Cycle 9, Hour 5: Five Minutes to Live
48 Students Remaining
The last five minutes of Sofia Rivenez's (designation: G21) life went by quicker than she could ever have expected. It didn't mean much given that she had never planned to die in her teenage years, but in the few minutes where her odds went from two percent to zero were perhaps the most memorable moments of her life. Before her forcible entry in the Battle Royale, Sofia had been nothing short of the average teenage girl. Born with an average-looking face with dark hair and smoky eyes that relied on make-up more than she was comfortable to admit, Sofia would not have been a striking sight to most eyes. In the social stratum of high school, sure, she might be known as one of the worst tormenters to those less affluent, or those less attractive, or simply less in the know – but in the education system of the USA, her type of persona were a dime a dozen. She should know, she'd been the arrow and she'd been the mark.
With seemingly no outstanding qualities to speak of, Sofia's inclusion would have been a mystery if not for one defining piece of her personality. Her competitive drive.
Those who knew Sofia in passing would describe her as an actress, a gymnast, or a bitch. Those who knew her from experience would attest most vigorously to the last qualifier. From early birth she had been raised with the notion that she was to have no friends. She had acquaintances, sure, perhaps even a few that she would readily admit to being chummy with, but friends? No chance. People were competitive by nature, Sofia more so, and letting people explore her psyche and her weaknesses... that was unthinkable.
By all rights, a girl like Sofia should have taken naturally to a game like Battle Royale. Bah! Wishful thinking. It was a concept Sofia knew very well. All her life she'd been told to think the best of people, but time and again people had shown her the worst. People robbed, and stole, and lied, and cheated. Fairytales aside, she couldn't trust any of them to do the right thing. Even if that someone was herself. Objectively, she knew to do the right thing, whatever that may be. Curl up and hope for the best? Pray for divine intervention? Sofia was Catholic by its loosest definition, but she had to admit prayer was a long shot here. God was her best friend when her worries were not letting her freshman fatties (or any subsequent fifteens) show in her leotard. God couldn't do shit in face of real problems like death and poverty and misery, could he? The only intervention that could help her was not divine. It was her own. She had to play, didn't she? How could she not, when there were so many things on the line? Her life, her future, her existence...
She had a lot to live for, too. Despite the mediocre hand that life had dealt her, Sofia had always made the most of her cards. The world didn't allow for many opportunities for a Latina, and so she grasped onto each and every with relentless spite. She wasn't pretty, but make-up and an affluent albeit distant single parent made the most of that, transforming her into one of the better-looking girls in school with upwards of an hour's work every morning. She wasn't popular, but the art of constantly putting down people gave her the seeming air of command. A flirtatious smile here, a peck on the cheek there, and she had the boys spinning around her like bees around a rose.
Okay, so maybe she went a bit overboard sometimes. Maybe she found a twisted sense of pleasure in making the other girls cry. Maybe she liked to rub their failures and imperfections in their faces. So what? It wasn't like it was gonna hurt anybody, it was just a harmless bit of fun. Besides, simply by batting her eyes she could get away with a lot of things.
Life wasn't as difficult when you were thin and pretty, but looks could only get her so far in life. Pretense could only work to such an extent. She'd earned her success every step of the way with nothing short of sheer, animalistic drive to rise to the top, while the occasional deployment of family money filled in the gaps between the stones. Drama was a means to make herself known to a brand new circle, debate to give an academic spin to her transcript, and while she had achieved reasonable success with both activities, it was really the former that had propelled her to where she was now. Hardly anyone would have thought gorgeous, outgoing Sofia had been a stuttering, introverted child at one point in her life, but it was true. It was the underdog story of a peasant who rose to become a princess.
At least the powers that be had blessed her with a clear path to victory. There were mercifully few of her friends in the Battle Royale. Outside of the girls' gymnastics team, she was only close to some of the drama circles. Other actors and actresses, mostly, but they too were lucky enough to be passed over for the game. Some of the stage crew she knew on sight, but she honestly wouldn't consider giving up on her chance at life for these people. Call it selfish, she had a game to play. She didn't like it either, but what else could she do?
"Jugar," she said with the brim of false bravado. "You can play."
Her resolve solidified with each spoken word. She was who she acted. She was a player.
It had seemed to her like a reprehensible idea at midnight, but four and a half hours later it was beginning to look more and more like a viable option. Surely she had no other choice? She had to look out for herself, just like everybody else will preserve theirs. And the best course of action was the only one that guaranteed a shot at making it alive. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. She was in the ideal position to play the game. Fitness, agility, speed, intelligence... she had all those qualities in spades.
"I will play." Sofia paused, then continued with slow but renewed fire, "I will play the game. I will survive."
If she wanted to survive, she had to play. If she wanted to play, she had to kill. If she wanted to kill, she had to hunt. The facts were as simple as ABC.
