by Cameron Jace
“I didn’t kill him,” I say. “I buzzed him to death. There is a difference.” I look at the wound on my arm from when I was fighting Carnivore.
“Buzzed him to death, huh,” Dave laughs. “Now let me go get you some vitamins and painkillers,” He says and turns around, walking out.
As I sit, dangling my bare feet from the bed, I see people walking around in the clinic. There is a notable number of older people here today. Most of them have dogs with them. The dogs seem strange in a way that I can’t explain. A lady looks at her dog who is showing signs of hunger, then she goes to buy herself a sandwich and eats in front of it, not offering it a bite. But the dog seems satisfied as if it was the one that just ate the Burning Burger.
“Who are those older women with their dogs?” I ask Hoor when he arrives.
“Oh. That,” He raises an eyebrow. “Why did they catch your attention?”
I tell him about what just happened with the dog and the burger.
“I don’t know how you will feel about this if I tell you,” Dave hesitates. “What you have seen is Faya’s latest crazy biotechnology.”
“What is it?”
“This dog you saw is a Pain Feeler.”
“Pain Feeler?”
“You know how older people tend to grow numb and lose certain physical feelings? Due to age, it could be dangerous to them. In some severe cases, an old woman could die, not noticing that her blood pressure suddenly hit the roof, or that she was wounded climbing the stairs because her skin has grown old and numb. Thus, not taking the right medicine at the right time.”
“OK? How can those dogs help then?”
“Like I said, they are injected with certain chemical complexes that connect them to their owner, so they can actually feel the pain of their owners. These dogs can sense when their owner’s temperature raises for instance. All the owner has to do is watch his or her own dog closely. If the dog is in pain, then she is too because he is actually reflecting her emotion, but she just can’t feel it due to the numbness.”
“Wow,” my eyes widen. “Are saying you might pair me with a dog like that if I grew numb again?”
“Of course not,” He laughs. “You’re young. This is meant for older folks.”
“So when that dog I saw was hungry, it was actually the lady who was hungry, and he was just saying that she needed to eat? How about when the dog itself is really hungry? This could be a little confusing.”
“We are working on that. Don’t bug yourself with the Summit’s crazy endeavor to create a perfect human race.”
“If you can’t feel, we’ll feel it for you.” I murmur.
“Exactly.”
“That’s one crazy invention. At least, it’s one of the few things that are actually useful.” I chew on the words, wondering if my numbness is serious enough to have a need for such a crazy solution.
“The problem is that it’s not entirely applicable,” Hoor explains. “To connect the owner’s human emotion to the animals, we need a third party, another human.”
“Why?”
“Dogs, in their own animalistic nature, can’t decipher human emotions, so we need a third person who volunteers to be genetically connected to the animal.”
“Now, you lost me.”
“A human volunteer whose genes we inject into the dog to make the connection. It basically means that the volunteer human suffers the pain of the other, older numb woman but since she can’t walk around with a human on a leash, she uses a dog that is paired to that human. Also, it doesn’t work without the animal in between for some scientific reason.”
“Still, why not just connect the healthy volunteer to the older woman directly. Human slavery doesn’t sound disturbing to the Summit.”
“Don’t push your luck, joking about that. The Monsters were going to be considered for that, but it didn’t work for some reason. You have no idea what the Summit might have in stores for the Monsters. At some point, they wanted to sell their body parts for the ranked patients in Faya.”
“So Woo is right,” I almost speak to myself.
“About what?”
“About Xitler not keeping his promises. This Monsterland solution might be a trap.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“But you say this Pain Feelers invention is still underdeveloped, right?”
“Yeah, and even when it’s fully developed, there some problems.”
“Like what?”
“Decca,” Hoor leans forward, adjusting his glasses. “Do you know one person in this world who would volunteer to feel the pain of someone else?”
I don’t reply to this one. I don’t know if Hoor noticed, but this is how the world is treating me already. They’re having their pleasure and entertainment through my eyes and my suffering in each game.
“You know this was why Carnivore was created in the first place before you buzzed him to death?”
