by Cameron Jace
“As if I’d wait for your permission,” he mumbles, looking at me. It seems as if something about me amuses him. “Wow. You look good,” he says. Finally, he says something nice to me. “In blood,” he adds. “Here, take this.” He throws a knife at me. It swooshes next to my ear and sticks to the trunk of the tree next to me.
I am not going to question his sanity anymore. I am worried about my family, and I need to stay alive, and maybe downsize the others.
“Do you know what happens to our families when we’re outranked?” I interrupt him.
“All kinds of bad things.” He doesn’t even look at me.
“Are you for real? What are you?” I try to focus. I can’t seem to put the puzzle named Leo together. “Who are you? Why are you even here? Why did you come back? How do you know my name? Why did you have a bomb in your mouth?”
“Xitler wanted me to explode. It’s his way of punishing me for rebelling against the Summit.”
“And why does a Nine rebel against the Summit?”
“Don’t you ever stop asking questions? My grandma doesn't talk that much. Where is your off-button?” He flips me around like a doll. Is this his excuse to check out my ass?
“That button is definitely not there!” I purse my lips.
“So you do have an off-button. It just isn’t there.” He smirks, and marches on. “Come on. I take it that you can pull the knife out from the tree by yourself?”
I pull the knife out, thinking that I might stick it in Leo’s back eventually. Right now, I have to learn all I can from him.
Suddenly, I hear a voice behind me in the bushes. When I turn around, I see a young girl.
Once she sees me, she runs away immediately. I run after her, but then one of the spying iSees buzzes over my head. It’s not a good sign. What if the girl is sent by Woo? I need to distract the iSee, so it doesn’t follow me to his hideout. I trip on purpose in those tight jeans and moan. Nothing easier in the world than convincing it you’re a complaining sixteen-year-old with angst issues. The iSees abandons the pathetic version of me.
I make sure it’s gone, stand up again, and follow her direction. But I am too late. I am standing on the threshold of the darkness in the forest, unable to find her. The girl looked about seven or eight years old, which doesn’t make sense. If Woo and other survivors from the previous games have managed to survive, they would be older than me, not as young as her. I am such a dork. How could I just trip and fall?
I call out to the girl, but I get no reply, except the echo of my own, lonely voice. Did I imagine her?
Standing at the forest’s threshold, I realize that I have blown my chance to find her. It could take hours to scan this place. However, I find a thin white plastic ring on the ground. I pick it up. Did the girl leave it behind? Is it a secret message from Woo to me? When I put the ring on, it feels as if it buzzes slightly. What’s with all the buzzing devices here? But nothing else happens. I rub it with my fingers. “Is that you, Woo?” I whisper to the emptiness surrounding me.
16
I end up following Leo out of the forest, back to where the explosions took place on the Main Street. I try to look away from the dead bodies scattered all over the streets, but I glimpse body parts, which is scarier than a complete corpse.
“What if some of them are still alive?” The thought hits me.
“Four of them were alive when I got you the clothes,” says Leo, searching for any weapons we can use.
“Really?” Making conversation keeps me from panicking. I have to get used to — well, to having dead people all around.
“I finished them off,” Leo says. “I used my hands. Had to spare the ammo in the rifle.” Who is this guy? “I killed them so they wouldn’t suffer, you know.” Leo explains. I’d love to believe him.
“I think I saw a young girl back in the forest, but she ran away,” I inform him. “How is that even possible?”
“What do you mean by a young girl? You’re a young girl,” says Leo, still rummaging through the dead people’s pockets.
“A kid. Seven or eight years old,” I reply.
Leo freezes, without turning around. “Are you sure?”
“I am not sure how old she was, but I am sure I saw someone hiding there that I haven’t seen before.”
“We could use this info later. Good job. I need you to stay alert and learn things fast.”
I am flattered that he thinks I did a good job. “My name is Decca, by the way.” Even though I know that he knows my name, I introduce myself.
“We will have to change that.” Leo kneels down next to a dead body.