Her raven-black hair tied back in a slick ponytail, the girl stood lithely in the night. She wielded the shotgun that she had been assigned (another push of fate) in one hand, and though the firearm weighed heavy in her arms, there was nothing unfitting about it. Searching her mind, Sofia was surprised to find the prospect of meeting another contestant had a certain thrill. Remove the mind from the game... she wasn't killing her friends, she was killing her enemies.
At precisely five in the morning, Sofia entered the hunting grounds of George Ewen High School, one of the two educational institutions in the playing field. She had yet five minutes to live.
Fast forward to four minutes past five, when Sofia took her last standing breath. It wasn't so much a breath as a gasp - a sudden, frenetic intake of air, caused by the incredible shock and pain of seven and a half inches of stainless steel. The blade slid into her body with an almost surgical cleanness. Muscles split, blood spilt, organs ruptured, but in that crippling moment when time froze, Sofia felt none of it. She did feel plenty of things like betrayal and anger and dizzying scorn, but pain did not register. But what overcame her was the frightening, agonizing coldness that stabbed clean through her abdomen, as if it was an icicle instead of a Steed 12 hunting knife that stabbed into her stomach and sapped her life.
If the rich, viscous blood that spilled from her nose hadn't robbed her of the ability to speak, Sofia would have cursed. Not god, who failed to protect her. Not the good ole US of A. Not even her attacker standing before her, one arm gripping the hunting knife with such stony resolution that it might as well be Excalibur.
Had she known she would have died so soon into the game – not even six hours, what a fucking joke! – would she have decided to play with such keenness? In hindsight (twenty-twenty), she doubted it. The choice to play – to rob others of their undeserving lives, to prolong her own – seemed meaningless now that she was fast expiring. It all seemed so very anticlimactic, like the butt of a tremendous, ironic joke even if she never really understood the concept of irony.
Even as she lay dying, Sofia couldn't help wonder... Could she be the first? How embarrassing. Was her role destined to be the first act, the torn lady slain in the opening of the musical? She was an actress, and a storyteller first and foremost. Her narrative should have been fit for a star. Her perfectionism would not have allowed any other. And yet... here she was. Abandoned, isolated, and left to die. Her friends... Did she have any to begin with, really? Did she see any of the girls as her friends to begin with? She used to deride the cheerleaders as vain, airheaded sluts. Same went for the party girls, those who put pleasure before performance. And the preps, the nerds, the geeks, those she disparaged at every given opportunity. It was quickly occurring to Sofia that even her friends, her so-called friends who all lucked out, even those girls had stabbed her in the back on more than one occasion.
She was alone. Truly, and irreversibly now, alone.
It was the price she had to pay. To stand out as the lone perfection, she had to put up with the flawed leaves that enveloped her blossom. She was an incandescent star, she wouldn't stand for any less, but that meant having to dissociate with those who couldn't compare with her perfection. If that meant not having any friends in high school, so be it.
But it hurt, damn, that she couldn't have admitted until her dying breath. It hurt far more than the stainless steel staked in her visceral organs. But the theater had soothed her pain. Onstage, she was a chameleon, the perfect embodiment of any role that could be put on paper. She had the characters, the little details, the backstories, all of those down to a natch. The stage was where she could cease being herself, and start living a brand new Camille from matinee to soirée. She was unbelievably good. But the focus on refining the details made her lose sight of what was bigger than just her. The other students in the cast... Well, there was no easy way to admit it. They hated her. They couldn't fathom her strive for perfection. To them, she was the nasty bitch who made a stink of every little thing.
And then – they humiliated her, all of them. And for the first time in life, Sofia truly felt how alone she had been. Standing on that stage, not a person by her side, Sofia did what she could.
She went onstage, in life as she would soon in death – alone.
Rewind to one minute past five, when Sofia was still exploring the halls of George Ewen High School. She had been trying to get a firm grasp for the building's structure, perhaps thinking of setting up base in the concrete structure. The school was a sturdy maze of corridors, yet given some time and consideration it was positively simple to maneuver. Coming around the corner from the chemistry classroom, the dashing figure of one Girl Number Two collided squarely with her tiny frame and nearly knocked her over with impossible momentum. Sofia could have mistaken her for that fat goth bitch (or the fat Muslim bitch) if it weren't for her drastically smaller profile. That, and the unbelievably frizzy hair that made it hard to mistake the girl for any other in the game.
"¿Qué coño? What the fuck?" she spat as she grabbed the girl.
Not getting a perceptible response, Sofia held the girl by her shoulders and practically slammed her into the lockers with a resounding boom. To say that Maria Belluscio (designation: G2) was terrified would be the understatement of the year. The cast photos in each gambler's edition of the BR9 booklet had included a modest girl with a long tangle of brown hair and wide, watery eyes. The actual person that stood in the high school was a completely different girl by the looks of it. Maria had practically gone catatonic from the shock and desolation, her tiny frame looking as if crumpled upon itself as she swayed down the hallway with cradled arms. Her brown hair, her clothes, everything on Maria was drenched in rainwater and tears. The tear stains that coated her face were an imprint of fear, but her dishwater eyes were devoid of spirit.
