The 1st Annual NTWF Games (EPILOGUE Now Up!)

[Avery]

Alright, here we go. I'm trying to revive the past-time of NTWF stories, and figured the best way to do it was by writing my own! If you'd like more info, see this thread. Also please post on that thread if you might like to see yourself as a minor character! (Or you can post here, as well, if you'd like.) All major characters have been decided already, but there is still tons of room for cameos, and without your explicit permission, I can't use you! D:

I will generally be posting a chapter once every 1-5 days, depending on how quickly I write them. The exception to this will be the first two chapters. The first is going up now, and the second-- like the flyer at the beginning of the first chapter alludes -- will be going up at 3pm today, EST. After that, chapters may be posted up to one per day. It'll really just depend on how fast I write. xD Also, this will probably be rated about 'T', for violence. Nothing gratuitous or overly gory, but based on the nature of the story-- there will have to be some. xD;

Without further adieu... I present to you...

The 1st Annual NTWF Games!

Chapter One

SPOILER: Click to show

1. The First Annual NTWF Games

The flyers were papered about the forum by the dozen, stuck on walls and tacked to doors, as prevalent as unearthed earth worms the morning after a heavy rain. Written on creamy white paper, they featured no gimmickry, no colorful images or shiny glitter glue. Instead, their message was stark and simple:

Forum-Wide Meeting: Today at 3pm
Location: Issues & Inquiries
Your attendance is mandatory

Your Administrators,
Nimras, Huntress, Dan, & Komrade Killix

“I wonder what sort of meeting they’re holding,” said Terra with a frown. “And why I didn’t know about it before now. I mean, I’m a mod, aren’t I? What do the admins think they’re doing, holding a meeting without letting any of the minis or fullmods know?”

“It is quite curious,” I agreed, studying the flyer, and then turning to glance at the one posted not more than five feet away from the first. The admins must have been a sight to behold, peppering the forum with these decrees as everyone else slept. The rest of us had simply woken up this morning and wham, there they were. It was more than just a bit disconcerting.

And what was with ‘administrators’ as opposed to simply ‘admins’? Since when had Nim, Hunty, Dan, and Killix insisted on using their full title? Not to mention, the whole ‘Komrade Killix’ thing. What was her deal?

“I bet it’s a party,” Kristy helpfully suggested from a few feet over. “You know, a surprise party. For us being such good members. And they decided to go all businessy and formal on the flyer so no one would figure out.”

“Ooh, I love parties!” piped in Sae. “I should go get dressed for it, find a costume… maybe I’ll be a princess, or Barbie… ooh, so many ideas!” She smiled and started away to get dolled up.

“Kristy’s probably right,” Terra agreed, biting her lip. “Just a party, thrown by our wonderful admins—er, administrators. Yep. That must be it.” But the look she exchanged with me told me that she wasn’t buying it.

I wasn’t, either.

**

By the time I arrived to Issues & Inquiries at approximately 2:50pm, it was immensely crowded. I could only furrow my brow as I walked inside and noticed that the large room had been quite uh, transformed, since my last visit. It had previously been sparsely decorated, with tables and chairs flung here and there, and a stack of forms and papers on a desk at the front, which forumers could use to document their issues (or inquire their inquiries) and then submit them for review. The walls had also always been a bit cobwebby, on account of the board’s general lack of use, and the carpet old and mildewy.

Not anymore.

The carpet had been torn out and replaced with gleaming tile so white that it nearly burned my eyes. The dingy walls had been repainted with a fresh coat of admin-pink paint. The tables had been removed, as had the desk with the forms. In its stead there now stood an enormous stage, rising some four feet into the air and with a podium in the center, atop which was mounted a microphone. At the back of the stage, in five padded chairs that probably cost as much as my very quaint house at the fringes of ModSquad, sat Killix, Nim, Dan, Hunty (the present admins)… and Stal, a retired one. I tried to catch his eye, but he looked resolutely away from me.

What the heck was going on?

“This is the weirdest thing ever,” someone murmured into my ear.

I turned and found Gelquie, looking nervous. She too kept glancing at the stage in an effort to catch one of the admins’ eyes, but no one would look at her, either. That meant Terra and I weren’t the only ones out of the loop: the admins apparently had excluded everyone but themselves from knowing their plans and the purpose of this meeting.

“I wonder what they’re doing,” I said to Gelquie.

“I have no idea,” she replied, “but it can’t be good.”

“If this is a party,” commented Terra as she entered the room and settled beside Gelquie and me, “it’s a lousy one. No refreshments. No seating.”

“I don’t think it’s a party,” Gelquie said.

We stood in silence then, nervously waiting for 3pm to arrive. Once it did, the admins began to shift on the stage, whispering amongst themselves for a few moments before finally Stal stood and eased up to the microphone. He tapped on it—producing that horrible, echoey squawking noise that microphones tend to make when prodded—and cleared his throat.

“Hello,” he said stiffly. “Thank you for coming today. Now, you may be wondering why we have summoned you here. We will answer that shortly. First, however, I would like to play you a movie…”

With that, Stal reached under the podium and must have pressed a button, for a large screen suddenly descended from the ceiling. He hit another button, and an image appeared on the screen. From where the rest of the admins were sitting, Nim reached over and flicked off a light-switch, plunging the room into darkness, at which point Stal hit a final button, and the image on the screen start to move.

It was, essentially, just a collage of sappy pictures and short videos: sunsets and mountains, laughing children, forumers playing games. Interspersed with these were portraits of the admins smiling and looking regal. As it played, a voiceover that sounded suspiciously like Killix talking in a fake deep tone boomed:

“Long ago, this forum was a place of glory… a utopia… the administrators were given the respect they deserved… all was peaceable, all was well. But then the disrespect started. The insolence. No longer did the members treat the administrators as they should. Even the mini-mods and fullmods fell prey to this. They did not respect their superiors. And this behavior is intolerable. It is wrong. This forum has been lulled into a sense of complacency, its members have been made to think that they may act however they see fit. That there is no almighty authority in place to stop them. BUT THIS IS WRONG. The administrators you treat with such a blasé sense of disregard—we will not tolerate this any longer! No! For too long we let you forumers tramp all over us! And it ends today!”

The screen snapped to darkness. The voiceover cut off. Nimras abruptly turned the lights back on.

At the podium, Stal said, “We debated for a long time about what to do, how to instill obedience once more. I am retired, but I could not turn down the admins’ request for aid. It is true how poorly they have been treated. I knew I must help them. And finally, after much talk, we settled on an idea. A way to let you scourges know that obedience comes first.” He turned and gestured towards Killix. “Now, to tell you about it, I present to you, Komrade Killix.”

The crowd clapped, albeit apprehensively. Killix approached the podium, whereupon she smiled broadly at Stal, clapped him on the shoulder, and whispered something into his ear. He smiled back, then returned to his seat. Killix adjusted the microphone.

“Good day,” she said. “Now, as my colleague informed you, this forum is in need of some reminders. Reminders that poor behavior is not tolerated. That we, the administrators, are in charge and must be respected. Most of you will not be happy with what I am about to tell you. You will whine and cry and attempt to flee. Do not do this. It will do you no good. Those doors—“ she gestured to the double-doors leading into Issues & Inquiries, which had been shut at some point, probably during the movie, when everyone was distracted—“are locked. Chained on the other side, in fact, by your fellow forumer, Alyssa, who stands at the other end of them with her friend Teow. Both of them have guns, and will shoot if you try to bust out. What, you ask? Non-administrators? Yes. After all, not all of you are vile, foul cretins. Some of you will be spared from the impending ah, changes. Those of you who have proven loyal to us—and if you’re not sure if this includes you, well, it doesn’t; all the loyal members already know who they are—will not face the punishment. But as for the rest of you… well. We agonized about how to punish. Some of us were tempted to go easy, at least at first. A slap on the wrist. But then we realized this could not be. No. The punishment must be severe. It must instill fear and obedience with no room for deviation. As such, beginning next week, after a brief training period, twenty-four of you shall be participating in the First Annual NTWF Games!”

As she spoke, she dramatically waved her hand, and a banner unfurled from the ceiling. It was black as night, and embroidered on it in blood-red scrawl was the phrase: ‘Twenty-Four Will Enter. One Will Leave. May the Odds Be EVER In Your Favor!’

“What is this?” Gelquie hissed into my ear.

“Something very bad,” I murmured back.

On the stage, Killix beamed as she took in the banner. Just about glowed. Then, she cleared her throat and continued on, “In a few minutes here, my colleague Hunty shall be holding a—let’s call it a raffle. We have selected twelve boards, and for each board, have entered the names of the people who reside there. In other words, where you live! Two names shall be selected as our players from each of the boards. If you are selected, you have no choice but to play—unless, of course, another resident of your board volunteers in your place! Now then, you might be asking: ‘But Komrade Killix, what is it that we’re playing? What is this NTWF Games?’ Well, it’s fairly simple. You might have noticed our beautiful renovations in this Issues & Inquiries board. Well, we have also been renovating Memory Lane! Into what, you ask? Why, an arena! An arena where the twenty-four players will fight to the death! Like the sign says, twenty-four will enter, one will leave.”

Somewhere in the crowd, somebody laughed. It wasn’t a ‘ha-ha funny’ laugh, more of the sort of nervous laugh one makes when a person has essentially been told that they might possibly be entered in the near future into a fight to the death. Nonetheless, Killix seemed none too amused.

“Do not laugh!” she yelled. “This is no joke!” She took a deep breath, as if attempting to calm herself, before adding, “Now, time for Hunty. Hunty will be performing the raffle!”

“Right now!?” Hayati shouted in shock.

“Yes, right now!” Killix shrieked back. “And if you keep showing disrespect, I might rig the drawing to make you win!”

With that, Killix whirled and stomped back to her chair, and Hunty took her place at the podium. As she adjusted the microphone, Nimras scurried off-stage for a second, only to return with a wheeled cart, which she eased next to Hunty. Atop the cart were twelve glass bowls—giant ones—filled with slips of folded paper.

“Inside these bowls are names,” Hunty announced brightly… and with a bit of a slur to her words. Oh, great. She was drunk. “Names! So much names! Um, many names. And I will draw TWO! Two from each bowl! And you guys get to play our game! Aren’t you excited? Be excited! Cheer!” No one cheered, and Hunty scowled. “Cheer!” she shrieked. “Cheer!”

… the crowd forced a cheer.

“Good!” she slurred on. “The raffle will begin right now! Hurrah! Let’s all give a second cheer for the First Annual NTWF Games!”

Chapter Two

SPOILER: Click to show

2. The Raffle

As the crowd of forumers watched on in absolute horror, Hunty drunkenly stumbled over the cart with the bowls on it, and picked up the one at the edge. It must have been heavier than she was expecting, because she nearly almost dropped it, but made a last minute save—which she found greatly amusing, as she started to giggle as she tottered back to the podium and plunked the bowl on top of it.

“First up is the Forum Gates!”

The Forum Gates? But the only people who lived in the Forum Gates were newbies who hadn’t yet found their niche and moved into a home in a different board. This whole thing was beyond ludicrous, but drafting people from the Forum Gates? Again, Gelquie and I exchanged disbelieving looks. Several people near us in the crowd had begun to shift towards the doors, as if they were about to challenge Killix’s claim that they were locked and had armed guards on the other end.

“Ok, let’s see who our first player is!” Hunty babbled excitedly. She reached into the bowl and grabbed blindly at the little slips of paper before tugging one out. She was nearly quaking with excitement as she opened it. “And our first player is… Lukas! Come up here, Lukas!”

From the middle of the crowd, a blonde-haired teenager gasped. That, I presumed, must be Lukas. A newbie, like I expected. I hadn’t ever seen him before. Looking like he thought this whole thing might be a wild joke, he hesitantly ascended the steps to the stage and settled beside Hunty.

“Lukas! Yay!” Hunty clapped. “You’re our first! And our second…” She reached back into the bowl. “Gloria! Come up here, Gloria!”

Lukas and Hunty were then joined on the stage by another bewildered looking newbie. Hunty instructed the two of them to shake hands before shepherding them off to the stage’s side-wings. She then moved onto the next board: NT Staff Call, from which she gleaned two more confused newbies. They had decided to move there only because it seemed quiet.

“Next up,” said Hunty as the Staff Call representatives were moved offstage, “is Neopia. Oooh, Neopia!” She hiccupped. “Ok, so… for Neopia we have… we have… oooh… Kozma! Come up here, Kozma!”

Kozma did not come up. Instead, he turned towards the doors and, like so many others had likely been considering, made a break for it. He pounded on them, kicked them, beat on them with all of his might. But they didn’t budge: they were chained tight, just as Killix had said.

“Stop that foolishness!” Hunty implored. “Come up here, Kozma!”

“No!” Kozma yelled. He glanced at Hayati, who was standing nearby. “Help me!” he begged. “Help me beat down this door!”

“I would advise against that,” Hunty said gravely. “Anyone who helps a player attempt to escape will be entered in their stead. Anyone want to risk it? Hmm, Hayati?” When Hayati shook his head, Hunty grinned and went on, “Good! Then come up here, Kozma, and let us pick the second representative from Neopia!”

Defeated, Kozma shuffled up to the stage, though from the way he kept flitting his eyes about like a cornered rabbit, I was fairly sure he hadn’t completely given up on the idea of escape. He stood twitchily beside Hunty as she reached back into the bowl and came up with another slip.

“And our next representative for Neopia is… Tiger!”

And it continued like this, on and on, as Hunty called more names to represent more boards. Hunter and PFA for the Icy Taco. Coaster and Jina for Games & Interactive. When Jay’s name was chirpily announced to represent the Editor’s Mark, he began to swear out the admins and nearly punched Hunty in the face before being restrained by… Bacon, of all people, who rushed out from the wings and tackled down the feisty Jay. Apparently Bacon was another one of the admin’s pets, like Alyssa and Teow.

After Jay was hauled off the stage—with assurances from Hunty to the crowd that his temper didn’t mean he wasn’t going to get to play the game, get to, like it was an honor—Hunty called his board-mate: Elcie, who did not attempt to sock Hunty, but nonetheless looked terrified.

Next up came the Guilds board, which was to be represented by Thundy and Fraze. The first Neopian Times representative was Nova.

“But… Dan!” Nova pleaded as he climbed up to the stage. “We’re… we’re friends, Dan. You can’t do this to me!”

But Dan outright ignored him, and Nova seemed absolutely shell-shocked as Hunty went digging in the bowl for he, Nova’s, partner.

“Our second Neopian Times player will be… ah, Sae! Come up here, Sae!”

Sae, decked out in the princess costume she’d thought would be fun to wear to the ‘party’, reluctantly came up to the stage. She gave off a very strong ‘deer in headlights’ vibe and was close to tears. As she and Nova were escorted off the stage, he patted her on the arm, as if to comfort her. But it did nothing. By the time they disappeared from view, Sae was visibly crying. My own stomach churned. Almost half the boards had been called now. Sooner or later, my own home—ModSquad—would come up. I didn’t want to hear my name drip from Hunty’s drunken lips.

Artist’s Alley came next, to be represented by Kristy and Ginz. Like Nova, Ginz tried to bargain with Dan, attempted to convince him that they were friends, how could he do this? But like a statue, Dan stayed quiet. Wouldn’t look at her. Wouldn’t even acknowledge that he heard her desperate words.

For the Splatterboard, Terra and Azzie were drafted. My stomach fluttered as I watched Terra, who had been standing mere feet from me, approach the stage. Her skin had gone sheet-white. She was walking very slowly, as if stalling. The remaining boards were quickly dwindling. If my place of residence wasn’t up next, it was still coming soon.

In between Hunty’s announcements, a couple more people had attempted to beat on the door. They’d all been quickly stopped by death threats, and in any case, it was apparent that the door was chained tight. Another of the more innovative forumers, Icon, accompanied by Lizica, had tried to escape by rushing the stage and flinging themselves into the wings—but both were brought down by Bacon and another of the admin’s pets, Mel. I tried to convince myself that the muffled banging noises that came from backstage a couple moments later were not gunshots.

“Now!” Hunty said. “Now is time for RolePlaying!”

I glanced at Gelquie, knowing that she called the RP board home. She bit her lip and tapped her foot, nervous habits of hers.

“Hey,” I whispered, “even if they call you… maybe someone else will volunteer.”

“No one else has so far,” she replied glumly. “I doubt the trend of self-sacrifice is going to start now.”

On the stage, Hunty was beset by a sudden flurry of hiccups, which then caused her to giggle. Behind her, Stal had to clear his throat in a very gruff way probably five times before Hunty got the point and calmed herself. Then, she reached into the glass bowl that held the names of those who lived in the RolePlaying board and yanked out one of the slips.

“Cassie!” she squealed. “Cassie, where are you at?”

As Cassie went to the stage, I could sense a bit of tension evaporate from within Gelquie. But still, she had to know that the RolePlaying board was only half represented. There was still a shot that the next name Hunty withdrew from the glass bowl would be hers.

And sure enough…

“GELQUIE!” Hunty yelled. “Oooh, I love when I pick mods! Love, love, love it! Come up here, Gelquie!”

Gelquie gulped and started towards the stage. As Hunty instructed her and Cassie to shake hands, I could only stare with dread at the one remaining glass bowl on the cart: ModSquad. My home. My name was in there somewhere, on a nondescript piece of folded paper.

Hunty almost started to buzz with excitement as she realized that the last board being ModSquad meant that well—she would get to pick more mods. My stomach pitched once more as it dawned on just how desolately populated ModSquad was. Mods weren’t required to live there, after all; that was how people like Terra and Ginz had ended up being called as representatives for other boards.

I made a metal note as to who, beyond me, lived in ModSquad. All the admins did, of course… but they couldn’t be selected, obviously. The zombie mods resided there, too—people like Fj0rd and Robyn, Zylaa and Squiesh, and… Stal. Though clearly Stal had aligned himself with the admins and no one else. Then there was Icon, who was already possibly dead after rushing the stage, and Celestial. Leoness. And… me. That was it. Oh cripes, was that really it?

My chances of escaping this horrific raffle unscathed suddenly seemed exceptionally low.

“Mods, mods, mods!” Hunty sang as Cassie and Gelquie were led away. “I am going to pick some mods!”

From her seat at the back of the stage, Killix looked none too entertained by Hunty’s drunken antics, but clearly wasn’t going to call her out on this in public. She merely sat there with pressed lips and a scowl as Hunty began digging around in the final glass bowl.

“Our first representative for ModSquad is... Celestial!”

“No,” Celes said. It was not a cry. It was not a shriek. It was, simply, a firm statement, a defiant snap. “I’m not playing your stupid game, Hunty. You guys are insane. Not happening.”

“But it’s not a choice,” Hunty said, like Celes had merely forgotten and would be much more compliant once reminded of the non-voluntary nature of the NTWF Games.

“Everything is a choice,” Celes replied. “And I’m not playing. None of the other people you’ve called will be playing, either.”

“But… but… um…” Hunty, clearly too drunk to have a level debate, turned desperately towards the seated admins. Killix rolled her eyes at the emcee before standing up and striding back over to the podium.

Pushing Hunty out of the way (and none too gently), Killix said, “I will be straight with you, Celestial: this sort of insolence is exactly why we were forced to put together a game such as this. Now… you—“ she thrust her finger at a random newbie at the front of the crowd “—come up here.”

“M-me?” stammered the newbie. I thought his name was Andy, or maybe Arty. I’d only talked to him once or twice.

“Yes, you!” Killix growled.

Terrified, the newbie stumbled up to the stage. As he neared Killix, she reached out, lightning-quick, and grabbed onto his arm. In the blink of an eye, she had him drawn him in towards her and had maneuvered him into a chokehold. Andy-Arty sputtered and tried to thrash against her, but failed. He was only a kid, after all, maybe thirteen-years-old and skinnier than a weed. He was no match against Komrade Killix.

“If you refuse to come up onto this stage, I will have Bacon execute this fine young gentleman.” As if to accentuate her point, Bacon came back onto the stage, with a pistol in his hand—a pistol that he had pointed directly at Andy-Arty. Killix added, “And after this young man is dead, I will have Bacon shoot someone else. And someone else. And so on and so forth, until you concede that you are playing this game.”

“I—you’re bluffing,” Celes stammered.

“Really?” Killix asked. “Would you like to bet on that, Celes?”

Celestial didn’t reply, but the way she swallowed hard and, with a cringe, started towards the stage, made it clear that she did not wish to bet. With Celes beside her, Killix released Andy-Arty and ordered him off the stage. He just about flung himself off, tripping over his own feet in an effort to get away from the maniacal admin.

“Now that that’s settled, Hunty, please resume the raffle,” Killix instructed, sitting back down.

“Sure thing!” Hunty slurred. “Time to pick our last player!”

As she dug around the bowl, my heart beat in my ears. Please, please, please, I inwardly begged. Please not me. Please not me. I knew that an answer to my prayers would mean someone else was about to have their life upturned. But still, I couldn’t help myself, couldn’t stop the selfish begging…

Hunty’s hand finally surfaced from the bowl, and in it was clutched a piece of paper. Time seemed to slow as she unfolded it. Smoothed it out. Hiccupped once, twice, thrice. Giggled. Dropped the paper. Picked it back up as Killix glowered, seeming like she might jump back out of the chair, clobber Hunty, and read the dang thing herself.

“And our last player,” Hunty said at last, “is… Carrie!”

The air rushed from my lungs.

Chapter Three

SPOILER: Click to show

3. Admin Alley

For a few moments, I didn’t move. I could barely breathe, barely think, as Hunty’s announcement rang in my ears and the drunken emcee stared expectantly at me from the stage.

“Carrie!” she repeated as my cheeks burned and I tried to force the breath back into my lungs, with minimal success. “Come up here, final player! Or we’ll have Komrade Killix put you in a chokehold like that newbie guy, ha-ha!”

No one laughed at her joke, and I was pretty sure Killix was this close to dragging Hunty off the stage and smacking the drunken woman. I wouldn’t have minded that. At least it would provide a distraction, a temporary delay to my doomed march to the stage.

But ultimately, Killix stayed seated. Hunty grinned at me and beckoned me up to take my place beside her and Celes. Even though my legs felt leaden, I forced myself to move. If I didn’t, I was afraid Killix would go hostage-taking again. And this time, she might make good on her threat to have Bacon shoot someone.

On the stage, Hunty patted me on the shoulder with far too heavy a hand and then turned to address the crowd once more. “Yay!” she squealed. “Yay! We have all our players! Now, for the next week, they’ll be training and stuff… you know, so that they’re all good and strong and whatever.” Hiccup. “Then, the Games will begin! One week from today, right at this minute. Or not this minute. 7am. Is it 7am?” She glanced back towards the more sober admins, who gave her curt nods and very much looked liked they regretted letting Hunty do the raffle. “Ok!” Hunty trilled on. “7am! And it will be televised all across the forum! Mandatory viewing, no less. And you guys can place bets, and laugh while they die, ha ha, die! And root for your favorites, I guess, the people you don’t want to die. You can even SPONSOR THEM! Anyway, at the end of the event, only one of the players will emerge victorious.” She turned back towards Celes and I and said sweetly, “May the odds be ever in your favor. Now, off the stage with you lot! Off where the rest of them went!”

I supposed she meant the wing, and sure enough, from the side of the stage, I could see admin-pet Mel gesturing Celes and I over. We exchanged with each other very uneasy looks, then started towards Mel. As we exited the stage, Hunty was telling the crowd that after one final message from Stal, they would be excused for the day, but to be on the lookout on TV tonight for the first training footage, yay!

As Celes and I were led to the backstage area where the rest of the players had been sequestered, Stal began to make his closing speech. But though his voice reached the rest of the players and me, I didn’t hear a word he said. No. All I could hear was the beating of my own heart, the blood rushing through my ears, the sound of my living, breathing body—the one that, next week at this time, might not be living anymore at all.

**

After Stal concluded his speech, all of the admins came back to look at their victims—er, players. Including Hunty, who immediately tried to drunkenly hug Jay, who tried to punch her again. Jay was smacked off her by Bacon, and Killix then snapped at Hunty to go ‘sleep off whatever it is you ingested, dolt’.

Hunty sullenly slunk off, after which Stal said, “You will have to begin training immediately. We’ve constructed a fine training center in Admin Alley. You will also find your lodgings for the next week there. Now, follow us to Admin Alley. Keep in mind, our lovely armed guards—Mel, Alyssa, Teow, and Bacon—will be flanking this nice group. If you try to run, you will regret it.”

My stomach soured once more. Admin Alley was practically my backyard, right under my nose. How had I not noticed the crazy, power-hungry admins constructing a training centre? The news about the training center was just the beginning of my shock and anger, though, because the admins then led the rest of the players and I through a dizzying maze of narrow streets, twisty alleys, and underground corridors I hadn’t even known existed. I’d been a mod on the forum for what, five and a half years? And yet all this had existed beneath my fingertips, hidden from me by the crazy administrators who were about to force myself and twenty-three others to fight to our deaths.

I felt sick. Truly sick.

Upon arrival to Admin Alley, I noted grimly that it had indeed been renovated in an extreme sort of way. What had once been a slightly abandoned corner of the city that made up the NTWF had had gates erected at the front of it—towering, spiked gates. And then there was the wall, some ten feet high and also spiked, completing enclosing it. Within the confines rose several buildings, the largest of which we were immediately led into it. The training center.

How had the admins pulled this off without anyone realizing? True, no one really ventured over to Admin Alley… but it was still only a half-mile or so from my house! At least I could sort of justify to myself not noticing the complete reinvention of Issues & Inquiries: it was a simple one-storey building, one way in and out, and seldom touched. But Admin Alley was… well, bigger. An entire city block, in fact. And it had also been redone in a much more dramatic way.

“Now,” Killix said once we were inside the training center, “here you will find numerous different stations to help you train. Weights. Archery. Rope-climbing courses. It’s up to you to train, or not train. Either way, at 7am one week from today, you will enter the arena. And from there, it’s a free-for-all. Only one of you will survive. Any questions?”

From the back of the cluster, one of the NT Staff call draftees raised her hand. She was a waifish brunette in her early twenties, with bright blue eyes and a tattoo of a bunny on her left arm.

“Um,” she said, “I have a question.”

“Yes, ask your question ah—Morgan, is it?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Well. This whole thing—um… it’s a joke, right?”

“Very good question,” said Killix thickly. She glanced towards Alyssa, who, along with the other admin pets, was standing loosely between the players and the admins, as if to make sure none of us would try attacking. “Lyss?” Killix said.

“Yes, Komrade Killix?” Alyssa asked.

“Do me a favor, why don’t you? Take your gun, and shoot that target.” She pointed to one of the archery dummies that was positioned a few yards away.

“Yes, Komrade Killix,” Alyssa said, and diligently fired the gun.

It went off with an ear-splitting boom; several of the other players clapped their hands over their ears and gawked at the target dummy, which now had a healthy chunk missing from its stomach.

“Now, Morgan,” Killix said. “Did that look like a joke? Hmm?”

“Um. No.”

“Precisely. And this game is not, either, and you best not treat it like one. Now, begin training. You will notice numerous cameras mounted around the training center. Those are there to record your pursuits and air them to the rest of the NTWF, so that they can begin betting and the like. After all, this is a game. And what is a game without betting?” She smiled. “So, begin!”

No one moved an inch. No one even blinked. And this did not amuse Komrade Killix. She scowled and turned back to Alyssa.

“Lyss?”

“Yes, Komrade Killix?”

“If these dolts don’t begin training, or at least moving, within the next twenty seconds… shoot them. Not a kill shot. Just in the knee, hm? Something to ah, motivate them!”

“Yes, Komrade Killix.”

“Good then! Now. 20…. 19…. 18….”

As Killix continued counting down, still no one moved—at least, for a moment. Then, when it hit us exactly what Killix had said, the clump of terrified players quickly disintegrated as everyone made a beeline for different training stations. Kozma and his board-mate, Tiger, headed towards the fire-starting area, followed by the newbie, Morgan. Ginz and Nova, both of whom still were occasionally staring at Dan in absolute disgust and disbelief, went to the archery station. A very large cluster, including Jina, Coaster, and Thundy, shuffled to the weights.

“How about we uh… climb some ropes?” I nervously asked the person nearest to me: Kristy.

“Um, sure,” she said. “Ropes are good.” She glanced towards Gelquie and Terra, who had also yet to break from the crowd (Killix was now on 10). “Wanna come?”

“Alright,” they replied.

We started off, and it was only when we’d made it halfway to the ropes, and Killix was on four, and everyone else had wandered off to various stations, that I noticed one person still standing in her original place, terrified and frozen: Sae.

Her princess costume was definitely not made for training. She looked so out of place, so scared and confused.

“Three!” Killix yelled.

“Sae,” I called. “Hey. Come with us. Come to the ropes.”

“Two!” Killix yelled.

“Sae! Now! Ropes!”

Sae moved in the nick of time, just as Alyssa started to cock the pistol. I let out a breath I hadn’t even known I was holding.

“This… is a very bad party,” Sae murmured. “I don’t… I don’t think this party is appropriate for a princess like me.”

“It is a bad party,” I agreed with a sigh. “A very bad party. And very inappropriate. Now, let’s climb some ropes, eh?”

Chapter Four

SPOILER: Click to show

4. Interview

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Kristy, Terra, Gelquie, Sae, and I stayed in our hastily formed group, moving from station to station, taking in all that the training center had to offer. As we milled about, I warily observed the rest of the players, trying to figure out who would be a threat a week from now, and who wouldn’t. It was hard to tell, really. Thundy was having a blast—literally—building small explosives out of metal scrap, but really, would there be random metal scrap in the arena? PFA and Hunter were both deft on the ropes… but what if there wasn’t anything to climb?

After hours of training, the admins served us an entirely flavorless dinner of soup, bread, and beans before ushering us off to our lodgings. They weren’t springing for anything luxurious: twelve people in one room, twelve in the other, in a windowless building at the edge of Admin Alley. It resembled a military barracks more than anything, with concrete floors and unfinished walls, and a single toilet stall in the back corner, not entirely separated from the sleeping area (yuck). The bunk beds were metal-framed, squeaky, and had mattresses so thin that I was pretty sure they might just be yoga mats.

“There will be guards. Two posted outside the door, and even more on-call if trouble arises. So don’t think of escaping, hm?” Dan said before leaving us for the night; he made a show of locking the door behind him.

My room consisted of the group I’d been training with—Kristy, Gelquie, Sae, and Terra—plus Jay, Ginz, Nova, Elcie, Jina, Coaster, and Celestial. I took a top bunk in the corner, and Sae crawled into the bottom bunk below mine. With a desolate sigh, she pried off her princess tiara and placed it on the ground.

“I don’t think I’ll be needing this here,” she murmured before curling up like a kitten and going to sleep.

Most of the others followed suit, climbing into their own beds—the admins hadn’t even provided blankets—and attempting to sleep. But in the opposite corner I noticed a group of four clustered together, whispering amongst themselves: Nova, Ginz, Elcie, and Jay. Based on their tones, whatever they were talking about was definitely private. Thinking back, they’d formed their group back near the outset, just like Kristy, Terra, Gelquie, Sae, and me. Had stuck together since then, like glue.

I would have to look out for the four of them in the arena.

**

The next morning, over a breakfast of incredibly stale cereal, Dan strode into the dining room and stood at the head of the table. He was looking chipper today, with his hair all gelled up and combed nice and a smile on his face.

“Hope you slept well!” he said. “Or not: doesn’t really matter to me! Anyway, now commences your second day of training. Today I will also conduct my interviews. Yes, interviews! That shall be aired all across the NTWF! We were considering doing them live, but after Hunty’s ah, colorful performance yesterday, we decided pre-recorded would be best. Not to mention, some of you are rather punch-happy, and I’d rather the viewers not get any rebellious ideas.” He glared at Jay. “Anyhow, all of you will be interviewed by me; the interviews will then air on television the night before the Games. This is your chance to win fans, sponsors! Appeal to the masses! You’ll each get five minutes to talk to me, no more, no less. The interviews will be done in alphabetical order throughout the day. I’ll start now with Azzie. Come with me, Azzie!”

Azzie gulped down a mouthful of cereal before hesitantly standing up and following Dan out the room. In my head, I tried to alphabetize the names of the other players to see where I’d fall. Hm. There were no ‘A’ names beyond Azzie, nor any ‘B’ at all. As for C… there was Coaster, and Cassie, and Celestial… but all of those came after ‘Carrie’.

Drat, I was next.

Sure enough, before breakfast was even finished, Dan returned with Azzie and announced that it was my turn. Fantastic. I wondered what would happen if, the moment we stepped out of the room, I tried to make a break for it. Ran and ran like my life depended on it (which, I guess, it kind of did). Attempted to lob myself over the spiky gate and flee into the depths of the city. Most likely, Dan would have one of the pets—he was presently accompanied by Teow and, this was a new one, Birdy—shoot me before I made it five feet. Not in the head, probably, because then he’d have to find a new player. But in the knee, like Killix was threatening yesterday. Or the shoulder. Somewhere painful but non-fatal.