“What do you mean?” I ask. He wants me to change my name?
No reply.
“Hey.” I start to lose my temper. “Who are you?”
“We need to look for anything we can find in the pockets of the dead. Anything we could use,” he mumbles, ignoring my questions.
“Like what?” I comply helplessly.
“Use your head. We’re fighting for our lives here. You think I love searching dead bodies? We’re in the middle of a war. Wake up.”
“Okay.” I am speechless. Maybe I talk too much. My mom said I talk too much. But then, she wanted to kill me. Maybe she wanted to kill me because I talked too much.
“Try to get us all the money you can find,” he offers.
I don’t reply. I think he is joking. He is coping with such a crazy world, making silly and dry comments. I think he does it to escape the grim situation we are facing.
“How’d you like your money? Tens, twenties, or coins?” I mock him, as I start looking.
“Now we’re talking,” he says. He likes it when I get his sarcastic look at the world. I like that I am getting used to him being mean. No prejudice or criticism, only survival on our minds.
“I know it is unlikely, but getting our hands on sterilizers or medicine would be really good. Besides, we need to get water.” He mutters the last part.
“We can find a first-aid kit in one of the buses. School buses should have those,” I remind him.
“Fascinating.” Leo gazes at the far end of the slope we took down here to the Playa. There is only one school bus left. “I need you to do exactly as I say.”
“I am listening.” Finally, I feel like I am of use to him.
“Turn off your iAm.”
“Again?”
“I didn’t turn it off the first time. I only muted it.”
“Are you sure this won’t upset Timmy?” I say, while turning it off. “I am not sure we’re allowed to do that.”
“We can do whatever we want,” he says. “It’s not like we’re playing capture-the-flag here. They are trying to kill us.” Leo runs toward the bus. I run next to him. He shoots a couple of cameras on the way. His favorite habit. I make a mental note: If you survive this, don’t forget to blow up some of their cameras too. It looks fun.
“Sooner or later, we’ll need to disconnect from the iAm network, if we want to survive this,” he says. “You know there is a small device like that bomb receptor installed underneath your left ear? A very small one, the size of a grain of rice. It’s how your iAm tracks you.”
“Oh. I knew that everyone in Faya has one. I never knew where exactly. It is installed right after birth. You don’t get a birth certificate without it, and it’s illegal to remove it. Punishment is as harsh as a death sentence. I know everything. Happy now?”
“Good girl. Remind me later that I’m starting to like you.” He stops and squashes a beetle on the ground, and then moves on. Boy issues, I guess. “Since we’re already in the game, we could care less about the punishment. To remove the receptor, I’ll need to operate on you. It’s a small surgery, but dangerous. It’s not like this is my main plan, but it’s a possibility, as plan B.”
“Hmm — so what is plan A?” I wonder, neglecting the fact that a strange boy wants to operate on my brain.
“Plan A is improvising,” he says.
“What a plan!”
/> “Are you mocking me?” he wonders, ducking as he runs. I do the same. I don’t know what I’m ducking from. “Ever heard Charles Darwin say that ‘in the history of mankind, those who improvised have most effectively prevailed?’”
“Who is Charles Darwin?”
“The only dude who can prove that Prophet Xitler is a monkey.”
It seems like a joke, but I don’t get it. What’s wrong with monkeys? I love monkeys.
We get on the last unexploded bus, and start searching for the kit. Leo breaks a window in the bus with the back of the rifle, and shoots all nearby screens and cameras. I find the kit. I have no time to check what’s inside. We get off the bus. Leo hides the kit in the bag.
Once I turn the iAm back on, we hear Timmy cursing. He is mad at us for turning off the device. I can’t understand what he is saying though.
I hear a rumble in the distance. It looks like everyone is gathering in the front of that crazy-looking huge glass dome. The one I saw when Leo stole the soldier’s Jeep. Leo and I run toward the others as they signal for us to hurry over.
What’s going on?
“In case you haven’t heard me, you two sweethearts,” Timmy growls in the iAm, “the second round of the game is on!”