A mousy girl of small stature and smaller spirit, Maria was not one of the popular people by any standards. She was reasonably smart and nerdier than most, but it was the Type I diabetes mellitus that robbed her of any chance of being misrecognized as popular. The constant needling made her a target of much mockery, and in a gesture to improve her physical condition and social standing, Maria had made herself tangentially known as a member of HMHS's drama department stage crew. That was where she encountered Sofia. It was uncanny, even creepy at first, how much Maria had idolized her. It seemed acting was a dream of hers, but talent hadn't cooperated and Maria found herself constantly on the sidelines to watch as true stars shined.
Law of the jungle dictated that the actors and the stage crew not to mingle, but Sofia was never one for rules. She'd taken Maria under her wing, in her own mind at least, and in repayment Maria was content to be Sofia's personal assistant. It was nice to have someone bring her coffee or stitch a costume or carry her books at her whim.
It had been a pleasant deal on Sofia's end, which, let's be honest, was the side that mattered. But in a Battle Royale, all good things had to come to an end. In the game, things were bound to be surprising. Things were unexpected. Things were unjust. The little lamb could turn out to be a big bad wolf in disguise. Strike first, strike fast, and she could still come out on top.
"Thank god, Sofia!" Maria couldn't help but let a bit of a smile penetrate the fear. "I thought it was, I don't know, I swear there was someone, oh god, thank god it's you!"
A beat passed, then Sofia hurled her strength into a slap on Maria's cheek – echoing, reddening, stinging – and the surplus momentum sent the weaker girl reeling to the floor. It wrung a surprised squeal out of Maria, but the girl did not seem able to react any further.
"Don't blame me for what's about to go down," Sofia said with a decidedly feral sneer. "If there's any regret in the afterlife, then I've got four, no, six words for you: wrong place, wrong time, tough shit."
Fast forward to three minutes past five, when Sofia backed rapidly away from the imposing man before her. In the shadows of the hallway she found it hard to identify him, but in the interest of self preservation there were more important things on her mind. The second hand on her wristwatch ticked with each second of inaction. Fight or flight? It had to be one or the either, but Sofia wasn't sure which path would get her farther along. She was reasonably confident either way – years of gymnastics had given her an ease of agility that could not be matched, while her designated weapon made damn sure she had enough fight in her to take on the fiercest of foes.
The booklet that came with her designated weapon marked it as a Patriot MACS-12 shotgun, a formidable gun capable of pulverizing everything short of reinforced steel in a single blast of buckshot. Sofia wielded it clumsily but with all the expertise that she had garnered from the gun manual. Point, brace, and click, it seemed impossible but it really was that simple. She didn't even need to aim, just pointing the barrel in someone's general direction was good enough to lay a good quadrant of a human body to waste.
If she had stood her ground, Sofia might have lived.
Her heels slapped noisily against the tiled floors, leaving a trail of echoes that was easier to follow than tracks in the snow. She didn't know which way to run, only that she had to get as far as possible. The beast that pursued her was inhuman in its dogged ferocity, tearing after her with claws (or a single talon?) made of metal. Time didn't allow her to scout the roads ahead, or even to get a firm look at her assailant. All she could do was run like the wind carried her. Go left, down the hall, a corridor of empty classrooms and laboratories flying past, left, right, right again, up the stairs, a dead end? No, a way out! She ran faster than her mind could weigh her options, her legs pumping like a piston, so hard that sharp pain tore at her calves.
And then - thwock.
Pain exploded across her face, more startling than she had ever known. It almost masked the wet CRACK of the bones in her nose fracturing under the force of the an incredibly hard and massive fist. Sofia cried out in pain, reeling back and landing solidly on twisted legs as blood spurted from her face. Trying to get up despite the red hot pain that had swathed her kneecaps, Sofia found herself looking into the face of a monster.
"Mierda," she swore in bone-chilling awe.
Meat. That was the first thing that came to mind. He had a face like a brick wall, but it was made entirely of flesh and meat. Intense eyes, set deeply in their sockets, a mouthful of gnashed teeth that revealed his savagery. The only hair that topped his nearly bald head was a small crop of hair in the approximation of a Mohawk. But it wasn't the boy's appearance that terrified Sofia. It was his guns - both the massive, muscle-bound arms that stretched in a vaguely freakish manner from the boy's shoulders, and the metal stock of a shotgun wrapped in his other fist, as vividly loaded as Sofia's had been when it had been wrested from her. He looked close to seven feet with two hundred fifty, maybe three hundred pounds of muscle piled on his large frame. A righteous monster, he was decked in a ripped denim vest and a heavy, studded leather belt.