It wasn’t worth the risk.

Dan brought me to a small room that was arranged… pleasantly. Cushy loveseat on one end, which Dan sat on, and then a chair beside it, which he instructed me to take. There was a camera pointed towards us, manned by Bacon. Obnoxious studio lights—where had the admins gotten those?—made the room unbearably bright, and I resisted the urge to shield my eyes.

“The interview is simple,” Dan said. “We just… chatter. I ask you a few questions. Easy stuff.”

“Ok,” I replied, and then before I could help it, I blurted out, “Why are you guys doing this?”

The syrupy smile Dan had been wearing since first greeting us in the breakfast room evaporated like smoke on a cloudy day. “This is not the time for begging and pleading,” he said stiffly.

“I’m not begging or pleading,” I said. “Just asking a question. A simple question.”

“You were all told yesterday why this had to be done. That explanation remains the same. Now, for the interview—”

“I don’t want to be interviewed, Dan,” I snapped. “Look. I’ve been a mod with you for five and a half years. You didn’t used to be like this, none of you did. So what’s gotten into you guys? What could possibly make you think this is a good idea?”

“Fear instills obedience,” he said simply. “Now, I’m not going to warn you again. No more questions. The interview will start in let’s say… thirty seconds. If you’re not amicable, you’ll be punished.”

“Oh?” I snorted. “Punished how? You’ve pretty much already signed my death warrant, Daniel.”

“Do not call me that,” Dan growled. “And remember: you may be here, but you still care about people who aren’t, don’t you? And it would be such a shame for them to meet an untimely end in a horrific accident, hm?”

“Are you… threatening my friends and family?”

Dan shrugged. “Thirty seconds are up. Let’s begin. Remember. Amicable, Carrie. Be amicable.”

I was amicable.

Chapter Five

SPOILER: Click to show

5. Styling

That night, I again observed Elcie, Jay, Nova, and Ginz huddling in private and whispering amongst themselves. They’d also stuck together in the training center all day, moving from station to station as one fluid entity. I wasn’t sure why their togetherness disconcerted me so much; after all, it wasn’t like Sae, Terra, Gelquie, Kristy, and I were doing any different. Still, there was something about the lot of them that made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

I would definitely, definitely have to watch out for them in the arena.

Though I’d slept fairly soundly—given the circumstances—the night before, my slumber the second night was plagued by horrific nightmares. Several times I awoke drenched in a cold sweat, my heart beating as fast as a humming bird’s. I kept dreaming that I was in the arena, being stalked by some horrible, anonymous force… or that Sae, still bedecked in her princess costume, had met a gruesome end… or that Jay and his band of probable allies had gone off their rockers and were cannibalizing the other players… or that Dan decided I hadn’t been agreeable enough in my interview after all, and had gone after those I cared about…

Needless to say, when morning broke, I was still exhausted. My eyes felt heavy, and my head buzzed. My stomach pitched and flopped. Though today the admins had gone all out with breakfast, giving us slightly raw eggs in addition to cereal, I wasn’t hungry one bit. I prodded halfheartedly at my plate of runny eggs, sloshed my fork around the ooze of bleeding yolk.

When Dan strode into the room, my stomach pinched. He’d already completed all the interviews yesterday, so what could he possibly want now? The stomach pinching intensified when Hunty stumbled in behind him. One look at her and it was clear that she was no less drunk than she had been during the raffle. I glanced at the clock that hung on the dining room’s far wall. 6:49am.

She sure was an overachiever, that Hunty. Drunk as a sailor when the sun was barely up.

Dan cleared his throat, as if to address us, but before he could, Hunty grinned broadly and said, “’Morning guys!”

With the grace of a brain-damaged goat, she tottered over to the person sitting nearest to her: Azzie. As Azzie shrunk down, Hunty leaned over and enveloped the girl in a crushing hug. Azzie was too terrified to fight back, and so she merely sat there, her mouth hanging open in shock, as Hunty giggled and squeezed her. The awkward hug lasted a solid thirty seconds, before finally Dan reached forward and yanked his colleague away.

“Stop that,” he hissed.

“But I’m juss—”

“If you cannot behave, you’ll have to leave. Understand?”

“Yes,” she murmured, sounding like a kicked puppy. A very inebriated kicked puppy. With a dramatic sigh, she crossed her arms, pouted her lips, and simply watched on whilst occasionally hiccupping as Dan began to address us.

“I hope you all slept well,” he said. “And thank you for cooperating so nicely during the interviews yesterday.” As he said this, I swear he was glaring at me. “We are presently editing the interviews, and as I stated yesterday, they will be aired the night before the Games begin. But prior to the airing of the interviews—tonight, in fact—you will be participating in a parade.”

“A… parade?” Jina asked quizzically.

“Yes, a parade. Down the main street of the forum! You know, in order to drum up support, so people can see—live, in the flesh!—their players!”

“But people have seen us live in the flesh all the time,” PFA said.

“And they can keep seeing us live and in the flesh all the time if you crazy people call this whole battle to the death off,” Hunter added helpfully.

Dan waved his hand dismissively. “Please, no whining. I can’t stand it! Anyhow, I am here only to present to you your stylists.”

“Stylists?” Coaster asked.

“Yes, stylists! And stop interrupting, all of you! My fellow administrators and I have selected two forumers to serve as stylists for you all. Twelve players will be assigned to each of them. They will help costume you and pretty you up so that you all look your best during the parade. Representatives from ModSquad, Guilds, Neopia, the Neopian Times, the Splatterboard, and RolePlaying will be styled by Chao. Representatives from NT Staff Call, the Forum Gates, the Icy Taco, Artist’s Alley, Editor’s Mark, and Games & Interactive will be styled by Nut.” He turned and called out, “Alyssa, Teow! You can bring them in now.”

And into the room were marched Nut and Chao.

It was instantly clear to me that, unlike the pets, they were not doing this willingly. For one thing, neither Nut nor Chao had guns… and Alyssa and Teow both had their guns pointed at the two stylists. Furthermore, Chao’s eyes were wide with fear, and she was shaking a little. Nut kept gulping and darting their eyes about the room as if looking for any means of escape. What had the admins done—gone seeking out residents of Artist’s Alley who didn’t “win” the raffle and then force to be impromptu stylists?

… well, probably exactly that, I realized with a sigh.

“So,” Dan finished, “eat up that delicious, generously supplied breakfast, and then all of you will go off with your stylists! Styling will last until well, whenever it’s done. You will then train as normal until you're taken off to prepare for the parade at 5 o’ clock sharp. But please, be mindful when you’re training to not muss the costumes!”

“Why don’t you just style us after training?” Fraze asked.

“I said no more interrupting!” Dan growled.

“You guys are going to be made sooo pretty!” Hunty trilled. “We like—we kidnapped—”

“RECRUITED,” Dan interjected.

“Yeah, um, recruited, the best ever stylists! Yay! I’m sooo excited!” She started towards Azzie again—presumably to dole out more hugs—but before she made it halfway, Dan grabbed onto the drunken admin and stopped her dead in her tracks.

“Hunty and I will be off now,” he said between gritted teeth as Hunty tried to bat free from his grip, whacking at him like a kitten at a dangled feather. “You have five more minutes to eat before styling. So, eat up! You’ll need the energy!”

And with that, he left the room, dragging Hunty out alongside him.

**

Despite being described by Hunty as the ‘best stylist ever’, Chao, frankly, seemed to have no idea what she was doing. Her heart was into it, surely, most likely because the entire time she spent with us, Teow had a gun leveled at Chao’s head. And if being under threat of death doesn’t make you passionate about something, well, I don’t know what else would. But alas, heart is not the same thing as skill.

“Um, they haven’t given me very many materials,” she said as pottered about the room that the admins had delegated as the ‘styling boutique’ (yes, they had literally penciled that onto the door). “I mean… not anything good. And the makeup is um. I think it might be very chock-full of lead paint, and is not in fact actual makeup. So um. Heh! Who wants to go first?” When no one volunteered, she looked over to the Neopian Times representatives, Nova and Sae. “How about you guys?” she asked.

“Why not,” Nova sighed, walking over to her.

Sae was a bit more reluctant. It was going on two days now since we’d won the raffle, and still she hadn’t taken off the princess costume, although she hadn’t touched her tiara since the fist night.

“I… don’t want a different costume,” she said sadly.

“Oh, but I’ll make you pretty!” Chao promised. “Like a… Weewoo! Yes! A Weewoo! You guys can be white Weewoos! Wouldn’t you like to be a white Weewoo?”

“Not really,” Sae said.

“Well. I’ll change your mind on that with my great styling, I swear!” Chao exclaimed. When Sae still didn’t budge, Chao added a little desperately, “Please? Because if you don’t cooperate, I’m fairly sure Teow over there is going to kill me and find a new stylist.”

Sae still seemed unsure, but fortunately allowed Chao to make over she and Nova. One hour and a lot of glue and feathers later they looked like um… people with glued feathers stuck to them. Not to mention, Chao had only managed to scrounge up a handful of white feathers, so she’d then had to turn to multicolored ones. So Nova and Sae were more rainbow Weewoos than anything. If, of course, the rainbow included such lovely colors as puke green, dirt brown, blinding aqua, and rust orange.

“These itch,” Nova grumbled afterward, scratching at his arm.

“Don’t scratch!” Chao gasped. “If you do the feathers will fall off, and then you won’t even have a costume at all, and then Teow will shoot me.” That seemed to be her go-to line to win compliance, and it had proven very effective so far, as Nova stopped scratching.

The rest of the costumes were equally as dreadful. The Guilds representatives, Thundy and Fraze, were painted with (heavily toxic, from the fumes of it) gold paint—because well, guild sounded sort of like gilt, which was what something was called when it was covered with gold. The Neopia players, Tiger and Kozma, were shoddily dressed as Neo from The Matrix and then a pea. Put them together, and you got Neo-pea(uh). Azzie and Terra, of the Splatterboard, were splattered with various colors of paint and then had wooden boards hung around their necks. Gelquie and Cassie, from RolePlaying, were artfully decorated with Monopoly play money and plastic dinner rolls (what, the admins had given Chao plastic dinner rolls, but so little by way of actual material that Azzie, Terra, Thundy, and Fraze were all naked save for the paint!?).

As for Celestial and me, Chao had a bit of a hard time coming up with a costume. Finally, she simply decided to paint and clothe us in the colors of our titles: cyan for Celes, orange-brown for me. The end result was Celes looking like a sickly Smurf and me looking like someone with very bad, very peculiar case of jaundice.

Everyone was all styled up by around two in the afternoon, giving us several hours to mill about the training center before the parade. And ‘milling’ was all we did, given that no one particularly wanted to be the one to ruin their costume by actually training.

I looked over the players from the boards that Nut had been assigned, and was relieved to find that they all looked just about as ridiculous as Chao’s charges. The Icy Taco representatives had been glued up with taco shells and had ice cube stickers plastered on them. The Editor’s Mark players had quills attached to them and were wearing… monocles? Did editors generally wear monocles? The NT Staff Call people were, predictably, carrying around (plastic, hollow) staffs and had pages of the NT adhered to their bodies (Nut sure did like glue, didn’t they?). The Forum Gates people had been outfitted with bonnets and diapers, presumably to represent their newbie-ness. They both looked mortified. The Games & Interactive players were covered in dice, playing cards, and jacks. The Artist’s Alley folks had paintbrushes, crayons, and markers glued onto their bodies and threaded through their hair.

“This is awful,” grumbled Kristy as she fiddled with a colored pencil that had been adhered onto her forehead. “We look like idiots.”

Just like the previous days, our group of five—Gelquie, Terra, Kristy, Sae, and me—had gathered immediately upon returning from the styling session. We were all miserable, and Kristy was right: we looked like idiots.

“I miss being a princess,” Sae sighed.

“At least we’re still alive,” Gelquie reminded her. “There are worse things than simply not being a princess anymore.”

“Much worse,” I agreed with a soft, sad sigh.

Chapter Six

SPOILER: Click to show

6. The Parade

At 5’ o clock sharp, the admins descended on the training center like vultures on carrion. Since the raffle, only Dan—and this morning, Hunty—had really shown their faces in Admin Alley, but all of them were together now. They wore fancy suits and dresses, except for Komrade Killix, who was clad in a… military uniform? What, she fancied herself as a soldier now? Crazy lout.

“Good evening,” Dan said as he studied our costumes with a raised eyebrow. The corners of his lips twitched. I could tell he was trying to keep from laughing. In as level a voice as he could manage, he continued, “If you’ll follow us now, we’ll lead you to the start of the parade route. You will all be marching alongside your board-mates, two abreast, in a straight line. And just so you know, this will be your one and only chance to appeal to the masses in-person before the Games begin. So try and put on a happy face, hm? You know, waving. Smiling. If you act like a sour, sullen child, you’ll win no fans—and fans turn into sponsors, which might keep you alive in the arena. Now, any questions before we go?”

Thundy raised his hand. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve got a question. If you haven’t noticed, Fraze and I are naked except for our skivvies and this coat of horrendous gold paint. Any chance we can cover up a bit more before being strutted in front of the entire forum?”

“No,” Dan said. “Everyone will march as they’ve been styled. Any other questions?” When everyone shook their heads no, Dan smiled. “Excellent! Let’s go now. And remember, any attempts to flee would be very ill advised, either during the walk to the parade route or the parade itself. We have copious amounts of armed guards who will shoot you before you can say ‘boo’. And then you’ll have to play the Games will shot up knees or arms or shoulders, not fun! Not to mention, I doubt fleeing like a scared, pathetic bunny rabbit will be very appealing to potential sponsors, hm? Now, follow us!”

And off we went through the dizzying maze of side streets and back alleys, weaving and wending through the hidden parts of the NTWF. Our final destination, and the parade’s start point, turned out to be at the fringes of the Neopia board. According to Dan, we would begin marching along one of Neopia’s side roads, just to get warmed up, before turning onto the forum’s main street, which ran all the way from the Neopia board down to the edge of ModSquad.

“Now, remember, smile and wave—but I also must warn you, that you are not to interact with the spectators beyond gestures such as smiling and waving. No saying hello to friends. No conversations.”

“No begging them to save us, you mean,” Fraze muttered under his breath.

“I heard that,” Dan snapped. “Now, find your board-mate, and form a line in the order of the boards. That means Neopia first, ModSquad last. Marching will begin in sixty seconds.”

Celes and I found each other and paired up to the form the tail of the line. I hadn’t spoken a whole lot to her in the past few days. It wasn’t purposeful, really, but I’d been distracted by the group I’d formed at the outset, and she’d been… not sulking, exactly, but off by herself. All of us players were definitely scared and jittery and angry. But Celes seemed a touch more bitter than the rest. It wasn’t surprising; after all, beyond Kozma’s attempt to flee upon being chosen and Jay’s pursuits in punching, Celes been the only one to tell off the admins during the raffle. Had been the most outspoken and stubborn. The only reason she’d even ‘agreed’ to play was because Killix was threatening to murder newbies otherwise. A couple days in, some of the players appeared to be accepting their fates a little bit. They were putting all their effort into training, trying to make the odds truly turn in their favor. But not Celes. While the others, myself included, dabbled at fire-making or climbing ropes, she simply skulked about the training center, working at nothing in particular. She stayed tight-lipped and dour. Observing instead of participating. She did not try to form any alliances. She did not speak to the other players. She simply stood and watched. A lone wolf.

Now, I said to her, “At least our costumes aren’t the worst, eh? At least we have clothes.”

She shrugged. “What’s it matter what we look like? We’ll be dead soon enough.”

“Maybe not.” I bit my lip. “One of us could win.”

“Twenty-four players. One winner. That’s nearly a ninety-six percent chance of dying.” She ran her fingers through her hair, which had been painted cyan along with her skin. “Ninety-six percent. Who are you kidding, Carrie? Neither of us is going to win.”

And with that cheery comment, the parade commenced. After marching us along the first few feet, Dan, Komrade Killix, and the rest of the admins told us they were going to go watch the festivities from their private box along Main Street, but to remember the guards, a.k.a, their pets. As if we could forget them. They peppered the parade route like fleas, guns outstretched and ready to shoot… not to mention the two that flanked the chain of players, one at the head and one at the tail, right behind Celes and me. There were even more pets than I’d realized. Teow, Bacon, Alyssa, Birdy, and Mel, of course. But there were others, too. Omni. Breakingchains. People I’d considered friendly now stood there ready to shoot my kneecaps out if I dared break rank. For the umpteenth time in the past few days, my stomach curled. Churned.

It seemed as if the entire forum had come out to watch the march of the doomed. And though some were cheering and waving, the mood of most of them seemed quite grave, really. It dawned on me that they might not be attending the parade voluntarily. The admins had probably threatened them if they didn’t come out and support the players. After all, beyond the admin pets, all of these people watching the parade had to know that the only reason they weren’t in the parade was because of a lucky shot. A folded piece of paper merely grazed by wandering fingers instead of plucked out of a gleaming bowl. Though Dan made it sound like the rest of the forumers were just peeing themselves with excitement over the impending Games, I was fairly sure that this was false. They were playing along because they were scared not to, nothing more, nothing less.

**

It was approximately halfway through the parade, as we neared Artist’s Alley, that pandemonium broke loose.

See, Main Street was, as a whole, ramrod straight—except for one small section of it, in between the Editor’s Mark and Artist’s Alley, that curved a bit. This led to a quasi-blind corner, where one’s view if they were say, marching along the road, temporarily became limited to just a couple dozen feet ahead, until they crested the curve. After this, everything went back to normal. Main Street straightened back out like curly hair run through a flat iron.

Just moments before all hell broke loose, I thought to myself off-handedly: This curve would be a very good place for someone to make a break for it. Of course, I wasn’t actually expecting someone to make a break for it, given the armed guards and Dan’s solemn warning about blown-off knees and shoulders.

Kozma, however, had other ideas.

It shouldn’t have been too much of a shock, really. Based on his ‘attempt-to-beat-down-the-door-and-run’ reaction upon winning the raffle, it was obvious that trying to flee was a risk he was willing to take. Still, the suddenness of it, the chaos of it, took me by complete and utter surprise.

Along with his board-mate, Tiger, Kozma was at the front of the pack of players. Like the rest of us, he’d been walking a brisk but steady pace for the duration of the parade. Until we reached the curve, that is. At which point, like a gazelle being chased by a lion, he broke into a sprint.

For a few brief seconds, he ran straight forward. But there was an armed guard there, and seemingly deciding that it was a poor idea to blaze right past them, Kozma turned and darted towards a clump of spectators off to the side, in an effort to lose himself amidst the crowd. With a surprising litheness, he leaped over a barricade that had been erected to keep the players separate from the onlookers. Fat lot of good that did.

“YOU STOP THAT!” shrieked one of the guards, Teow. “COME BACK HERE BEFORE I SHOOT YOU!”

Kozma did not come back: he kept running, pressing himself into the crowd. Likely realizing that concealing him might lead to bystanders being shot, the crowd parted around him like the Red Sea with Moses.

“THE REST OF YOU, STOP MARCHING IMMEDIATELY!” yelled another of the guards, Birdy, before flinging herself after Kozma.

The rest of the players and I ground to an immediate halt. We could only gape on in horror as Birdy lobbed herself over the barricade and sprinted after Kozma. Teow was close on both of their heels.

For a moment, it seemed like Kozma might actually make it away from the pursuing guards, as he’d already covered a remarkable amount of ground. But then he made a fatal error: he looked back over his shoulder, as if to gauge the distance between him and the pets. And that was why he didn’t see the small dip in the sidewalk before him. His ankle caught. He went down like a sack of bricks, landing on the pavement with a sickening crack. In seconds, the guards were on top of him.

As they dragged him, flailing and screaming, back over to the rest of us players, I nearly threw up. Why? Because that crack. It had been the crack of bone, his ankle twisting into an entirely unnatural angle. Broken.

Another of the pets, Ian Wolf-Park, had raced from his post a couple hundred feet up the road to assist his fellow guards. He helped Teow hold onto Kozma, who was still attempting to escape in spite of his bum ankle, as Birdy pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and talked rapidly into it. After a brief conversation, Birdy hung up the phone and then turned to the rest of us players.

“I just spoke with the administrators. The rest of the parade is canceled. Please follow Ian, Teow, and I back to Admin Alley. Anyone who thinks Kozma is an inspiration and would like to follow in his footsteps will be shot. And Komrade Killix was very clear that we could take a kill shot, and then merely select a replacement player from your home-board. So think about that before you make a fool out of yourself like Kozma.”

Chapter Seven

SPOILER: Click to show

7. The Ranking of the Players

Apparently being a player meant that no proper medical care was to be afforded, as the only treatment Kozma was given for his clearly broken ankle was gauze wrapping. No crutches. No splint. Not even a dang Tylenol to ease the pain.

For his ‘supreme idiocy’—as Killix called it in her scathing lecture to us a couple hours after the parade was halted and we were lugged back to Admin Alley—we would receive no dinner. I felt like a little child, sent to bed with no supper by Mommy after doing something naughty. Except replace ‘mother’ with ‘dictatorial tyrant’. And add in the fact that truly, I had done nothing wrong. Kozma had attempted to run, sure. But the fact that everyone else was being punished for his wrong seemed a bit unfair.

Not that I could blame him for trying, really. Like Celes had gloomily noted, all of us had about a 96% chance of dying in the arena. Maybe Kozma ran some calculations in his head and decided he had a 5% chance of successfully escaping, and that therefore it was worth it.

“At least our chances of winning went up,” Kristy sighed that night in our room. Sae had gone to bed immediately upon entering the space, but the rest of our group had gathered in the corner to talk amongst ourselves.

“Why do you say that?” Gelquie asked.

“Because he has a broken ankle,” she explained. “He’s not going to make it very far with a broken ankle.”

“He’s just lucky he didn’t get shot,” Terra said. “Or get a bystander shot.”

“He probably doesn’t have many fans,” Kristy said a bit too glibly, fiddling with her blonde hair. “Flinging himself into the crowd with armed guards giving chase? Not very endearing. People probably aren’t going to root for someone who put them in harm’s way.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think having fans is going to be enough to win,” I said.

“It could help, though,” she replied. “I think Hunty mentioned that people can sponsor you if they like you. Which I imagine means you know, give you stuff. Helpful stuff. I’m happy with anything that’ll improve those odds…”

“Even with Kozma a dead man walking, the odds are still just 4.3% that any one particular person will survive,” said a new voice.

Our eyes snapped towards the speaker: Celes, who was lying on her top bunk a couple feet away, and apparently eavesdropping. She had her knees drawn up to her chest and her lips pursed. Her hair was braided into a messy plait. Though all of us had attempted to scrub the paint-and-glue portions of our costumes off in the cold, drippy showers of the Training Center after the parade, her skin was still flecked with stubborn swipes of cyan.

“4.3% is better than nothing,” Kristy said hesitantly. “And better than it was before.”

Celes shrugged. “Whatever keeps you going in the face of inevitable death.” And she turned away from us.

None of us spoke anymore after that.

**

The next few days passed in a blur, everything melding together: wake up with the sun, eat a bland breakfast, train all day, devour an equally as bland dinner, and then spend the night tossing and turning atop my bunk. Before I knew it, I awakened one morning and realized that it was the last day before the start of the Games.

As I downed my breakfast, my eyes stayed glued to the dining room’s clock. I watched with utmost dread as it ticked towards 7am, knowing that once it hit it, I officially might have 24 hours or less to live. At least, I thought dourly, I probably wouldn’t die first: without medical aid, Kozma’s ankle had swelled to epic proportions. It hung limply, still pointing in a very wrong direction, and he couldn’t put any weight on it without screaming in pain. He hobbled about in a horrifically clumsy way, tripping and swaying and staggering, with the coordination of… well, a particularly drunk Hunty, if I was being generous.

He wouldn’t make it five seconds in the arena.

I was also nervous about Sae. After washing off her terrible Weewoo costume, she’d put her princess dress back on and absolutely refused to wear anything else. She spoke little, but when she did talk, it was mostly complaining how this whole thing was so dreadful for a princess like her. How would she survive the Games? I was afraid she’d freeze at the outset and be cut down in the blink of an eye. Gelquie, Kristy, Terra, and I had talked about it last night, how we planned on dragging her along with us at the start so that she wasn’t instantly killed. But what if she refused to come with us? What if she panicked and absolutely wouldn’t move? The thought of leaving her made me sick, but I knew I couldn’t risk my own life to drag her along with us…

I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

I was so lost in my nervous reveries that I didn’t notice Dan waltz into the room until he loudly cleared his throat and announced to us, “Good morning, players! How is everyone this morning?”

As I snapped my head towards him, a few of my fellow players muttered responses, none of which were very genuine, because I was pretty sure nobody in this room beyond Dan was ‘fine’.

Not that Dan cared. “Wonderful!” he said. “Now, today is the final training day. Your interviews will air tonight at 8pm all across the forum. My fellow administrators and I have arranged to have a television brought into each of your rooms so you can watch them. Generous, right?” He beamed. “First, however, there is another very important thing to take care of: your demonstrations!”

“… demonstrations?” Jina asked.

“Oh yes! Today at 3pm, each of you will be privately brought before the rest of the administrators and me. You will show us what you’ve learned in training—demonstrate to us your most lethal skill, your secret weapon, what you’ll use to blaze through that arena tomorrow! Then, we will score you out of 10 and air your score alongside your interview. So that the viewers have a bit more information by which to place their bets. Fun, right?”

“What if we haven’t learned anything?” Coaster asked.

“Such humility! Of course you’ve learned something! And if you haven’t, well—better get to training soon so you can learn a new skill in the next few hours! So finish up those delicious bowls of mush and get to work!”

**

“What kind of skill am I going to show them?” Kristy lamented awhile later inside the training center. “I can sort of start a fire. And climb up half a rope before falling. And hit target dummies with arrows most of the time, but never anywhere good. None of those are exactly going to make me a superstar in the arena.”

“Do you really think anyone here has some secret hidden talent?” Terra asked, glancing around at our fellow competitors. Jina was presently shooting arrows at the target dummies with an immensely low success rate. His board-mate, Coaster, shot alongside him and had embedded a grand total of one arrow in a dummy; the rest went wide by a margin of probably ten feet. Elsewhere, Morgan of NT Staff Call had spent the past thirty minutes rubbing two sticks together without even a spark; her board-mate, Sam, was trying out the ropes course and was just managing to give himself rope burn. At the station where one was supposed to distinguish between edible and poisonous plants, Cassie had just been forced to ingest an antidote by the station supervisor after mistaking highly toxic berries for edible ones. Needless to say, Terra was right: Kristy wasn’t the only one without a talent.

... except, I noticed, for the pack, as I’d internally dubbed the group that was made up by Jay, Nova, Ginz, and Elcie. They weren’t amazingly skilled or anything, but they were respectable, especially if you put them all together. Ginz could start a fire in a snap. Nova could shoot a mean arrow. Jay had a way with throwing heavy objects… and knives. Elcie could scamper up and across the ropes course like a monkey. On their own, they were contenders, but nothing remarkable. Together? They would be a force to be reckoned with.

“They’re cocky,” Gelquie said as she noticed where my eyes had fallen. “Overconfident. That’ll be their downfall.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m worried about them.”

“We’ll just try and avoid them,” Kristy said. “They can’t kill us if they’re not near us, right?”

“I suppose,” I conceded. Only in my head did I add, But what if it’s just us and them left? We won’t be able to avoid them forever.

**

“Because interviews went in alphabetical order,” Dan said upon gathering us at 3pm, “the demonstrations will go in reverse alphabetical. That means Tiger is first. So Tiger, if you might follow me into the private demonstration area.”

Tiger swallowed hard and set off with Dan, and the rest of us simply sat there and started our long, agonizing wait for our own turns. With each minute that passed, I grew more and more nervous. More psyched out. What was I going to do to impress the admins? My best station had been the ropes course. I wasn’t monkey-like as Elcie was, but I could hold my own. So I could… try and climb around. Assuming they even had ropes in their demonstration area. But that wasn’t exactly impressive. And I didn’t have many other skills, alas, even after almost a week of utilizing the training center. The thing that the admins didn’t get, I decided, was that you can’t just throw a group of clumsy, terrified people into a training center and expect them to suddenly become skilled, coordinated survivalists and athletes. It just didn’t work like that.

A couple minutes later, one of the pets, Mel, came out to retrieve the next on the list, Thundy. Since Tiger didn’t come back with him, I assumed the players were taken elsewhere following their demonstration. This thought was confirmed when Mel arrived to gather Terra, and Thundy wasn’t with her.

“Good luck, Terra,” I said.

“Thanks,” she replied. “I’ll need it.”

By the time my turn rolled around, I was almost nauseous from anticipation. I felt bad for Azzie, the last up, for having to wait all alone. I gave her a halfhearted wave as I started towards the demonstration area. She forced a smile and waved back. Waving. Today we were waving. Tomorrow would we be trying to bash in each other’s skulls?

The demonstration room was… interesting. It was basically a large tent tucked behind the barracks, apparently hastily constructed after we’d left our lodgings earlier in the day. Inside it were a variety of things with which one could use to impress the admins, who were (smartly) seated behind inside a large Plexiglas cube, the entrance to which was guarded by two pets.

I glanced around at the weapons and tools scattered about the tent. Weights. A bow and arrow set, plus some target dummies. Throwing knives. A bucket filled with kindling, presumably for fire starting. A couple flimsy ropes were strung up and attached to the roof of the tent. I could try and maneuver them, but they looked rather… shoddily hung. I was afraid if I grabbed them wrong, the whole tent would come tumbling down.

“You can begin,” Killix announced through the Plexiglas after I’d spent a solid minute gaping at the possibilities without selecting anything. “Any more dawdling will negatively impact your score.”

“Ok, um. Sorry. I was just uh. Looking,” I said.

“Begin,” she repeated.

“Right.”

Without much thinking, I grabbed the thing closest to me: a wooden bow, light and supple. I slung it over my shoulder, then arranged the target dummy (which had several puncture wounds in it from earlier players). There were several types of arrows to choose from, and not knowing which was best, I palmed a handful of ones with gleaming metal tips.

My success with archery within the training center had been… marginal. I hit the dummies sometimes, but usually in bad places. I hadn’t once hit the ‘heart’. More arrows than not went extremely wide, lodging in walls and once almost nicking PFA’s cheek as she strode by behind the archery area. Fortunately she believed me when I said it was an accident.

So picking archery was a risk. But since there wasn’t exactly any one skill I was fantastic at, anything would be a risk. And maybe I’d sink one or two arrows into the dummy’s thigh or something. Or at least get one close.

“Um,” I announced to the admins, “I will be demonstrating to you my great archery skills.”

“Get on with it,” Nimras said.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and took a deep breath. Tried to ease my nerves as I lined up my shot. Let the first arrow fly.

It went so wide that it whizzed clear out of the tent, sinking itself into a tree several dozen feet away.

Great.

Trying to ignore the admins’ sniggering, I secured another arrow and pointed the bow towards the dummy. My cheeks burned, and sweat rolled down my forehead. I was so nervous that my hands were quaking. Cripes. I would be lucky if this arrow didn’t nosedive and plant itself in the ground two feet in front of me. Before me, the dummy danced in and out of my vision as I was hit by a sudden, severe wave of dizziness and nausea. Almost as a protective measure, I clamped my eyes shut.

Before I knew what was happening, the second arrow flew out of the bow.

I opened my eyes again just in time to see it plant itself firmly in the dummy’s heart. Bulls-eye.

In their Plexiglas box, the admins had stopped their tittering. Dan had a shocked eyebrow raised and Killix’s mouth hung agape. I debated shooting another arrow, but was fairly sure lightning wouldn’t strike twice, and the next arrow would go as wide as the first, and then the admins would completely forget about my kill shot and give me a zero score.

So instead, I set the bow back down before walking over to the dummy and yanking the arrow out of its chest. It had hit so hard, and buried so deep, that the wood was now skewed, the metal arrowhead irrevocably bent.

“Thank you for your time,” I said, starting out of the tent.

“You—you can’t take that with you!” Dan called out.

“Oh? This?” I glanced down at the arrow. “Sorry about that.”

And then before I could stop myself, I flung it full force at their Plexiglas box. It had no chance of actually hitting them, but that didn’t stop all of them from flinching as, metal tip first, it smacked against the cube. Most of them just cringed a bit, but Hunty (drunk as per usual) leapt straight out of her chair from fright.

“Thanks again!” I called with a forced smile before striding out of the tent.

Chapter Eight

SPOILER: Click to show

8. The Interviews and Results

That night at 8pm, we all gathered around the circa 1975 television that the admins had wheeled into our room. Its screen was grainy and crackly, and it couldn’t maintain a steady volume. In order for everyone to get a good view of it, several people were watching with craned necks from top bunks, myself included. Even then, the vantage point was far from stellar.

