by J. D. Heath
Norton says, “Before we get too excited, let me inform you of the rules. You’ll have five days to prepare. You’ll be given plans for the parts of the Fortress that are open to the Dying Game. You’ll train. You’ll play nice with each other during this time of amnesty and training. If any of you harm any of the others, you’re death will be swift and immediate. But it will also be painful.”
I have no doubt.
He continues. “The Dying Game lasts exactly three days, unless you are all dead before then. There’s no rules. Kill as you wish and will. If any of you survive the three days you’ll be granted a pardon for your past crimes, given a new identity, and removed from the Fortress.”
McKenzie shudders all over. Panic’s written on his face. He begins to weep. The reek of urine stains the air. I see the others looking at him, contempt written all over their faces. He’s weak, and they know it. His sobs fragment the quiet and I shrink back, pushing myself deeper into the box as I look away.
My brain has yet to fully grasp the situation. I know this. I also know that this is the most diabolical of traps, and I have to find the flaw in it if I want to survive it.
Find the flaw in the trap and you can escape the trap.
Norton says, “Before we go any further it should be noted that three of you are here as Thrills.”
Thrills? What’s he talking about? It doesn’t take long to get that answer. He says, “Three of you are thrill killers who signed up for the Dying Game on a volunteer basis. As you know, your families are already laying the foundations for the story that will be put about afterward. If you aren’t a Thrill, and didn’t volunteer, rest assured there are those who are working with us to make sure your deaths are registered and that nobody ever questions how you died.”
How I died. My heart sinks. I’m an orphan. No siblings. No deep connections either. I’m a programmer, and I work from home, doing freelance assignments.
In other words, if I die, there’d be nobody who would even notice. I recall the way the cops ran my ID, asked me questions about what I did for a living.
I was set up. They knew I hadn’t killed that guy. But nobody would wonder where I went after they finished questioning me. They had plenty of evidence to catch the woman who’d really killed that guy, and they were likely picking her up right now.
How much did they get for my body? How much did they get paid to deliver a killer to the Fortress?
I know two things right now. One, I’m surrounded by killers and about to be forced into a game I never wanted to play. Two, if I survive—I’m going after the cops who sold me into the Dying Game.
Norton says, “We’re going to let you out of your boxes now. You’re going to play nice and go straight to your cells. You’re probably still feeling the effects of the drugs. You need to hydrate. You’ll be fed soon. You need to rest. In the morning, the training begins.”
One of the other men goes up the stairs. I stand, pinned to the box like a mounted butterfly, waiting for what comes next. There’s a long click that echoes from every box. The metal straps slide away from my body. The relief’s so immense that I totter forward, my legs shaking.
Then it happens. McKenzie lets out a low scream and bolts. He hurtles toward me and I stagger backward, right back into my box, one arm going up to ward him off but he changes direction and hauls ass toward a door set on the wall opposite the cells.
Norton doesn’t move. Nobody does. McKenzie hits some invisible line and a low whump, whump sound drones across the room.
Then comes a muffled boom. Fire and flesh fly into the air. What looks like a long hunk of bone skids across the floor, landing right beyond the end of the box I’m now using as a dubious shelter. Brallen bursts into laughter. The scarred man laughs too. They’re laughing as the blood pools and spatters across the floor, the wall, and their skin.
Norton says, “There’s always one.”
He’s smiling again, and looking at the screens. My gaze goes to those screens and my blood freezes stiff and cold in my veins.
The numbers under our names.
They’re not the number of kills we’ve made.
They’re our odds of survival.
Somewhere, out there, people are betting on us.
CHAPTER 2 MORGAN
The cells are open on each side and front, the steels bars all that stand between us and freedom. Or so it would appear. The truth is there’s the bands around our ankles to consider.
“There’s always one,” that was what Norton had said and I believe him.