Protruding from his fist was a fang-like blade the size of her forearm. His thin lips grew into a humorless grin. "Gotcha."
Rewind to two minutes past five, when Sofia could hardly believe the reaction she was exerting from Maria. You would think she had never had a gun pointed at her chest before, the way she was screaming until her tonsils ripped. Jeez, it was a Battle Royale, you'd think she'd know sooner or later she'd be facing her own mortality. Instead, she trembled like a small furry mammal, cowering at the bottom of several dented lockers with her face peeking behind the twin bumps of her cradled knees.
"God, why are you doing this?" The wail was directed as much at the invisible eye in the sky as it was at Sofia. "You're not serious, are you? Please, you're just kidding, right? It's me, Maria, you know me, we used to hang out all the time!"
"No, we didn't," Sofia denied on auto-pilot, though she shortly realized it wouldn't matter that this girl she was about to kill had been one of her chummiest pals since grade school. She had to cut off the dead weight, calmly and coolly, as she had gotten rid of Maria back in freshman year once it was apparent that Maria wasn't gonna win her any popularity. "What the hell, you know this was coming. You're weak, you're fucking weak, and you know what happens to the weak in the jungle?"
Maria whimpered.
"They get caught by predators, they get skinned and flayed and devoured, you dumb whore! Yeah, and you know what? You'll never see me go that way, because I'm no fucking prey, I'm the queen of the fucking jungle!" She kicked Maria in the ribs lightly, catching the girl mid-sob and sending her shrinking further back until she was practically shriveled in the locker storage.
There was a time when Sofia would be on the receiving end of those words, but no more, not with her mighty shotgun and the sheer determination to win the game by her side. She would prevail, she would win, she would show all those bitchy cheerleaders and the preppy girls that she, Sofia fucking Rivenez, would not be casted away like a ragdoll that a toddler had gotten sick of. She'd find each and every one of them, and made sure they paid for years of looking down on her before she finally clawed her way to the apex. Rosalyn? Carved open and gutted like a deer. Stella? Dead with the hilt of a dagger protruding from the top of her blonde head. Blair? Every bone in her muscular body broken from a defiant fall. Cheryl? Staring with mute horror at the football-shaped hole in her bust. Chantal? Her caramel skin seared to a dark crisp. Heather? Her perfect face slashed to ribbons with a box cu-
"Oh my god, are you - get away from her!" Those words were punctuated by a shockingly loud crack as the tiny black device in Heather Montoya's (designation: G16) hands came to life in an electric blue arc. A pageant girl with coiled blonde hair and an hourglass figure, she had been wandering the halls when she heard the familiar voices within. Seeking a much-needed friend (and thinking the best of people), she went in through a broken window. The best did not come to be as the sight just around the first corner was that of Sofia readying to shoot Maria square in the chest.
Sofia turned to her with gritted teeth. She had to play the hero, didn't she? Just as well she could kill two birds with one stone. Turning to the appalled Heather with a lick of her lips, Sofia prepared to fire the twin blasts of her shotgun in the girl's chest.
"Boy, oh boy," came a rumbling voice, ripe with the uncanny enthusiasm of an overgrown toddler. "What do we have here?"
Fast forward to five minutes past five, when Sofia Rivenez officially expired on the grimy linoleum of a forsaken high school in the middle of No Fucking Where, USA. Though her eyes were open in a wide, circular gaze, they were no longer capable of sight. Her cheeks paled as gravity drained the blood from her face, spilling a carpet of dark brown that squelched as a pair of steel-toed boots trod on over. The hilt of the hunting knife disappeared in a meaty fist, then with a tremendous force it withdrew from where it had been wedged in her midsection.
The boy whistled a simple tune as he tugged a pair of fingerless gloves over his blood-slicked hands. He could call it hard work, but he'd be lying. Truth be told it was far more simple than they showed on TV. All that crap about people not dying easily? Bullshit. Look at what's-her-name in the corner, just stuck a knife in her and there she was, done.
High hopes was what Jonathon Sedlak (designation: B22) had entered the game with, and high spirits had never left him since. A game by any other name... lawful murder was still just that. In legislation they called it the Education Reform Act, in colloquial they called it Battle Royale, but Jonathon wasn't one to bother with syntax. He could murder. He had done so before, mostly cats and dogs, then there was that carjack. He had the experience, and now with the Battle Royale and the hunting knife from his pack, he had the means as well.
Too. Fucking. Good. To be. True.
Best of all? That spic bitch with the shotgun. The vitriol in her eyes as the life bled out of her abdomen. Her final gargle as blood spilled out from her severed throat. Bitch was ditzy enough to play around with guns, she deserved every bit of fire that burned her. She hadn't put up much of a fight, that was a pity, but Jono expected no shortage of game in the coming hours.
