres down Kungsträdgårdsgatan with Wolff hanging from the harness.

Jesus what a fucking massive great explosion! Even though he’d thrown loads of flashbangs in Counterstrike and read about the effects on the net and even seen YouTube clips of the M84 in action, none of that came close to doing the little fucker full justice.

Up with the switch, out with the pin and then just roll it in among the horses. Okay, a bit harder IRL than Online, but not that bad. Even though he had earplugs, sunglasses, and the visor pulled down, the blast and the flash of light still took his breath away. It was a bit like pressing pause on television, and the image freezes while the programme and the sound roll on behind it.

He had to blink hard several times to shake the effect from his retinas and get his eyes back to real time. And what he saw exceeded all his expectations! The street was a fucking warzone! Beaten up riders everywhere, horses bolting, rearing up and generally going crazy. One horse went through the glass of one of the outdoor cafés, a couple of others mowed down one of the newly planted trees in the avenue in Kungsträdgården and carried on blindly into the park through a cluster of parked bicycles. People taking a Saturday stroll in the park had to leap out of the way of the panicked creatures to avoid getting run down or having their heads kicked in. People screaming, horses whinnying, kids crying and in the middle of all that one of the royal carriages came racing down the street with some bloke hanging off the side of one of the horses. It was like a Hollywood film, only better.