McKenzie wasn’t cut out to play a game like this. His victims were kids. Easy targets. Easy kills. I didn’t doubt, not for a single second, that McKenzie was an appetizer for whoever was on the other side of those screens.
The Dying Game’s a betting game.
My odds?
Not so great.
They’re better than hers though. My attention wanders to the cell on my right. Gina sits on the small cot, her back pressed against the bars. There’s nobody behind her so maybe that makes her feel safe. I hope not. There’s no safety here, none at all. If she lets herself believe there is, she’s as good as dead.
I take a fast stock of Gina. Long-lidded blue eyes. Skin so pale it could’ve been cut in a marble quarry. Slender, attenuated limbs. Reddish-gold hair hanging in tangles to her waist. Jeans that are neither expensive nor cheap, just somewhere in between. Sneakers. A long-sleeved blue sweater that accents her eyes and hair and skin. Her very short nails are painted a matte-red.
She’s already as good as dead, whether she buys into the illusion of safety or not. She literally has no chance of survival. I’d have known that even if I hadn’t seen the odds below her name. 1000-1. The longest shot in the Dying Game. Even McKenzie had a better set of odds.
She scrubs her face along a sleeve. If she’s been crying she was doing it silently. She pulls her knees up to her chest and rocks back and forth gently, soothing herself.
I know what innocent people act like. She’d given off every signal of innocence. That rage she’d displayed, the rage that could only come from being accused and not given the chance to prove her innocence, had been genuine.
I have to help her.
I can’t help her.
She’ll be dead weight in a very literal way.
She’ll get me killed right along with herself.
I can’t let her die here.
She’s innocent.
I know it.
Further along the line of cells, in the small space next to Gina’s, Ally’s pressing herself against the bars that separate her from Tayne. Her voice, high with that hysterical glee she’d displayed earlier, comes toward me.
“Tayne! I joined this game for you! I fucking love you! I’d kill for you! I’d kill anyway. I love to kill, it feels so good…” I can’t see her face but I can see her body. Her back’s to me so I can see her high, tight ass wriggling and her hands clutching at the bars. She’s a Thrill then, a volunteer. “I want you so bad right now. Just think, if we’re allies, we could go somewhere together and just do it all the time. Kill, fuck. Whatever.”
Great. Like I don’t have enough to worry about, now I have to worry that this unhinged young women with a need to kill and a big old wet spot for Tayne Duty will kill me just to get laid.
Not that I think, for a single second, Tayne wants Ally. She doesn’t look enough like his mother to turn his peculiar crank. Tayne deadpans out, “Shut up.”
Ally simpers and flips her hair. “I just…”
“I said shut up. Get the hell away from me. Now.”
She scampers across her cell, taking up a pretty pose on the cot. I stare at her, trying to assess the situation. The kills she made? She was in a car with those three people, and it went off the road. Somehow she got out just before it went through a guardrail and over a cliff, bursting into flame in the canyon below.
She’d done that, somehow. Made sure of the wreck and then took a flying leap from her door. The thing wa
s ruled an accident, but it wasn’t, from the looks of things. Now she’s here, volunteering to play Bonnie to Tayne’s Clyde. She’ll be dangerous just for that. If she’s really formed some sort of attachment to him, she really will kill for him.
And die for him too.
There’s nothing more dangerous than a woman caught in the crazy that forms couples like Bonnie and Clyde, Harley Quinn and the Joker.
Clark Dunne, the scarred-face man, smiles at me when my gaze turns to him. I wonder how he got here. He’s been serving several consecutive life sentences, six of them, in fact, but only because he was smart enough not to admit to any crimes that took place in no-death penalty states.
He’s a hit man. A damn good one, inventive too. He once killed a man by blowing up the toilet the guy was sitting on. To kill a man by blowing up the toilet he’s sitting on to take his morning shit is somehow the biggest fuck-you I can think of, and I’m sure it was Clark’s way of saying dude was an absolute POS.