And the shotgun was now in his hands, which meant that the game was as good as his. Sofia's pack yielded a fruitful total of thirty shells, enough to set him on the start of a slaughter. Reloading the weapon and relishing the satisfying metallic KA-CHUNK, Jonathon could only grin evilly.
He couldn't admit to having watched Battle Royale before – pay-per-view was a luxury that few could afford in this country, and for many it paled to necessities such as a fed stomach and a roof over your head. To a guy like Jono, coming up with either of these things were by no means a breeze at many times in his life. Gran could have provided both, but he'd never deign to accept help from that wrinkly old cunt. No, he got his own people in the Jacks. He had their back, and they had his.
The Yellow Jackets, or the Jacks as they were colloquially known, were a biker gang that operated out of Haven's Mill. As far as anyone with the slightest streak of crime in them went, there were many elements that could be wronged in Haven's Mill. The Jacks weren't one of them. In a town where no organized crime has taken root (none of the ones that'd scare the shit right out of you at least; the Jacks were a second-rate gang at best), they had seized turf and firepower and ran a rather profitable business out of the idyllic settlement. Narcotics, prostitution, raves, they dealt with what brought in good profit without placing too large a blip on the pigs' radars. They didn't always used to be that way. Back in the days they were more of an outlaw club than a regular gang, but power dynamics had a funny way of turning when you least expected it. When new blood took hold, Jono embraced them as the new authority. He was muscle, yeah, but he was smart enough to play dumb, and that bought him a pass. Brawn was supremacy, but cunning was what kept him from overreaching. He knew what had to be done.
If the juggernauts on a higher level needed someone to do the dirty work, Jono obliged. Really though, he was just a fan of chaos and destruction that came with the trade. If someone needed the literal stuffing beat out of them, he provided the fists. If gasoline had to be spilled to coerce a payment out of a tardy homeowner, he was there to light the spark. If an uptight, busty bitch needed some convincing, well, that was the perk of the job wasn't it?
It was great, that he would not deny, and by that he meant the sex, the money, and the power trips that he was so often rewarded with. But all the same to Jono, the bloodshed was an incentive in its own. He didn't use to be that way, but he grew to love it...
Looking over to where Sofia had died, Jono found himself called back to the first person he had murdered. He'd killed a few more since then, and maybe some he maimed who later died at the ER, but none felt quite as thrilling as the first and the last.
Jack Shelley needed to get his hands on a crew van fast. He didn't say what he needed it for, but at a time when he was still eager to prove himself, Jono didn't question the orders. Four-wheel drive, tinted windows, a make as inconspicuous as possible. Shelley could have found himself a car easy, but he had a name out there and he needed anonymity. All he needed to do, all Jonathon needed to do was grab a sedan and he'd be working his way up Shelley's chain of good will.
The parking lot behind the Dusk-2-Dawn mart was nearly deserted, save for a dark grey Rancher XL in the middle of the concrete like a pine tree in the Sahara. It was running with the air-con on, a filtered glow and a steady stream of exhaust emitting from the vehicle. He'd guessed someone decided it'd be alright to leave the car running while they nipped inside the mart to grab a case of beer. To be honest, Jono was almost surprised with how effortless it had gone. Pulling the door open and intending to drive away before its owner returned, Jono instead found himself looking at a stunned blonde holding a cell phone to her ear.
"What the hell?" she said as Jonathon quickly pointed his flick-knife forth. Her lips sagged, and her eyes widened in fear.
"Leave the fucking keys and get out, bitch, or I'm gonna cut your arm off!" It took a stunned second before she scrambled to grab her purse. Jono didn't know if it was a stupid instinct, or if the bitch figured he'd tap his foot and wait while she got her tampons in line. All he knew was that he couldn't let the bitch ID him.
Lunging forward on pure animalistic mode, he quickly jammed the switchblade to its hilt. The blade sunk in beneath the blonde's left breast, a blossom of red spreading on her sweater and soak it through as Jono retracted, slicing through flesh once more as it exited. She didn't even seem capable of screaming, merely coughing red twice with twin doe eyes of surprise, before she fell sideways out onto the parking lot. In the dark of the night, he couldn't see the red that pooled around her folded body, but the metallic tang of spilled blood was rich in the damp air. The wire frame of her glasses crunched underfoot as Jono climbed into the driver seat.
All reason dictated that he should speed out of the parking lot in a plume of dust before anybody passed by, but Jonathon took a moment to soak it in. His heart was beating lightly in his chest that he wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't put his concentration to it. His breaths were even. He didn't feel any different.
Jono smiled, and floored it.