The program opened with a voice-over note from Stal that essentially gave a recap of why the Games were being held and then a short summary of the past week’s events (the raffle, the training, the parade—though he glossed over the part where the parade was abruptly ended after Kozma’s escape attempt).

Then began the interviews.

They were aired in no particular order that I could discern—not board-order, not alphabetical—and it was clear to me immediately that they’d been edited with an extremely heavy hand… and not particularly well. The cuts were sharp and sudden. One second Dan would be sitting with say, his chin resting in his hand, only for a jagged cut to occur and then wham, his hands were suddenly in his lap. The players’ answers to questions had also obviously been spliced and oftentimes placed in the wrong context. For example, Dan might ask: “How do you feel about the administrators?” and the player would answer with something like, “Wonderful!”; or Dan would ask, “Are you excited to play the Games?”, to which the player would say, “Oh, yes!”. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that those answers were, in reality, given to very different questions.

The most nerve-wracking part of each interview came at the end, when that player’s demonstration score would flash on the screen for a few moments before cutting to the next interview. Most of them were fairly low. Coaster received a paltry three, which caused him to groan and stalk away from the TV in disgust, lamenting that he should have gone for the ropes instead of the throwing knives. Sae somehow managed to pull a five, but wouldn’t tell anyone what she’d done when asked. Gelquie got a four, as did Kristy, while Terra got a five (she excitedly announced to us that she’d thought of starting a couple fires, then juggling the burning twigs—which was apparently enough to somewhat impress the admins, though I had no idea how such a skill would prove useful within the arena). Thundy managed a six, and so did Tiger. All of the newbies—Morgan, Sam, Lukas, and Gloria—got matching twos. More fours were issued to Jina, PFA, Hunter, and Fraze. Cassie got a six, Celes a three, Azzie a baffling three and a half (really, admins?). The most embarrassing was surely Kozma’s zero; but given that he couldn’t even walk, it wasn’t that surprising.

The scores that most unnerved me, though, were those of Nova, Ginz, Elcie, and Jay. Seven, eight, eight… and nine. A nine! Jay smiled smugly and received high-fives from his buddies when it was displayed. The look in his eyes was that of a man just bursting with self-assurance. Maybe Gelquie was right: maybe the group’s overconfidence would be their downfall. I could only hope so, anyway.

Just to prolong my unease, my interview and score were displayed dead last. I barely heard a word of the interview, my heart was thudding so fast and loud in my chest. I just wanted the score, that number to flash on the screen. Throwing the arrow at the admins probably hadn’t won me any brownie points. But I hoped for at least a three, maybe a four. I had hit the dummy right in its heart, after all. And it’s not like I’d hurt any of them with the lobbed arrow. Just scared them. A momentary fright.

“… and thanks for speaking with me, Carrie!” Dan’s chipper voice said, as the image on the screen started to fade.

The moment of truth.

A number flashed.

1

I cursed under my breath. 1? They’d seriously given me the second-lowest score after Kozma’s zilch? The dang arrow hadn’t even touched them! Hadn’t even had a chance of touching them! I blinked back the tears that were welling in my eyes. Oh, how I wished I could go back in time, stop myself from being so stupid. Without that last move, I probably would have managed a decent score, middling at the very least. Instead, I’d done even worse than the dang newbies.

“Ouch,” Kristy said from her perch on her own bunk bed, which was beside mine. “What’d you do so bad?”

“Threw an arrow at ‘em,” I grumbled.

“… an arrow? At the admins?” asked Gelquie from the floor, her eyes wide.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Jay sniggered. “Ridiculous,” he said, to which his lackeys nodded in agreement.

“Oh, shut up, Jay,” Terra snapped.

“Are you threatening me?” Jay asked.

“No. Just telling you to stop being a jerk.”

“You’d better watch yourself,” Nova said. “Of everyone in this game, Jay, Elcie, Ginz, and I have the highest scores. That means we’re the best. And I think it’s pretty idiotic to make enemies of us already.”

“She’s not trying to be your enemy,” Gelquie said.

“I’m not,” Terra agreed. “But if you think having a high score is going to keep you alive, Nova, then you’re the idiot. Look around this room. There are twelve people here. Then twelve next door. Only one is going to survive. And of those ‘high scores’ you tout? Um, hello, Nova. You have a seven. You’re the weakest link of your little friends. You think they won’t kill you the moment you turn your back?”

“Not before we kill you,” Nova growled.

“You’re first on our list,” Ginz added. “And your friends, too. So Kristy, Gelquie, Sae, Carrie—you can thank Terra here for painting a target on all of your backs.” She smiled poisonously. “Now sleep tight, guys. It’s time for you to die come morning.”

**

It wasn’t even 5am when Teow came into the room and woke us all up, said it was time for us to get ready for the Games. She handed us each uniforms to wear into the arena: a white t-shirt, black linen pants, and grey tennis shoes with matching socks. The shirts were all identical except for the embroidering over the left breastbone with our names, followed by our board names.

Carrie: ModSquad

I ran my fingers over the lettering. Sourly decided that the admins had only gone for white so as best to display our blood once we died.

“Don’t we get supplies?” Coaster asked after we were all dressed.

“No,” Teow said. “There will be a pile of supplies in the arena. First come, first serve. Now, if you’ll follow me, I’ve been appointed to lead you to the preparation area outside the arena, where the administrators will brief you on the rules and whatnot of the Games.”

We were all silent as the grave as Teow, joined by Mel, marched us from Admin Alley to the preparation room that had been constructed just outside the confines of Memory Lane, where the arena was located. It was an airy but stark place, and had obviously been hastily built: it smelled of wet paint and plaster. The people from the other room were already milling about it when we arrived. The admins showed up a couple minutes later.

“If you’ll gather around,” Dan said, waving us over. Once we’d assembled, he smiled broadly and went on, “It is now approximately 5:45am. You will enter the arena at 6:55, to be at the starting line by 6:59. You will then have to stand in place for 60 seconds before the Games officially begin: and when I say in place, I do mean in place. Any movement prior to 7am will lead to instant death.”

With that, he strode over to a cabinet in the far corner of the room, from within which he withdrew a canvas bag. Out of the canvas bag, he removed what could only be described as a thin, metal dog collar. Placing it in the palm of his hand, Dan held it out for all of us to see.

“These handy collars will serve numerous purposes within the arena,” he said. “First and foremost, they’ll allow my fellow administrators and I to track your location at all times. Second of all, inside each collar is a very small amount of explosives, which can only be triggered via remote control by myself or Komrade Killix—or will automatically go off if one attempts to forcibly remove the collar without the proper key; again, only Komrade Kilix and myself have access to the keys. Try and pry the collar off? Boom. Move an inch before 7am? Boom. Do something in the arena that you shouldn’t be doing?” He paused before admonishing, “Come on! I know you’re not that daft! So tell me, players, do something in the arena that you shouldn’t be doing?”

“Boom?” guessed Kozma.

“Precisely!” Dan said. “Now, in a few moments, you’ll all be retrofitted with these fine collars. They will not come off until we have our victor at the end of the Games. And as lovely Alyssa, Birdy, Mel, and Teow collar you guys all up, dear Komrade Killix will be giving you a rundown of the general guidelines of the Games—how they will work, so to speak.” He glanced at the pets. “Go ahead,” he said. “Start fitting them. Players, please be cooperative as you’re being fitted. I should not have to tell you that any struggling at this point is very poorly advised.”

As the pets started snapping collars around the necks of my fellow players, Komrade Killix began, “There are not many rules in these Games. Your goal is, quite simply, to get out alive. This necessarily means that all other players must first die. You may kill whomever you’d like, however you’d like, whenever you’d like, so long as it is after 7am. Upon one’s death, a very distinct trumpeting noise will sound throughout the arena to alert the other players of the fatality. Each night at midnight, an announcement will be made by yours truly listing the names of that day’s fallen. All bodies will be removed from the arena promptly by a specially trained crew, who are in fact the individuals fitting your collars right now. If you at any times see these crewmembers, you are not to touch them: if you do attempt aggression… well, as my colleague might say, you will go boom. We have constructed a very tall wall around the perimeter of the arena. If you reach it, you are to turn around immediately. Attempt to scale it and escape? Boom. Ah, I see you’re all fitted now with your collars. So I will turn this over to the fine Stalos to explain to the final scraps of information.”

“Thank you, Komrade Killix,” Stal said as I thumbed at the collar now secured around my neck. It wasn’t overly tight, but it was definitely an unfamiliar sensation, and not particularly comfortable, given that it was made out of well, metal. Not to mention the explosives inside of it. I could barely focus as Stal continued, “You will be provided no supplies upon entry to the arena. But immediately inside, you will notice a pile of supplies of all types, up for the grabbing. There may also be additional supplies hidden around the arena. Finally, you might acquire supplies if you garner sponsors on the outside, who then purchase and gift you with them. All gifted supplies will be sent in via airdrops, so be on the lookout. There is no set time limit for the Games. It will last until we have one player left standing, period, however long that may take. Also, around the arena you will find a great number of cameras, which are used in order to record the Games for airing across the forum. Tampering with cameras is strictly prohibited: they’re our eyes and ears in the arena, and if you attempt to sabotage them, you’ll go—well, Dan says it best: boom. Now, for the next hour or so you will remain in this preparation room. At 6:55, Teow, Alyssa, Birdy, and Mel will lead you to the starting point within the arena, for an approximate arrival of 6:59. You will be arranged in a circle around the supply pile, where you must stay without moving for 60 seconds before the start of the Games—the time will be counted out over a PA system, the same one that will be used to announce deaths at the conclusion of each day. Once the countdown hits zero, the Games begin. Any questions?”

I’m sure there were many, but everyone was so nervous that they just shook their heads no. So Stal smiled thickly and told us that he and the other admins would be going now. That he’d see the winner ‘on the other side’. And with that, the lot of them left.

The final countdown began.

PART TWO: The Games

Chapter Nine

SPOILER: Click to show

9. The Arena

What none of the admins had mentioned was the fact that we were to be led into the arena blindfolded, in a single file line, touching the shoulder of the person in front of us for guidance—the front person who was then touching the shoulder of one of the pets. It was only once we were arranged into a circle, just as the clock hit 6:59, that the blindfolds were ripped off, the pets left, and the arena was presented to us for the first time.

I don’t know what I was expecting. For them to have constructed a woody marsh, maybe. Or transformed Memory Lane into a hellacious, barren desert.

Instead I found myself in the depths of a city.

Memory’s Lane quaint, old houses and shops had been torn down and replaced with a claustrophobic array of tall, narrow buildings. We stood in a plaza that was really more of a roundabout, off which jutted four curvy cobblestone streets. Even when I craned my neck as far as possible, I couldn’t see more than a few yards down any of them, based on the density of the buildings and the way the streets turned so sharply.

In the center of the plaza sat the fabled pile of supplies.

Kristy, Terra, Gelquie, Sae, and I had briefly discussed in the preparation room whether or not to go after the supplies, but hadn’t ended up with a definitive answer. I glanced over at Terra, who was three players away from me… and then my eyes trailed one player further, to Jay. I caught his eye only briefly. It was gleaming with cockiness and challenge, darting between the other players and the treasure trove in the center of the plaza.

“Let’s not,” I mouthed to Terra, nudging my chin at Jay.

She nodded her agreement. So did Kristy and Gelquie when I looked at them… and Sae, too. She was the one I was most worried about. Not that she’d go after the supplies, but that just like in my nightmares, she’d freeze up and refuse to go anywhere. That the rest of us would have to leave her behind. She’d sworn several times this morning that she would follow us wherever we left. That princesses were sometimes warriors, too. I only hoped her words translated into reality.

Over the PA system, Killix’s voice was loud and harsh, counting down to zero. She was presently on forty. Each successive number made my heart pound harder, my stomach flip more.

Thirty-five. Thirty.

I was darting my eyes frantically around at all the other players, sizing them up. Most were standing still and stiff as boards, taking Dan’s warnings of going ‘boom’ to heart. But I noticed that across the circle from me, Sam, one of the Staff Call newbies, was shaking like a leaf. His entire body was quivering, twitching almost.

Fifteen. Ten.

One of the other newbies, Morgan, had tears leaking from her eyes and kept sniffling. Kozma stood with a grimace on his face, balancing mostly on one leg; I vaguely wondered how he’d even managed to make it all the way from the preparation room to this plaza. A lot of hobbling, I supposed.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

The nanosecond ‘zero’ dripped from Killix’s lips, Celestial surged forward like a bat out of hell, dashing towards the supplies. Jay was hot on her heels and rammed Celes in the neck, sending her to the ground… where she was then summarily trampled by the rest of the rushing players. She tried to haul herself back up, but by that time, Jay had reached the supplies pile and hoisted up a throwing knife. He lobbed it at Celes—but it went wide and ended up thwacking right into the throat of Sam.

He fell to the ground, dead.

Trumpets sounded.

Sam’s board-mate, Morgan, let out a guttural scream and leaned over his body. It was a fatal error: the next knife Jay threw sliced into her, and she crumpled over as trumpets blazed once more overhead.

I’d feared that Sae would be numb and frozen, but in the calamity, I was the one who found myself not moving. I simply stood there in horror, watching the pandemonium. Celes, wounded from being trampled but not mortally so, hefted herself off the ground and fled into the distance, sans supplies. Jay threw another knife at her, but again it went wide, this time sinking into the soft flesh of Jina’s stomach. Jina collapsed, and Ginz finished him off with a quick slash from her own pilfered knife. As an almost two-for-one, she then turned and stabbed into the heart of another nearby player: Lukas, of the Forum Gates.

Trumpets blared twice more.

“Carrie!” Kristy yelled as she rushed towards me, accompanied by my other allies. “Let’s go!”

“Before Jay and his cronies decide we’re next!” Gelquie added.

My wits came back to me, and I started to run alongside them—but not before witnessing two more deaths. First was Kozma, who had tried to hobble towards one of the curvy streets, but was hit by an arrow fired by Nova before he made it five feet. Bulls-eye; Kozma fell. Second was Gloria, the last remaining newbie, who was whacked over the head with a tire iron as she wrestled Elcie for it. Needless to say, Elcie won.

As my group and I ran, I heard something whizzing by my ear… and nearly jumped out of my skin when a throwing knife lodged itself into a wooden lamppost directly to my right.

“Grab it!” Terra yelled. “Grab it, and let’s keep going!”

I yanked it out from its resting place in the post, and on and on we ran.

**

Two more trumpets sounded as we ran. I didn’t know whom for, but I dreaded hearing their names at midnight. Secretly I hoped it might be Jay or his cronies, but I suspected not; they were too deft, too skilled.

In any case, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to mull over the identities of the dead, because the admins seemed to have gone out of their way to make the arena as confusing as possible, which meant that navigating it took an immense amount of concentration.

It was a city like no other, its streets wending about in no predictable direction, crisscrossing and turning and doubling back on themselves. The buildings all looked fairly similar to each other, as well, so that it was quite difficult to ascertain whether or not we were passing the same ones twice. For all we knew, we were running in a giant loop and were on our way back towards the calamity at the supplies pile. Once we realized this, after we’d been running for about half an hour, we decided to stop for the moment.

“We can go inside here,” Gelquie panted, pointing at a three-storey building with a redbrick exterior. But when she walked up to the door, it was locked. She frowned and tried to kick it, but it didn’t budge.

“I.. it’s a façade,” Kristy said, peering into one of its windows. Or more accurately, attempting to peer into one of the windows before realizing it was a fake, that the glass backed to solid concrete. “This lousy building is a façade!”

“Are… are all of them façades?” Terra asked, stalking over to the building next door and peering into its windows: concrete again.

“They can’t be,” I said. “We can’t just be expected to wander around the streets with no shelter. Then the Games will last like two hours.”

“Unless they want us to innovate,” Gelquie said.

“Innovate how?” Kristy asked. “By hiding behind lampposts and hoping no one sees us? Crouching lamely in alleyways? Where are supposed to go if we can’t go into any buildings!?”

“We could go up,” Sae murmured.

We all turned our heads towards her, and found her gazing at the roofline. Like most city buildings, the roofs were flat. They were all trimmed with concrete edging that rose up probably a foot, providing a nifty little barricade.

“There might be no actual roofing,” Terra said. “It might just be the concrete edging, and then nothing.”

“One of us should climb up and look,” Kristy said. “Who did the best on the ropes?”

All eyes instantly fell on me, and understandably so. The rest of them had not done very well on the ropes course: Kristy could make it about halfway, Gelquie about a quarter. Sae and Terra could hardly scurry up five inches. On the other hand, I could lug myself all the way up as long as I put my mind into it. But I knew very well that scaling a building was not the same thing as scaling a rope.

Sensing my apprehension, Gelquie said, “I think they’ve designed some of the buildings specifically so someone can climb up. Look at this one. Some of the bricks jut out a bit more than others. Footholds, handholds. There’s a rain gutter running down it for additional leverage. And some of the windowsills poke out a bit.”

“I can always try if you’re too nervous,” Kristy added.

“No,” I said, “I did the best on the ropes, I should scout it out. I’ll call down if there’s a solid roof up there, and then I can help the rest of you guys up.”

I started to climb.

Chapter Ten

SPOILER: Click to show

10. The First Midnight

I almost squealed with excitement when, several minutes of careful climbing later, I reached the roof and discovered it to be fully existent. It was a flat, smooth concrete, and felt solid underfoot. I gave the rest of my group the thumbs up, and then they began their precarious ascent. Fortunately, the footholds and handholds Gelquie had pointed out made scaling the building risky, but not overly difficult. In fact, it was even easier than the ropes course. Within ten minutes, all of us had made it up.

We sat so that the concrete edging concealed us from anyone on the street. After a bit of talk about the horror at the plaza, we fell largely silent. Internally grappling with our probable fates, how close we’d all come to death. The sound of that knife whizzing by my ear played over and over again in my head, on an infinite loop. What if it had been a few inches to the left? It would have sunk into my skull, ended me right then and there. I was lucky to be alive still.

We spent the entire day up on the roof, too nervous to climb down from it and face the possible dangers on the street. We knew that we couldn’t stay up there forever: we had no supplies, no weapons beyond the knife that had almost taken my head off. We could go a day or two without food or water, but not any longer than that. Eventually we would have to embark on a journey for supplies—if not weapons, then something to eat and drink, at the very least. But the thought of doing so unnerved us all.

“Maybe all the rest of them will kill each other off in like, a day. Jay’s pack will hunt down everyone, and then Jay will turn on his cronies, and then we hunt down Jay, and then… the admins decide this was all a horrible idea and let us all leave alive,” Kristy said that night, as we all huddled together for warmth, the concrete unbearably hard against our backs. Above, the sky was inky black and without stars; the wind was breezy and cool. Somewhere nearby a cricket was chirping, the tinny noise of it filling the air.

“We can only hope,” Terra sighed

It was a few minutes later that Killix’s voice broke the silence once more, speaking from above. My heart twinged at the sound it. Midnight, I realized. It must be midnight: time for the names of the previous day’s dead to be announced.

“Good evening, players,” she nearly sang. Gee, someone was overly happy about the horrific deaths. “Congratulations for surviving day one! But it is now, with sadness—” she sounded about as sad as a kid on Christmas who had just been given a pony, or hell, a unicorn “—that I must list the names of the dead, in the order that they fell. From NT Staff Call, Sam and Morgan. From the Games board, Jina. From the Forum Gates, Lukas. From Neopia, Kozma. From the Forum Gates, Gloria. And finally, from the Icy Taco, Hunter and PFA. Sleep well, players, and may the odds be ever in your favor.”

I’d seen the first six deaths—but Hunter and PFA? That was a surprise; they must have been the ones who caused the final two trumpet blares as my group and I ran from the chaos. It seemed so crazy, eight people cut down in just one day, within minutes of each other, really. A solid one-third of the player pool was now dead, just on day one. And what honestly disturbed me more than anything was that, while I did feel a definite sadness, there was also a large part of me that was… not glad, exactly, but relieved. Eight gone, but I wasn’t one of them. Eight gone, but still I lived.

But for how much longer would my luck hold out?

**

We woke up the next morning with the sun.

From the moment I opened my eyes, I felt… pretty miserable. My throat was dry and parched. My stomach rumbled. The rest of my group seemed equally as uncomfortable, with lips cracked and bellies groaning.

“Maybe the fairies will bring us food,” Sae said drowsily.

“No fairies,” sighed Gelquie. “We’ll need to get our own food. And water, too.”

“I’m still a bit nervous to climb down from here,” Terra said. “I just have visions of Jay and his pack lurking around the corner and killing us all in one fell swoop.”

“The arena’s a big place. The chances of that are pretty slim,” Kristy said, though based on her tone, I was fairly sure she was trying to convince herself of that more than anything.

“Either way,” I said, “we don’t have much of a choice. We need to go and find food and water sooner than later. We’re already thirsty and hungry enough. If we wait much longer, we’ll start getting weak. And then if Jay and his pals are waiting for us, we’ll be no match against them.”

“Agreed,” Gelquie said. She scooted over the edging and peered down at the street. “Path seems clear,” she announced. “Want to just climb down and start searching already before we chicken out?”

“Might as well,” Kristy replied.

Fortunately, climbing down was a lot easier than climbing up, as it didn’t require any upper body strength. We’d all made it to street level within a minute or two. Then we had to make the decision of where, exactly, to go. Since we came from the left yesterday, we decided to head right.

“I just hope we don’t end up walking in circles,” Terra grumbled as we began down the curvy, confusing street.

“We could leave breadcrumbs, so to speak,” Gelquie suggested. “Markers. So that we know if we’ve passed landmarks already.”

Kristy shook her head no. “Too risky. What if someone else sees them and uses them to find us?”

“Oh. I didn’t think of that.” Gelquie sighed.

For hours, we simply walked. Ahead and ahead, on an endless march. As the day progressed, it grew unbearably hot, the sun gleaming bright and vicious in the sky. Kristy’s pale skin started to burn, as did mine. The only saving grace was that we ran into no one at all: the streets of the arena were barren, abandoned. Either everyone was hiding out, or we were simply lucky.

However, that about did it for our luck, because while we didn’t run into any other players, we also found no food or water. I knew—knew!—in my head that there had to be things to eat and drink somewhere within the arena. The admins wouldn’t be so stupid as to build the arena dry and without foodstuffs, because then all the players would be dropping dead of dehydration, not murder. And agonizing deaths via dehydration probably weren’t what they had in mind, didn’t make good TV. So there had to be water and food. But where?

It was late afternoon, and I was almost going delirious from the heat, when all of a sudden we stumbled upon a grove of trees… and at first when we saw it, I thought I was hallucinating. What else could be the explanation for the dizzying cityscape suddenly giving way to a wooded thicket? I couldn’t hear nor see any water within it—but this place, it had to be what we were looking for. Why else would the admins have constructed a random wooded area amidst an otherwise endless stretch of high buildings and rutted streets? Well, to mess with us, possibly. It seemed like the sort of thing Killix would find absolutely hilarious… or that Hunty would suggest in one of her drunken stupors. But erecting such an elaborate grove would be an awful intricate prank, even for the psychopaths who’d created the Games…

I blinked once, twice, thrice, wholly convinced that the whole scene would disappear into thin air like the illusion it was… but it didn’t.

“Is that real?” Kristy asked, equally as stunned.

“I… think so,” I murmured.

I wanted more than anything to fling myself towards the grove, into its treed confines. But I held back, knowing that running in like a chicken with my head cut off might be a poor idea. After all, the density of the trees meant that we couldn’t see more than a few yards into the copse. There could be someone hiding just out of sight, ready to ambush us.

“Bad things happen in the woods,” Sae announced. “There could be giants in there, you know. Ready to squash sad little princesses like me.”

“There aren’t any giants in there,” Gelquie said. “But we still need to be careful. Everyone, stick close together. Stay quiet. Listen close for any noises that are… off.”

We started into the grove.

Chapter Eleven

SPOILER: Click to show

11. Into the Woods

We walked slowly and evenly across the brambly ground. After a day of running across harsh cobblestones, the natural earth felt nice beneath my feet, almost springy. That said, with each crunchy leaf that one of us accidentally stepped on, and each branch that cracked underfoot, I winced a little. Afraid that someone else was hiding in these woods, and now they’d heard us, and soon we’d all be dead.

The grove was larger than it had looked at first glimpse. We’d been walking for a solid ten minutes and were now completely encapsulated in the trees. They weren’t very tall trees, and some of them in fact looked fake… but on a couple we found low-hanging fruits—apples, mostly—which we snagged and munched on greedily. We also found some berries on a clump of bushes, but given that none of us had done particularly well in the ‘edible foodstuffs’ training station, we left those. We had enough to worry about without ingesting possibly toxic berries.

Twenty minutes in, all of us froze in our tracks at a noise in the distance. My first reaction was to panic and assume fellow player, but after a few more seconds of careful listening, I realized it wasn’t another person at all.

“A stream,” I whispered. “Water!”

Our pace picked up considerably as we followed the sound. I could practically feel the water sliding down my throat, the coolness of it. Gosh, had I really been reduced to this in merely a day: salivating over water like an ordinary person might salivate over chocolate lava cake or crème brulee? I bet the admins were sitting on their fat butts right now, slurping down sweet, bubbling sodas—or rum and Coke for Hunty, probably—and watching the Games progress with utmost excitement. I bet they were gobbling on bonbons and ice cream bars and cake. I bet they were hoping Kristy, Gelquie, Sae, Terra, and I would run into another player, that a bloody fight would commence.

Oh, how I hated them!

All of a sudden, the tree line broke, and the stream appeared up ahead. Primal instincts took over: we surged towards it, dropped to our knees, and scooped handfuls of the clear, cool water to our lips. We were so (stupidly) distracted by the precious water that we didn’t even notice the person who stood just a couple yards upstream from us.

Cassie.

It was Kristy who first saw her, a solid ten seconds after we’d started gulping water from the stream.

“Oh,” she gasped, pointing towards Cassie.

We all whipped our heads towards her. My stomach dropped, and I almost puked the precious water right back up. For a few brief moments, we simply stared each other down, each apparently shocked by the other’s presence. She had a backpack slung over one shoulder and a bow and arrow set slung over the other. I presumed both items had been pilfered from the melee at the supplies pile yesterday. She didn’t immediately reach for the weapon, much to my relief. But after a couple more seconds, it seemed to dawn upon her that she was one person, and we were five. Her eyes grew wide. Quick as a cat pouncing on a mouse, she whipped the bow off her shoulder and lined up an arrow.

“DUCK!” Terra screamed as the arrow went flying.

We all hit the ground, but too late: the arrow screamed by us, nicking Gelquie on the cheek.

“RUN!” I shrieked as Gelquie clutched at the fresh wound and Cassie lined up another arrow.

We all scrambled to our feet as the second arrow went flying. This one, fortunately, missed us, but just as soon as she’d let it go, Cassie began to string up another. As my group and I flung ourselves back towards the tree line, the barrage of arrows continued. Reminiscent of the knife the day before, one lodged itself in the soft bark of a tree in front of me, missing me by inches.

… the knife. It was only then that I remembered the knife. The night before, I’d taken off my socks to use as a makeshift sheath for it, then stuffed it into my pocket. Now, I desperately plucked it out, fumbled the crude case off. As Cassie lobbed yet another arrow, I wildly—blindly—threw the knife towards her. I didn’t mean to hit her… didn’t think I could hit her. I just wanted to scare her, give her a moment of pause so that she’d stop shooting long enough for us to go away.

But then I heard a horrible thwacking noise, accompanied by a strangled, short-lived scream. Something heavy—a body—hit the ground with a thud.

A trumpet sounded.

I skidded to a dead halt, as did the others, and turned towards where Cassie had been standing. Had been. She now lay on the ground in a crumpled heap, the knife I’d thrown embedded in her chest.

Oh. My. God.

Had I just killed her? Had I really just killed her? Cassie, who I considered a friend? Who just a few days before the raffle I’d spent the day with, the two of us running around the RolePlaying board, laughing and joking and happy?

“You… you didn’t mean to,” Kristy murmured helplessly. “She was trying to kill us, Carrie. You didn’t mean to.”

“You did what you had to,” Terra added.

Blinking back tears, I hesitantly went over to her fallen, bloody body. Crouching down, I felt for a pulse, but was all too aware that I wouldn’t find one: the trumpets had made that clear. I knew, logically, that this hadn’t been on purpose… and that just like had Kristy said, Cassie had been firing arrows at us first. But only because she was terrified. Because this arena had made her so paranoid that she’d thought my group and I might attempt to kill her, so she ought to try and kill us first.

“We should sing her a song,” Sae said somberly. “A nice lullaby, so that she goes to sleep without nightmares.”

“You… you can do that,” I whispered. “I don’t think I much feel like singing.”

“That’s ok,” Sae said. “One voice is better than none.”

She began to sing then, a soft, dissonant lullaby that made my heart ache even more. I knew vaguely that she was being too loud, that it was dangerous what she was doing, because Cassie might not have been the only person in these woods. But I couldn’t bear to tell her to stop.

“We should take her supplies,” Gelquie said gently to me.

I looked up at her, and yet again almost puked as I remembered her cheek wound. It wasn’t anything overly severe, but it was bleeding quite heavily, her skin stained red, the blood dribbling all the way down her chin before splashing onto her clothes and then the ground below. As the old saying went, ‘twas merely a flesh wound, but I hated seeing it nonetheless.

At least when we went rummaging through Cassie’s backpack, we unearthed some gauze, which was promptly slapped over Gelquie’s injury. It wasn’t much: she probably needed stitches. But since sutures weren’t likely something that would be found in the arena, it would have to do.

Also inside the pack we found two canteens, which we quickly dipped into the stream and filled to the brim. Beyond that, there were some mushy protein bars and beef jerky, things I would never consume in the ‘real world’ but that look delectable now. Overall, though the pack wasn’t exactly a goldmine, it was a lot more than we’d had before. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to feel overtly happy about acquiring it, because Cassie being dead was the only reason it was ours at all. And I didn’t want Cassie to be dead.

After taking the pack, Kristy then went around gathering the arrows Cassie had fired, and slung the dead girl’s bow over her shoulder. The best shot back in the training center, we decided she ought to be the one to hold onto it. As Sae continued to sing her melancholy lullaby, we prepared to leave the woods.

But just as we began away, Terra stopped. “You guys,” she said. “We’re leaving something behind.”

“What?” I asked.

She glanced at Cassie’s body. “The knife. We need to dig it out of her.”

I knew it was only practical, but I still couldn’t bear to watch as Terra dug the weapon out of Cassie’s dead, bloody flesh. The weapon I’d thrown into her dead, bloody flesh. Instead, I stared off into the tree line. Tried to settle the newest wave of butterflies that had erupted in my stomach. And listened with an aching heart to the sound of Sae’s singing, her funereal lullaby echoing in my ears.

Chapter Twelve

SPOILER: Click to show

12. Run

We could not find our way back to the roof.

After emerging from the grove, we attempted to go back to our point of origin… but apparently failed in some spectacular way, because we quickly got so turned around that we could barely tell up from down and left from right. Even rehydrated, the heat was stifling, and we were all probably suffering from various degrees of sunstroke. Kristy’s skin, which had been burning since sun-up, was now a crispy shade of tomato red. Mine wasn’t far behind.

After several hours of aimless wandering, Terra suggested giving up on the idea of returning to last night’s roof; after all, we could simply find another one. We now had enough food and water to safely hole up for the rest of the day, so wandering around anymore was just sheer stupidity.

“Here,” she said, pointing to a three-storey building to our left. “Let’s go up there.”

“There aren’t any handholds or footholds,” I pointed out. “We’re not going to be able to climb it very well.”

“Well then, let’s find one that’s more climbable.”

Easier said than done: it took us another half hour to find a building that we could actually scale. And once we were at the top, we were horrified to realize that there wasn’t a solid roof. Nope. Instead of sturdy concrete like last night’s building, this one’s roof was a massively unsteady-looking wood plank that was already half-rotted. Had probably been installed that way, I realized as I wiped a band of sweat from my forehead. It wasn’t sturdy enough for a mouse to scamper across, let alone to support five grown human beings.

I bet the admins were laughing their butts off right now, watching us gape at the inhospitable roof. Hunty was probably guzzling rum and giggling like a schoolgirl while Killix guffawed in her dumb military uniform. “Look at those heat-stroked idiots!” they were probably saying. “Look at their sad faces! So dejected! Ha! I hope they die soon!”

Maybe it was the, well… heat stroke… or maybe it was the horrific events of the past day and a half, but as I stood there three levels up, staring down at the rotting roof with my feet balanced precariously on the top of a windowsill, I felt the sudden urge to scream. To swear and curse at the top of my lungs. I knew I couldn’t, because an enemy player might be nearby and hear me. But it took every ounce of willpower within me to keep that shriek bottled.