Clark did kill several cops, including the ones who’d been hauling him from the courthouse back to the jail. He managed to escape and lead an entire city’s police force, the FBI, and a few other agencies with well-known initials on a ten-day chase.
They only caught him because he ran the stolen Ferrari through a red light at one-hundred-and forty mph, hit a building and flipped a few times. They had to use the jaws of life to get him out. He broke both legs in multiple places in the wreck. That’s good to remember. His legs will be his weakest spot.
He’s a dangerous player in this game, bad legs or not, and I’d do well not to forget it.
I tire of scoping them out and trying to size them up. The drugs are leaving my system, but slowly. There’s a ragged edge of exhaustion under the adrenaline and I know when that last spurt of it ebbs away I’ll have to sleep.
I have to sleep anyway.
I believe Norton, about the amnesty. There’s people betting on this game. For the next week they’ll be sizing us up, laying their money down. Taking bets on who will form alliances—and betray their allies—who’ll die first. Who might outlast the clock. Who will kill who and how.
Gina’s still rocking back and forth. I move closer to the bars that separate our cells. “Hey.”
She looks over at me but doesn’t come any closer. “What?”
“You okay?”
“Why do you care?”
I lean into the bars. “They did it to me too. No trail. Not even an arrest. Put me in the back of the squad car, shot something into the back seat and closed a metal slide.”
Her eyes widen. She swallows so hard I hear the gulp. She gets to her feet and comes to the bars. Her voice is a thin, barely audible whisper. “You didn’t kill the people they say you killed?”
I study her face. I wish I could say no. “I did, but I was still supposed to get due process, right?”
She doesn’t move. Her eyes scan over my face. “Why’d you do it? Become a vigilante?”
Truth’s always easier than a lie. “I’m really sick of criminals getting away with it.”
“So due process only counts when it’s for you.”
“They had their day in court. They also paid lawyers to keep them out of jail. They were guilty.”
“How do you know? I mean, how do you know for sure?”
“Because they walked on technicalities. They were guilty, but they still went free.”
A small smile cracks her mouth. Her right incisor wings out a bit in an incredibly attractive way. “Maybe you should have left them alone. Then they’d be here and you’d be sitting at home.”
I smile back at her. “True.”
Tayne calls out, “Hey Warden! I want fried chicken. Get me some boys, if it’s going to be one of my last meals do it right! I want fried chicken.” Then he starts to cackle, a long and unpleasant sound that makes me clench my teeth.
Her gaze holds mine. “I can’t believe it. He’s the Reaper.”
Is he?
I was on that case. It was ugly. Eleven people dead, and all of them murdered in their beds. If it hadn’t been for all the blood, you’d almost believe they were just sleeping. Even now I can name off every name of the victims.
Catching the Reaper had been the force’s top priority and with good reason but there’d never been a single clue behind. Not a shred of DNA. Not a fingerprint. No fibers. No footprints. No clues at all.
The press had gotten wind of the thing left with every single body: a small, exquisitely-made wooden scythe and, naturally, they ran with it and the name the Reaper was born.
Some local beat cops responded to a complaint from a neighbor who’d called in to report the disgusting smell emanating for the house Tayne lived in with his parents. They found Tayne with his parent’s bodies. He’d confessed to their killings, and to being the Reaper.
He confessed, and then he went catatonic. He came out of that and just kept saying it was him. He even said there were more bodies. But he would never talk about any of it, not even his parents.
I kept saying I didn’t think it was him, didn’t think he could be the Reaper. But the profilers who examined him and who’d written a profile that matched Tayne exactly were sure. The press was sure. The police force was sure. And the citizens of the city wanted relief and comfort.
The evidence of his guilt wasn’t good, but his confession was—especially given that as soon as he was caught the killing stopped.
I finally say, “Yeah. Me either.”
Her fingers cup her elbows. “You ever wonder why the Reaper killed those people?”