17
“You can’t do that,” I protest. “Ten hours between the games.” I know he is punishing us for turning off the iAms. I don't even have time to look for Woo.
“Not if it’s for your own good,” says Timmy. “All of you need water for the rest of the games. The next game will earn you that water supply. In case you’re wondering, I will contaminate any lake or water source available in The Playa.”
I feel angry with myself. This means there are lakes and other water resources in the battlefields that we don’t know about. Even though the Playa seems infinite, I should have looked. Leo said that we needed water and a place to hide. I didn’t do anything about it, but complain.
Now we are going to bargain with our lives for water. It’s too soon. It’s unnecessary. I am anxious to know what sick game we’re going to play now.
In my iAm, I see Timmy standing behind a podium on stage in an opera hall. He is dressed in a tuxedo, wearing joker-like makeup, resting his hands wide on the podium, faking seriousness. “Ladies and gentlemen.” He coughs, covering his mouth with one hand, pretending to have said something wrong. “I mean, boys and girls of Faya.”
Timmy’s show gets the audience’s attention. Teens start posting comments and opinions about the game. The channel broadcasting on the iAm shows anticipatory boys and girls sitting in the sky-high Zeppelins, hanging in the air outside the Playa.
“Viewership dropped to one and a half million in the last hour, but I promise you that this..." Timmy points at a large screen behind him showing the glass dome, “will blow your mind.”
Even though I can see the dome in front of me, I prefer watching it on the iAm. The broadcasting is thoroughly detailed, and the dome looks beautiful. It is made of shiny, transparent glass that covers a huge circle of icy floor beneath, which is a little bigger than an ice-hockey field. The glass looks unbreakable. Footage from the iAm shows Timmy earlier, dressed in a military outfit. He is ordering soldiers to fire a cannon at the dome. The bomb simply glides over the dome like a drop of water. Another one of those silly Instant-CGI effects.
“What you see is state of the art, designed by our genius designers. This dome is made of glass, very strong glass. Its circular base is an ice-skating field. We call it the Breathing Dome. Interested?”
The broadcast shows videos of bored housewives, barely interested in what’s on TV. The Breathing Dome isn’t attracting a lot of viewers.
“Not interesting enough?” says Timmy, watching the counter. “I am sure we can work something out.”
Twenty men and woman start entering the dome, wearing black ice skates. They are muscled and huge, looking awful and scary. They look like wrestlers. The men are shirtless, and the women — who look like angry men — wear metallic bra armors. The men have big stomachs, as if stuffed with giant metal balls, and hairy chests like gorillas. The veins in their necks are visible. Their shoulders look like the curves on top of a mountain. Their wrists are as thick as Leo’s arm. They have implanted horns, sticking out their heads. The men have their heads shaved. The horns make the women look like devils. The horns are implanted into their skulls, not stuck on. All of them wear gas masks with the symbol of the Burning Man on it. The tattoos on their arms are Sixes, but there’s an X on top of the Six. I wonder what that means. And finally, they wear school ties on their bare flesh.
They look weird. I mean, they are intimidating, but they look like they’re showing off in a circus.
“Teenies and weenies, let me present: the Bullies.” Timmy points at the weird men and women.
Still, the crowd isn’t that excited.
“Wow. Look at those armored bras,” Roger This says. How did he survive the School Exploding Bus? No one pays attention to him.
“So what is the damn game about?” someone asks from the audience in the Zeppelins.
“The Breathing Dome has all the water the Monsters need underneath the ice. To get it, they will have to kill the twenty Bullies inside the dome. The catch is that there is no oxygen inside the Breathing Dome.” Timmy laughs. “How ironic. No air in the Breathing Dome.” He claps his hands together like a clown. “While fighting in the dome, the only way to breathe air is from within the breathing booths you can see inside the dome.”
He points at tall glass boxes that look like phone booths. There are oxygen inhalers inside the booths. The back of each booth is connected to a large blue tube that supplies it with the oxygen. The tubes, wide enough, run all over the icy ground, already posing an obstacle to the ice skaters. We’ll have to jump over them.