I wasn’t the only one on the verge of a breakdown. After climbing back to ground level, I could tell that Terra was blinking back tears.

“Let’s continue on,” she said through gritted teeth as we began walking again. “Maybe we’ll actually get some luck and stumble upon the building from last night. Or die in the heat. Whichever.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Kristy said. “We’re not going to die. Especially not today. Not from something stupid like heat stroke.”

We lapsed into a thick silence then, one that was only broken some twenty minutes later by Sae suddenly making a moaning noise. My first reaction was that crap, she’d been shot, she’d been hit by a knife, she was about to die. But nope. When I whipped my head around to look at her, she was completely fine physically. No nicks, no wounds, no scrapes.

“Sae,” I said, “stop making that noise. We don’t want to attract any attention if someone is nearby.”

“Sorry,” she said, “it’s just… the blood. So much blood. I hate blood!”

“You’re not bleeding,” I pointed out.

“Oh, not me. Gelquie. She’s been leaving a trail of it, you know. It’s just dripping down her face. It’s making me quite queasy.”

It took me several moments to fully comprehend her words, and once I did, my stomach dropped like a heavy stone. I looked back towards Gelquie, who had been ambling along at the rear of the group.

The gauze we’d applied back at the river had slid straight off, dropping unnoticed at some point behind us, presumably. The heat. It was this insufferable heat, which was making us all sweat buckets. The climb up—and then immediately back down—the building hadn’t helped. So caught up in not falling to her death, Gelquie likely hadn’t even noticed as the gauze slipped free. Had probably confused the blood that leaked out afterward with sweat, given that she (and the rest of us) were drenched in it.

And just as Sae had said, the blood had been dripping down with each step Gelquie took, dotting the cobblestones like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs—if you were to replace breadcrumbs with bodily fluids, and then added in the fact that in this instance, leaving a record of our path was as horrendous a thing as possible.

“Please tell me there’s more gauze in that pack,” I said to Terra, who was carrying it.

She unzipped it and fumbled around, but came up empty. “Nope.”

I reached into my pocket and came up with my socks, the ones I’d been using as a knife-case—but Terra also had the knife now, stuffed into the pack, so the socks were no longer serving that purpose. I tossed one at Gelquie. “Not ideal,” I said, “but press it against the wound. Should at least absorb anymore blood and stop it from dripping to the ground.”

“Do we have any tape, or something sticky to adhere it?”

“You guys,” Sae interrupted.

“Give us a minute, Sae,” Terra said as she went digging back through the pack. “No tape, but I was thinking—”

“You guys,” Sae repeated.

“I was thinking,” Terra went on, ignoring Sae’s interjections, “that you could kind of bungee it, maybe? There’s a bit of rope in here. Tie it around the back of your head and—“

“YOU GUYS!” Sae yelled, stomping her foot and pointing her finger behind us. “LOOK!”

We turned to see what she was so insistent to show us… and I promptly almost peed my pants when I saw what—or more accurately, who—had caught her attention. People. And not just any people, but Jay and his pack. They’d been attempting a slow, stealthy approach, but when the realized they’d been sighted, they broke into a run, headed straight towards us.

Oh. Crap.

None of us had to say anything: within a second, we’d all started to sprint away, Sae included. We flung ourselves down the street, our feet beating against the cobblestones, as Jay and the pack chased behind us. I dared glance behind my shoulder a few times and was alarmed to see how heavily armed they were. They’d clearly picked clean most of the supplies pile yesterday: each of them had a stuffed-full backpack plus an entire cache of weapons. Elcie and Nova both had bows, which they’d started to fire. Jay had an entire collection of throwing knives and was lobbing them towards us at a dizzying speed. Ginz had a dart gun, of all things, and was presently attempting to line up a shot as she ran.

As they continued to chase us, I heard Nova yell to Jay, “Stop throwing the knives! We’re going too fast to pick them up! We can’t afford to lose them! Here, you can have my spare bow!”

The elimination of knives from the fray would have been comforting if it weren’t for the barrage of darts and arrows still being fired in our direction at a rapid rate. Apparently these weapons had been deemed less important, more expendable, and thus were acceptable to use even if they might be lost. Either that, or the pack simply had so many of them that they didn’t care about losing a bunch. I fervently hoped for the former.

For what seemed like ages, we ran with our pursuers right at our heels. By some miraculous stroke of luck, none of the arrows they fired hit us: they all went wide. The same thing went for the darts. Still, the fact remained that we were very much the prey in this situation, at a disadvantage. They could fire towards us at their leisure, but unless we ran facing backwards—which would have meant slowing down to the point where they’d simply catch up with his outright—we couldn’t return the favor. It was just a matter of time before one of the arrows or darts struck.

“This is it,” Terra moaned, panting hard. “This is it…”

“Don’t say that!” Kristy wheezed. “Don’t say that!”

But despite Kristy’s plea, I knew that Terra might be right. I just didn’t see how we could get out of this. Jay and his band of merry murderous gentlemen—er, gentlepeople—had clearly demonstrated yesterday that they would kill without hesitation. And even further, that they were pretty dang good at it. The pack was responsible for all of deaths I’d witnessed at the plaza. I hadn’t seen PFA or Hunter die… but I didn’t have to be a betting woman to guess that Jay and the pack had something to do with those fatalities, as well. My group and I? We’d just be another notch in their belts as they gleefully murdered their way towards victory.

Then, like a flash of lightning on an otherwise cloudless day, the strangest thing happened. As we rounded a corner, someone appeared on the street up ahead of us. Just standing there, motionless, as they gaped at the approaching clump of runners.

My trigger reaction was that somehow one of the pack members had broken away from the rest of the group and darted through some obscure back alley we’d missed to cut off our path. But when I glanced back over my shoulder, I noted that all of them were still there. Nova was fumbling to string another arrow on his bow; Ginz was cursing whilst smacking at her dart gun, which had apparently jammed. Elcie was panting like a dog on a hot summer’s day and clutching her side, clearly suffering from a stitch, as Jay sniped at her to ‘man up’.

So this person looming ahead was not a pack member. So then who was it? Given that everybody inside this arena was dressed identically—and the fact that this person had placed a hand over their eyes, to form a makeshift sun visor—it took until we were just a few yards from them for me to be able to accurately identify them.

Coaster.

A very, very confused Coaster. Based on the blistering red shade of his usually pale skin—he was even more burnt than Kristy—and the vacant look in his eyes, I decided he was probably suffering from some form of heatstroke. The sun had messed with his head and dulled his reaction time. Disoriented him. That could be the only explanation as for why he didn’t move even as we grew nearer and nearer to him. It wasn’t until we were mere feet away that it occurred to him to scramble out of our direct path—and even then, he only stepped back a few feet, onto the sidewalk. He did not hide. He did not draw a weapon. He simply gawked, like a captivated kitten watching snowflakes drift from the sky for the very first time.

“Sitting duck!” Jay yelled gleefully from behind us, as my group whizzed by Coaster and left him in the dust. “Guys, let’s take him out!”

I craned my neck back just in time to see Ginz—who’d gotten the dart gun working again—fire towards Coaster.

Mercifully, she missed.

The pack had a decision to make then: either keep running and bypass Coaster… or turn around and finish him off. As morbid as it was, and even though it would mean probable death for Coaster, I prayed ardently for the latter. Why? Because if the pack had to stall, then we might get away. Not definitely: they could catch right back up with us. But at this point, I would take anything—anything—that’d improve our odds of escaping from the pack…

“Keep running!” Nova ordered. They’d also passed by Coaster now, leaving him several dozen feet behind. “We can’t let Gelquie and them get away!”

But Jay snapped back, “No! This opportunity is tailor-made! We can’t just let him live!” And promptly doubled back around, towards the still motionless, disoriented man.

“But they’re going to get away!” Nova said, nonetheless turning and sprinting after his leader.

“We’ll catch right back up with them. They’re slow and weak! Now, shut up and let’s kill him!”

“Guys,” I breathed to my group, “come on… let’s run even faster… this distraction—it might be our only chance…”

“I’m running as fast as I can,” Kristy gasped between wheezes.

“Everyone has so much potential,” Sae replied, picking up her pace. “They can always do a little bit better…”

The most amazing thing happened then. As the sound of desperate, pained screaming erupted from behind us—I winced—the road curved yet again. We rounded it. And suddenly, up ahead on our right, I saw something that made me grin from ear to ear: the building. Our building. The one with the concrete roof that we’d slept on the night before.

“You guys, look!” I said, pointing at it.

“Is that… oh, please tell me it is!” Gelquie replied.

“It is,” I confirmed, lobbing myself towards the building. I started to climb at a breakneck pace, the rest of the group only seconds behind me. The previous night, it had taken us several minutes apiece to ascend. But adrenaline and the threat of death can do a lot to speed you up. We clambered up the brickwork like monkeys, hefting ourselves over the concrete edging just as trumpets sounded.

The pack had finished off Coaster.

Not a minute later, the sound of feet beating furiously against the cobblestones drifted up to our hiding place on the roof. I didn’t dare glance down over the edging, but I knew what it was: the pack recommencing their pursuit of us now that Coaster was dead. They probably expected us to be somewhere up ahead on the road, still fleeing them.

They passed us right by.

Once they were gone, the five of us remained silent for several minutes. We were all still panting, and Kristy and Terra were physically shaking. Gelquie sat with the soiled sock clutched to her wounded cheek, her eyes clamped shut, as if in complete disbelief about what had just occurred. I was in disbelief, too. I couldn’t comprehend how we were all still alive.

Finally, Sae broke the quiet by wistfully sighing, “Jay and his friends have turned very rotten, haven’t they? It’s so sad. I know the light still glimmers for them… but I’m afraid all they see now is the dark…”

“It’s hard to see the light, sometimes,” Terra murmured, “when the world around you seems so very dark.”

“But that’s the thing, Terra,” Sae replied. “It might seem dark, but it’s not. The light always wins in the end. Always. It has to. There simply isn’t any other option.”

Oh, how I hoped that somehow—no matter how far fetched it seemed at the moment, with ten forumers brutally murdered already and our lives hanging so precariously in the balance—that she was right. Please, oh please, let her be right.

Chapter Thirteen

SPOILER: Click to show

13. Plaza

Exhausted from the chase, it took a lot of willpower for us not to completely slurp down the two canteens of water and eat every scrap of food that had been in Cassie’s pack. Rationing everything out was a measure of great self-restraint, and all of us were still thirsty and hungry by the end of it.

At least when the sun went down, the temperature cooled by a good twenty degrees, going from searing hot to tolerable. The evening before had been outright chilly, leaving us huddling together for warmth, but the weather the second night in the arena was almost perfect.

Until, that is, it started to rain. Of course.

It wasn’t by any means the storm of the century, but it definitely made the roof uncomfortable. Without any protection from the moisture, we were all made soggy in record time. The only positive point of it was that we managed to catch some of the rain onto our tongues, and then some more into our emptied canteens—not a huge amount, but anything was helpful.

Midnight was marked by Killix’s voice cutting into the air, overpowering the sound of the raindrops. “Hello, players,” she said. “I hope your second day in the arena went well! Unfortunately, for two more people, the day did not go very well—” The sound of shuffling, a struggle over the mic and then—

“She means people died! Bang bang, arrows and darts and dead, hah!” slurred a voice. Hunty.

More shuffling. A popping noise that may or may not have been Komrade Killix smacking the crap out of her colleague. And then: “I apologize for the interruption. Indeed, people died today. First fell Cassie, from the RolePlaying board. Next was Coaster, from the Games board. Sleep well, surviving players, and may the odds be ever in your favor!”

At least, I thought darkly, Killix didn’t announce the names of the killers. I didn’t think I could bear hearing it announced that I’d killed Cassie; part of me still couldn’t believe that I had. As the rain dripped onto me, I racked my head, trying to think of a way I could have avoided it. We shouldn’t have surged out from the trees like we did, without looking—we should have surveyed the scene first—we should have let her know our peaceful intentions, that we didn’t wish to hurt her. Should have, but didn’t. And now she was dead.

It dawned on me, then: even if I did survive this arena… how would I live with myself afterward? I was a killer now, with a friend’s blood on my hands. It didn’t matter if somehow the odds did turn in my favor, and I made it out of here alive. Things would still never be the same again.

**

The next day was even hotter than the one before, the sun like an iron in the sky, searing us from the moment it rose. As we’d slept, the rain had trickled off, and the stifling heat quickly dried out all the water it had left behind.

The wound on Gelquie’s cheek had stopped bleeding overnight, but it looked awful: an angry red slash, stretching at least two or three inches across. I just hoped that it didn’t get infected, because we certainly had no antibiotics to give her if it did. At the same time, though, we also didn’t have enough extra water with us to spare any to clean the injury right now. In fact, we barely had any water left at all: just the drips we’d collected from the rainstorm the night before, which barely amounted to each canteen being filled an eighth of the way.

“We’re going to need to go and get more food and water, aren’t we?” Kristy sighed as she sipped glumly at one of the canteens.

“We are,” I agreed. “This won’t last us through the day. And we probably should go sooner than later… it’s only going to get hotter as the day goes on.”

“Should we try and find our way back to the grove?” Terra asked.

“No,” I said, a kneejerk response, as visions of Cassie’s fallen, bloody body bloomed in my mind. “I don’t—it’s not—it was far, and we don’t even know how we got there, so we might not find it again.” Not the whole truth—and I was sure they all knew it—but not false, either.

In any case, none of them disagreed with my assessment. We decided to head in the opposite direction from the day before, hoping to find a slightly closer source of water. But none materialized. After a couple hours of wandering, all we’d succeeded in was getting ourselves dehydrated and even more sunburned. Kristy’s burns had started to blister and peel already, like the skin off an onion. It made me a little queasy to look at—but then I just reminded myself of Gelquie’s cheek wound, and suddenly Kristy’s sunburn seemed mild by comparison.

Even worse, after about three hours, we suddenly realized that we’d made a gigantic circle when we found ourselves back at the building with the roof we’d slept on for the two previous nights. At first Gelquie desperately tried to claim that no, it was a different building, it had to be! But a quick ascent to the top confirmed otherwise, because the beef jerky wrappers we’d left behind were there.

“I can’t believe this,” Kristy said. “I can’t frackin’ believe this!”

Upon departing from our ‘home’ building for the second time—hurrah, attempt two, I thought dourly—and taking a different (we hoped) path, we found ourselves back at the plaza where the Games had begun. Apparently we hadn’t taken the most expeditious way to our rooftop the first day, because we made it this time in just about fifteen minutes. As we approached it, we stared longingly at where the supplies pile had been two days ago—but of course it’d been long picked dry. The bodies had also been removed.

The evidence of them had not.

The cobblestones were streaked with blood, gaping, disgusting spatters of it. Even two days later, it tainted the humid air with the smell of copper, of death. Pain. It was everywhere, omnipresent, impossible to avoid.

Given her gentle personality, Sae had been doing fairly well during the Games so far. She’d been a little sullen at times, and still unfailingly optimistic, but still, she’d been managing ok. But now, at the sight of so much blood and gore, I noticed tears pricking at the backs of her eyes… pricks that soon turned into a fat, steady stream, rolling down her cheeks. She snuffled and hiccupped. Made a soft, almost animal moaning noise.

“Hey there, now,” Gelquie said, patting her arm. “It’s alright, Sae. It’s alright.”

“It’s just… so sad,” Sae choked out.

We’d been walking at a steady clip, but had ground to a halt now. We simply stood there in the plaza for several minutes, with Sae sobbing and the rest of us trying to comfort her. That is, until the sound of voices from the distance cut into the air. My blood ran cold. I whipped my heads towards the sound, and was immensely relieved to find that the speakers weren’t yet within viewable distance. Meaning, though we’d heard them—they were speaking very, very loudly, arguing it seemed—there was a chance they hadn’t heard us. They might not know we were here.

“That way,” I hissed, nudging my chin forward. “Away from them. Quickly.”

Sae seemed to know that she’d had her moment, and now had to return to reality. With a heavy arm, she wiped away her tears and took a deep breath. Gave one last forlorn look at the blood-spattered plaza. Then the lot of us ran for it, hoping we’d make it away before the approaching people ever knew we’d been there at all.

Chapter Fourteen

SPOILER: Click to show

14. The Field

The good news? We made it away from the approaching mystery people without them spotting us and giving chase. The bad news? We spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly, and by the time the sun set, we still hadn’t found any water… or food. The rations from Cassie’s backpack had long since been devoured. We had nothing edible or drinkable on us. Not a single drop or crumb.

Even worse, we were hopelessly lost. For the life of us, we could not find our way back to the rooftop. We roamed the curvy, confusing streets like stray puppies, with not the faintest idea in our heads of where we were going. At once, every building and landmark we passed looked completely familiar and completely novel—both like we’d seen it a hundred times before, and never in our lives. We climbed up several random buildings but found no sturdy rooftops. We peered into countless thick windows but found nothing but façades.

By the time Killix’s voice broke into the air at midnight—announcing that the day had elapsed without any deaths (boy, she sounded disappointed)—we were about ready to nestle into an alley until morning, even though we knew this was probably horribly dangerous.

“Five more buildings,” Gelquie said, her tone strained and betraying every ounce of her pain and exhaustion. “Let’s look into the windows of five more buildings, and pray that one of them is not a façade. After that, let’s just find an alley.”

The first three buildings were the same as the rest: solid concrete behind the glass. But on the fourth, we struck pay dirt.

When I first glanced through the window and saw an actual room on the other end, I simply blinked and rubbed my eyes, convinced that I was hallucinating. That my brain, taking pity on me, had decided to invent a non-façade building as an act of mercy, a way to give me a temporary morale boost. But nope. When I pressed my nose back up against the window a few moments later, the room remained.

Nearly quivering with anticipation, I barreled over to the door leading inside. Closed my hand around its knob. Turned it, still expecting for it to be nonmoving, a fake. For the door to have mere cement on its other end instead of a real, tangible room.

Instead, the knob turned easily. The door swung open. Nearby, both Terra and Kristy literally squealed with shock and excitement.

“Careful,” said Gelquie. “Let’s go in slow. In case we’re not the only ones to find this place.”

Fortunately, after a careful examination of the building, it seemed that no one else had discovered it—or, at the very least, were not presently inhabiting it.

It wasn’t very fancy, comprised of a mildewy entry level and then an open loft above, accessible via ladder. The floors were unfinished plywood and the walls were a plaster that had been painted—what else?—admin pink. There wasn’t any furniture, but in the corner we discovered, tossed lackadaisically aside, a bottle of sunscreen. One of the fabled ‘randomly scattered’ supplies, we decided, since surely no other player would have left it behind. Kristy almost cried with relief when we spotted it.

“We should get to sleep,” Terra said as she slipped the sunscreen into the backpack. “It’s already after midnight.”

“Agreed,” Gelquie said. “And hopefully tomorrow we’ll find some water.”

“We’d better,” I said gravely, knowing that we wouldn’t last much longer without something to drink.

“I’m sure the fairies will lead us to another stream tomorrow,” Sae said, curling up on the floor. “I just know it…”

And with that blindingly optimistic statement, we slept.

**

In the morning, we resumed our search for water. But before we left, we took a calculated gamble and covertly marked the door of the building by scraping our knife over it, leaving scratches in the wood. We knew it was risky. That another player might see the gouges and investigate. But after spending so long wandering the night before, and knowing that so many buildings within the arena looked identical, we wanted a way to pick out this building from the rest in case we should pass it by again. We couldn’t chance something like leaving an actual trail by which to find our way back, but at least if we stumbled across it again, we’d know.

Though I’d tried to mentally prepare myself for the possibility of us again wandering all day without finding any water, this never came to fruition, because about an hour into our search, the density of the city abruptly… stopped. The rutted cobblestone street dead-ended, the buildings ceased. Just like had happened at the grove. Except it was immediately quite clear that we weren’t at the grove this time around.

For one thing, there weren’t any trees, just squat, brambly bushes and a long, pale yellow grass that reached almost waist-high. It stretched for as far as we could see, out to the horizon. I could feel it—feel it!—in my bones that there was water nearby. I licked my lips in anticipation, and then my group and I went in.

We walked slowly, in part because it was difficult to maneuver through the scrub and tall grass, but also because we didn’t want to be brash again and have another incident like Cassie. As we walked, I had a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. The hairs on the back of my neck stood. We’d seen no one, but something just seemed off about this whole field. It took me awhile to place my finger on it: the grass. While it rose high in most places, there were clearly areas that had previously been trampled on, waded through.

Someone else had been here, before.

As we descended deeper into the field, the evidence of someone having been around became more overt. A tossed food wrapper here. The trace of a footprint there, if we peered carefully down at the ground, sweeping aside the tall blades of grass. A scrap of what looked like t-shirt had been tied to the branch of a spiny, dead bush. It flapped in the wind like a flag.

“Should… should we turn back?” Kristy whispered as she stared at the blowing fabric.

“No,” Gelquie said firmly. “If someone emerges, we run. But otherwise, we can’t afford it. There’s water nearby. I’m sure of it.”

She was right: not more than five minutes later, we came across a small pond. The water was brackish but still tasted sweet as honey on my tongue. Even better, stalks of something green were growing in it, shooting up through the surface. I reached out and snapped off a stalk, then crunched it between my teeth whilst hoping very hard that it wasn’t some obscure poisonous plant. It tasted earthy, almost like a potato, and when I hadn’t keeled over a few minutes after testing it out, I munched on a bit more. So did the rest of my group.

The morning sun beat down on us.

“You know,” Kristy said as we sat there, gnawing on the mystery food and taking swigs of cool, muddy water, “I was thinking about it. I counted. There are already ten people dead. That’s nearly half. And of those left, five are us. Four are the pack. That means just five singletons.”

“Three,” said Gelquie. “I think Thundy and Fraze are probably together.”

“Why?” Terra asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just have a feeling.”

“I wonder who it is that’s been around here,” Kristy went on. “Not the pack, I think. The grass would be more trampled if it were them. But who, then? I mean, who’s left beyond us and the pack and Thundy and Fraze?”

“Azzie,” I said racking my mind. “And Celes. And… I can’t remember the last.”

“Tiger,” Sae said. “Tiger is the last.”

“Oh, right. Tiger. Well, in any case, it could be any of them. And as much as it’s relaxing to sit here and chat, I think it’s risky to stick around for too long. Let’s finish this uh—“ I glanced at the green stalk in my hand “—vegetable? Fill the canteens. And then get out of here.”

Just as I said this, a whooshing noise from above caught my attention. My first reaction was arrow. Someone was firing an arrow! I jumped to my feet and frantically scanned the area, looking for a shooter. But there was no one… and no arrow ever landed. Plus, I realized, how in the world would someone be shooting an arrow from above? There weren’t any trees here, nowhere to stand beyond the flat, hard ground.

I turned my eyes towards the sky.

The sun was so bright that it took me a moment to find it, drifting lazily in the wind: a wicker basket with a parachute attached to its top. What the…

“A gift,” Kristy said giddily. “A gift from a sponsor!”

The moment the basket reached low enough, Kristy leapt up and plucked it from the sky. The parachute deflated abruptly, and Kristy swept it aside before reading aloud the note that was taped to the basket’s top:

“From Draco,” she said. “Enjoy.”

With hands that were nearly quivering from excitement, Kristy pried open the basket’s top and peered inside. Promptly broke out into peals of joyous laughter when it was revealed to us the basket’s contents: three loaves of thick bread, its crust a perfect brown; an entire pile of beef jerky packets; several packages of dehydrated fruit; a roll of tape; and perhaps best of all, another water canteen.

“Oh,” Kristy breathed. “Oh, this is amazing.”

“Even the parachute is great,” Gelquie said with a broad smile. “We can snap it off and use it for a hat, or a bandage, or… or… just anything!”

For the first time since entering the arena, it seemed like things might be looking up.

Chapter Fifteen

SPOILER: Click to show

15. Boom

Things continued to go our way. We made it out of the field without running into whichever other player had been spending time there. Then, we somehow found our way back to the non-façade building without getting once turned around. I was grinning ear to ear as, running my fingers over our gouge mark in the door, I stepped inside.

We went to sleep that night with full(ish) bellies—we were being careful to conserve our newfound windfall of food—and mouths that weren’t completely parched. Though the night before we’d slept on the ground level, we decided to slumber in the loft tonight, because Gelquie pointed out that it gave us an extra layer of security if someone were to stumble upon our hiding place. If we were on the first floor, we’d be spotted immediately—but in the loft, we were concealed from immediate view.

At midnight, Killix made her nightly announcement, and again seemed horribly torn up over the fact that there’d been no further deaths. The admin was most definitely itching for blood.

I nodded off shortly after her announcement, and my sleep was a quiet and dreamless one. No nightmares for the first time in over week.

I would have probably slept straight through until morning, if it were not for the sound of the door to the building being opened just after 3am. The creak of it, followed by someone stepping inside, jarred me into consciousness. At first, I thought I’d imagined it, that it was a mere folly of my dreamscape. But then from below, voices sliced into the air.

A chill came over me.

As quietly as possible, I crawled over to the railing at the edge of the loft and peered over it. It was pitch black inside the building, but even still, I could vaguely make out the two figures who’d entered the building. Two. Not the pack: that would be four. Both were clearly male, so not Tiger or Azzie or Celes…

Thundy and Fraze. It had to be Thundy and Fraze.

As one of them—Thundy, I thought—shut the door, I inched over to where the rest of my group slept. I was afraid that if I abruptly shook any of them awake, they’d make a noise and give us away. So instead, I employed the method of slapping a hand over each of their mouths prior to prodding them awake, then pointing down at the ground level to alert them of Thundy and Fraze. Within a minute or so, all of them had been roused. And all of us were pretty freaked out.

“Just stay quiet,” Gelquie whispered as softly as possible. “Maybe they’ll leave… stay quiet…”

And so we stayed silent, afraid to even breathe too noisily. Thundy and Fraze, on the contrary, were speaking with each other… and they were speaking loudly. Their voices floated from the ground level up to the loft, and it became apparent very soon that they were not having a conversation so much as an argument.

“You are an idiot!” Fraze groused. “This whole idea, Thundy—I mean—just no! No!”

“But I’m nearly sure I’ve got it figured out,” Thundy snapped back.

“Right, but in this case, ‘nearly’ is well—not nearly good enough!”

“What else do you suggest?” Thundy retorted. “That we just spend our days hiding in alleys and our nights skulking about the arena like dogs with their tails tucked? Terrified of every noise? Thirsty as hell, hungry as hell? Just hoping that everyone else somehow dies and then it’s just us left, and then the admins go, ‘Oh gee, we changed our minds on this whole ‘one victor’ thing, both of you can win, hurrah!’ Because newsflash: that isn’t going to happen. We’re going to die, Fraze.”

“That doesn’t make your idea any less idiotic, Thundy.”

“I don’t care what you think. I’m doing it.”

Beside me, Gelquie pressed her lips close against my ear, and whispered so quietly that I could barely hear it, “Let’s scoot to the edge of the loft. Just the two of us. So that we can see what they’re doing.” She turned towards everyone else and mouthed for them to stay put.

We then crept towards a vantage point from which we could see Thundy and Fraze as well as hear them. They’d relocated from beside to the door to just under the loft: they were almost directly beneath us, so that we could only barely see them. We watched as Thundy pulled what seemed to be a small length of wire from inside the pocket of his uniform linen pants. Fraze reached out and tried to snatch it away from him, but Thundy evaded his ally.

“No!” Fraze barked. “Not happening, Thundy! Don’t be a moron! Even if you do have it figured out, the admins are probably watching us and will realize what you’re doing before well, you can do it.”

“It’s our best shot,” Thundy said. “No matter what, it’s still our best shot.”

A few things happened in very quick succession then. Thundy reached up and poked the wire into the lock of his collar, just as Fraze leaned in and grabbed Thundy’s wrist in an attempt to stop him. Undeterred, Thundy twisted the wire.

“Stop!” Fraze said. “You best stop that right n—”

Fraze never got to complete his statement, for at that precise moment, the collar bomb exploded.

It was a sound so loud that my ears felt like they might blow up as well. Debris was flung about the building, pelting into the loft like little snowflakes of ash and dust and—body. Scraps of wood and metal and God-knew-what-else sunk into my skin, embedding there. I could hear nothing but a horrible ringing noise. I reached out to grip onto the railing of the loft—just to steady myself—before realizing that the blast had knocked it clear over.

As the dust settled, I peered frantically down at where Fraze and Thundy had been standing moments before. Now all that remained of them were bloody, mangled bodies. I couldn’t even tell which was which. Vomit rose in my throat, but I swallowed it down. The horrible ringing noise continued in my ears.

Someone was tapping on my shoulder. I whirled around to find Gelquie, who had also been sprayed with debris and had small shrapnel wounds covering her body. The old injury on her cheek had started to bleed again. She seemed to be yelling something, but I couldn’t hear her over the infernal ringing noise. It took me several moments to read her lips, to discern what she was trying to say:

Run! Run!

I looked over at the rest of the group. Terra and Sae also had shrapnel wounds, though since they’d been farther back from the blast, theirs were fewer and less severe. Kristy seemed the least injured but still had several gouges and nicks across her body. She had her hands clapped over her ears and was staring at me with wide, shocked eyes, as if she still couldn’t comprehend what had happened.

I looked back Gelquie, who continued to yell over and over again for us to run. When still no one moved, she grabbed onto my wrist and dragged me towards the ladder that led downstairs. By some miraculous stroke of luck, it hadn’t been blown to smithereens. We all descended it with clumsy feet. Flung ourselves past the bodies of Fraze and Thundy and out of the damaged building. As we ran through the door, I noted that the entire front wall of our hiding place had been blown out, revealing its interior to the street. It looked like a corpse itself, defiled and wrong.

It took a solid fifteen minutes for my ears to stop ringing and my hearing to return to me. We’d been running hard and were at least a mile from the exploded building by then (I could only hope we weren’t leaving behind a trail of blood).

“We should… we should find another shelter,” I gasped, my shrapnel wounds burning like hell.

“But where?” Kristy asked. “It’s not that easy… we know it’s not that easy…”

“Just somewhere,” Gelquie said through gritted teeth, in excruciating pain from her own injuries, both new and old. “I can’t run much longer…”

We ended up in a narrow alleyway, which we knew wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do. It was far enough away from the blast site, at least, that if someone came investigating the explosion, they wouldn’t immediately stumble upon us.

Kristy, who was the least injured, offered to stay awake as guard while the rest of us plucked shrapnel out of our skin and then tried to get some sleep. I thanked my lucky stars for the parachute on our sponsor gift, as we managed to rip it up to form little makeshift bandages, which we adhered to ourselves using the roll of tape that had been inside the basket. Even once the debris was removed, though, the little wounds stung like crazy. None of them were very big, but it was just the sheer number of them. It was like having a million little paper-cuts or bee stings or splinters: not horrendous on their own, but add them all up, and it was agony.

It was only once we’d ‘treated’ all the wounds and were preparing to sleep, and Gelquie asked Terra for the backpack to possibly use a pillow, that we realized that nobody had it.

“I… I put it off to the side when I fell asleep,” Terra murmured in horror. “And then when Carrie woke me up, I didn’t grab it immediately, and then the blast and I just—I… oh, my God.”

“But the knife,” Gelquie said. “The knife was in there. And two of the canteens! And our sunscreen! I… I managed to take the basket with when we ran. How could you forget the backpack, Terra? How!?”

“We… we could go back,” Terra blubbered, tears welling in her eyes. “Let’s go back.”

“We can’t go back,” Kristy said. “It’s too risky. People will have heard the blast. They might come to investigate.”

“But… our supplies… our supplies! Oh God, oh God…”

None of us slept for the rest of the night.

Chapter Sixteen

SPOILER: Click to show

16. Presents

Predictably, the next day brought even more crushing heat. We needed those two extra canteens from the backpack more than ever, but our desperation didn’t make them magically reappear. Terra, who was still horribly distraught over having left the pack behind, again suggested perhaps returning to the building to find it, given that any people who’d gone to investigate would have since moved on, but in the end we decided against this.

“Even if there’s nobody there, the place was damaged so heavily,” Gelquie said, sounding exhausted. “It probably isn’t even structurally sound anymore. We were lucky to make it out without it collapsing down on top of us. I don’t think it’s worth the risk to go back in. Not to mention, if people did come to investigate it last night… they could have already found the backpack. It might not even be there.”

The idea of somebody else having the pack—and therefore, the gleaming knife inside of it—made me a bit nauseous. But not nearly as nauseous as the old wound on Gelquie’s cheek, the one made by Cassie’s arrow what seemed like years ago, though I knew it had only been a few days.