“Really?”
“It’s true. Carnivore was the first to be experimented on. Remember when they marketed it as the animal that feeds on the pain of others? Carnivore was an experiment to feel the pain of other humans, but something went wrong that made it what it is—I mean was.”
“How did our world come to this?” I ask, preparing to leave after Hoor had injected me with another liquid to ease the pain in my eyes.
“To what, Decca?”
“To a time when what was meant to serve a greater cause and more humane purpose ended up becoming Carnivore?”
“I tell you what,” Dave looks at me, sensing my doubts and confusion. “Why don’t you forget about all the responsibilities, endorsement offers, and the Summit and just go visit friends and have fun for a while. I haven’t heard you talk about having any fun times in the last year.”
“Friends?” I say the words and stare into an empty memory. “My only friends left are those who survived the games with me.”
“The Monsters, you mean?” Dave wonders. “So be it. Why don’t you just go give them a visit? Actually, I am wondering why you never talk about meeting them anymore. I know Monsters aren’t allowed out of the Playa, but you are allowed to visit. What happened?”
“I kinda lost my friends. God only knows how.” I sigh.
4
Monsterland
Leaving Dave’s clinic, I drive to the Playa. He is right. I need to reconnect with my friends or I will go crazy. Even though Monsters love me, I still prefer to hide under my yellow hood. I don’t feel like talking to too many people. Let’s only settle for meeting my fellow survivors.
One person figures me out at the gates though: Bellona.
With her pink hair and her green soldier outfit, I’d say the only thing that changed about her is that official new Monsters tattoo on her arm – it goes almost unnoticed with all the other tattoos she’s got. The new tattoo is quite different from any tattoo you’d have ever seen. It’s done with a simple knife, a straight short diagonal cut on your left arm like mine from the day when I killed Carnivore. It gets sprayed instantly with some liquid so the cut doesn’t heal.
I should be proud of myself. I made kids in Faya cut their arms to brag about being Monsters as if they were proud Ninjas. Duh. Things like these confuse me. I don’t want to feel responsible for a nation’s behavior. I am just a girl who fought for her life, and I am starting to question what my responsibly as a Ten really is.
“Bellona.” I muster a smile on my face. Things took an unexpected bad turn for us since last year. I don’t know why she doesn’t like me anymore. It seemed like she always liked Leo, but since we’re not together, I can’t understand why she’s still angry with me. I try to make peace, though.
“Decca,” She leans over and rests one hand on the car’s roof while peeking inside. I see her machine gun strapped on her other shoulder. “Or should I say Pixie. Or wait. Ten… der?”
Her words feel like an invitation to a verbal fistfight. I pass. I don’t fight
girls. I feel their pain. “Did you guys receive the things Woo asked for?” I ask politely.
“We did, princess,” She says the words as if she’s just tasted bad apples. “Are you here so we can thank you for what you do for us?”
I grip the wheel harder so I don’t lose my temper. “Not at all,” My jaw is starting to hurt from keeping that fake smile on my face. “Just a regular visit. I’d thought I say, ‘hi’ to Woo, Pepper, and… you.”
“Stop acting like you’re one of us,” She loses it finally. “You know what you are.”
The way she says it makes me feel like I am a prostitute or something. Why is she like that? What did I do? “And what is it exactly that you think I am?” I roll my eyes.
“You’re a Ten, Decca. One of them. You’re not one of us. You know that.”
“Why are you saying this to me? You know that I do my best to keep the Monsters alive. I am not one of them. I belong here.”
“You could have been one of us if you hadn’t insisted on attending the game in the Mirage after Leo sedated you. You could have just stayed in the Playa.”
“That’s a good question,” My suppressed anger is reddening my face. “Let me see. Why did I do that?” I put a finger on my mouth. “Oh. I remember. Because Leo sedated me without my permission, and because none of you bothered to tell me what was going on, and because I thought that you were my friends, and I cared for you, wanting to save you?” Ok. I admit it. I lost it, my voice a pitch higher now.
“You always try to play the hero.” Bellona shakes her head.
