In my pleading and his rage, he reaches for his favorite knight and checkmates my black queen to death.
The crowd behind me claps and hails and chirps with enthusiasm, cameras flashing from all around. The Chessmaster has just executed his fourth move and checkmated me.
“This is the moment I’ve been waiting for,” he tells me, merit wrapping his soul. “I’ve killed you, Alice.”
That’s when I sit back, cross leg over another, place my elbow on the rim of the chair, and glance with disgust at him.
The Chessmaster isn’t the first to sense what really happened in here, but the audience do. They let out a series of uncontrollable shrieks, saying, “She tricked him!”
The Chessmaster’s face knots so tightly I thought he was going to bleed. He stares at the chess pieces, the checkmated queen, and doesn’t get it. What’s the fuss about? Why is the audience saying that the little girl from Wonderland tricked him?
Then his eyes shift toward the poison cups.
I seize the moment and reach for my fourth cup and gulp it with all the easiness in the world. It does drive me crazy and makes me dizzy, but I don’t show it, because I’m in for the grand prize: saving the world.
“You tricked me.” The Chessmaster slumps back in his chair. “You little b — “
“Save the swearing for when you burn in hell,” I tell him, remembering what The Pillar taught me. “I made you play with my rules, not yours.”
“Who taught you such a trick? Why hasn’t anyone thought of it before?”
“Because they’re afraid of you. You’re the terrorist who bombs a building with innocent people because he’s been hurt in the past. You force people to play your game by scaring them.” I am so excited I can’t even catch my breath. “And all I had to do was play my game, not yours.”
“By making me think you made your best move when it was deliberately your intentional worst.” The Chessmaster moans, knowing his time has come.
“Exactly,” I explain further. “You forced me in a game where I have to try winning in a losing war; where, when I lose in the end, I have no choice but to drink the seventh poisoned cup that will kill me.”
“And you fooled me by losing earlier and not buying into my frame.” The Chessmaster is amazed but saddened and disappointed with this whole existence. “Now that you made the most stupid move in history, I had no choice but to checkmate you earlier in the fourth round.”
“Stupidity is so underrated.”
“And by recklessly checkmating you in the fourth round, you will never reach the seventh cup, and you will simply not die,” he finishes my masterpiece for me. “You bought yourself out of hell by being a moron.”
“I prefer being called mad.”
“And that’s not just it,” the Chessmaster nails his own coffin with his last words. “Having been unable to kill you, I’m obliged to drink all seven cups, even though I checkmated you. It’s the rules of the game.”
“Let me just correct this part. In reality, I checkmated you. Kinda kicked you in the balls, wrapped you up in choking foils made out of your anger, and rolled you down the rabbit hole of hell.”
The Reds in the place crash onto the stage and force the Chessmaster to his final verdict, to drink the seven cups of poison.
I watch him give in, the audience behind me applauding, reminding myself of the man who has taught me this trick.
The Pillar.
With my Red guardian reminding me of the technique written on the napkin, I was the one who laughed last. I didn’t buy into the Chessmaster’s game, made him think he was winning, and struck when it was hot.
Now that I’ve practiced what I’ve learned and saved the world, I have to finish my masterpiece with a few last words. Words I’ve been taught by The Pillar, whom everyone says is a devil.
A broad smile, a euphoric feeling of transcendence, and a breeze of hope caresses me as I stand above the Chessmaster, Death himself, and tell him.
‘I will die when I say so!”
Chapter 77
London
Inspector Dormouse had finally reached the address where Mr. Fourteen resided. He’d managed to extract it from the conversations in the recordings and drove from Oxford to London, hoping he wasn’t too late.
He stopped the car by a place called Lifespan, a hospice where Mr. Fourteen hid, pretending he was dying man, just to stay away from The Pillar’s wrath.
With everyone asleep, the lazy Inspector stepped up and entered the main hall. He pushed the sleeping nurse aside and flipped through the guest’s names. He’d learned the name from the recordings too.
There he was, resident in a private room on the sixth floor.
Dormouse hurried to the elevator but found it dead. Maybe the elevators fell asleep.
He had to struggle with the misfortune and pain of climbing up the stairs. Gosh, six stories?
Inspector Dormouse was incredibly out of shape. The last time he had climbed up six stories must have been in his sleep.
Three floors up, panting and wheezing and feeling his limbs tear apart, he fell asleep again. He just couldn’t resist it.
A few minutes later he woke up, shocked and disappointed with himself. What if The Pillar had reached Mr. Fourteen earlier?
Like a slow-chugging locomotive, the Inspector trudged step after step, now coughing out thick fumes he preferred not to look at.
Finally, there he was. On the sixth floor. A few strides ahead and he’d be inside Mr. Fourteen’s room — even if he’d found him asleep, he would still be able to protect him.
But first, Dormouse needed to drink. He stopped by the water cooler in the corridor and gulped water, wetting his shirt and pants in the process of his slurping.
Fresh now, he still had to tie the loosened laces on his shoes, and then he approached the room.
He knocked once but no one answered. Mr. Fourteen was unquestionably asleep.
But what was that blood seeping from under the door?
Enraged, Inspector Dormouse kicked open the door into a dark room.
A switch flicked by the opposite wall. A faint yellow light that only showed two things: a man dead on the floor, probably Mr. Fourteen, and The Pillar with a gun in his hand, sitting nonchalantly calm under the yellow light.
“Too late, Inspector,” The Pillar smirked.
“You killed him,” Dormouse said. “You killed Mr. Fourteen.”
“Had to be done,” The Pillar said. “It took me a long time to find him.”
“What kind of beast are you?”
“Call it what you want. I made my choice.”
“You call killing an innocent man a choice?”
“What makes you think he is so innocent?”
“I know all about you, Pillar. I know about your deal. You and Alice. The ritual to gain more lives than the Cheshire.”
“Really?” The Pillar considered. “Is that what you know?”
“You killed the Fourteen because they betrayed you and wouldn’t let you collect your souls.”
“That’s one side of the story.” The Pillar rubbed something inside his ear with his little pinky, his other hand gripping the gun, pointed at the Inspector.
“There is no other side to it,” Dormouse said. “You will not walk out of this building alive.”
“I came and went as I pleased in the asylum. No one could ever stop me,” The Pillar said. “Besides, you should really lower your voice, Inspector. Everyone’s asleep.”
“You got that part wrong, Professor,” Dormouse smiled victoriously, as the people in the hall were starting to wake up. “Because Alice killed the Chessmaster. People are about to wake up.”
And for all the conflicting reasons in the world, Dormouse saw The Pillar smiling in broad lines, his eyes wide, and it looked like his heart was fluttering. Dormouse didn’t know what to make of this. If The Pillar was this brutal beast, how come he was so happy Alice was still alive?