It was getting infected: this much was clear. It was crusty and inflamed and oozing pus. Outside the arena, I knew it wouldn’t have been a cataclysmic injury. She would have received stitches and antibiotics and gone on her way. But in here, minor things weren’t so minor. They started out that way before snowballing, intensifying. I looked down at my own injuries, the ones covered with scraps of parachute, and wondered if in a few days from now, they’d be infected, too. If all of us would somehow manage to avoid death via another player only to succumb from festering sores and lesions. The admins would probably find that hilarious.

“We need to go find water again,” Kristy said as she nibbled on a bit of the dried fruit that’d been inside the basket. “Should we go back to the field? I think I’ve kind of got a better idea as to the layout of the arena now… I think we could find our way back there…”

“No,” Gelquie said. “It’s too much of a risk. There was clearly someone staying there. It was probably only a matter of a luck that we didn’t run into them before. If we go again, we might not be so fortunate.”

“It’s too hot to just wander, though,” Kristy rebuffed. “To try and find some new water source…”

“Let’s just go back to the stream,” Terra murmured. “The stream where Cassie died. I’m with Kristy—I think I have the layout of this arena pretty much figured out. I think I can get us back there.”

My first instinct was to argue fervently against this course of action. I did not—not!—want to go back to the place where I’d killed Cassie. At the same time, though, I knew objectively that Terra’s idea wasn’t a bad one. We were all tired, exhausted, and already getting dehydrated from the searing sun. As Kristy said, we couldn’t afford to just amble about the arena like lost sheep, trying to find a novel water source. If we did this, we might end up like we had a few days ago: unsuccessful. And I wasn’t sure if we could recover from another day without water. Still, the thought of going back to the stream made me anxious. Sent my heart beating fast and my palms sweating.

“Her body will be gone, you know,” Kristy said to me, picking up on my uneasiness. “Long gone. It’ll be like she was never there at all.”

“I know,” I said. “I just… it’ll be hard.”

“It will,” she agreed, “but it has to be done.”

“Don’t worry, Carrie,” Sae said as she ran her fingers along her own wounded arms, fidgeting with the makeshift bandages. “The fairies will protect us. And I’m sure Cassie forgives you. I’m sure she knows you didn’t kill her on purpose. She wouldn’t want us to be thirsty. She’d be glad that we’re going back to the stream.”

Even though I knew that Cassie was dead and therefore incapable of things such as forgiveness, Sae’s words were still comforting. And also not wholly erroneous: the Cassie I knew before the arena—my friend Cassie—would absolutely lambast me for dehydrating to death in her name.

I was, however, nervous that Terra might be wrong about having figured out the arena’s layout, and we wouldn’t actually find the stream again. Sure enough, five hours later, we’d gotten turned around probably a dozen times and had yet to rediscover the grove. It was so hot that I was pretty sure my skin was about to start melting off. My shrapnel wounds stung like the dickens. I was so thirsty that I was about to consider attempting to drink my own sweat, before deciding that this was an awful idea and the fact that I’d even thought of it said a lot about my mental state.

“We should have gone to the field,” Kristy muttered. “I know where the field is. I could have found the field.”

“It’s this darn heat!” Terra snapped. “It’s gotten me confused. I knew—know—where it is I just… I just…”

“Arguing never helps,” Sae said solemnly. “Bad will never helps. We must stay upbeat, and then the fairies will show us our way!”

“There aren’t any fairies!” Terra yelled. “If there were, don’t you think we would have found the blasted woods hours ago!?”

“Don’t scream at her!” Kristy (ironically) screamed. “She’s just trying to help!”

“Well if she wants to help, then she can tell her blasted fairies to show us the fracking grove already!” Terra screamed back.

“Would both of you guys shut up!?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure anyone in a five-mile radius can hear you right now. You’re going to get us killed.”

Almost immediately after I said that, a voice broke out into the air. My first reaction was that it was another player, indeed having heard Terra and Kristy’s argument. But this theory was dashed only a few seconds later, when I realized that the voice was way too loud to be simply another person in the arena. In fact, it was coming from overhead…

“Good afternoon, players,” it said.

“Is that… Stal?” Gelquie asked.

“I… think it is,” I replied with furrowed eyebrows.

Over the PA, Stal went on, “It is my pleasure today to be making a very special announcement to you! First off, I would like to congratulate all of you for surviving these first few days. But none of you, alas, have made it thus far unscathed, it seems. All of you need something quite badly. And what sort of administrators would we be if we didn’t at least give you the chance to acquire such things? Therefore, in three hours at time, at 4 o’ clock sharp, there will be presents laid out in the plaza! One for each of you, all wrapped up with a pretty bow and your names written on the front. It is, of course, first come, first serve—if you don’t get your gift, someone else might! Anybody who tries to swipe a present prior to 4 sharp will go—well, in the words of dear Dan, boom! To ensure that you know when the clock has struck 4, a chime will sound over the arena. Of course, it is entirely voluntary as to whether you wish to go claim your present. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor!”

Stal’s voice died away. My group and I exchanged shocked looks, the admin’s words taking awhile to sink in fully. Presents? This was certainly unexpected… and I knew immediately what would be inside them. Gelquie’s would have some sort of medicine for her cheek. The rest of ours would either have canteens with water or maybe some medicine for our shrapnel wounds. Valuable things. Things that might keep us alive.

Furthermore, though we still were likely nowhere near the grove, we had just passed the plaza not ten minutes before. We could easily make our way back. We could be there at 4pm.

“We can’t go,” Kristy said immediately. “Nope. Not going to risk it.”

“But the presents,” I said. “Kristy, you heard what Stal said. They’ll have inside something we desperately need.”

“Yeah, and you don’t think the pack will jump on that? They’ll probably wait for everyone to try and grab their gifts, kill them all, and then take off with the whole lot. Not worth it.” Kristy shook her head firmly.

“I’ll admit it,” Terra said, “I have no idea where the grove is. I thought I did but… I don’t. It was so far away, and we fled in such a bad mental state after Cassie died, that I have no idea how to my find my way back there. And I’m thirsty. Really thirsty. And Gelquie’s cheek looks bad. Carrie’s right: we need those presents.”

“My cheek is fine,” Gelquie countered. “I’m with Kristy. It’s too much of a risk.”

“Oh, I hate arguing,” Sae murmured. I took this to mean that she was assuming a neutral position, and therefore would not be the deciding vote either way.

“Your cheek is not fine,” I said to Gelquie. “Not at all.”

“And I’m so thirsty,” Terra repeated. “If there’s even a vague chance that those present have water inside it, then it’s worth the risk. I don’t care what you guys say, Kristy and Gelquie. I’m going to get my present.” She glanced at me. “Carrie?”

“Agreed,” I said. “I’ll admit it’s dangerous. But guys, this whole arena is dangerous. If we keep wandering around like this, we’re not going to make it. We’re going to keel over from heat exhaustion or dehydration or both. I’m not going to force anyone to go. But Terra and I… we’re going to take the chance. What if we have it so you guys hide out sort of nearby, and then Terra and I meet up with you afterward?”

“What if you don’t come back, though?” Kristy asked. “What are we supposed to do then?”

“I… give it an hour,” Terra said. “An hour after the chime. And if you’ve heard trumpets by then, and we’re not back, then assume we didn’t make it. We’ll leave you with the basket of food.”

“I don’t like it,” Gelquie murmured.

“Neither do I,” I said. “But it’s just how it’s going to have to be.”

Chapter Seventeen

SPOILER: Click to show

17. Arrow

By 3:30—at least, what we calculated to be 3:30, since none of us had watches or any other way to tell the time—we had situated Kristy, Gelquie, and Sae in an alley about a mile off from the plaza. Then, Terra and I found our own hiding place: a claustrophobic dumpster in a different alley just a few dozen feet from where the presents would be. I didn’t remember it being there at the start of the Games, nor did Terra; we decided it had probably been placed just recently by the admins, specifically so that it could be used as a hiding place during the gift-grab.

It was dingy, stiflingly hot, and barely fit the two of us, though at least it seemed to be a shell more than anything and there wasn’t actually any trash inside. For whatever reason, however, it still smelled horrendous, like rotting meat and stale urine mixed with God-knew-what-else. The best part of it was that there was a small slit through the metal on the side, through which we could peer out towards the plaza.

In the plaza’s center, where the supplies pile had been a few days ago, there now sat fourteen wrapped gifts of varying sizes, ranging from postage-stamp small to what could have only been a giant weapon, given its enormous size and awkward shape. I could not make out the name on it, but I dearly hoped it wasn’t for the pack… and also that, no matter who it was for, they got to it before the pack did. I was sure by this point of the Games that there were indeed things the pack desperately needed, but weapons couldn’t possibly be on that list, given how heavily armed they were the last time we ran into them.

“Should we make a beeline the second the chime rings?” Terra asked.

“No. I think we should wait a little.”

“But the pack,” she said. “If they surge out right at four and swipe everything, this whole thing will have been a waste.”

“I’m hoping that they will surge out right at four. And that so will other people. And the pack will get distracted by fighting those people, at which point we can make a mad dash for our presents and get away while the pack is preoccupied.”

“That’s a lot of hoping,” Terra said.

“It is. But I don’t think it’s all that improbable, either.”

We then waited with bated breath until the chime trilled at 4pm sharp. I kept my eyes pressed against the dumpster’s slit, fully prepared for chaos to erupt in the plaza. For nearly all of the remaining players to gush out from various hiding places and get into crazy clashes with each other, allowing Terra and me to slip out and make our own mad scramble…

But then the chime went off and…

Nothing happened.

Not a peep from anywhere. Not a single darting player, pack or otherwise. The plaza stayed as still and silent as death. The presents gleamed in its center, their wrapping paper catching in the sun.

For a solid minute or two, Terra and I simply sat in the dumpster and waited—for something, anything. But still nothing happened.

“What the heck?” I murmured.

“This is weird,” Terra whispered back. “I’m going to open the lid… poke my head out, maybe see if there’s something beyond our range of vision that we’re missing…”

“No!” I hissed.

But it was too late: she’d already pushed up the dumpster’s lid and popped her head out. The metal lid made a too-loud creaking noise as it opened, a stubborn groan. I tried to tug Terra back down, but before I could, a sudden flurry of movement from across the plaza caught my eye. There was an alley over there, narrow and small, that I hadn’t even seen up until now, because a lamppost mostly concealed its entryway. But now from within it, four people poured out. They were armed to the teeth and headed right towards Terra and me.

The pack.

They’d been waiting for someone else to make a move so that they could kill them… and Terra had been the unlucky one to show her face first. As they surged towards us, I could swear that Jay was smiling. And that somehow the lot of them had gathered even more weapons since our last encounter.

“Run!” I yelled to Terra, jumping to my feet and scrambling out of the dumpster. “Run!”

We hadn’t made it five feet before they started trying to slaughter us: they shot arrows and darts, and threw knives (apparently they now wanted to kill us so badly that they were willing to risk losing some of the throwing knives). For the first thirty seconds of the chase, all of the weapons went wide… and I even managed to pick up one of the knives that Jay threw that skidded to a halt in front of me. Blindly, I lobbed it back towards them. But unlike with Cassie, it didn’t hit.

“Kristy and Gelquie were right,” Terra moaned. “This was such a bad idea… we’re going to die… this was such a bad idea…”

I didn’t argue with her, because she was probably right. It was four against two, and they were heavily armed. Not to mention, they seemed to be in far better physical shape than us, meaning that even if all of their attempts to murder us with arrows and the like failed, they could still probably outrun us in the end.

We’d been running for about five minutes when a bloodcurdling scream erupted from Terra, and she stumbled. I reached out and grasped onto her arm to keep her from falling, and it was only once I’d lugged her back to her feet that I noticed what had caused the horrific yelling.

An arrow now protruded from the soft flesh of her thigh. As if out instinct, she fastened her fingers around its shaft to yank it out, but I screamed for her to stop. If she tugged it free, I was afraid she’d bleed to death.

“Oh, I’m so dead, I’m so dead,” she moaned, struggling to maintain pace with me.

“Don’t say that!” I screamed, even though chances were that she was dead on with her assessment. She couldn’t maintain our frantic pace anymore; even as I dragged her along, she was hobbling more than running, and the pack was quickly closing in on us.

“Leave me behind,” she said. “Run for it, and leave me.”

“No! I’m not going to just leave you!”

But as I said that, I glanced over my shoulder and promptly almost puked as I realized just how close that pack had grown to us in just the ten or so seconds since Terra had been shot. They were sprinting at probably thrice our speed. They’d at least stopped firing their weapons, probably figuring they’d soon be able to finish us off in hand-to-hand combat, but I knew that they’d be on top us very, very soon.

I turned back towards Terra, who now had tears dripping down her face. A massive amount of blood had started to leak from her wound, staining her black linen pants. Her usually tan skin had gone icy pale.

“Leave me,” she repeated again.

I opened my mouth to rebuff her, but before I could, the dissonant sound of trumpets sliced through the air. Almost simultaneously, I heard a loud thunk as something behind us fell to the ground.

I whirled around towards the pack… and discovered that one of them had fallen. Elcie. It was Elcie. She now lay in a crumpled heap, blood pouring from a gaping wound in her back, in which was lodged a knife.

For a moment, I couldn’t wholly comprehend what I was seeing. Who had killed her? Not any of her pack-mates, as they’d all skidded to a halt in a semi-circle around her, screaming her name in shock as they attempted to shake her awake. My eyes flitted past them.

And there, standing in the middle of the street with a simultaneously triumphant and terrified look on her face, was Celestial. The pack saw her not a moment after I did, and only then did they seem to put the puzzle pieces together.

“Kill her!” shrieked Jay, lobbing a knife at Celes.

It missed, and she started to run; the pack, after wresting Elcie’s bow and arrow set from her shoulder, flung themselves after her, leaving their dead ally behind in a pool of her own blood. As they disappeared into the distance, I shared a stunned look with Terra, still not believing what had just occurred. I waited for the sound of trumpets once more—an indication that the pack had killed Celestial—but none sounded.

“Wait here,” I said to Terra before jogging over to Elcie’s body and prying a blood-soaked backpack off one of her shoulders.

“We should go,” Terra groaned as I walked back towards her. “Before they kill Celes and then come back after us. The alley where we left the rest of them should only be a few minutes away.”

When we arrived back to Kristy, Gelquie, and Sae’s hiding place, they were all hysterical, convinced that the sound of trumpets had been one of us dying. They calmed slightly when I told them that it was Elcie who’d died… but they promptly all freaked out again when Terra turned to show them the arrow sticking out of the back of her thigh.

“We… we need to take it out,” Kristy burbled.

“But then she’ll bleed to death,” Gelquie countered.

“We can’t just leave it in, though,” Terra murmured. Her voice had gone weak; her skin was even paler. From the way she was swaying as she stood, I was afraid she was close to passing out.

“We can use the rest of the parachute to try and staunch the bleeding,” Kristy said. “And then… then… we can take turn carrying her to the woods. The stream. I was thinking about it while you guys were gone. I think I know where it is.”

“You don’t need to carry me,” Terra said, almost slurring her words now. “I’ll be fine guys… I’ll be fine…”

But she wasn’t fine. By the time we carefully extracted the arrow some ten minutes later, and stuffed the wound with scraps of parachute, she was barely conscious. Even packed, the injury bled like the dickens, more blood shooting out of it than I’d known a person even had. Desperately we combed the pack I’d taken from Elcie, looking for some sort of medical thing that might help, but we came up empty. Inside it was just some food, an empty canteen, and—of all things—a deck of playing cards. Nothing that could help Terra.

“The woods,” I whispered to Kristy after the arrow was removed, out of earshot from the gravely wounded Terra. As I spoke, I traced my finger over the fabric of my white uniform shirt, which was now completely stained in Terra’s blood. “How far are the woods?”

“I think about an hour from here,” she said. “At a normal pace.”

“We can’t make it. There’s no way.”

“We’ll carry her,” Kristy replied.

It was Gelquie who spoke next, murmuring, “Kristy, we can’t. None of us are strong enough to carry her for so long, not as dehydrated as we are. And the blood. She’s bleeding so badly. It’s a miracle no one’s found us as is, given that she probably left splashes of blood behind her on her and Carrie’s way here. If we tried to get to the woods? It’d be like a trail of breadcrumbs. We wouldn’t make it.”

“But… but… what then?” Kristy asked, but I think she already knew the answer; we all did.

“She’s bleeding so heavily, Kristy,” Gelquie said. “She’s barely conscious. I don’t… I don’t think she has much longer.”

“No,” Kristy hissed. “No, Gelquie. No!”

“Kristy…”

“All we can do now,” Gelquie went on, blinking back tears, “is sit with her. Talk to her. Wait with her until—well, until. And then, afterward… then we go to the woods.”

It didn’t take much longer. Within ten minutes, Terra lapsed into unconsciousness. Her heartbeat slowed. As Kristy held her hand, and Sae sang a quiet lullaby, our ally’s breathing became more intermittent. Blood continued to gush from her wound, the parachute bandage doing nothing to stop the inevitable.

Still, when the trumpet sounded overhead, I couldn’t help myself. I fumbled for a pulse; when I found none, I started to shake her, trying in vain to force her back to life. I continued this for a solid thirty seconds, before Gelquie gently grabbed onto my arm and told me to stop.

“It’s too late, Carrie,” she said, her voice cracking. “It’s too late for that now. She’s gone. Terra’s gone.”

Chapter Eighteen

SPOILER: Click to show

18. After

For awhile, we stayed with Terra’s body, staring down at it in shock and disbelief. But then Gelquie softly announced that we couldn’t stay with her forever—that we were too close to where Terra and I had lost the pack, that they might come back searching soon and find us. And even if they didn’t, we were all deliriously thirsty.

“We won’t last the night here,” Gelquie said. “And staying here with Terra won’t make her suddenly wake up. Kristy says she knows how to get to the grove. I think that’s where we need to go.”

“But… but…” Kristy choked out. “I don’t… I feel so bad leaving her…”

“It’s ok,” Sae said, enveloping Kristy in a hug. “The fairies will stay with her, Kristy. The fairies will be here for her now.”

All of us were sobbing as we left Terra behind a few minutes later and set out for the grove. True to Kristy’s claim just before Terra’s death, she found it without us once getting turned around or lost. The bitter, devastated part of me almost resented her for this newfound sense of direction: why hadn’t she remembered how to get to the water before Stal’s announcement about the presents? If she had, Terra and I might not have been so desperate to try and retrieve ours. No matter what, the idea would have been tempting, on account of Gelquie’s infected cheek—but if we’d at least had access to water, it wouldn’t have been quite so tempting. We might not have done it.

Terra might not have died.

Of course, I knew it was wrong to blame Kristy, that Terra’s death wasn’t anybody’s fault beyond the pack… and the admins. This, at least, was what I told myself as I waded into the stream after our arrival to the grove, trying to wash my dead friend’s blood off my body and out of my clothes.

As darkness fell, the four of us who were left huddled underneath an apple tree. Despite having eaten relatively little during our time inside the arena, we weren’t hungry—but Gelquie convinced us that we had to eat, we couldn’t afford to lose any more energy. So as we sat, we nibbled disinterestedly on jerky from Elcie’s pack and bread from our sponsor-won basket.

“You know, there are only ten people left now,” Kristy said, taking a swig of water from the canteen. “The four of us. Three of the pack. Celestial and Tiger and Azzie.”

“That is, if the pack didn’t get to Celestial,” I muttered darkly.

“They didn’t,” Gelquie said. “If they had, we would have heard trumpets.”

“Oh, right,” I said. Then: “So fourteen are dead. Ten are left. That means the chances of at least one of us four surviving this mess is almost 50%.”

“True,” Gelquie said. “But that still means the rest of us have to die first.”

“I’m not killing any of you,” Kristy declared. “I don’t care if the admins have to blow up my stupid collar to get their winner. I’m not going to kill you three.”

“Agreed,” Gelquie and I chorused.

“Don’t worry,” Sae said. “I’m sure the fairies will save us before it comes to that. I just know it. I do.”

**

At midnight, when Komrade Killix announced Terra’s name (along with Elcie, Fraze, and Thundy’s), the four of us promptly burst into fresh sets of tears; none of us fell asleep before 2am, and we were all still exhausted when morning rolled around. It wasn’t just classic tiredness, but a bone deep fatigue, a full body ache. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck… and then fixed up… and then hit by another truck. My now day and a half old shrapnel wounds still burned, and several of them were growing oozy underneath the bandages. My temple throbbed. And compared to someone like Gelquie, whose cheek was now so infected that it was downright nauseating to look at, I was doing pretty darn well.

It was as we were refilling the canteens that a noise from above drew my attention. I looked up just in time to see a basket with an attached parachute ensnare itself in the branches of a tree. Another sponsor gift.

Kristy, who was the least injured among us at this point, climbed up and retrieved it. Once she was back on the ground, we all crowded around and opened the basket, which the note on top proclaimed to be from Zylaa.

“Bread,” Kristy said, rummaging through it. “Another canteen. Ooh, antibiotic cream. And… and…” Her voice fell as she came across the last item. “Needle and thread,” she murmured. “A needle and thread.”

Tears popped into her eyes, and she removed the spool of thread from within the basket. Shaking a bit, she turned it over in her hands.

“Why couldn’t this have been sent yesterday?” she sobbed. “Before Terra… before… we could have used it to stitch her wound. To stop the bleeding. She didn’t have to die.”

“It all happened so fast, Kristy,” Gelquie said. “Her getting shot and then bleeding out… it just happened so fast. There wasn’t any time for a sponsor to scramble together a basket and send it in.” She placed a tender hand on Kristy’s shoulder. “But now we have it. If any of the rest of us get injured, we’ll be able to stitch it up.”

“I just wish that… I just… it seems so unfair, is all. To Terra. It seems so unfair to Terra.” She sniffled.

“I’m not going to argue with you there.” Gelquie sighed. “Now, we need to figure out what we’re going to do today. We could stick around here, I guess… but I’m afraid that since there doesn’t seem to be a huge number water sources in this arena, that we aren’t the only ones to have found this stream. I’m almost positive that if we stick around here, it’ll only be a matter of time before we have an encounter with another player.”

“Well, we can’t very well go back to the actual building,” I said. “Given that it’s slightly… crispy.”

“We could try and find our way back to the roof,” Kristy said between tears. “I… I think I could find my way back there.”

“Might as well,” Gelquie said. “At least our chances of running into anyone else up there are slim.”

**

We found our way back to the roof without getting lost, and proceeded to spend the rest of the day sitting up in there in a numb, exhausted silence. Even after slathering Gelquie’s cheek wound in antibiotic ointment, it still looked… pretty terrible. The rest of us used little dabs of the medicine on our shrapnel wounds, though probably not as much as each injury needed, given that we wanted to conserve the tube for future use. If, I thought dourly, any of us survive much longer, anyway. I was not feeling very optimistic after Terra’s death.

From the start of the Games, I’d known that the chances were basically 100% that members of my group would die. But there’s a stark difference between knowing something and knowing something—from having a concept of a horrible eventuality and actually experiencing it. Conceptualizing a friend dying in your arms is not the same thing as actually having it happen. Not at all.

There were only two good thing I could find about the day after Terra’s death: first, that it was not as brutally hot as the previous days. It was warm, but not unbearably so, and a soft breeze rippled in the air. Second, that we had a decent amount of water and food to get us through the day, meaning we didn’t have to leave our rooftop hideout. These were just small consolations, though. Like getting robbed of a million dollars and then winning a buck on a lotto scratch-off soon afterward. Sure, the dollar’s nice, but you’d much rather have the million back.

You’d give anything to have that million back.

Chapter Ninenteen

SPOILER: Click to show

19. Sing

No one died the day after Terra. Ten players were still left when Killix made her announcement at midnight—six of whom I knew likely wanted to see me dead… and three of whom would have to die for me to get out of this arena alive, even if we’d all sworn up and down that we wouldn’t kill each other. I wondered what would happen if it came to that, just my group left alive. Sure, we promised now that we wouldn’t do anything to hurt one another. But in the heat of the moment, when it was just us left… would we be able to stick with that promise? With just a friend or two standing between us and freedom, would we really be able to see our pledge through?

I wanted to say yes. I longed to say yes. But ultimately, I wasn’t completely sure.

Still up on the rooftop, I nodded off not long after Killix’s broadcast, only to be flung back into consciousness not thirty minutes later by the sound of people yelling down on the street below. My mind instantly flashed back to the deaths of Thundy and Fraze, them stumbling onto our hiding place shortly before blowing themselves up. This time, though, the arguing people were talking so loudly that I didn’t even have to wake up the rest of my group: we all blinked awake within seconds of each other.

My heart thudding in my ears, I crawled on my hands and knees over to the concrete edging at the roof’s end and peered hesitantly over it. Down below, illuminated by the light of the full moon that gleamed overhead, was the pack.

My first instinct was panic. Absolute terror. They’d found us, oh God, they’d found us, and now they were just going to sit down there and wait us out, because they knew we had to come off the roof eventually—that, or they’d climb up, and we’d have to fight them in close combat. Either way, we were about to die. I would not ever find out whether my group and I could truly carry through with our promise not to harm one another, because we’d be dead before then, all of us.

… except, I quickly realized, they weren’t even looking up towards us. If they were here because they knew where we were hiding, wouldn’t they be standing with eyes cast towards the roof? Instead, they loitered with their backs to our building, not once so much as peeking in its direction.

“Should I shoot them?” Kristy breathed into my ear. “With my arrows?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t think they know we’re here. If we start shooting at them, they will. And you’ll be only able to hit one of them before the others get wise.”

“What then?” she whispered.

“We wait,” Gelquie murmured. “We wait, and hope like hell that they move on.”

They were showing no inclination to move on, though, as they were clearly in the throes of a horrific argument between Ginz and Jay. The two of them were so furious that several times Nova had to hold one or the other back to keep them from coming to blows.

“I just don’t get it,” Ginz spat. “Your fixation on Gelquie and them. What’s so dangerous about those idiots that we have to spend each day, every day, looking for them? They aren’t the only ones in this arena, Jay. We could take a break from looking for them to hunt down some of the other players.”

“But they need to be killed,” Jay retorted. “There are four of them, Ginz. That’s still more than there are of us, and I don’t like it. I want them dead. Plus, it’s because of them that Elcie’s dead! She died when we were chasing them!”

“Celestial killed Elcie,” Ginz reminded.

“And she got away, that witch! And in turn helped them get away, too! I’m tired of them getting away, Ginz. I want them dead!”

“No,” Ginz simply said.

“No?” Jay snarled; again Nova had to interfere to keep the row from turning physical. “What do you mean, no? I am in charge of this group, Ginz. Me. And if you don’t like how I’m running things, then leave. I don’t give a crap. Leave. Just leave!”

“Fine!” Ginz yelled. “Goodbye!”

And she whirled and stomped away.

Or, tried to stomp away, anyhow, because she didn’t make it five feet before crumpling to the ground, a knife stuck in her back. Almost simultaneously, trumpets sounded overhead.

“No one disagrees with Jay!” Jay screamed. “No one leaves this group alive! Rot in hell, you witch!”

As Jay lobbed expletives at Ginz’s fallen body, Nova dropped to his knees and tried to shake his ally awake. Quaking like a leaf, he yanked the knife out of her back and pressed his hands atop the gory wound, as if attempting to staunch the bleeding. But of course, it did nothing: as the trumpets had made so clear, Ginz was already gone.

Up on the rooftop, my group watched in rapt horror. The way that Jay had so quickly turned on Ginz made my blood run ice cold. This arena truly had made him lost his mind, hadn’t it? I could understand, if not condone, purposefully killing your competitors to make it out alive. But the way Jay was yelling now, gloating over Ginz’s murdered corpse, made it clear that he was killing for more than just necessity now. There was a part of him that enjoyed it. That reveled in the power he had over the lives of others.

For what seemed like ages, Nova cradled Ginz’s body in his arms and tried to force her awake. When it finally seemed to dawn on him that she wasn’t coming back, he broke into a horrific, wracking sob that even made my heart ache. He hugged her close to him, ran his fingers through her long hair, murmured inaudible things into her ear.

Yesterday, when Terra had died, our group had been devastated. But the way Nova was holding onto Ginz now… caressing her, refusing to let go… so clearly was not just the reaction a man mourning the death of a friend. No: this went further than that. This was a man clutching to the woman he loved. The person who completed him, who meant more to him than anything else in the world.

After the longest time, Nova finally let go of Ginz, gently easing her body to the ground. With tears still streaming from his eyes, he wobbled to his feet and turned to face Jay.

“Why did you kill her?” he choked out.

“She was leaving. I couldn’t let that happen.” He shrugged, seemingly disaffected, as if he’d just swatted a pesky fly and not viciously murdered a human being.

“You shouldn’t have killed her.”

“Oh, stop the waterworks,” Jay said. “You’re being such a crybaby. Let’s just leave the witch and go. Maybe get some sleep before sun-up.”

“No,” Nova said, reaching into his pocket and coming up with a large knife, its silver blade catching in the moonlight. He pointed it towards Jay.

Jay laughed. “Oh, what, you’re gonna stab me, lover boy? Yeah, right.”

Nova didn’t respond to Jay’s scoff: instead, cheetah-fast, he surged forward and tackled the man who’d killed Ginz to the ground. Jay shoved back at him and reached into his own pocket, presumably to get a weapon, but before he could, Nova had stabbed him clear in the throat. Blood spurted out. A trumpet sounded overhead. But even after it was clear that Jay was dead, Nova stabbed him again. And again. Over and over he stabbed, until he was covered head-to-toe in Jay’s blood, and the man’s corpse resembled grinded meat.

During this whole thing, Kristy, Gelquie, and I had been sitting with our eyes just poked over the roof’s concrete edging, but Sae had remained behind. So caught up in what Nova was doing, I didn’t notice her creep up to the rim of the roof herself. Didn’t notice her decide that just barely peering over was not good enough. Didn’t notice her—slowly, quietly—rise to her feet.

Didn’t notice, that is, until she glanced over at me and asked far too loudly, “Why is he stabbing him so much?”

Like a snake striking its prey, Nova’s eyes darted up towards the roof, settling on Sae. I flung myself towards my ally and tried to pull her down, so that she was once more concealed behind the concrete edging, but apparently surprised by my action, she jumped back, and I missed. At the same time, down on the ground, Nova stood up and pulled his bow off from his shoulder. Fumbled to line up an arrow.

“Sae,” I gasped. “Sae, duck.”

But it was too late: Nova fired. The arrow screamed through the air, piercing straight through Sae’s heart.

She fell; the moment her body connected with the roof, the dissonance of trumpets blazed through air.

I screamed.

Almost at the same time, Nova began to shriek as an arrow sliced into his shoulder. I looked over at Kristy, only then remembering her bow.

“Take that!” she yelled, lining up another shot. “Take that, Nova!”

She let another arrow fly, but this one went wide; Nova fired back, but we all ducked behind the edging in time for it to miss us. Moments afterward, Kristy popped back up to shoot yet again—but this arrow also missed.

For a moment, Nova seemed to consider returning fire once more, before realizing that his odds in this situation were not very good. Not only was he now one against four—no, three, I remembered, blinking back tears—but we also had a built-in barricade to hide behind. He already had an arrow lodged in his shoulder. If he kept on shooting at us, it would only end one way: with him dead.

He turned back towards Jay’s body and wrested off the man’s backpack. Then, he dashed back towards Ginz and took her pack as well, before fleeing into the night.

Kristy’s first instinct was to climb down from the building and rush after him, but Gelquie and I stopped her. She screamed as we held her back, refusing to let her give chase. Tears gushed from her eyes like water from a faucet. She held an arrow in one of her hands, just itching to line it up and chase after Nova and fire it into his heart.

“He killed Sae!” she sobbed. “He killed her!”

“I know,” Gelquie said. “But he’s probably already long gone. By the time you climbed down—Kristy, there’s no way you could catch up. And even if you did, he might kill you before you killed him.”

“What, then?” she asked. “What do we do?”

“Stay up here until morning,” I said, even though the thought of spending the entire rest of the night with Sae’s body made me sick. “And then… find somewhere else to go. In case Nova decides to come back.”

“We… we should sing to her,” Kristy blubbered. “To Sae. She would have sung for us. We should sing for her.”

I would never win an award for my singing voice, but I forced myself to sing along with Kristy, holding back tears as I did. I failed: soon I was sobbing just as hard as Kristy, and so was Gelquie. If someone had asked me later, I couldn’t for the life of me have remembered the words to the song, nor even the tune of it. All I could recall was the way our voices joined together, mine and Kristy’s and Gelquie’s. How they filled the dark night as we clutched tightly onto each other, singing over the body of our fallen friend.

Chapter Twenty

SPOILER: Click to show

20. Back to the Field

When morning broke, none of us had slept a wink; we’d spent the duration of the night sitting with Sae’s body. Eventually, we’d stopped singing to her, in case another player happened to stumble by on the street below and heard us, but even if we’d wanted to slumber, we all knew it wouldn’t happen. Not after all that had just occurred before us: Ginz’s sudden death, Nova stabbing Jay like a madman before turning towards Sae, sending an arrow screaming into her heart.