“I don’t really understand, Bellona. Really. Why does this part bother you so much?”
“Because if you had just stayed where you were and didn’t follow us to the Mirage, you wouldn’t have won the Monster Show. And if you didn’t win, Woo wouldn’t have given in to exposing the Monsters hiding in the Playa. We could have joined them, kept this awesome secret, built an army inside, and surprised the Summit with a revolution with none of them even knowing that we survived in the Playa by not saying that we’re alive. But look at us now. We’re playing peace with the Summit, living in our own city, which is nothing but a huge prison. What use is it, all that money you spend on us when we can’t leave the Playa? When everything that we do, the Summit knows about?”
“If you’re so mad about Woo exposing the Monsters, then why don’t you fire all that anger out on him? Why me? We used to be friends. Why me?”
“Because he did it for you,” Bellona says in a tone of mixed anger and frustration.
“What do you mean he did it for me?” I shrug.
“You know exactly what I mean. Woo wanted you next to him. That’s why he sent Leo after you. That’s why he made Leo sedate you, so you’d stay in Faya with him. When he saw you winning the game and leaving, with the probability that you would never see him again because you never knew he was still alive in the Playa, he surrendered to the other Monsters’ requests to declare that they were alive. It was a foolish thing to do, but the unexpected romance between you and Leo made him weaker because he cared for you. He did it for you, Decca. The whole secret revolution was exposed because of his love for you.”
Words are stuck in my throat. I really want to believe you, Bellona. I want to believe that Woo exposed himself and the Monsters because he couldn’t watch me leave the Playa and never see me again, even if this would pigeonhole his image as a leader of Monsters. I want to believe it because this will explain the reason why I can’t give up on him even now. It would explain why I gave up on Leo. It would explain why I came this far to find Woo in the Playa. But the last year proves different. Woo rarely talked to me. He treated me flatly and I was lost here on my own.
Before I could build a coherent sentence to talk back to Bellona, my passenger door opens and Pepper hops in.
“Missed me?” She smiles at me, still looking the way she always did, but in a cleaner and tidier way. She is actually wearing a dress, which Monsters rarely do.
“Of course, I did,” I say and lean forward to hug her, not knowing why I feel so emotional. Maybe because of Bellona’s speech. Being a Ten made me lonely, and I needed my friends back.
“Drive on,” Pepper taps the wheel, looking at Bellona from the corner of her eyes. “Or the Evil Witch will shoot us.” She stares at Bellona.
I gun the car into the Playa, down the famous slope where it all started, not knowing if I should consider Bellona’s words or feel bad about her. Why do we all carry our own baggage after surviving the Monster Show? Shouldn’t we live happily ever after?
“I am not an evil witch!” I see Bellona yell in my rear-view-mirror, stomping one foot. Part of me wants to drive back and remind her that she is only nineteen. She shouldn’t be a soldier. She should be doing everything else that’s fun in this world. But I start to see it now. We might have survived the Playa, but not without the sticky pain and confusion that stains our souls after the experience.
“Doesn’t she look like a witch with her green outfit and pink hair and all those tattoos?” Pepper giggles. “All she needs is a broomstick. Oh. Wait. She’s got one. She just calls it a machine gun.” It’s amazing how funny Pepper has become after meeting Woodsy. She is the most enthusiastic since the games were over. Pretty good for a girl who was raised to grow up as a scapegoat.
“You look amazing in that dress.” I avert from mocking Bellona.
“Did you see my new dental bracing?” She points at them. “They are made from pure silver.” She brags.
“Was that Woodsy’s idea?” I wink at her.
“Nah,” She says, and I could sense a bitter taste on her lips. Is it possible that she and Woodsy are having a rough time, too? “I worked hard in the Playa, and Woo gave me a bonus.”
I can’t help but think that Woo paid her from the money I bring to the Monsters. It’s not that I feel like doing them a favor. I just don’t want anyone to hate me for being a Ten.
“So how is he?” I ask her.