“The Monsters have to survive the Bullies with no air in their lungs. They’re allowed to enter the booths briefly to inhale the oxygen they need, and get back to the killing fields of the Breathing Dome — if the Bullies let them. When the Monsters are in the Breathing Booths, they are immune. I believe this is exceptionally fair.”
The viewers’ counter is alarming: two and a half million people are watching.
“Sick lunatic.” Bellona spits on the ground. “I am glad we know how to skate on ice, or we would have lost already.”
“I can’t,” says Leo.
Bellona and I can’t believe our ears.
“Then we’re all going to die in there.” Bellona lets out a painful chuckle.
“You can’t skate?” I wonder. Really? I thought you were some arrogant superhero who could do anything.
“Yes,” answers Leo. He is cool about it though. I don’t think he understands how this could hurt us. “I’ll walk barefoot.”
“You’re such a caveman.” I roll my eyes.
“You will crack the ice. You are too heavy,” explains Bellona. “This is why the ice skates are thin. It creates as little friction with the ice as possible. With your weight, you can’t fight without breaking the ice. If you break the ice, you’ll drown in the water underneath, and contaminate it. Capiche?”
“I have clean feet,” says Leo. It's hard to tell if he's mocking her or not. He is in his machine mode again. Seek and destroy.
“And you said you don’t have enough ammo, right?” I remind him.
“Two bullets,” he says. “I have a knife. And my bare hands.”
“We need weapons inside. We can’t fight the Bullies without weapons,” says Bellona. “We have to think of some way to get weapons.”
Timmy demands that we put on the ice skates and grab the caterpillar tubes provided, which we will use as water containers. They are elastic bottles that look like a big worm, with a fixed curving straw that squeezes up the water from underneath the ice.
I don’t have a plan, neither does Leo. I am afraid his improvisation techniques are going to get us killed. I know that he will eventually find some heroic way to do his best. I need to
learn that planning was in the past. Here everything has to be outsmarted on the spot.
“Entry to the dome is obligatory, or I will explode me some Monsters.”
“Can he do that?” I ask Leo and Bellona.
“It’s more of an electric shock like the one I had in the forest,” says Leo.
“You had an electric shock?” Bellona admires Leo with her eyes. “And you’re still alive. Man, you are strong.”
I am starting not to like Bellona. I don’t know why.
“Did Decca give you a hard time? Did you just want to end your life?” continues Bellona, touching Leo’s arm. Leo puts his poker face on. Actually, Leo has his poker face on most of the time. It’s more of a poker-slash-dumb-slash-Terminator face. How many times did girls hit on you, Leo? Of course, my question applies to your past life, when you were a rock star, before becoming a mindless killing machine.
“So we enter the dome, get the water we need, and get out?” I ask Timmy, neglecting Bellona's annoying comment.
“You enter the dome, kill the Bullies, fill your Caterpillars with water, each member has to leave with one, and get out,” explains Timmy. “Or you can take a shortcut: enter the room and die. I wish I could warn you of trying to break the rules. But don't worry; you won't break any, because there aren't any,” says Timmy, peeling off a banana.
Bellona is talking with the skaters. They are confident they can kill the Bullies, all of them, if they can get their hands on the swords. Which won't happen if we don't use the Breathing Booths effectively. This time, I don't pay much attention to Timmy's comments. I let his voice fade away, like a forgotten nightmare. We are sixty-six outranked about to enter the dome.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Slowly.
The skaters know how to ice skate. Bellona orders them to stand second row inside, ten feet away from the Bullies.
About twenty of us can't skate. They tumble, whine, and ask for help. No one can teach them now. Bellona orders them to stay third row. I wonder why she wouldn't let them be first row. We could sacrifice them. I hate that I even think that.
Leo is his own master, no one argues with him. He hardly manages to stand still. I don't know what he will do about the skating. I won't ask. All I think about is how to stay alive, wondering if my family is watching the games.