I wondered about Nova, what kind of condition he was in now. Kristy’s arrow had sunk into his shoulder, after all. There’d been a part of me that had been waiting all night to hear trumpets blaze, marking his death, indicating that, like Terra before him, he’d bled out. But no trumpets ever materialized.

Nova had survived the night.

I wanted to hate him for this—for living even after he’d so mercilessly cut down Sae. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to, not completely. Jay’s death I felt no sadness over: this arena had changed him into a psychopath, a man who reveled in killing. But Nova? The way he’s screamed over Ginz’s body. How he’d chosen to flee in the end, rather than engage us even further in combat. There was still a flicker of the pre-arena Nova left inside him, buried deep perhaps, but there. Even now, he was not killing because he liked it. He was killing because he wanted to make it out of this arena. Because as long as my group lived, his chances of surviving were lower.

Could you really blame a man for that—for wanting to live?

That didn’t mean, of course, that I forgave him for killing Sae. Under the pale light of the early morning sun, as I sipped the last remaining bit of water from one of the canteens, I stared down at her body. She looked… peaceful, almost. She’d died so quickly that she hadn’t had time to be scared. If it weren’t for the arrow in her chest—none of us had bucked up the nerve to remove it—you could also almost convince yourself that she was just sleeping. Dreaming.

“We should go,” Gelquie said as she finished off the last of the water from our other canteen. “In case Nova decides to come back. And we need more water.”

“But where?” I asked, forcing myself to look away from Sae’s corpse, her pale freckled skin, her soft brown hair.

“The field, I think.”

“But I thought we decided that was too dangerous, because someone was staying there.”

“It’s closer, though, to here. By at least half, I think. I know Kristy managed to get us to the grove on the day that Terra died. But I don’t want to risk us getting turned around. I think we have a better chance right now of making it to the field.” She bit her lip. “Plus… when Nova fled last night. He went in the direction of the grove. I’m not saying he was headed there: he might have just been running for his life and went a random way. But if you had an arrow sticking out of your shoulder, and wanted to say, remove it and then clean the wound off… wouldn’t you want to go someplace with water? Fresh, cool, running water?”

“But you just said that the field is closer,” Kristy pointed out. “He could have gone there.”

“He could be anywhere,” I added.

Gelquie sighed. “I know,” she admitted. “But it’s not just that. The grove had apples, but not much else I felt comfortable eating. The field, on the other hand, had those water vegetables. And I swear I heard animals darting through the grass. We could catch some.”

“We still have food from the latest sponsor basket,” Kristy pointed out.

“We do,” Gelquie agreed. “But that’s not going to last forever. I’d rather have an excess than the bare minimum.”

It took a bit more convincing of Gelquie’s part, but eventually we agreed to go to the field. Before climbing down from the roof, I looked over at Sae’s body one last time. Ran a gentle finger along her stone-cold cheek. Whispered to her ‘goodbye’.

Upon descending to street level, we were all a bit taken aback to realize that Jay and Ginz’s bodies were gone, just bloody cobblestones left to mark where they’d fallen. Obviously the clean-up crew had come sometime during the night, but it disconcerted me a little that we hadn’t heard them at all. It occurred to me then that, had the pack not been arguing, we might not have noticed them pass us by, either. That it was possible that countless players had stalked by right beneath where we slept. There was nowhere safe in this arena, was there?

Thankfully, we arrived to the field without getting overly lost. It was midmorning by this time, and immediately upon wading into the tall grass, it became clear to us that someone was still frequenting this place. More food wrappers, cast here and there. Several more bushes with attached straps of material to them. Areas within the field that had clearly been trampled through time and time again, the grass blades bent if not outright crushed.

“I don’t like this,” Kristy breathed.

“We’ll get the water, get some food, and get out,” Gelquie said, though she was clearly nervous as well, and I was fairly sure she might now regret returning to this field. Up on the roof, it had been easy to gloss over the possible, severe dangers that came with another player possibly residing in this place. Easy to minimize the hazards. But now, in the thick of things, it all seemed risky as hell, like purposefully leaping into a pit of vipers and expecting not to get bit.

But going back at this point would be ridiculous. The day was already growing crushingly hot, and the idea of leaving when we were just minutes from water was unbearable. I tried to tell myself that we wouldn’t run into the person who’d been staying here. That since they hadn’t surged out and tried to murder us last time, why would they now? There were only singleton players left now, as far as we knew. And even with Sae and Terra dead, my group still had three people. If I were a single player, I wouldn’t dare attempt confrontation when I was outnumbered like that. Never.

Attempting to ascribe to this line of thought did not, however, make me any less jumpy as we moved through the tall grass. I could have cried from relief when we made to the brackish pond without running into the mystery player who'd been likely calling this field home. I leaned over and dipped one of the canteens into the water. Slurped it down, then handed it over to Kristy so she could do the same.

After hydrating herself, Gelquie proceeded to splash some water onto her cheek wound. The antibiotic cream had helped a lot; it was no longer oozing quite so badly, and it simply put, it didn’t look so nasty. But it was still clearly infected, and based on the way she sighed in relief upon feeling the cool water spray against it, I knew the injury had to hurt still. My shrapnel wounds certainly did.

It happened so fast: one second Gelquie was leaning over the pond, cleaning her injury. Then, in an instant, someone had surged out from seemingly nowhere and seized her into a chokehold. Pressed a knife against my ally’s throat.

I blinked hard and fast, unable to fully comprehend what I was seeing. Next to me, Kristy screamed and scrambled back. Gelquie, the person’s arms wrapped around her neck, stood with her mouth agape, as if she too wanted to cry out but couldn’t manage the noise on account of the fact that she was being choked.

Even once it had struck me what exactly was going on, it took me even longer to identify Gelquie’s assailant: Azzie.

The girl’s blonde, curly hair was a knotted mess. Random twigs and leaves were snarled in it, like a bird’s nest. Her skin was so sunburned that it had started to blister. I knew she still wore the uniform that’d been issued at the start of the Games, but it had been badly damaged—the white shirt was slashed and flecked with blood; the black pants had been so hacked that they were now more of shorts than anything. Good for the heat, but more exposed skin meant her sunburn extended down to her legs, too. She had only one shoe, which was also blood-spattered; her other foot was bare and covered in scratches. Most concerning, though, was the giant knife-slash on her forehead, stretching from one side clear across to the other. If I’d thought Gelquie’s cheek wound had been bad prior to our windfall of antibiotic cream, Azzie’s was a million times worse. It looked like her skin had literally started to rot off.

If this arena had been unkind to my group, it had been outright vicious to Azzie.

“I’m so sorry,” she blubbered, her hazel eyes teeming with tears. “I’m sorry for this, but I have to go home. I have to go home.”

“No, Azzie,” I said. “No, you don’t have to do this. You don’t.”

As Gelquie continued to claw at her, trying to wrest free from Azzie’s grip, Azzie sniffled and shook her head. “I do. I have to. I have to go home. I’m sorry, but I have to go home.”

Next to me, Kristy had quietly removed her bow from her shoulder and was stringing up an arrow—but I grabbed onto her arm and told her to stop, knowing that she had as much of a chance of hitting Gelquie as she did of hitting Azzie. It was too risky to fire.

“I’m so sorry,” Azzie kept saying. “I’m sorry… but I need to go home… I need to go home… I think I’m dying, so I need everyone else to die, so that I can go home…”

Even still, she did not swipe the knife. She just stood there, sobbing, with Gelquie in a chokehold. Her words, I decided, were not for our benefit: they were for her own. She was trying to convince herself that she had to kill Gelquie. That it was a necessary evil.

And in the end, I think this was Azzie’s downfall. She’d started off with a vise-like grip on Gelquie, but the longer she waited—the more she murmured apologies—the more tenuous the grasp grew. She started to shake a bit, like a leaf in the wind. And Gelquie, knowing that unless she acted soon Azzie would muster the nerve and slash that blade, acted.

With a heavy elbow, she rammed Azzie in the stomach. The woman gasped, just as Gelquie elbowed again. Azzie’s arm fell away from Gelquie’s throat, the wind knocked out of her, and Gelquie wasted no time, wrenching free from Azzie’s grip. Azzie reached out, as it to reel Gelquie in again, and managed to wrap her fingers around Gelquie’s wrist. With her free arm, Gelquie reached back and punched Azzie, but her assailant didn’t let go. As Kristy screamed and again begged me to let her shoot an arrow—“No!” I told her. “No! You’ll hit Gelquie, they’re too close together, you’ll hit Gelquie!”—Azzie yanked Gelquie towards her. Gelquie stumbled, and in an instant, both of them had tripped to the ground.

I considered rushing over in an attempt to pry Azzie away from my ally. I didn’t have any weapons on me right now: everything beyond our bow had been lost when Terra had left the backpack behind after Fraze and Thundy’s deaths. So it’s not like I could kill Azzie even if I managed to separate them… all I’d succeed in was getting her to go after me next. But just standing here like a useless brick as the two of them tussled was unbearable. As an ear-splitting scream erupted from one of them—I honestly couldn’t tell who it was—I made up my mind and surged towards them.

Just then, trumpets sounded.

Chapter Twenty One

SPOILER: Click to show

21. Déjà-Vu

At the blaring of the trumpets, I skidded to a sharp halt, gaping in horror at Gelquie and Azzie. For a few moments, neither of them moved, and I could not tell which of them was dead. Please, please, oh please, not Gelquie, not Gelquie, not Gelquie…

Finally, after what seemed like minutes but I knew was probably only twenty or so seconds, one of them stirred, pushing the dead body off of them before sitting sharply up.

Gelquie.

“Are—are you ok?” Kristy asked her.

“I… think so,” Gelquie replied, wobbling to her feet. There was a bit of blood bubbling from a shallow knife-mark on her neck, probably just from the pressure of Azzie holding the blade to my ally’s throat, and scrapes covered her arms from the tussle on the ground. But otherwise, she seemed ok. She was alive, in any case.

“What happened?” I murmured, staring past Gelquie and at Azzie’s corpse, which had a knife sticking out of its chest.

“I… don’t even know, really,” Gelquie said, pressing her fingers to her lightly bleeding neck wound. “We were just on the ground, and her knife—she kept trying to stab me, and I kept trying to grab it out of her hand, and then… I guess I did. I got it. And I stabbed her. Oh God, I stabbed her. I didn’t want to but…”

“You had to,” Kristy finished. “If you hadn’t, she would have killed you, Gelquie.”

“I know that,” Gelquie said. “But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

I knew exactly how she felt: the flood of emotions, the ache of regret. It was exactly how I’d felt after killing Cassie. I’d known logically that I’d had no other choice. That she was trying to kill me, and I’d merely fought back. But that didn’t ease the horror. It didn’t change the fact that I’d just murdered a person I’d once considered a friend. That, up until that moment, I’d still in a way considered a friend.

All of us were silent for the next few minutes, as Gelquie scrubbed Azzie’s blood off of her in the pond and then gingerly cleaned her neck wound. As she did so, I hesitantly yanked the knife out of Azzie’s chest and washed off the blade. It made me squeamish to do, but if anything, our confrontation with Azzie had made it clear that we were badly underequipped for this arena. We had one bow between the three of us, and it was useless in hand-to-hand combat. The only—only—reason Gelquie was still alive was because Azzie had hesitated to swipe that blade. Because underneath the injured, terrified potential killer the arena had turned her into still remained scraps of the person I’d known before these Games. The sweet, good-natured person who wouldn’t hurt a fly (literally, I’d once seen her capture a fly in a jar and release it outside rather than swatting it).

“So,” Kristy said awhile later, “what do we do now? I mean, Azzie was clearly the one staying here and now she’s... gone. So, I guess we could stay here. With the water.”

“No.” Gelquie shook her head. “I... I know it’s partly just my emotions speaking. Me not wanting to stay at the place where I killed someone. But even with her gone, I don’t like this field. It… it doesn’t provide very good shelter. And at this point, with so few players left, I’m afraid that shelter is pretty much pertinent. That people will be hunting, in their efforts to end these horrible Games already. Being out in the open like this overnight? It’d be a death sentence. I just know it.”

“Where do you suggest we go then?” I asked. “The roof?”

“Not there,” Kristy pleaded. “Please not there. I know Sae’s body will be gone, but I just… I can’t go back there. I can’t.”

“So, what then? We try and find a brand new place to hide?”

“Maybe another real building,” Kristy said.

“Because those seem to be in such abundant supply,” I countered.

“I know they’re not,” she replied softly. “I know it took us forever to find that first one. But Carrie… I can’t go back to where Sae died. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”

There was a part of me that wanted to argue with her, tell her that emotions could not win out at this point, and therefore she was being ridiculous. That it was better to go back to Sae’s place of death and live, than wander the arena in search of a long shot new shelter and get killed by another player in the process.

But then I looked into her hazel eyes and immediately read her terror, her exhaustion, her sadness. She wasn’t just being a whiny little girl, stomping her feet and refusing to go someplace because she didn’t like it. No. This was a person who meant what she said: I honestly didn’t think she could physically bear to go back to the roof. It would crush her.

Sometimes, I realized, emotions were more than just emotions. They took on a corporeal component. Flitted the thin line between feeling and being.

“Ok,” I said to her. “We won’t go back to the roof.”

She didn’t smile, just shut her eyes and gratefully nodded her head. “Thank you,” she said, holding back tears of relief. “Thank you, Carrie.”

**

Rather than attempting to find another hospitable roof—which would mean a lot of fruitless climbing—we instead chose to try to ferret out another non-façade building. We tried every door we passed, peered into every window, even scoured for hidden entrances within alleyways.

But some six hours after Azzie’s death, we’d come up empty.

With just three of us left now, the canteens went further, but in the blistering heat, they still didn’t go far enough. We were rationing them—but this left us all constantly thirsty. We’d collected some of the water vegetables, and still had leftovers from Zylaa’s sponsor basket, but even so, our stomachs rumbled. Portioning things out meant we wouldn’t starve or dehydrate to death (at least, not anytime soon)… but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t be horrendously uncomfortable in the meanwhile.

We only stopped to rest a few times, and briefly at that, afraid to stall any one place for too long. Shortly before dusk, we took one such break, settling into the mouth of a narrow alley. It wasn’t a very lengthy pause: just enough time to catch our breaths and take careful swigs of water. For Gelquie to smear more antibiotic cream on her cheek, and now, her neck.

All in all, it probably only lasted about three minutes.

But sometimes, three minutes is enough for disaster to occur.

Like with Azzie earlier, it all happened so fast. One second Kristy, Gelquie, and I were standing at the maw of the alley. Gelquie was placing the tube of antibiotic ointment back into one of the sponsor baskets. I was screwing the cap onto a canteen. Kristy was leaning down to tie her shoe…

… and then, in the blink of an eye, someone was on top of her.

Kristy screamed. Her bow clattered off her shoulder and hit the ground below with a thud, the arrows breaking loose from their sheath and scattering about the cobblestones. She batted wildly at the person who had tackled her, but only managed to end up punching at the air. As nimbly as a lion dragging a gazelle, Kristy’s attacker heaved her away from the alley and maneuvered her into a chokehold. Flashes of Azzie holding Gelquie hostage bloomed in my mind. Could this really be happening again? How could this be happening again!?

“Don’t even!” yelled the assailant as I went fumbling through one of our baskets in search of Azzie’s knife. “Don’t you dare, Carrie!”

I paused and gazed up at them. At Celes. My board-mate, who I hadn’t seen since the day Elcie and Terra had died. She looked… wild. Not beat-up like Azzie had been, but still much different than the girl I’d known outside the arena. She had her wavy brown hair tied up in a frizzy bun, and her bright blue eyes were darting frantically about. In her hand—pressed again Kristy’s throat—was a knife even larger than the one Azzie had had. And from Celes’s demeanor (she was not sniveling, or shaking, or apologizing), it was clear that she was not going to fall apart enough for Kristy to have a snowball’s chance in hell of successfully fighting back.

“Celes,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, even though inside I was panicking. “Please, you don’t have to do this.”

“I need you three to come with me,” she replied. Not the response I was expecting.

“Come with you?” I asked.

“Yes. Come with me. You all need to come with me.”

“We’re not going anywhere with you,” Gelquie said shakily.

“If you don’t come with me, I’m going to cut Kristy’s throat,” Celes replied, which caused Kristy to whimper.

“And if we come with you,” I said, “then you’re just going to kill us all.”

She did not say anything aloud then. Instead, she stared me dead in the eye, our pupils locking, and mouthed something that I didn’t catch. When I furrowed my brow, she mouthed it again, and this time I made it out:

Trust me.

I exchanged a hesitant look with Gelquie before looking back over at Celes and her hostage. Kristy’s skin had taken on a bluish pallor for having her throat so tightly squeezed. Silent tears leaked out of her eyes, rolling down her cheeks.

“Come with me,” Celes repeated. When still we didn’t move, she added, “Now. Or I cut Kristy’s throat. Come with me!”

We came.

Chapter Twenty Two

SPOILER: Click to show

22. Celestial’s Tale

Celes at least loosened her chokehold on Kristy’s neck so that my ally wouldn’t asphyxiate to death, but still had a firm grip on her as a whole, meaning that Kristy had no chance of getting away. Well, that and the knife pointed at her jugular, which did a lot to tame a flighty person. When I casually leaned down to grab Kristy’s bow as we first began to follow Celes down the street, Celes pointedly told me that I best leave it behind—knowing all too well that, despite her pleading for us to trust her, we most definitely did not, at all.

Celes walked at a break-neck pace, much faster than we were used to. After wandering most of the day in the blazing hot sun, and having barely slept the night before, it took a lot of effort for Gelquie and I to keep up with her and her hostage. She led us through a dizzying array of alleys that I hadn’t even known connected up with each other, apparently having decoded the layout of the arena in a way far superior to my group. She did not once have to stop and scratch her head in an attempt to figure out where, exactly, she was: she moved effortlessly, lithely, like a wolf gliding through its territory.

Ten minutes later, she abruptly came to a halt outside a generic-looking, four-storey building. Through the course of the Games, we’d probably passed by it a dozen times. Swiftly, Celes ascended its front steps. Then, with the hand that wasn’t holding a knife to Kristy’s throat, she rapped on the door in a very purposeful way: thump, tha-thump-thump.

A couple seconds later, it creaked open.

“In with me now,” she said to Gelquie and me, before stepping inside with Kristy.

“You know she’s probably about to kill us,” Gelquie whispered into my ear. “We could turn right now and run.”

“We could,” I agreed. “But would you really want to survive these Games knowing that you’re only alive because you sacrificed your friend? Because you ran like a coward and just left her behind?”

“No,” Gelquie sighed. “I wouldn’t.”

And with that, we followed Celes inside.

The building’s interior was shadowy and dark, and I had to blink my eyes to adjust to the dimness. As I did, someone slammed the door shut behind me. I jumped and turned towards them.

Tiger.

I hadn’t seen her since the beginning of the Games, as all twenty-four of us had stood in a circle around the supplies pile. I knew it was only about a week ago, but it seemed like years, given that most of those twenty-four were now dead.

She didn’t look bad, all things considering. Her white uniform shirt was dirty, but blood-free. Her hair was tangled but not overly wild, and though the frame to her glasses was bent, the lenses weren’t damaged. She didn’t seem injured at all.

In her hands was a tire iron.

I had visions of her lunging towards me and bashing my brains in. Finishing off Gelquie and me as Celes slashed Kristy’s throat. But she didn’t. Instead, she smiled broadly and said, “Oh, thank God Celes finally found you guys. I thought she never would.”

“It was like trying to herd a group of cats,” Celes said. “Roaming in no particular direction. And given all the trumpets that have gone off since last night, I’d half-convinced myself that the whole lot of them were dead.”

“Sae,” Tiger said. “She’s not with you guys. Is she… was she one… one of the trumpets?”

Still wondering what the hell was going on—why Celes had kidnapped us to this building, and why Tiger seemed happy to see us, and not just because she could now murder us all—I replied, “Yes. She was.”

“And the others?” Tiger asked. “Do you know the others?”

“Jay,” Gelquie said hesitantly. “Ginz. And Azzie.” Then, before she could help herself, she blurted, “It’s not that I don’t like this small-talk. But if we’re going to chat like old pals catching up, could you at least stop holding that knife to Kristy’s throat, Celestial?”

“Yes,” Celes said, “but only if you promise Tiger and me that you won’t go running the moment I do. I mean, if you really, really want to, fine: we won’t stop you. We’ll let you go. But I really hope you don’t, because I really think you’ll want to hear what I’m about to say.”

True to her word, she released Kristy, pulling the knife away from my ally. Kristy stumbled forward and darted over towards Gelquie and me. She didn’t talk, just threw herself into my arms, sobbing, probably in disbelief of the fact that she was still alive.

“Shh, it’s ok,” I said, patting her back. “It’s ok, Kristy.”

“Let’s go,” she moaned. “Leave them. I don’t care what Celes has to say. I don’t want to hear it.”

I knew in my head that Kristy was probably right on the money. That we should get the hell away from Celestial and Tiger before something bad went down. And yet… there was a part of me—a very large part of me—that believed Celes when the woman said that I’d want to hear what she had to say. That felt like we weren’t in immediate danger here in this building. I mean, if Celestial and Tiger wanted to murder us, wouldn’t they have done it already? If they wanted us dead, why would they even give us the option to run? It simply didn’t make any sense.

“Carrie, Gelquie,” Kristy said. “Let’s go. Come on, let’s go.”

“No,” I replied, even as it made my stomach flop. “I think… we should stay for now. Hear what Celes has to say.”

“But she had a knife to my throat!” Kristy said.

“And she didn’t kill you with it,” I reminded.

Kristy bit her lip and glanced at the other remaining member of our group. “Gelquie?” she asked.

“I… I agree with Carrie,” Gelquie said. “We should hear what Celes has to say. And if we don’t like it—well, then we leave. But only then.”

“Fine,” Kristy said, but she didn’t sound happy about it. She sniffled and wiped the last of her tears away. Looked over at Celes. “Tell it to us, then. If you have something to say, tell us already.”

“My pleasure,” Celes replied, and then she began with the most remarkable tale.

**

It all started on the day she killed Elcie and saved me from certain death at the hands of the pack. Up until the point, Celes hadn’t been doing a whole lot in the arena: she’d been moving from hiding place to hiding place and just hoping like hell that no other player found her. Of all the deaths, she’d only seen the initial few in the arena… and then Coaster’s; she’d been hiding nearby, unseen, when the pack interrupted that pursuit of my group to murder the heat-delirious man. That was where she’d gotten the knife she’d eventually use to kill Elcie: out of Coaster’s back. The haughty pack had left it behind.

Then came the day when Elcie died. The day the presents were placed in the arena.

By this point, she was deliriously thirsty. She’d found the grove back on day one, but had quickly run into Cassie there. In a tussle with Cassie, she’d managed to snare a canteen right out of the woman’s hands, which she quickly filled with water before making a break for it. Cassie fired a number of arrows after her, but mercifully missed. Celes made it out of the grove unscathed.

Even after Cassie’s death was announced on day two, Celestial was still afraid to return to the grove, however, convinced that someone else had probably moved in. So she was parched—and famished, given that the only food she’d gotten was a small basket of fruit leather from a sponsor. She eventually found more water on a rooftop cistern, but it was metallic and warm and had run out by the morning that Stal announced the gifts in the plaza.

Celes had known that going after her present was a risk. But she decided dying in a scrum over a gift was preferable to slowly dehydrating to death.

She’d waited inside a fetid, hellishly hot manhole—which led to nowhere, no convenient sewer running beneath the arena—until the chime sounded. And then… she’d continued to wait, having last minute butterflies. Did she really want to get murdered over a gift that may or may turn out to be valuable? What if the admins were just pulling some hilarious (to them) prank, and inside the presents were useless things? What if, what if, what if?

She spent so long debating within the manhole that she was still down there, waffling, when Terra poked her head out of the dumpster, initiating the pack pursuit that would eventually kill her. As the lot of us fled into the distance, Celes made a snap decision to heft herself out of the manhole and make a grab for her present. She swiped it—and the presents belonging to the pack—from the plaza and stuffed them into her pocket.

Then, Celes realized something: the pack had no idea she’d even been there. The formidable pack, who’d nearly murdered her in the plaza back at the start of things. This… this might be her only chance to end one of them. To cut down their numbers.

She flung herself in the direction she’d heard Terra, the pack, and I set off in, catching up with us just moments after Elcie fired the arrow that would lodge in Terra’s thigh.

Celestial threw her knife, the knife that she’d taken from Coaster’s corpse, at Elcie, killing her.

It was only after Elcie had fallen that it dawned upon Celestial that she now had to face thr three very livid remaining pack members. That while sure, now there was one less of them… all of the surviving members were not exactly going to let their comrade die without seeking revenge.

That, and now she didn’t have a single frackin’ weapon to her name.

She turned and fled, and they gave chase. Arrows and darts pelted the air around her, but none hit. Somehow, none hit. Still, Celes thought, it was only a matter of time. Soon she’d be killed. Except… she wasn’t. Somehow, someway, she evaded the pack, winding through side alleys, making hairpin turns, running as fast as she ever had before.

Finally, she lost them.

But, she knew, they might find her again. Even though they were no longer directly behind her, they were still somewhere nearby. Frantically, she tried the door of every building she passed… but came up empty. Façade after façade after façade.

Until finally, one wasn’t.

She almost cried with relief when at last she came across it. She shoved open the door and scurried inside, knowing she’d escaped death by a hair. Wiping the sweat off her brow, she shut the door behind her and took a deep breath. Reached into her pockets to open the presents she’d swiped.

She’d nearly jumped out of her skin when, from across the room, a voice said to her, “Hello.”

Tiger. Holding a tire iron, and staring at the intruder in what seemed like shock. Celes gasped and tore off the wrapping of the first present (addressed to Jay), and could have shrieked with elation when it turned out to be a knife. As Tiger menacingly held up the tire iron, as if ready to whack Celes if the woman moved an inch, Celes pointed the knife right back at her.

For a while, the two of them simply stood there at a standstill, neither of them daring to make the move that would lead to a fight.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, Tiger said, “I really don’t want to kill you.”

“Same,” Celestial said.

Tiger bit her lip. “So,” she said, still holding the tire iron out, “how’s the arena been treating you?”

“Fine,” Celestial said vaguely.

“Why are you so out of breath? What happened out there? I heard the trumpets.”

“Jay and his band of idiots,” Celes said. “I um, killed one of them, and they didn’t like it.”

“Which one?”

“Elcie.”

“Oh. That’s… not good, but… one less of them is comforting. Given that they’re why I’ve basically been hiding in this building since day one.” She hesitated before adding, “Look, this might be coming out of left field. But… I’ve been by myself since the start of these Games. And it seems like you’ve been alone, too. And I don’t like it, being alone. So I was thinking, what if we formed an alliance? Not… not forever. Just until there are less people left, at which point we split, and everything goes back to a free-for-all. But… I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d feel a lot better with someone watching my back, having someone by my side who I know isn’t going to kill me, even if it’s only temporary.”

Celestial, who’d been a lone wolf since back at the training center, wasn’t convinced. She wasn’t sure if she really did want an ally. But she was also exhausted and terrified to return to the streets, where the pack was still likely attempting to track her down. So, she cautiously agreed to forge an alliance with Tiger.

After that, it didn’t take her long to realize something about the building she and Tiger were sharing: there was only one camera inside of it, embedded low in the wall, at about calf-level, with a lens that could pan up and down, left and right, to gather a complete view of the room. Cameras were so ubiquitous around the arena that I’d learned to ignore them long ago… but not Celestial. She scoured that building, trying to find other recording devices. Convinced that there couldn’t just be the one.

But she came up empty-handed. It was, indeed, just the one.

One of the other presents she’d swiped from the plaza (Nova’s) had turned out to be a windbreaker. And so that night, Celes casually draped that windbreaker over the lens of the camera. Then, using fingerspelling and hand gestures, she and Tiger had a conversation.

After they ‘spoke’, Celestial removed the windbreaker from over the camera and folded it up to use as a pillow. She fell asleep… at which point Tiger pounced on her like well, a tiger. Punching. Kicking. Celes fought back. The two of them danced around the room like wrestlers in a ring, each trying to kill the other.

At least, this is what the admins would have thought was happening, if they were watching. The reality was much different. The fight? It was staged. The goal of it was not for Celestial and Tiger to kill each other… but for one of them to slam the other into a very particular wall, shattering the embedded camera.

Eliminating the admins’ eyes and ears.

After the lens was broken, Celestial pried the camera out of the wall and stomped on it, just to make sure the audio component was dead, too. This left she and Tiger in a building that the admins could not see or hear.

**

“It was then,” Celestial told us, smiling broadly, as my group listened to her story in disbelief, “that Tiger and I came up with our escape plan.”

Chapter Twenty Three

SPOILER: Click to show

23. The Last Midnight

“Escape plan,” I echoed, still not fully comprehending the amazing tale I’d just heard. It seemed science fiction, insane. Like an account out of some very demented children’s storybook.

“Yes,” Celes confirmed. “An escape plan.”

“But… but… okay, you broke the cameras,” Gelquie said, apparently also unable to wrap her head around Celestial’s story. “How do you know they don’t have other microphones? Like, in our collars?”

“Because,” Celes said, “Tiger and I have been saying things on purpose that would, if the admins heard them, likely cause us to go ‘boom’. We haven’t. So we think it’s a fairly safe bet.”

“How do you know they haven’t fixed the cameras, then? Since you broke them?”

“Because we’ve made sure to keep one of us in this building at all times since then,” Tiger explained. “They haven’t had the chance. Now, do you want to hear mine and Celestial’s escape plan or not?”

“We do,” I said.

“Good,” Celes replied, and continued with her tale.

**

After breaking the camera, they’d started fiddling with the collars. Not in such a blatant, overt way like Thundy had done, by inserting bits of wire into the keyhole (and promptly blowing himself up). Instead, they’d explored the collars’ control panels, not trying to get them off—but simply attempting to figure out how they worked.

They soon discovered a very crucial thing: the way the admins knew to blare the trumpets the moment someone died. A major component of the collars? A pulse monitor. Your pulse stops? Off go the trumpets, automatically. It made sense… but that didn’t stop the next thing Celes told us from making me a bit queasy: that she and Tiger were pretty sure they’d figured out how to jam the pulse monitors. To trick the collars into thinking a player was dead.

**

“But how would that help?” Kristy asked. “Why would you want the admins to think you’re dead?”

“In most cases, you wouldn’t,” Celestial said. “Unless, that is, you were inside a building in which the admins have no eyes or ears. A building into which, upon those deaths, they’d send in a clean-up crew. A clean-up crew that expected to find corpses, not very alive people lying in wait.”

**

She went back to the day Coaster had died, then. What had happened after she’d wrenched the knife free from his corpse before fleeing back into her hiding space. That’s where she’d been—hiding—when a clean-up crew surfaced a few minutes later. Quite literally, surfaced, a trapdoor opening in the middle of the street.

Out of the trapdoor ascended an unidentified admin pet, with a mask covering most of their face. They were clad in plastic biohazard suit, and had with them a body bag, which they closed around Coaster’s corpse. Then, the pet hefted up the bagged body before seeming to press a button in their pocket, which caused the trapdoor to slide open again. They disappeared back into it. Celes ran out, to see if she could follow them down, but it already closed again. She fell to her knees and ran her fingers over the cobblestones, but found… nothing. No grooves. No cracks. No evidence that the trapdoor had been there at all. If it hadn’t been for the obvious, sudden absence of Coaster’s body, she said she probably would have thought she’d imagined the whole thing.

Only a one-man clean-up crew had been sent that day, because it was only one body. But Celes was pretty sure that with more bodies, well—the clean-up crew would grow to match the corpse count, to make cadaver removal as expeditious as possible.

This was a very crucial part of the plan.

The final part of the plan was the most precarious, and also the most likely to change: somehow finding my group. She and Tiger picked my group because, beyond the pack, we were the only real alliance left at that point, and they figured it’d be easier to find, collect (nice word for kidnap), and then convince a number of people to cooperate with them at one time, as opposed to attempting to scramble up singletons, and then having to explain everything over and over again.

If they couldn’t find us, they would attempt the plan on their own, but they knew it would be less likely to succeed that way. We were crucial to them in making it work. In, as the admins said, making the odds turn ever in our favor.

**

After she’d spelled it all out to us, Gelquie, Kristy, and I were shaking our heads in disbelief. If I’d thought her tale was ludicrous at the start, it was even more insane by the end. I understood what she saying, technically. But that didn’t mean I thought it was likely to work, or even really possible. It hinged on so many what-ifs, so many assumptions.

But when I pointed this out to Celes and Tiger, they shrugged.