“Because he’s a psychopath.”
She looks disappointed. “That’s an easy answer. I’m sure not all killers are psychopaths.”
My voice is terse. “No, some are sociopaths. Some just snap. Some, like the Thills here, do it for the sheer rush of it. Take Brallen over there. He’s young, rich—very rich—and bored. He can have anything he wants. But he doesn’t want anything, mostly because he’s never wanted for anything. Killing’s the ultimate rush for him because it’s the one thing he’s told he can’t have—someone else’s life. I’m betting he’s a Thrill.”
“And you? What kind of killer are you?”
I’m confounded. The clear certainty that she’s the wrong person to ally myself with in this game comes back in, but so does that same old need to protect the innocent.
I’m saved from having to answer by a rattle of wheels and the sound of metal striking metal. The two men who’d accompanied Norton earlier are pushing a wheeled cart toward the cells. My stomach looses a low growl.
Gina says, “I wonder if they’re drugging the food and water.”
Her words jolt me. I haven’t even stopped to consider that they might be. “I don’t know.”
She chews at her bottom lip. “They could be. They could be giving us something that hypes up rage or makes us hallucinate or…well, anything. Whatever it takes to make us more interesting to the people watching.”
Shit. She’s right. I glance at the empty water bottles sitting on the small ledge in my cell. Then it hits me. She’s caught on to the fact that we’re on exhibit here. The screens are dark now. There’s not much to see. One of us could kill the other, reach through the cell and commit murder, but why do it? McKenzie was an object lesson, and one we’ve all clearly learned already.
I say, “If they plan to do that, they won’t do it now. They’d run the risk of people dying before their game starts.”
The cart stops at Tayne’s cell. He glowers as the tray and a cup is shot in through a small opening that bangs shut and locks again. Ally ignores her tray as well. Gina takes hers and goes to her cot. I take mine and do the same thing.
The cover lifts away to reveal roast beef, very rare. Peas, a small salad, a pile of wild rice. I eat it all. I need my strength. We all do. The weak won’t survive here. The cup holds green tea that smells of herbs and lemon. It’s very cold but not at all sweet. I drink it all, sipping it between bites.
The food and tea brace me up. I can think more clearly now. My mind goes back to the screens, to the way me and Gina were both spirited off the street and to here. Someone got Clark out of prison, got Brallen here—and he’s definitely made avoiding capture an art form. Is he a Thrill? It’s possible. Ally’s definitely a Thrill. So if Brallen’s also a Thrill that means there’s one more of their number in our ranks.
Who?
Anyone willing to volunteer for this is someone I either want on my side, or out of the way.
But back to the original line of thought. How big is this thing? The Dying Game? Big enough that someone has the ability to pull the kind of strings that would see people sprung from prisons and brought here. Big enough that there’s a cover-up of monumental, maybe even global proportions, going on here.
This thing’s big enough that an actress, the heir to a several billion-dollar fortune, a serial killer, a hit man, and killers who made national news with their crimes, can be killed and have the how of it covered up—and all for the amusement of the ones watching and betting on us.
That means there’s some heavy players invested in the other side of this Dying Game.
That fact means that the odds of anyone playing actually being allowed to walk away from it, are absolutely zero.
No way are they ever going to let us go. They have way too much at stake to let us go, even if we survive the bloodbath they intend to unleash upon us all. Especially if we survive.
Living past that seventy-two hour deadline’s no longer my number one goal.
Goal number one’s figuring out how to escape the Fortress.
CHAPTER 3: GINA
Morgan’s probably my best chance at survival. He’s got a soft spot for the innocent. He’s a cop infuriated by the system. That also makes him incredibly dangerous because his going vigilante lumps him in together with Norton, who truly seems to believe that the Dying Game’s a justifiable thing.
I get it. It’s easy to understand, really. Justice isn’t always possible in the court systems and some people do deserve to die for the things they’ve done.