It was in a small two-inch section of the papers the next morning, hardly worthy of any attention especially given the massive drug mule scandal plastering the front pages. Jono thought it hardly surprising. It was a bad part of town where he found her unawares, really she should have expected as much. Her name was inconsequential, as was the fact that she was survived by a shattered family of two. At the end of the day, Jono had killed her in cold blood, and he was beginning to understand the origins of the term. Cold blood. He certainly felt as much as her sticky blood spilled down the hilt of the switchblade onto his fingers. He expected she would bear the warmth of a human being, but the liquid that flowed through his hands was inorganic. He had ended her life, simple as that. There was no greater purpose to it, no melodramatic reveal of her life and expectations ruined. Shredding the papers, Jonathon could only let out a humorless laugh.
Present day, as he stood before the first girl he'd murdered as part of the Battle Royale, Jonathon considered his prospects. Playing the game was not a conscious decision, it was his second instinct. Those who stood in the way had to die. Those who tried to get away, well, he'd get to them sooner or later. That was the beauty of the game. It was a damn enormous city, yeah, but there were only so many places you could hide. The other girls thought they had gotten away – yeah, her with that zap-stick, and the shriveling chick in the closet – but they would in time go down to her. It was all in good time.
Murder was the name of the game, and Jono was your victor. There was no other man in the game with greater power than he did, nor was there anyone with a stronger desire to kill. He wasn't gunning to win, not exactly. Merely riding the game out would be the pussy way out, but slaughtering his way to the top, leaving behind a trail of bodies that Dahmer would be envious of, yeah, that sounded more like his thing. He'd take this game by storm. All those pussies out there, so delusional to think that they had a chance to survive the game... Jonathon was ready to give them a wake-up call of a lifetime.
"Why call them victims," the broad smile that split his face was demonic, "when they're not worthy of life in the first place?"
Sheathing the Steed 12 hunting knife in a stabbing motion, Jonathon let the rather ugly smile wash off his face. Time to get going.
Fast forward to fifteen minutes past five, when Heather and a mostly incoherent Maria were running from the monsters. They had to be monsters. That was the only explanation of how normal teenagers could lose every ounce of humanity within six hours of entering the game to devolve into murdering one another in cold blood. Her name might have been Sofia, but in reality she was a harpy with feathered wings and sharp talons. The man she did not know, aside from that he had to be a minotaur with muscles that bulged at every joint. They couldn't be inhabitants of the sweet little town of Haven's Mill, just as they couldn't have been on the student registry of HMHS. That was the only explanation beyond them being teenagers as normal as they were at one time.
And moreso now than ever, Heather realized she was not equipped to deal with monsters. She'd be the first to admit that since as early as she could remember, she had always been raised in a fountain of privilege. Her childhood was a blur of pageants, but competitive as the circuit was it was never grueling. Heather had nearly made it through her teenage years on good looks alone (though the backing of her affluent parents didn't hurt), and would have gone on to college with pretty much the same mindset had the Battle Royale not come along.
In different circumstances, Heather would have been perfectly comfortable to play the damsel in distress. Hell, with her long eyelashes and the glossy pout on her lips, she even looked the part. She could get rescued by the man of her dreams (one of the hunkier students of HMHS, no doubt), get whisked off the island by a team of efficient men in black, then live out the rest of her days like the endings of a Gwendolyn Monroe movie.
Forcing herself to swallow the fear, Heather knew what had to be said. "Listen to me, you're safe now. Everything's gonna be alright, but you need to listen to me, we gotta keep moving, okay?"
Heather sighed. Who the hell was she kidding? How could she measure up to be a hero when she could hardly take care of herself? Think back to five minutes ago, when her curiosity and the hope of an ally had led her to walk with practically empty hands into the lair of not one, but two vicious monsters. It was a miracle that she and Maria could slip away while the two monsters dueled it out among themselves (she hoped it would occupy them for long enough to allow Maria and her to escape). But it was clear to Heather that keeping her feet in a running motion was the extent of what Maria could process in her current mental state. Whatever it was – shock, awe, PTSD – was affecting the girl badly enough that she was entirely unresponsive.
The streets were cold, no, downright frigid. It was as much the precipitation that soaked their clothes as the bone-chilling realization of what being alone in the game truly entailed. If you wanted to be technical, Heather wasn't alone, but the presence of the non-functional Maria offered her little comfort in that department. Truth be told, she'd probably feel a lot less stressed if Maria had been left to die.
What a terrible thought, she immediately admonished herself.
She had to keep on keeping on. In this new world that she had been plunged into, Heather realized her looks meant nothing. Her wealth meant nothing. Her social status, her accomplishments, her intellect, all of that meant nothing. The only reality in this world of monsters was her own determination to live. That, and the fifty thousand volts of electricity coursing in the chunk of plastic in her hands.
"Maria, you can hear me, right?" She shook the girl's head lightly, getting nothing more than a mild-mannered squeak from her white lips. "Please, I can't do this alone. I'm not strong enough. Stay with me, please."