“Of course it’s far from guaranteed,” Celestial said. “But at this point, I don’t really see any other options, unless any of you want to just murder everybody else in this room right now, go hunt down Nova, and call it a day.”

When nobody volunteered for this course of action, Tiger said, “We’ll do it tomorrow. Get a good night’s sleep first, so that we’re sharp.”

**

At her midnight announcement, Killix seemed very pleased at the day’s fatalities. I wondered if the cameras, in addition to recording video and audio, also served as speakers, because her voice was definitely quieter inside Tiger and Celestial’s building than I ever remembered it being before.

“Good evening, players!” the admin said. “It has been a very exciting day in the arena: we started the day with ten competitors, and ended it with six! First fell Ginz, of Artist’s Alley, followed by Jay, of the Editor’s Mark, Sae, of the Neopian Times, and Azzie, of the Splatterboard. Sleep well, competitors, and fight on! And, as always, may the odds be ever in your favor.”

I did, indeed, sleep well, though this was probably only because I was exhausted. Even the dozens of fears I had about Celestial and Tiger’s escape plot, which spun around my head at lightning speed, couldn’t keep me awake much past midnight. The rest of my group was quickly snoring, as well. We all—Celes and Tiger included—slept straight through until morning.

Upon awakening, we ate a small breakfast of the vegetables my group had taken from the field yesterday. Sipped on bits of water (Celes and Tiger had their own canteens, one of which had been inside Celestial’s present from the plaza). We didn’t talk much, because there was nothing left to say. We were beyond words now, on this morning that we were to enact the plan.

Only actions remained.

Chapter Twenty Four

SPOILER: Click to show

24. Clean

As Celestial fiddled with the collar around Tiger’s neck, thereby initiating stage one of the escape plan, I had horrible visions of both of them going ‘boom’.

It was hard not to, after what had happened to Thundy and Fraze a few nights ago. One second I’d been gaping down at them from my perch in the loft… and then in the blink of an eye, they’d both blown up, their bodies eviscerated. Celes and Tiger claimed they knew what they were doing. That they would not in any way, shape, or form trigger the explosives in the collar, as they weren’t trying to wrest them off, just disable the pulse monitor, and the bomb could only be triggered if someone messed with the lock… or an admin pressed their big red button from outside the arena. Even as they declared this with such confidence, though, I couldn’t forget the fact that, shortly before exploding himself and his board-mate, Thundy had asserted pretty much the same exact thing.

Gelquie and Kristy were also obviously on edge. The three of us stood as far away from Tiger and Celes as we could get without leaving the building, our collective breaths held. We exchanged worried looks with each other. I don’t think any of us really expected this whole plan to come together without a hitch. It was just… so far-fetched. So contingent on an entire flurry of factors coming together neatly, like a present with a tidy bow on top.

“Why do I have a feeling this is going to end poorly?” Kristy whispered to Gelquie and me as Celes continued fiddling with Tiger’s collar.

“Because all of us still have pieces of Fraze and Thundy embedded in us?” Gelquie murmured darkly.

Suddenly, a trumpet sounded.

Out of instinct, I flinched, as did my allies. Who had just died? Had Nova finally bled out? It had to be, since all of us were still alive in this room. Next thought: crap, would this plan work with Nova dead? Because him being alive had been fairly crucial to the later stages…

I glanced towards Celes and Tiger, also expecting to find them with fallen, nervous faces. Except… neither of them seemed nervous at all. In fact, they were grinning. It took me a moment to realize why: the collar. Celes had successfully disabled the pulse monitor in Tiger’s collar. That trumpet sounding? It had not been for Nova at all.

“Who’s next?” Celes asked, looking over at my group, before adding, “We should probably do this fast. Otherwise the admins will wonder why there are such long pauses between each death.”

When neither Gelquie nor Kristy volunteered, I decided I might as well be next. Even though fears of Celes accidentally detonating my collar still gripped my mind, I was slightly comforted by the fact that Tiger’s collar had been disabled without her exploding into a million little pieces. And sure enough, within another minute, a second trumpet sounded overhead in commemoration of my death.

It was followed shortly thereafter by two more loud blares for Kristy and Gelquie.

After the four us had our collars disabled, we all simply stood there for a few moments, steeling ourselves for the next part of the plan. Then, Celestial gathered up the sum of our food and water into a basket, before we all divvied out the weapons. Between us, we had… not a lot, but enough, hopefully. Azzie’s knife, plus the one Celes had acquired from the pile of presents, and then two more on top of that, which Tiger had gotten in the melee at the supplies pile on day one. A tire iron. A stun gun, also from the supplies pile. I wished desperately that Celes had let us take Kristy’s bow with us the day before, but knew why she hadn’t. It would have been useful now, though.

In the end, Celes ended up with two knives, leaving the four of us with the other two knives, the tire iron, and the stun gun.

Once the weapons were dealt, Celes said, “Well, I suppose this is goodbye for now. See you all on the other end.”

Tiger nodded. “See you, Celes. And… and… if we don’t, for some reason… well, at least the collar going off would be an instant end. Painless. And at least we’ll all have died playing by our own rules.”

Celes smiled softly. “That’s the only way to go, my friends. But I’m not going to think like that. So I’ll just say it again: see you on the other side.”

“See you on the other side,” we chorused, and watched as Celes slipped out of the building and into the morning heat.

**

That had been my group’s biggest concern, though, as Tiger and Celes had gone over their plan the night before: what if the collars went off? Not during the disabling process, but after, as we carried out the later stages of the plan.

“I’m hoping,” Celes had said, “that the bombs go dead when they players do. I’m thinking they’d do something like that, as a safety mechanism for their clean-up crews. Wouldn’t want one of their pets accidentally triggering the bombs whilst lugging off the bodies.”

“But even if they deactivate when a player dies,” Kristy had replied, “only four us will be ‘dead’, Celes. You won’t be. The admins could still explode you. I mean, that’s probably the first thing they’d do if they figured out what was going on.”

“True,” she’d said. “But it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

**

Once Celes was gone, we waited for the clean-up crew to arrive.

Gelquie, Kristy, and I lay in a heap in the center of the room, piled over each other and hopefully looking quite dead, while Tiger waited behind the door. When the clean-up crew walked in, she’d linger there, unseen, until they started towards my ‘dead’ group and me. Then, she’d use the stun gun on one of them. As the clean-up crew then attempted to figure out what had happened, the rest of us would leap up and attack them.

The entire thing had the potential to go very, very wrong. We all knew this, but could only pray fervently that it wouldn’t.

It took the crew about ten minutes after Celestial’s departure to arrive. We heard them out on the street first, their boots smacking against the cobblestones. Since wining the raffle about two weeks earlier, I’d spent a lot of time nervous. But the anxiety I felt now—the pure, primal fear—was extreme. Even more than it had been back at the start of things, as I’d stood around that supplies pile in the plaza. One tiny thing going wrong would lead to my death right now. There weren’t twenty-three other players loitering around who could be killed in my stead. No. It was just Gelquie, Kristy, Tiger, and me.

In the end, it all happened very fast.

The clean-up crew opened the door and stepped into the building. Though I had my eyes closed, on account of the fact that I was dead and all, I could heard them walking towards my group and me…

… until a scream erupted, and one of them thumped to the ground, taken unawares by Tiger’s stun gun.

Gelquie, Kristy, and I sprang to action just as Tiger stunned a second of the four-man clean-up crew, pressing the weapon to the only exposed piece of flesh on them: the top of the neck. The cleaner fell, twitching.

The two remaining still didn’t quite seem to understand what was going on, and stood there, gaping, as my group finally reached them. It was only as Kristy arced her knife out, aiming towards one of their throats, that they seemed to realize what was happening and reached into their pocket, fumbling for something. But they were so nervous that this something skittered out of their hands and onto the ground.

A pistol.

They lunged towards it, but before they could, Tiger reached up and zapped them with the stun gun. They fell. But meanwhile, the first to be stunned was regaining their wits and staggering back to their feet. They were still unsteady, though—unsteady enough where, when I swiped my own blade against their throat, they did not have the presence of mind to fight back. They reached up and clamped a hand over their wound. Gurgled.

Fell back down, dead.

As the fourth cleaner reached into their pocket, as well, presumably also for a gun, Gelquie, who was armed with the tire iron, bashed them over the head. Their hand automatically flew out of their pocket to clutch at the injury. Gelquie brought the tire iron down again.

The second cleaner fell.

The two others were on the ground, still recovering from their encounter with the stun gun. Not daring to take my eyes off them, I backed up a few feet to grab the pistol off the ground. I’d never fired a gun before—nor did I really know how—but the cleaners didn’t know that. As I leveled the pistol in their direction, their eyes—which just barely peeked out from the top of their facemasks—grew wide.

Distracted by the gun, they didn’t even realize what else was happening: Kristy darted out a hand and slashed one of their throats, as Gelquie simultaneously brought the tire iron down on the skull of the second. The horrific sound of bone cracking filled the air.

And then… nothing. Silence. The room went deathly still. My heart was beating a million miles a minute, and copious amounts of sweat trickled down my forehead. Even with all of the cleaners down, Tiger still stood with the stun gun pointed out, as if ready to zap at them if they dared move.

But none of them moved.

None of them could move.

Part two of the plan had gone surprisingly well.

.... continued in next post...

[Terra]

Oh man, this is so great. =D Can't wait to see what happens!

(...I mean, besides the obvious.)

EDIT - And here is Carrie, taking over Terra's post because I've reached the maximum post length limit for Proboards! >___>

Chapter Twenty Five

SPOILER: Click to show

25. Underground

Still acting on an adrenaline high, it didn’t take us long to remove the cleaners’ uniforms and zip them onto ourselves. It wasn’t pleasant, though, especially once we got the masks off and realized their identities: Alyssa, Teow, Mel, and Birdy. It wasn’t unexpected, exactly. Stal had said at the start of the game that those four comprised the clean-up crew. Still, I knew them. Even if they’d gone to the dark side, so to speak, that didn’t mean I wanted them dead. Didn’t mean I wanted to have helped kill them.

The plastic suits were hot and uncomfortable, but perfect in that they zipped so high that the collars at base of our necks stayed hidden. The facemasks further acted to conceal our identities. At first I was concerned by the fact that the suits had spatters of blood on them, but Tiger pointed out that this was probably to be expected.

“They’re cleaning up bodies,” she said. “Often brutally murdered bodies. You think they manage to do that without getting a speck of blood on ‘em?”

With that statement, we started bagging the corpses of the guards within the flimsy body bags they’d had rolled up and stuffed into their pockets. Body bags and pistols: that was what each cleaner had on them… plus a remote control inside Birdy’s pocket, which we assumed would open the trap door in the street.

That had been another of my group’s concerns about the plan, actually: the trap door. How would we know the location of the trap door? But Tiger said that they were ubiquitous, almost as plentiful as the cameras that were plastered all about the arena. They had to be, because bodies were heavy, and the pets couldn’t very well go about wandering the arena with corpses slung over their shoulders for particularly long.

Sure enough, after we’d completed assuming the cleaners’ identities and then bagging their bodies, we found the trap door they’d come through just a few yards down the street. As Gelquie, who was wearing Birdy’s uniform, pressed the remote control, its door slid open, smooth as butter. My stomach cinched. I still couldn’t believe we’d gotten this far.

I was half-expecting that we’d have to climb a ladder down into the unknown, but was pleasantly surprised by a staircase. Thank God, I thought, shifting the body bag that held Alyssa into a more comfortable position. It wasn’t that she was super heavy, but any adult person is really not comfortable to carry. Especially when they are dead—ever heard the saying ‘dead weight’?—and you’re presently masquerading as them, and remain somewhat convinced that the collar around your neck is going to blow up at any moment.

I went down first, followed by Kristy and then Tiger, with Gelquie taking up the rear. Once we were all on the stairs, she hit the remote control again, and the trap door snapped back shut. I blinked my eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness.

The staircase seemed never-ending, with dozens upon dozens of steps leading far underground. As we slowly descended it (slowly because none of us wanted to trip and fall; it would be terrible to get this far only to die of an accidentally broken neck), my thoughts drifted to Celes. I wondered how her side of the plan was going.

Compared to ours, hers was simple: she would stalk about the arena, pretending that, after having murdered the four of us, she was now trying to find Nova and end things. All the while, she would be hoping desperately that she did not, in fact, stumble upon Nova, because she didn’t want to actually have to fight with him… especially since he legitimately probably thought that it was just the two of them left, and he was one more kill away from walking out of the arena. That, and Celes just had two knives on her, while Nova had his weapons, plus probably some of Jay’s and Ginz’s. If they did indeed meet up, the odds did not fall in Celestial’s favor.

I could not fully decide whose side of the plot was more dangerous: ours, or hers. Though I knew very well that any error in ours would probably end hers—and well, her—in an instant.

**

Though the staircase itself was dark, at the bottom we found a conservatively lit corridor. It was narrow and smelled of must, with warped linoleum floors and ugly green wallpaper. Vaguely, I wondered if it had been constructed purely for the Games, or if it had existed all along like the dizzying maze of back alleys and side streets I’d been led through after the raffle and on the way to and from the disastrous parade. Up until a few weeks ago, I thought I’d known the layout of the forum well, but it was clear now that I hadn’t. Not at all.

The sound of our boots—also pilfered from the dead cleaners—clicking against the tiles made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Even though I knew it was expected for four people to be clomping down the hall, there was a part of me that couldn’t shake the feeling that we were making too much noise. Or that the instant another admin pet saw us, they’d say… make out the vague shape of our collars underneath the plastic suits or realize that one of us had the wrong color eyes, or was shorter, or taller, or fatter, or thinner, or anything different than the cleaners whose identifies we’d assumed. And then this whole plan would go to hell in a hand basket. We’d die. Celes would die. Everything would be for naught.

It took us a solid five minutes of walking down the seemingly infinite corridor to finally reach its end. Alyssa’s body was growing leaden in my arms, and I had to keep shifting it around every two seconds to keep from dropping it. When the hall abruptly ended up before us, in the form of a shut wooden door, I was actually kind of excited. That is, until the aforementioned door swung open at our presence, and into the corridor stepped Bacon.

“Took you long enough,” he groused. “I know four bodies is a lot to deal with, but really, you should be faster by this point. And why do you have so much blood on you, jeez? You’re supposed to be bagging the bodies, not splattering their juices on you. Komrade Killix is not going to be pleased.”

As Bacon ranted, I noticed Tiger, who was standing to my left, shift the bag with Teow’s body in it so that it was balanced over just one of her shoulders… and then, she dipped her freshly free hand into plastic suit’s front pocket. By the time I realized what she was doing, I was powerless to stop it: out from the pocket she grabbed Teow’s pistol.

She fired it at Bacon’s head.

On my other side, Kristy, who had not seen the movement of Tiger’s hand, screamed, dropping Mel’s body in the process. Gelquie flinched and gasped but at least kept hold of Birdy’s corpse.

And Bacon? Stayed standing. It took me a moment to understand why: the bullet had missed, lodging itself in the door. The wood around the impact point cracked, splintered. Bacon, confused as all get out, gaped at Tiger in shock… and then his eyes flitted down to the body Kristy had just dropped. Upon hitting the floor, the bag’s zipper had split. The crown of a head now poked out of it. Mel’s head.

As Bacon put it all together, Tiger squeezed the trigger of her gun, as it to fire again. But it didn’t go off. I dropped Alyssa’s body and reached into the pocket of my plastic suit for my own weapon … but by the time I dug it out, Bacon had already fumbled up a pistol himself.

“There’s only one shot in the guns they take into the arena… but mine’s fully loaded,” he said, and in the same breath he fired.

The bullet hit Tiger square in the forehead; she collapsed to the ground just as I shot back at Bacon, hitting him in the dead center of the chest. He fell, and his gun skittered out of his hands at impact. Bleeding heavily, he twitched and grasped towards it… but before he could pick it up, Kristy lunged towards the weapon and palmed it.

She used a bullet from Bacon’s own gun to finish him off.

With Bacon neutralized, I turned back towards Tiger, at the gory hole in her head. It would be obvious to even a complete moron that she was dead, but I couldn’t help dropping to my knees, anyway, and fumbling for a pulse. I whispered her name, begging her to wake up. This couldn’t… this couldn’t be happening. The plan had been going so well. So well! No one else was supposed to die! That was the whole point of escaping!

Yet here Tiger lay, a bullet through her brain.

“Carrie,” Gelquie said after rummaging through Bacon’s pockets, from which she unearthed another fully loaded pistol (the admins sure kept the pets well-armed when they weren’t doing chores inside the arena). When I didn’t respond, she repeated, “Carrie.”

“What?” I murmured, continuing to press at Tiger’s wrist in search of a pulse. For a sign that some miracle had occurred, and life still flickered inside her.

“She’s gone. Tiger’s gone. And I doubt Bacon was the only pet stationed around here. Someone probably heard the ruckus. Someone is going to come running. We need to keep moving.”

Her words came to fruition before I could even respond: someone flung the door back open and stepped into the corridor. Expecting another pet, I turned from Tiger’s body and leveled my gun in their direction. Gelquie and Kristy did the same.

But it wasn’t a pet we found.

It was Dan.

Chapter Twenty Six

SPOILER: Click to show

26. Turning the Tables

There was one part of Gelquie’s assessment of the situation that had been off: Dan had not come running because he’d heard the shots. This we quickly ascertained when he nearly fell over in shock at the fact that there were two (unexpected) dead bodies in the corridor, and three guns pointed at his head.

“What… why are you pointing guns at me!?” he bleated, apparently not yet understanding that we weren’t the droids he thought we were.

“Hm, I don’t know Dan,” Gelquie snarled, ripping off her facemask. “Could it be because you decided it was a swell idea to fight us to the death?”

At the revelation of Gelquie’s identity, Dan’s face went so pale that I was surprised he didn’t black out. He turned briefly, as if to run, but Kristy, taking off her own mask, advised that this would be a very stupid move.

“I… I don’t understand!” he said. “I… where are Mel and Teow and Birdy and Alyssa?”

I nudged my foot towards the partially open body bag that contained Mel. At seeing her bloody, bashed in head (she’d been one of the tire iron fatalities), he let out a noise that was somewhere between a gasp and sob. His gaze then trailed towards the other three body bags. As he proceeded to put those pieces together, his eyes grew wide as dinner plates, and his skin went from ‘milk’ to ‘ghost’.

“Now,” Gelquie continued, “I believe you probably have on you something we would like very much.” She gestured at her neck.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Dan blubbered.

“The key.”

“I don’t have the key with me! I don’t just carry around the key! Why would I just carry around the key?”

But from the way he was tripping over his own tongue as he spoke, and sweating profusely, it was patently obvious that he was lying through his teeth. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out where the key was on him, given that he kept flicking his eyes down at the zippered pocket of his snazzy, purple-checked polo shirt (gee, apparently the admins were watching the conclusion to the Games in style). Dan was many things. Charming… cocky… a psychopath who thought it was totally cool to fight twenty-four innocents to their deaths. But a good fibber he was not.

“Daniel,” Gelquie said firmly, “I am going to give you ‘till the count of three. At three, I will fire a shot.” She smiled sweetly then and added, “Not a fatal shot, of course! Just something in the knee or shoulder. A non-fatal wound, because I’m so kind.”

“I… I…”

“One.”

“But I don’t have—”

“Two.”

“I don’t—”

“Two and a half.” Gelquie cocked the gun. “Thr—”

“Ok!” Dan gasped. “Ok! It’s in my pocket! My shirt pocket.” And then he reached down, as if to undo the zipper and fumble the key out.

But before he could, Kristy cried out, “No! Stop that! Don’t reach in there!”

Dan paused with his hand hanging above the pocket. “What? I thought you wanted the key.”

“We do,” Kristy said, storming over to him; he cowered like a little girl as she approached. “I just don’t trust what else you might have in that pocket.” And with that, she gingerly reached down, unzipped the pocket, and pulled out from within it two things.

The first was a shiny brass key. The second was a remote control somewhat similar to the one that Gelquie had used to open the trapdoor. Except, as Kristy flipped it over in her hands and read the label on the back, it became clear that this remote served a very different purpose

“‘Boom’,” she read off it, and then ran her fingers over the array of small buttons, on which were etched names. Thundy. Hunter. Morgan. Carrie.

Gelquie and I kept our guns trained on Dan—who was now sniveling and had tears running down his cheeks, and snot dripping from his nose—as Kristy used the key to take off all our collars. After over a week of having it fastened around my neck, it felt liberating yet odd to have it removed. My skin underneath had blistered, and was probably twenty shades paler than the sunburned rest of me.

After Kristy, Gelquie, and I had our collars off, and had dropped them the ground, I glanced back down at Tiger’s corpse. I was almost positive that she’d died instantly upon being shot, that she hadn’t felt pain; but this didn’t erase the obvious stress and fear that’d been etched on her face as she’d fallen. The panic that had permeated her at the moment of her death was crystal clear. My eyes next drifted down towards her neck, where I could still vaguely discern the outline of her own collar.

“Kristy,” I said. “You should take Tiger’s off.”

“Why?” Kristy asked, biting her lip.

I shrugged. “For the same reason we sang Cassie or Sae to sleep. Or held Terra’s onto hand even after she’d… gone. She deserves to have that collar come off.”

“You’re right,” Kristy said, leaning over Tiger’s body. Gently, she brushed down the part of the plastic suit that covered our dead friend’s collar, before inserting the key into the lock. She turned it; the collar popped off, clattering to the floor. Kristy blinked back tears. “There,” she murmured. “There you go, Tiger.” And then she whirled towards Dan again. “Now,” she said, “you’re going to be doing some things for us, Daniel. If you want to live, you’d best follow every word we say. Understand?”

“I understand,” Dan said, his lower lip quivering.

“Good,” Kristy said. “So, if we wanted to address those still in the arena over the PA system, how would we do that?”

“I… I don’t know. I’ve never made an announcement on that thing!”

“Really?” I asked in mock surprise. “Oh, that’s too bad. I really prefer you with two working kneecaps and not one.” I mimed pressing the trigger of my gun.

Dan jumped like a dog who’d been startled awake from a very urgent dream about chasing squirrels. “No! I… I’m sorry, I just… I’ll show you! It’s about a ten-minute walk from here. In another part of this complex. Aboveground, though. We’re below ground, but it’s—it’s aboveground. We just walk the way I came, and then up a staircase, and it’s there. Right there! The rest of the administrators are all inside it right now, watching the end of the Games! I’ll… I’ll show you!”

“Oh, I’m so glad you remembered!” Gelquie said brightly. “Now, come on, Dan. Let’s go. Be a good boy for us, and maybe those odds of you staying alive will keep in your favor, huh?”

**

Ten minutes was a very liberal estimate on Dan’s part: it took us closer to twenty. During most of this time, I was fairly convinced that Dan was just moments away from attempting to flee from us, but he kept chickening out. He sure was a crybaby when suddenly he was the one under threat of death. He kept trying to stop from crying, and would succeed for a minute or two, before the tears came back. This constant sobbing then led to hiccupping, which for some reason caused him to cry even harder.

He would have lasted three seconds in the arena, I thought to myself.

None of us spoke much during the walk, though Dan, between sniveling, occasionally muttered to himself such gems as: “Why do these things happen to good people?” and “What did I ever do to deserve this?” This self-pitying questions were interspersed with random ‘should-haves’: “I knew we should have had the clean-up crews go in with walkie-talkies… why did I let Komrade Killix convince me otherwise… I should have pressed it. And the camera! I knew we should have fixed the camera… I knew we should have done something to drive them out of that building so we could fix the camera. Oh, this is so unfair!” Cue a giant sob.

When Gelquie casually asked him why he’d even come to the corridor if it hadn’t been in response to the gunshots (it hadn’t: the idiot hadn’t even heard them, somehow), he muttered that he’d wanted to see how the four of us had died—“what Celes had done to you!” He seemed immensely upset over the fact that he had not been able to fulfill this fantasy. Nor did he seem to understand why I had to physically grab onto Kristy’s arm afterward and snap ‘No!’ at her to keep her from firing a shot into the back of his head upon this sulky pronouncement.

By the time we finally arrived to the room that was alleged to contain the PA, I was starting to think the woeful admin was leading us on a wild goose chase. The room’s metal door was shut, but not locked, or so claimed Dan. He also told us, with the pride of a child bragging about all the ants he’s burned with a magnifying glass, that there were guards inside, and they’d shoot us on sight, and that our stupid plan would never work.

Kristy told him to shut up, and that if anyone was getting shot, it was him. He testily informed her that we wouldn’t be able to even start to fire our guns at him before getting shot ourselves. Tired of hearing him babble, Kristy jutted out a sharp hand and grabbed hold of his arm. He tried to shimmy out of her grip, but ceased this action when she dug the muzzle of her pistol into the side of his skull.

He shut up, then.

“Be a good boy, Dan,” Kristy reminded cheerily.

And with that, we entered the room.

Chapter Twenty Seven

SPOILER: Click to show

27. Confrontation

I don’t know what I’d been expecting: some grandiose viewing room, perhaps, and the admins sitting on plush couches whilst sipping on cocktails and viewing the Games on a jumbo projector screen.

Instead, we found ourselves in a rather modest space that could have passed as somebody’s living room. There was a large, but not humongous, TV mounted on the far wall, which could be viewed from a mint green sectional, on which sat Nim, Hunty, Stal, and Killix. Two pets stood behind them, also gazing at the television. The TV was presently focused in on Celes, who was stalking about the streets. She appeared uninjured. My heart swelled at the sight of her. Thank God she’s still ok, I thought.

Opposite the couch, on the other side of the room, was a conference table surrounded by five chairs. It was a mess, strewn with papers and files and… empty rum bottles (ah, Hunty). Also atop the table, I spied a remote control identical to the one Kristy had pulled from Dan’s pocket. I hoped desperately that this meant Killix didn’t have a ‘boom’ device on her person. The final piece of furniture in the room was a wood-oak cupboard in the corner beside the conference table, its drawers shut.

Since the couch faced away from the door, my group and I went in with a slight advantage—in that, the admins and their pets didn’t immediately see us. Of course, Dan—who was not going to be a good boy, it seemed—quickly neutralized this advantage by screaming at the top of his lungs that he was being held hostage.

Things devolved pretty quickly after that.

The pets, whom I now identified as Breakingchains and Ian Wolf-Park, pivoted towards us, guns outstretched. Bullets sizzled through the air. Kristy, Gelquie, and I returned fire. On the couch, the admins shrieked and lobbed themselves to the floor, using the sectional as a barricade against the gunfire. Cowardly Dan, keen on this idea, tried to hurry towards them, but in his haste, he ended up tripping over his own feet and face-planted to the ground, at which point he whimpered and curled up into a protective little ball.

Of the initial bullets fired, all missed, from both sides, instead embedding into walls. The next batch proved slightly more successful: one tore into Ian’s thigh, and he tumbled to the ground. But he wasn’t wounded without collateral damage, since a second bullet screamed by so close that it grazed the side of Kristy’s neck. Not a direct hit, but still she shrieked in agony as blood bubbled from the wound. The sound of her screaming made me simultaneously terrified and angry. I pointed my gun towards Ian, who was trying (unsuccessfully) to stagger back to his feet, and pulled the trigger.

Bulls-eye.

A perverse part of me was still somewhat expecting that trumpets would blare upon his death, but of course they didn’t. And only seconds after Ian died, a bullet fired by Gelquie hit Breakingchains in the forehead, in an instantly fatal wound in almost the exact same place as Tiger’s. She fell, her pistol clattering out of her hand.

As Kristy still clutched at her shoulder wound, I noticed that, on the floor, Dan had uncurled and was attempting to slink towards Breakingchains’s lost pistol.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” I snarled at him, which caused him to shrink back into a fetal position. He simply watched on with tear-filled eyes as I stormed past him and scooped up the gun myself, then pried Ian’s weapon out of his dead hands. I gave one of the pistols to Gelquie and kept the other for myself.

“Thank you,” Gelquie said, accepting the gun. Then, to Kristy: “Are you ok?”

“Yes,” she said, hand still clasped around the wound. “It’s just… it hurts, is all. But I’ll be fine.”

I wasn’t wholly convinced, but we did not have the time to spare now to doctor Kristy’s wound. Not with Celes still inside that arena, a bomb strapped around her neck. Trying not to let the situation overwhelm me, I looked back over to the admins, who remained tucked behind the couch barricade.

“Get up,” I demanded. When they didn’t move, I added, “Please.”

Still none of them shifted for several moments. It was only when I threatened to shoot Dan that any of them stirred, quaking as they lurched to their feet. Hunty, predictably drunk, fell thrice before successfully righting herself. The rest of them seemed to understand what was happening, at least to some extent… but not Hunty.

“C-Carrie!” she slurred. “So good to see you! Did you… did you win? I was always rootin’ for you to win!” Hiccup.

“Oh yes,” I said earnestly. “I certainly won. Now, all of you shut up unless you want to end up like yours pets, and tell me how to use your PA.”

“We will do no such thing,” Komrade Killix growled, her eyes darting back and forth between my group and the remote control that sat on the conference table. My first guess had been right: she didn’t have her exploding device on her person right now.

“I’ll make this simple for you,” I replied. “Either you show me the PA, or I shoot you.”

“I’m not showing you the PA!” she repeated.

“Ok,” I said. “That’s fine.” I looked deliberately down at Dan before declaring, “Either you show me the PA, or I shoot Daniel.”

“No,” Killix repeatedly defiantly, at the same time that Dan cried out, “It’s in that cupboard over there! Top drawer!”

Killix swore at him, telling him that he was an idiot, which upset Hunty, because “you’re sooo mean, Komrade!” Drunk as a wino after a long night at the bar, she started wailing, which made Killix yell at her… which made her sob harder.

“Keep your guns trained on these idiots,” I said to Gelquie and Kristy.

They nodded, and Kristy hesitantly pulled her hand away from her wound so that she could re-level her pistol at the admins. Although the injury still bled, I decided that it wasn’t, in the end, an overly severe wound. The bullet had scraped by, but after she got it bandaged up, it should be fine. And if anything, her injury gave me even more motivation to make sure the rest of this plan went well. Because if it did, then Kristy could get proper medical care. Her wound wouldn’t sit uncleaned and untreated, eventually getting infected like Gelquie’s cheek. No. Kristy would get pain meds. Sterile gauze. Antibiotics to ward off infection.

With the admins held at bay by Gelquie and Kristy’s guns, I strode over to the oak-wood cabinet and opened the top drawer. Half of me expected for Dan to have been lying, but the pitiful excuse for a man was telling the truth. I reached up and pulled the microphone out.

“Where do I plug it in?” I asked him.

“There’s a jack on the floor next to the conference table. Hook it up there,” he murmured as Killix glowered at him, looking like she wished he had been entered as a player in the Games. At least she didn’t swear him out again.

Microphone in hand, I went to the conference table and peered down at the floor. Sure enough, there was a jack plugged into the wall. I unwound the microphone’s cord and connected it to the jack, then hit the power button at the base of the mic. It crackled to life.

I lifted the mic up to my lips and turned back towards the TV. It now had shifted to focusing on Nova. He looked… well, pretty bad. At some point since Kristy had shot him a few nights ago, he’d pulled out the arrow, but there remained a gory wound where it had hit. Crusted blood surrounded it, and pus oozed out. Even though it was probably a terrible idea because of the overly bright sun, he’d at some point removed his white uniform shirt and tied it around his head as a makeshift hat. Although he’d absconded with Ginz and Jay’s packs after killing Sae, he now only had one. He wore it over his good shoulder. He didn’t have his bow anymore, just a gleaming knife clutched in one of his hands. When the camera panned close up to his face, I made out an even mixture of pain and determination glinting in his blue eyes. As if he knew what lousy shape he was in, but also knew that he was just one more kill away from walking out of the arena.

Still watching Nova on the screen, I took a deep breath and said into the microphone, “Good afternoon.” On-screen, at the sound of my voice, Nova froze and furrowed his brow. I continued, “This is Carrie. The Games have officially been canceled. If Nova and Celestial could please report to this plaza, someone will be by shortly to remove your collars and escort you out.”

Chapter Twenty Eight

SPOILER: Click to show

28. Back

Not five seconds after my announcement, the shot of a very confused Nova flicked to black. I turned off the microphone, and then looked at the admins.

“Why’d the picture go out?” I asked. None of them replied. With a sigh, I rolled my eyes and directly addressed our helpful little star, Dan: “Daniel. Why did the picture go out?”

“Our techs probably heard your announcement,” he muttered. “Cut it off. Good for them.”

“Where are the techs? Are they nearby?”

“Yes,” Killix lied, at the same time that Dan said, “No. They’re in a different building a couple miles away.”