Her face knots a little. “You know, Decca. Woo is working so hard, becoming more blunt and distant day by day. Everyone is counting on him. He is the revolution’s hope, the only one left from the Breakfast Club, yet he feels like he’s stuck in here. I don’t know what we were thinking when we agreed to Xitler’s offer.”
“There was no other way,” I have to explain again. What’s with everybody questioning this? It’s not like they weren’t there when we made the deal. “I had to become a Ten and do the show so the Monsters live. Had I chosen to become a Monster, the Summit would have finished us a day later in the 11th Monster Show.”
“I know. At least there will be no more Monster Shows in Faya,” She nods. “It’s just that after one year, we all feel stuck. Do you know that the Summit announced that the newly ranked Monsters will be sent in here right away this year? That is almost another two thousand new Monsters, which will be a burden to us. We really need to get away. That’s why I support Woo in finding the Rabbit Hole.”
“Not again,” I pursue my lips, driving slowly through the Monsters working and building things here and there. God know what Woo makes them do. “There is no Rabbit Hole. It’s a false hope, Pepper.”
“No,” Pepper sounds defensive. “If Woo says there is one then there is one, and we’re going to find it.”
“OK. OK,” I wave a hand. “We’re not going to fight over this. I’ve had a rough day already,” I can’t seem to persuade anyone that we can’t keep on following Woo’s obsession with the Rabbit Hole. As long as Woo doesn’t tell me why I am special and what his real story is, I can’t follow a false dream. I have so many questions about him, me, the Breakfast Club, and some memories that are still lost somewhere in the back of my mind. I prefer to live with the fact that Xitler fooled us by dragging us into this deal we made. “Speaking of Woo, there is something that Bellona was telling me,” I say. “She was saying Woo exposed the Monsters last year for me. I have always thought that this was the Monster
s’ request, that they wanted to scream, ‘I am alive’ in their iAms when I won. What do you know about that? Did he say anything about that?”
“You’re asking me?” She laughs. “The Monsters were definitely inspired by you so they wanted to shout it out, but Woo could have stopped them since everyone trusted him, too. Besides, you should be the closest person to Woo in the world. You should know if he had other motives.”
“But believe me, not anymore. The last year, he keeps avoiding me as much as possible. I can’t talk to him anymore. Sometimes, I think he is a replica or something. I am not even sure this is the Woo I… liked… when I was a kid.”
“You’re still a kid,” Pepper taps me on the shoulder. “You’re going to be seventeen a week from now. Happy birthday by the way. I know it’s still in a couple of days but I am not even sure I will see you that day, busy girl. You know we’re not allowed to leave the Playa. Besides, you’re born on the Day of the Ranking. You got the whole world to celebrate with you.”
“How I wish I could still feel like a kid.” I sigh as I stop the car at Woo’s office – which is a huge tent – under the Monorail. I haven’t heard most of Pepper’s last sentence, except the fact that she reminded me of still being a kid.
“I think Bellona is right though. Woo exposed the Monsters for you. He couldn’t watch you walk away with Leo. He just wouldn’t admit it. We all believe that. Somehow, he is just too proud to admit it. He love…” Pepper stops in the middle of the word.
Suddenly, a number of Monsters come running in front of my car, holding Woo. He is injured badly in his leg. What did he do?
I jump out of the car and follow them into his office.
5
Woo
Woo was shot at by a sniper while searching for the Rabbit Hole in the Playa, as usual. Gladly, the bullet only scratched his leg. Again, I am not going to question his sanity about insisting to find the Rabbit Hole. What concerns me is knowing who shot him and why. I know that Summit gave only a part of the Playa to the Monsters – the part near the Breathing Dome where we fought the last show, and the Monsters love to call it Monsterland. But there are other parts that are still controlled by the soldiers. One of them is the Monsterium. Since the Monsters had built their own camps in the abandoned forest in the Playa, the Summit didn’t want to hand all of the Playa to them. The Monsters only needed a place to live so they thought the forest plus the Monorail and Breathing Dome area was just enough. The Monsters were also busy enough and cared less for a rollercoaster ride. They were trying to figure out how to make the revolution happen.