They were blocks away from the high school. Logic dictated that in the virtually unending rain, tracking the girls would prove near impossible even to the best of hounds. But in times of fright, all semblance of logic escaped Heather's mind, replaced by that dwindling thought of 'what if?' What if the monsters knew where they were heading, and was getting ready to ambush them en route? (A long shot, given that neither Heather nor Maria had any idea in the first place.) No limit of worry was worth the risk.
Running past a Mexican food truck and noticing its open doors, Heather practically forced Maria inside the mobile kitchen before letting the doors slam shut, her back pressed against the hinged surfaces. The serving window was shuttered, essentially cutting off all contact with the outside world as long as the doors weren't breached. Heather mouthed a quick prayer of gratitude, her teeth chattering in time with her palpitating heart.
She squeezed her eyes tight. Damn it, it was the rain, it had to be. She told herself she wasn't to cry no more. Two years, two long fucking years, that's how long since she's told herself she had to be strong, for her own sake as much as her father's. The thought that he could see her now through one of the omnipresent cameras dried her tears rather effectively, and brushing away the traces of rainwater (and no more, she told herself), Heather resolved to find her strength within. It was a promise she had made a long time ago, and one she had made her dad keep as well...
"That looks like her." As her lips parted, an almost invisible plume of white air puffed in the chill of the morgue. She didn't know if the low temperature was intended to keep the bodies from decomposing, but all it did was accentuate the already morbid room, doing absolutely nothing to alleviate the knots wrought in her stomach. Heather never wanted to be in this position, but following that phone call she had no choice. She was only a woman by the loosest definitions, but this was a task only she could take up.
And that was because her dad was in no condition to speak with any coherence. It was the first time she had seen him cry, but the man she had idolized as the Man of Steel in her toddlerhood had now devolved into a piteous wreck. Unsurprising, perhaps, considering that in the span of six short hours he had become a widower, but it was still disconcerting to see. Especially if said witness happened to be his daughter.
Without the signature wire-frame glasses that tipped low on her nose, the body on the stainless table looked impossibly like a stranger, but the resemblance couldn't be denied. Behind the stiff blonde hair and the dark stains where the blood capillaries had broken under her skin, her mother's face was as recognizable as ever. Even in death was her beauty unable to be tainted by the reddish mottles of livor mortis that covered all over a unilateral side of her face and body. The sight of it ought to have brought her to tears – like her dad – but Heather felt she was devoid of tears. The tinges of her upset were there, but unlike her father there was no overwhelming tsunami of emotion that waited to erupt from her body. She simply felt... dead.
"Looks like isn't good enough. We need a positive ID." The mortician had a tone that blended well with the morgue's ambiance. "Shit, little girl, don't make this difficult for me."
"Yes, that's her, you insensitive man. Patricia Lou Montoya, age forty-one, retired model and homeowner, what more do you want me to say?" Heather practically rapid-fired, the grief inside her unexpectedly melting into great rage. "Don't make this difficult for you? You do know that's my mother under that sheet?"
The mortician rolled his eyes. "What-fucking-ever." He turned to her father. "You're the husband? Come over here, we need to get the paperwork in order before we can release the body for-"
"I'll handle it." Her voice jumped in before her mind had even registered what she was saying. Perhaps it was the anger at the utterly inappropriate attitude the man seemed to show her grieving father, perhaps it was simply the need to grow up now that she had to succeed her mother.
"Are you sure, little girl?" The sneer was infuriating, but Heather willed herself not to let it show. "Are you even old enough?"
Heather turned up her nose, walking off with great precision as she blinked away the tears that finally came to surface. Not a girl, yet hardly a woman...
The frighteningly loud noise of impact on metal slammed her back to the present, where she had pressed up against the back wall of the food truck's interior kitchen. As her mind faded to the absence of a time past, Heather had been trying to get out of her soaked clothes. She expected a little privacy, but quickly laughed as she realized that was going to be a luxury she couldn't afford. Draping her sopping wet jacket over the nearest camera to obscure it, Heather quickly stripped of her wet shirt and skirt, drying herself rudimentarily before reaching over for the fresh set of clothing in her pack. She thought Maria might want a change as well, but forcibly stripping the girl when she was too far gone to be responsive seemed ungainly.
That was when he showed up.
Quite nearly naked and feeling more vulnerable now than ever, Heather whirled around at the gated window. There stood a boy perhaps a year older than her age, and he locked eyes with her in a frenetic sort of desperation. At one point, he had been handsome – still was, a little – with chiseled features and a body that could dissect rock. His dirty blond hair was usually pulled back in a short ponytail to keep it from falling in his eyes as he leapt to make a dunk shot, but now he wore it down in a drape of golden-brown curls.
"Hey, hey, hey, girlie, open up, let me in there, alright?" The break in Heath MacDougal's (designation: B13) voice was rife with desperation as he wobbled the gate. "Come on, I know you can hear me. Open up!"