Killix twitched, apparently wanting more than anything to smack the crap out of Dan. As if sensing her anger, he whimpered again and then sniffled pathetically. He must have known that even if he made it out of this situation uninjured, he was no longer going to be on his fellow admins’ good sides. By cooperating with my group, he’d turned himself into a pariah. I would have felt bad for him if not for, you know, the fact that he was behind the murders of nineteen of my friends. And that just about a half hour earlier, he’d been buzzing with excitement over the prospect of seeing my bloody, murdered body so that he could find out how I’d died, yay!

With the announcement made, Kristy, Gelquie, and I next had to figure out who among us was going to return to the arena, with Dan’s key in hand, to free Nova and Celes. We’d talked about this part of the plan before, of course. Freeing those still inside. But given that making it this far had always seemed like a very small possibility, we hadn’t yet ironed out the details. The who.

“Kristy can’t,” Gelquie pointed out. “And we probably need two of us to stay behind with the admins to keep them… obedient. So, that leaves either me or you to go get Nova and Celes.”

I didn’t want to go. I really, really didn’t want to go. I never wanted to see the inside of that arena again. But between Gelquie and me, she was the better shot (in case the admins tried something), and I was a faster runner. That meant it only made sense for her to stay with admins, and for me to go back to the arena with the key. I knew this. But that didn’t make the taste in my mouth any less sour as I volunteered to go back.

Before leaving, Gelquie and I rummaged through the dead pets’ pockets in case they had anything useful… and sure enough, we came up with handcuffs, two apiece. After pegging Dan as the least threatening and therefore the one who would be left unchained, Gelquie and I ordered the other admins to turn and face the wall, away from us. Stal, Nim, and Hunty did, but Killix refused. It was only after I again threatened to shoot Dan, and he started blubbering and begging, that she grudgingly obeyed.

I was deathly afraid that one of them would try fighting back as I proceeded to cuff them, but I suppose the fact that Gelquie and Kristy still had guns pointed at them was enough to dissuade them from making such a choice. We briefly debated chaining them up in a circle, each attached to another, before ultimately deciding to just got the simple route and cuff ‘em police style: hands behind the back.

Once they were all bound, we told them to sit on the floor and be quiet. Hunty asked why they couldn’t use the couch—“The floor is so uncomfy”—but was told only nice people got to sit on couches. From his curled up ball on the floor, Dan asked if that might mean he could sit on the couch, on account of him being so helpful.

“No,” Gelquie told him. “Go sit with your pals, and God help you if try and free them, Danny boy.”

As Dan crawled (yeah, literally crawled) over to the rest of the admins, none of whom would so much as look at the traitor, I tried to hand Gelquie my guns. But she shook her head and refused to take them.

“I don’t want you out there defenseless,” she said. “Nova might… he… might think it’s a trick or something. You need a way to protect yourself.” She bit her lip. “Good luck, Carrie.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said, swallowing down the frog in my throat, as I accepted from Kristy the remote control that would open up the trapdoor we’d come down through. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

**

During the walk back to the trapdoor, I got myself pretty pysched out, as every possible way this pursuit could go wrong played over in my head. I might get lost. I mean, after spending so long in the arena, I sort of had its layout down, and thought I kind of knew where the plaza was in correspondence to the trapdoor. But what if I got turned around, and then promptly dehydrated to death? Or what if Gelquie was right, and Nova indeed thought my announcement was a farce, and then tried to kill me? What if the remotes were one-use wonders, and the one I had with me wouldn’t even work again? What if my side of the plan went well, but the admins somehow escaped their chains, and attacked my friends, and blew up Celes and Nova, and then came to kill me, too? What if, what if, what if?

By the time I made it back to the corridor where Bacon and Tiger died, I was nearly shaking from fear of the unknown. I gulped and sidestepped their bodies, trying not to look at them—especially Tiger. At some point, I realized I was still wearing the darn clean-up crew suit, and I paused to shake it off. Underneath, my arena uniform was sweat-soaked.

When I reached the staircase that led up to the trapdoor, I took as deep a breath as I could manage before ascending the steps. I knew my panic at the thought of going back to the arena was probably justified, psychologically, given all that had happened inside it. But that didn’t mean it was helpful. I couldn’t navigate it whilst literally quaking in my boots. I had to keep a sharp mind, a level head, during this final part of the plan.

I could not break down now. I couldn’t! I’d survived over a week in a hellacious place where nearly two-dozen others had wanted to see me dead. I’d had friends die in my arms, their blood spattering on me. I’d gone hungry and thirsty, and baked in the heat. I’d been through so much, and come out of it without completely losing it. I simply could not allow myself to crumble at this eleventh hour. I refused.

That didn’t stop bile from rising in my throat as I reached the trapdoor. I swallowed it down and stared at the remote in my hand. Took a deep breath, then pressed the button. The door slid open.

I stepped back into the arena.

It had gone from a warm dawn to a blistering hot morning. The humidity was sauna-thick, like breathing in straight water. The sun beamed so intensely overhead that I couldn’t so much as glance skyward without it hurting my eyes.

The air was very still.

After stepping out of the trapdoor, I deliberately didn’t shut it again, so that I wouldn’t accidentally run right over it later, when I returned with Celes and Nova (I was forcing myself to think optimistically). I did, however, randomly click the remote as I started towards the plaza, in order to see if the other trapdoors around the arena were on the same frequency and might slide open. That way, I wouldn’t have to come all the way back here once I rescued the others.

Of course, they weren’t. And when I finally flipped the remote over in my hand after I’d been back in the arena for around ten minutes, I noticed a very faint number etched onto its bottom: 126. Great. So apparently that was trapdoor number 126, and this remote opened it and only it.

I started at a brisk walk, but I was so jittery that soon I’d segued into a full-out run. In the stifling heat, it wasn’t easy, but I pushed through the discomfort. And even though I got turned around once—of course—I reached the plaza about forty-five minutes after entering the arena.

Where the supplies pile had been at the start of the Games now sat Celes, cross-legged and looking exhausted. When she saw me, the biggest smile I’d ever seen in my life broke out across her face. She stood and started towards me. But before she could—

Something—someone—surged out from seemingly nowhere and tackled me down. I hit the ground with a thud, my head whacking against the cobblestones. I fumbled fruitlessly at my pocket for my pistol, but couldn’t reach it, on account of the fact that my attacker now had me straddled, with an elbow pushed against my throat.

Nova.

From across the plaza, Celes shrieked his name, telling him to stop. But he only pressed harder. That is, until he seemed to notice something… or rather, a lack of something. The reason he could choke me so easily, without any impediments? My absent collar. My bare, blistered throat.

When this dawned upon him, he eased up his choking holding. His eyes widened. He glanced momentarily at Celes, who had started towards us in a frantic run but was still a few dozen yards away. Then, he looked back down at me.

“Your collar,” he murmured. “It’s gone. Is… is this for real?”

“Yes,” I wheezed. “Get off me, please. Yes, it’s real.”

His face still scrunched in disbelief, Nova climbed off me just as Celes reached us. She dropped to her knees and loomed over me, asked if I was ok. I nodded my head and tried to force steady breath back into my lungs; it hurt.

“Here,” I gasped, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the key. “For the collars.”

By the time I recovered from the choking incident, and sat back up, Celes had taken off both her and Nova’s collars. She was grinning ear to ear, and I expected that he would be happy, as well. But… he wasn’t. With a vacant look in his eyes, he ran his fingers over his newly collarless neck. Drew in choppy, uneven breaths, as if he had been the one choked.

Tears leaked from his eyes.

“Oh God,” he was saying. “I… can’t believe this. I can’t believe this. I’ve been a monster. I’ve killed so many people. I almost just killed you, Carrie. I… I… can’t believe this. What have I done?”

“It’s ok, Nova,” Celes said gently, placing a calming hand on his bare, sunburned back. “No one blames you. You… you did what you had to.”

But he simply moaned once more, “I’m a monster. I can’t believe this. I can’t.”

At last staggering up from the ground, I said to him, “Celes is right, Nova. It’s ok. It’s all ok.”

It took a lot for me to say that. He had, after all, killed Sae… and, I knew, possibly Terra (I still wasn’t sure whose arrow had been the one to sink into her thigh). But he’d also lost a lot in this arena, had Nova. Ginz. Just thinking of the way he’d screamed over her body that night, cradling it in his arms, made my stomach seize even now. If it had been Jay alive at this moment, facing me… I might not have felt so great. Jay, after all, had ultimately embraced his role in these Games, like a wife might embrace her husband upon his return from war: lovingly, fiercely, joyfully. He had liked killing. Delighted in it. But Nova?

Nova was different.

Nova had run with Jay as a part of the man’s pack. They’d been allies, up until Jay killed Ginz, and Nova then killed Jay. But overall, they were very different people. And even though Nova had sent that arrow flying into Sae’s heart, I didn’t think he was a monster as he claimed.

“I can’t believe this,” he sobbed again, like an old cassette tape stuck on loop. “I can’t believe this…”

“It’s ok,” Celes said once more. “I promise you, it’s ok, Nova.”

“It’s all over,” I added. “It’s over now.”

Chapter Twenty Nine

SPOILER: Click to show

29. Two Months Later

Issues & Inquiries was packed to the brim.

The chairs we’d brought in had all been long since claimed, leaving the space standing room only. And gladly, people stood, crammed in every nook and cranny, as they stared at the prisoners on stage with venomous eyes. The prisoners were chained to the nines and wearing prison orange, and just moments away from receiving the sentence for their crimes.

As one of four surviving mods to have played in the Games, and the person to have rescued the final players, my colleagues had decided that I ought to be the one to announce the verdict, the one we’d spent weeks agonizing over in this very room. None of us could agree; we all wanted different levels of blood. Gelquie had argued that they ought to be put to death, no questions asked, as did Celes; others had begged for a more humane sentence. Several of the zombie mods, who’d temporarily come out of retirement until we could find new minis, on account of the fact that most of the staff was now dead or imprisoned, also had differing opinions. Zylaa—one of my group’s sponsors in the arena—was more on the ‘hang them out to dry’ side. Robyn changed her mind every five minutes, alternating between ‘kill the louts!’ and ‘let’s not be too harsh’. Icon—who fortunately turned out to have not been killed back at the raffle, but merely tossed in jail for the duration of the Games, alongside Lizica—tried to sneak as many puns into our otherwise serious discussion as possible, if only to amuse himself slightly during a talk that was most definitely not amusing in any other way.

Nova was the only surviving non-pink mod to skip out on the meetings. In fact, after receiving medical treatment for his wounds, no one had seen much of him at all. He spent his days holed up in his house, as if embarrassed to show his face around the forum after all he’d done.

But now, as I stood on the stage in front of a microphone, prepared to read the admins’ sentences, I was pleased to notice him out amid the crowd, tucked in the back corner of Issues & Inquiries. He seemed uncomfortable, but he was there. This alone was progress.

“Um, if I could have your attention, please,” I said into the mic; the room immediately plunged into an excited silence as everyone stared at me. Made nervous by all the attention, I ran my fingers along the shrapnel scars on my arms, as if to remind myself of why we were here today. Of why we’d had to make this sentencing such a public event: the forum had all seen the deaths of the players. The injuries. The horror. They needed closure. They needed to be there when the admins were made to pay for their terrible crimes. It would have been easier to do everything behind closed doors, sure.

But it wouldn’t have been right.

With all eyes on me, I continued, “Thank you for coming out today. On behalf of everyone who was made to play the NTWF Games, I appreciate your support. Now, I won’t dawdle any further. I know why you’re here: to see how the admins will be punished. This was not a decision we came to lightly. We agonized. Should we execute them? Forgive them? Force them to fight each other to death like they did to us?” At this, someone in the crowd cheered; I winced. “Anyhow, in the end, we decided that any option that would lead to their deaths needed to be off the table. Sure, we wanted blood. But we also didn’t want to stoop to their level. What they did was unforgivable—but an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. However, we also knew we could not let them get off lightly. What they did was an abomination. All of them—Stal, Dan, Nimras, Killix, and Hunty—have proven that they are not fit to be free in the world. Not now, and not ever. As such, we, the mods of the Neopian Times Writer’s Forum, do hereby sentence them to be incarcerated for the remainders of their natural lives, with no possibility of parole.”

The crowd clapped; several of the admins swore. Hunty, who had not been allowed a drop of alcohol since being taken into custody the day we brought down the Games, groaned and muttered that she sure could use a drink.

Even now, I still couldn’t believe that our escape plan had largely worked (not completely: if it had worked completely, Tiger would have survived). After collecting Nova and Celes from the plaza of the arena, we’d gone back to the trap door. Returned to the room where Kristy and Gelquie were holding the admins. Using Killix’s cell phone, we’d then called people who we knew would help us: Zylaa, Draco, the stylists Nut and Chao, everybody we knew had not been in support of these games. Within hours, the admins were all transported to the jail on the fringes of ModSquad—where we also found Icon and Lizica. Their surviving pets were arrested. All of us remaining players were whisked to Splatterboard General Hospital for treatment for our numerous maladies.

The rest of the forum hadn’t been immediately aware of what had happened, the crazy end to the Games. One second they’d been watching Nova lurk around the arena, and the next their television screens had gone black. So that night, the least injured among us, Celes filmed an explanation of what all had gone down and aired it across the forum. Celebration ensued, revelers filling the streets. It was like I’d thought back at the parade, as I’d watched the tepidly clapping crowds: no one beyond the admins and their pets had ever been excited about these Games. The fact that they’d been thwarted, with five survivors instead of one? The forum was left deliriously happy.

Now, as everyone cheered over the admins’ sentences, Celestial led the condemned into the wings off the stage, from which point guards would then lead them to the prison. I watched them as they were shepherded off. They’d all been incarcerated since their arrests, but knowing that the prison was now to be her permanent home, Killix suddenly tried to make a break for it. It didn’t go very well for her: within feet she’d tripped over her chains, tumbled to the ground, and had a guard on top of her.

I smiled, then looked back at the crowd. “Now,” I said into the microphone, “you also likely know that the admins did not carry out the NTWF Games alone. They had supporters—people like Alyssa and Teow, Ian and Birdy. Most of those supporters were, unfortunately, killed, but there still remain a dozen or so of them. Like the admins, they have been incarcerated since the end of the Games. We did not wish to go through the pains of bringing them all the way here, so they have been told their sentences in private. I will now share those sentences with you: twenty years in prison each.” More cheers; I waited for them to dissipate before saying, “Finally, I’m pleased to announce that the demolition of the arena is nearly complete. Construction will start shortly on a memorial, and we have plans to convert the entirety of Memory Lane into a peaceful place of reflection. Thank you for coming out here today. Have a good afternoon.”

With that, I forced a smile and stepped back from the microphone. The crowd began to dissipate, filtering out the doors that led back out to the street. After a few minutes, only a handful of people remained inside Issues & Inquiries, mostly gathered in small groups and murmuring amongst themselves about the admins’ prison sentences.

“Good job,” Celestial said to me as I turned off the microphone. “You did well.”

“Thanks,” I replied, just as Kristy flung herself up the stage steps and, before I knew what was happening, had enveloped me in a hug.

“Life in prison!” she said excitedly. “I mean, I admit it, I was kind of hoping they’d be executed but—life in prison is next best!” She grinned.

True to my initial assessment, the wound on her neck hadn’t proved overly severe. It hadn’t even needed stitches, just bandaging. Two months later, only a small, pinkish scar remained in its place.

As Kristy let go of me, Gelquie, who had been off in the wings during my speech, came out and joined us. The wound on her cheek had also healed into a scar, though hers was much larger than Kristy’s. She’d been on antibiotics for nearly six weeks after the Games in order to stave off an infection in her bloodstream. At the hospital, the doctor had gravely informed Gelquie that she was lucky to get treatment when she did, that the antibiotic cream she’d been using inside the arena had been too little, too late. Much longer without treatment, and Gelquie might not have recovered. It still sent chills up my spine to think about.

For a few minutes, the four of us simply stood and chatted, with Celes explaining to Kristy why again, precisely, we’d gone for life in prison as opposed to a death sentence. Then, we heard someone else clomping up the stage steps. I turned to look at them.

Nova.

“H-hi,” he said to us, his voice quivering.

“Hello,” I replied, smiling at him. “I’m glad to see you out and about.”

He bit his lip. “Yeah. I… it took a lot of self-motivation. I almost turned around four times on my way here.”

“I’m happy you didn’t,” Kristy said.

“Me… me, too,” he stuttered. “I needed to be here. With everyone. I… you know, I’ve had two months now, to think about what happened. I don’t think I’ll ever come to peace completely with the things I did in the arena. The things I thought were ok to do. I should have never teamed with Jay. I… I thought he would provide some protection, you know? And then he just sucked me into his mindset, and I got… caught up in it. I regret it so badly now. Especially because of what happened to… to Ginz.” He blinked back tears and had to stop for a few moments to regain his composure. Then, he continued, “In the end, I just have to accept it, I think. It is what it is. I can’t change it, no matter how badly I want to. And I realized today, as I watched you talk, Carrie… that… that… I never really thanked you. Not properly. For rescuing me.”

“It’s Celestial who should be receiving your thanks,” I replied. “And… and Tiger, too. It was their idea. All theirs.”

“No,” he said. “It was all of you. What you did was risky. I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to do it. Not in a million years. So thank you all.”

“You’re welcome, Nova,” we replied. “You’re very, very welcome.”

Epilogue

SPOILER: Click to show

Epilogue

The jail cell was eight feet by six feet. It smelled like mold and sweat and despair. It had a bunk to accommodate two people, but she was alone inside of it. No cellmate for her.

She was in that cell for twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week. The one hour per day she didn’t spend in it was instead used up in a dour, depressing exercise yard. Also very small. She walked around it in frenzied laps, to and fro, to and fro, pining for some way out. But the wall around the yard was impenetrable. She knew this for certain, because she’d tried to escape once already, and had only ended up getting tazed. She still had a burn mark from it.

The only other human beings she ever saw were the guards. And they didn’t talk to her. Not a peep. Some wouldn’t even look her in the eye.

It drove her crazy.

Inside the cell, she had a lot of time to think. A lot of time to stew. She agonized over everything that had gone wrong. What she could have done to prevent this fate for herself. She should have listened to the coward, Dan—oh, she hated Dan!—when he suggested equipping the clean-up crews with walkie-talkies. Or had declared that they ought to fix that blasted camera. Or she should have kept the remote control that could explode the collars on her at all times. Shouldn’t have just left it on the conference table, out of reach. She should have insisted on carrying a gun, instead of leaving all the weapons to the guards.

She should have killed that wench Celestial back at the raffle, right there on the stage. Never let her play the Games at all.

Eight months, now. It had been eight months since the disastrous ending to her precious Games. Eight months in this fetid cell. Six since she’d been sentenced to spend the rest of her existence inside it.

It felt like years.

Beyond thinking, she had one other activity to waste away the time: when the guards weren’t nearby, she would sit at the edge of her bed, toothbrush in hand. With the end of it, which she’d carefully sharpened, she would chip away at the wall behind her. On the other side of it was ductwork: she was pretty sure of this. Ducts.

Ducts led out, eventually. They had to.

It wasn’t fast going. Sometimes she convinced herself that she’d made no progress at all, the changes in the wall nearly imperceptible. But over time, all those hours spent chipping added up. A groove formed in the wall. Just a groove now, but soon it would be much more than that, she hoped.

Whenever she heard the guards approaching, she was quick to fumble a poster over her handiwork. A poster! It was the one ‘luxury’ they’d let her have in this fetid cell. It was a very innocent sort of poster: a kitten, hanging off a branch, struggling to regain its footing.

‘You can do it!’ the poster said.

Oh yes, Killix thought. She could most definitely do it.

Fin

[Omni]

I can only wonder what would happen if someone were late for the meeting and came up to the sight of chained doors and gun-wielding guards. XD;

[Kristykimmy]

Oh, man, that was awesome. I cannot wait for the next chapter.

[Deleted]

Awesome! I cannot wait for the next chapter!

[Avery]

Omni: I presume they would be rounded up and severely punished for not being prompt. 8D

Anyway, not quite 3pm, but since I have errands to run and don't know if I'll be around at 3-- voila, here is the second chapter. XD Next one should be up tomorrow around this time! Also, I've done some outlining/plotting to figure out who among the players is going to take on a more main character role. For these characters, I figure I need a bit more of a physical description and whatnot to go off-- so be on the lookout for possible a PM in your inbox asking for a general description of your forum persona. >__> If you get one, congrats. You're going to be a main(ish) character, or at least mentioned a lot. xD And just to make it clear, being sort of main does NOT mean anything about when you die. ^__^ Meaning, you could be a fairly main character during your time in the story but still end up dead quickly. Or, conversely, a side character but last very long. xD

SPOILER: Click to show

2. The Raffle

As the crowd of forumers watched on in absolute horror, Hunty drunkenly stumbled over the cart with the bowls on it, and picked up the one at the edge. It must have been heavier than she was expecting, because she nearly almost dropped it, but made a last minute save—which she found greatly amusing, as she started to giggle as she tottered back to the podium and plunked the bowl on top of it.

“First up is the Forum Gates!”

The Forum Gates? But the only people who lived in the Forum Gates were newbies who hadn’t yet found their niche and moved into a home in a different board. This whole thing was beyond ludicrous, but drafting people from the Forum Gates? Again, Gelquie and I exchanged disbelieving looks. Several people near us in the crowd had begun to shift towards the doors, as if they were about to challenge Killix’s claim that they were locked and had armed guards on the other end.

“Ok, let’s see who our first player is!” Hunty babbled excitedly. She reached into the bowl and grabbed blindly at the little slips of paper before tugging one out. She was nearly quaking with excitement as she opened it. “And our first player is… Lukas! Come up here, Lukas!”

From the middle of the crowd, a blonde-haired teenager gasped. That, I presumed, must be Lukas. A newbie, like I expected. I hadn’t ever seen him before. Looking like he thought this whole thing might be a wild joke, he hesitantly ascended the steps to the stage and settled beside Hunty.

“Lukas! Yay!” Hunty clapped. “You’re our first! And our second…” She reached back into the bowl. “Gloria! Come up here, Gloria!”

Lukas and Hunty were then joined on the stage by another bewildered looking newbie. Hunty instructed the two of them to shake hands before shepherding them off to the stage’s side-wings. She then moved onto the next board: NT Staff Call, from which she gleaned two more confused newbies. They had decided to move there only because it seemed quiet.

“Next up,” said Hunty as the Staff Call representatives were moved offstage, “is Neopia. Oooh, Neopia!” She hiccupped. “Ok, so… for Neopia we have… we have… oooh… Kozma! Come up here, Kozma!”

Kozma did not come up. Instead, he turned towards the doors and, like so many others had likely been considering, made a break for it. He pounded on them, kicked them, beat on them with all of his might. But they didn’t budge: they were chained tight, just as Killix had said.

“Stop that foolishness!” Hunty implored. “Come up here, Kozma!”

“No!” Kozma yelled. He glanced at Hayati, who was standing nearby. “Help me!” he begged. “Help me beat down this door!”

“I would advise against that,” Hunty said gravely. “Anyone who helps a player attempt to escape will be entered in their stead. Anyone want to risk it? Hmm, Hayati?” When Hayati shook his head, Hunty grinned and went on, “Good! Then come up here, Kozma, and let us pick the second representative from Neopia!”

Defeated, Kozma shuffled up to the stage, though from the way he kept flitting his eyes about like a cornered rabbit, I was fairly sure he hadn’t completely given up on the idea of escape. He stood twitchily beside Hunty as she reached back into the bowl and came up with another slip.

“And our next representative for Neopia is… Tiger!”

And it continued like this, on and on, as Hunty called more names to represent more boards. Hunter and PFA for the Icy Taco. Coaster and Jina for Games & Interactive. When Jay’s name was chirpily announced to represent the Editor’s Mark, he began to swear out the admins and nearly punched Hunty in the face before being restrained by… Bacon, of all people, who rushed out from the wings and tackled down the feisty Jay. Apparently Bacon was another one of the admin’s pets, like Alyssa and Teow.

After Jay was hauled off the stage—with assurances from Hunty to the crowd that his temper didn’t mean he wasn’t going to get to play the game, get to, like it was an honor—Hunty called his board-mate: Elcie, who did not attempt to sock Hunty, but nonetheless looked terrified.

Next up came the Guilds board, which was to be represented by Thundy and Fraze. The first Neopian Times representative was Nova.

“But… Dan!” Nova pleaded as he climbed up to the stage. “We’re… we’re friends, Dan. You can’t do this to me!”

But Dan outright ignored him, and Nova seemed absolutely shell-shocked as Hunty went digging in the bowl for he, Nova’s, partner.

“Our second Neopian Times player will be… ah, Sae! Come up here, Sae!”

Sae, decked out in the princess costume she’d thought would be fun to wear to the ‘party’, reluctantly came up to the stage. She gave off a very strong ‘deer in headlights’ vibe and was close to tears. As she and Nova were escorted off the stage, he patted her on the arm, as if to comfort her. But it did nothing. By the time they disappeared from view, Sae was visibly crying. My own stomach churned. Almost half the boards had been called now. Sooner or later, my own home—ModSquad—would come up. I didn’t want to hear my name drip from Hunty’s drunken lips.

Artist’s Alley came next, to be represented by Kristy and Ginz. Like Nova, Ginz tried to bargain with Dan, attempted to convince him that they were friends, how could he do this? But like a statue, Dan stayed quiet. Wouldn’t look at her. Wouldn’t even acknowledge that he heard her desperate words.

For the Splatterboard, Terra and Azzie were drafted. My stomach fluttered as I watched Terra, who had been standing mere feet from me, approach the stage. Her skin had gone sheet-white. She was walking very slowly, as if stalling. The remaining boards were quickly dwindling. If my place of residence wasn’t up next, it was still coming soon.

In between Hunty’s announcements, a couple more people had attempted to beat on the door. They’d all been quickly stopped by death threats, and in any case, it was apparent that the door was chained tight. Another of the more innovative forumers, Icon, accompanied by Lizica, had tried to escape by rushing the stage and flinging themselves into the wings—but both were brought down by Bacon and another of the admin’s pets, Mel. I tried to convince myself that the muffled banging noises that came from backstage a couple moments later were not gunshots.

“Now!” Hunty said. “Now is time for RolePlaying!”

I glanced at Gelquie, knowing that she called the RP board home. She bit her lip and tapped her foot, nervous habits of hers.

“Hey,” I whispered, “even if they call you… maybe someone else will volunteer.”

“No one else has so far,” she replied glumly. “I doubt the trend of self-sacrifice is going to start now.”

On the stage, Hunty was beset by a sudden flurry of hiccups, which then caused her to giggle. Behind her, Stal had to clear his throat in a very gruff way probably five times before Hunty got the point and calmed herself. Then, she reached into the glass bowl that held the names of those who lived in the RolePlaying board and yanked out one of the slips.

“Cassie!” she squealed. “Cassie, where are you at?”

As Cassie went to the stage, I could sense a bit of tension evaporate from within Gelquie. But still, she had to know that the RolePlaying board was only half represented. There was still a shot that the next name Hunty withdrew from the glass bowl would be hers.

And sure enough…

“GELQUIE!” Hunty yelled. “Oooh, I love when I pick mods! Love, love, love it! Come up here, Gelquie!”

Gelquie gulped and started towards the stage. As Hunty instructed her and Cassie to shake hands, I could only stare with dread at the one remaining glass bowl on the cart: ModSquad. My home. My name was in there somewhere, on a nondescript piece of folded paper.

Hunty almost started to buzz with excitement as she realized that the last board being ModSquad meant that well—she would get to pick more mods. My stomach pitched once more as it dawned on just how desolately populated ModSquad was. Mods weren’t required to live there, after all; that was how people like Terra and Ginz had ended up being called as representatives for other boards.

I made a metal note as to who, beyond me, lived in ModSquad. All the admins did, of course… but they couldn’t be selected, obviously. The zombie mods resided there, too—people like Fj0rd and Robyn, Zylaa and Squiesh, and… Stal. Though clearly Stal had aligned himself with the admins and no one else. Then there was Icon, who was already possibly dead after rushing the stage, and Celestial. Leoness. And… me. That was it. Oh cripes, was that really it?

My chances of escaping this horrific raffle unscathed suddenly seemed exceptionally low.

“Mods, mods, mods!” Hunty sang as Cassie and Gelquie were led away. “I am going to pick some mods!”

From her seat at the back of the stage, Killix looked none too entertained by Hunty’s drunken antics, but clearly wasn’t going to call her out on this in public. She merely sat there with pressed lips and a scowl as Hunty began digging around in the final glass bowl.

“Our first representative for ModSquad is... Celestial!”

“No,” Celes said. It was not a cry. It was not a shriek. It was, simply, a firm statement, a defiant snap. “I’m not playing your stupid game, Hunty. You guys are insane. Not happening.”

“But it’s not a choice,” Hunty said, like Celes had merely forgotten and would be much more compliant once reminded of the non-voluntary nature of the NTWF Games.

“Everything is a choice,” Celes replied. “And I’m not playing. None of the other people you’ve called will be playing, either.”

“But… but… um…” Hunty, clearly too drunk to have a level debate, turned desperately towards the seated admins. Killix rolled her eyes at the emcee before standing up and striding back over to the podium.

Pushing Hunty out of the way (and none too gently), Killix said, “I will be straight with you, Celestial: this sort of insolence is exactly why we were forced to put together a game such as this. Now… you—“ she thrust her finger at a random newbie at the front of the crowd “—come up here.”

“M-me?” stammered the newbie. I thought his name was Andy, or maybe Arty. I’d only talked to him once or twice.

“Yes, you!” Killix growled.

Terrified, the newbie stumbled up to the stage. As he neared Killix, she reached out, lightning-quick, and grabbed onto his arm. In the blink of an eye, she had him drawn him in towards her and had maneuvered him into a chokehold. Andy-Arty sputtered and tried to thrash against her, but failed. He was only a kid, after all, maybe thirteen-years-old and skinnier than a weed. He was no match against Komrade Killix.

“If you refuse to come up onto this stage, I will have Bacon execute this fine young gentleman.” As if to accentuate her point, Bacon came back onto the stage, with a pistol in his hand—a pistol that he had pointed directly at Andy-Arty. Killix added, “And after this young man is dead, I will have Bacon shoot someone else. And someone else. And so on and so forth, until you concede that you are playing this game.”

“I—you’re bluffing,” Celes stammered.

“Really?” Killix asked. “Would you like to bet on that, Celes?”

Celestial didn’t reply, but the way she swallowed hard and, with a cringe, started towards the stage, made it clear that she did not wish to bet. With Celes beside her, Killix released Andy-Arty and ordered him off the stage. He just about flung himself off, tripping over his own feet in an effort to get away from the maniacal admin.

“Now that that’s settled, Hunty, please resume the raffle,” Killix instructed, sitting back down.

“Sure thing!” Hunty slurred. “Time to pick our last player!”

As she dug around the bowl, my heart beat in my ears. Please, please, please, I inwardly begged. Please not me. Please not me. I knew that an answer to my prayers would mean someone else was about to have their life upturned. But still, I couldn’t help myself, couldn’t stop the selfish begging…

Hunty’s hand finally surfaced from the bowl, and in it was clutched a piece of paper. Time seemed to slow as she unfolded it. Smoothed it out. Hiccupped once, twice, thrice. Giggled. Dropped the paper. Picked it back up as Killix glowered, seeming like she might jump back out of the chair, clobber Hunty, and read the dang thing herself.

“And our last player,” Hunty said at last, “is… Carrie!”

The air rushed from my lungs.

[Kristykimmy]

I haven't even managed to master stairs yet, how am I going to survive the NTWF Games? XD;

Hunty's drunken Emceeing is hysterical.

[Tiger]

Yes, I get to be a tribute! =D

...What d'you mean that's not a good thing?

[Omni]

Go Celes!

... What? I like that her character tried standing up.

[PFA]

Jul 10, 2013 15:56:55 GMT -5 Tiger said:

Yes, I get to be a tribute! =D

...What d'you mean that's not a good thing?

I also get to be a tribute! Yay? :'D

[Mostly Harmless (flufflepuff)]

Oh my gosh~ I could just SEE it happening in front of me! *SQUEEEEEEEEEEEAL*

((It's kinda weird to see my name in there after so many times I've been called Fluffle xD I'm not complaining though))

[Celestial]

Oh this is fantastic! Drunken Hunty especially was wonderful. And sweet, I get to be board-mates with the main character! =D Hoping this won't turn out too much like the books. I like you, Carrie, but not that much.

Can't wait to see what happens next!

[Jayeee]

XDD This is awesome!!
Hopefully I get to survive with that feisty temper of mine! =DD

[Coaster]

I have a feeling that the Games & Interactive board will completely dominate these NTWF Games just as it already dominates the recent threads page...

(even if I don't have a broom to poke people off jelly castles with)

(watches intently from beyond the fourth wall)

[Kozma]

Oooooh; I'm already trying to escape; this does not bode well for me. I can't wait to find out how I die! XD

Great job, Carrie. This is going to be a real entertaining story.