Heather felt her joints lock in a frozen position as indecision took her over. Heath... was a good guy, right? No? She didn't know, she had to admit. He was a jock, but beyond that she realized she knew him very little. He was Stella's boyfriend, and responsible for a good part of her heartbreaks if what her friend was willing to share was of any indication. So he had a tendency to overdo it when he was drunk. So he was a bit of a player. But did it mean he was a bad person? Did it mean he was a killer? Yes? No? Who was she to make this decision?
"Go away," Heather heard herself say. The loud crack of her stun gun jumped to life as she threatened another student with her assigned weapon for the second time in one hour. "I can't risk it, I'm so sorry. Not with Maria, and certainly not with my life on the line."
"Are you kidding me? It's fucking cold out here you bitch!" Heath's tone was incredulous, but it was the barely concealed contempt in his eyes that Heather caught. "Fuck, fuck, fuck! I'm a nice guy, I'm not even asking that much, I just need a place to hide you fucking bitch!"
He shook the food truck's gated window with greater ferocity, wrenching it from side to side with the sound of metal straining against its bonds. Fearful of what he might do if he somehow broke through, Heather whirled around. Something long, something big and threatening...
Whistling a long piece of metal from Maria's pack, Heather swung it at the window with all her might. The metal connected amidst a gnash of sparks, sending a thoroughly shocked Heath falling back on his ass (soaking his pants through by the valiant curse). The strike was not propelled with particularly great strength, yet the gash of metal was clear as daylight. In her hands she wielded a long, thin length of metal with twin blade flanges, by her recognition a trench shovel modified to dissect as well as excavate. Heather didn't have the time to consider the weapon in her hands; in his wild run to get away from the half-naked psycho babe with her blade shovel and electric gun thing, Heath had hurled his assigned weapon at the girl with a parting shot. "Fucking crazy bitch!"
For a second, Heather saw a flash of silver, picturing the food truck blown to smithereens, her smoldering body scattered in approximate pieces. Then the vanity mirror smashed feebly against the side of the truck, its empty frame clattering on the ground, the reflective shards already disappeared in the murky silver beneath.
She froze for a beat, then she laughed, an impossible reaction in face of something so absurd. She laughed until the tears flowed freely. She laughed until the pang in her stomach intensified into a stabbing pain. She laughed until there was no air left in her lungs, then she laughed some more. In some lights this made her a madwoman, but she had to be, didn't she? She was in a Battle Royale, sanity's a cozy lie she couldn't spare out here. Look at Maria, she had the right idea.
Taking a ragged breath, Heather rubbed her cheeks dry. This time, she would cry no more.
Unbeknownst to the killer, his handiwork had not gone without attention.
Hidden in the depths of the janitor's closet (or as deep as she could fit in), the heavyset girl peered out from a gap in the boards with glittery eyes. She had been biding her time for a long time counting, but now was still far from the time to reveal herself. It had been the fright that kept her concealed at first. High school should have been the last place she would want to head to, but it was a stable structure in the outskirts of the gaming area. She had spent so much time of her hell on earth in that sinners' stew, might as well end her life here, right?
Not that she had an easy way to accomplish the task. Her razor blades had been confiscated, along with the safety pins and scissors that had accumulated at the bottom of her backpack. All that left her with was a Riffa lighter, and though it did bring glorious, head-clearing pain, no way was she gonna kill herself by immolation. Even if the three spray-cans that came in her pack made it unbelievably alluring to simply set one on fire and blow herself to kingdom come. Instead, she merely dug the ridges of her chewed fingernails into the old scabs, once more breaking the healing skin on her forearm. Blood flowed at a snail's pace from some of the wounds, and the girl lapped it up to keep it from dripping down to her elbow. Rattling a small vial of pepperspray that came as one of the spray-cans, she misted the open wounds with a dusting of cayenne pepper extract. The burn was agonizing and seared all the way along the nerves of her arm, forcing the girl to draw blood from her bottom lip as she bit hard to keep from screaming. Pain was her goddess, and pain was her salvation. It drew away from the suffering that would have been infinitely times unbearable otherwise.
Breathing heavily as her blood dripped into the drains of the basin, Nikita Ortiz (designation: G18) perked her head as she heard the noises of Sofia breaking in. Her first instinct was to hide from... she hadn't known it was Sofia then. Her first instinct was simply to hide.
And then before her fearful eyes, the massive boar of a man had stabbed her tormentor and left her to bleed out in seconds. In the blink of an eye, Sofia had been snubbed out like the remnants of a cigarette. It was terrifying. It was inhumane. It was... exhilarating. The man with the Mohawk left shortly, but Nikita felt this was an opportunity that could not slip away. In five minutes, he had accomplished what Nikita had dreamt of doing for four whole years. But there were so many more of her tormentors in the game, and the big man was certain to strangle them one by one.
And believe you her, Nikita had the intention to bear witness to every last one.