Cycle 9, Hour 6: The Voice in the Sky
47 Students Remaining
At the precise moment that the second and minute hands of the wall-mounted clock in her underground office tapped to their upright position, the electronic loudspeakers installed at strategic points around the playing field activated with an explosive squeal. The tinny, metallic screech soon dissolved into bars of generic elevator music that was designed to be as dissimilar as possible from all the other possible noises that might come about in a Battle Royale. For a moment the loudspeakers had nearly every surviving contender's attention, drawing their minds from the fear of bloodshed and confrontation.
The first in a lineup of Battle Royale hosts and presenters was Sophia Guinevere, a former lieutenant general whose feminine and statuesque appearance made a stark contrast with the impressive collection of wartime medals and ribbon bars that she boasted. Though she was not scheduled for any visual appearance, she insisted on showing up in her unblemished uniform.
"Good morning, Battle Royale fighters." The voice ringing through the playing field was regal and dignified, with brittle strength that shone through every crisply enunciated syllable. "My name is Sophia Guinevere, and on behalf of everyone who made the game of Battle Royale possible, we offer an earnest welcome to each contender still standing. We hope you find your pre-assigned supplies and the amenities of the playing field adequate.
"It is not in my nature to dally when there is such potential for bloodsport at hand, so let us proceed. As of 0600 hours of day one, we have presently three fatalities. Charlie Herold, designation: B7, died of a gunshot wound to the head. Michael Torres, designation: B23, died of immolation and blunt force trauma. Sofia Rivenez, designation: G21, died of massive blood loss, as a result of blade wounds." Her unwavering tone showed no emotion at all, but the pause before she spoke once more rang of stern disappointment. "Might I remind you that regardless of quality of the eliminations, the simulation will conclude in precisely sixty-six hours from the present.
"Our statisticians at the Battle Royale headquarters have taken every action seen thus far, and the numbers have been churned. As a reminder, the most and least valuable players are eligible to compete for an additional weapon, provided that they outpace, outfight, or otherwise outsmart their opponent. Most valuable player: Jonathon Sedlak, designation: B22. Least valuable player: Richard Kowalski Jr., designation: B11. Sedlak and Kowalski, you will be notified of the location of the prizes to be competed over via text message.
"Immediately following this announcement, at 0603 hours, zone C8 will become an active danger zone. At 0700 hours, K6 will activate. At 0800 hours, G12 will activate. At 0900 hours, D6 will activate. At 1000 hours, I9 will activate. At 1100 hours, A1 will activate. Each named zone will remain activated for a total of six hours. To those of you who may or may not be entertaining the idea of evading the danger zones by means of the city's facilities, they apply to airspace and underground locations as much as they do at ground level. No amount of vertical distance will stop the transmission signals to detonate your collars.
"This concludes your morning announcement. Those of you who are asleep, unconscious, hearing impaired, absent-minded, or otherwise unable to decipher the simplest of messages will be glad to know that a transcript of this announcement will be uploaded and can be accessed by your PDAs in short time. Before I retire to my abode, let me wish all Battle Royale fighters still standing a good game ahead.
"This is Sophia Guinevere, signing off." And then, static, signifying the end to the intermission of death and violence.
"...!"
Those bastards!
"...!"
They did this on purpose!
"...!"
Those fucking bastards!
"...!"
The red glow of LED lights beneath the pole-mounted speakers indicated that words were being broadcasted across the island. The constant and rhythmic drumming of air particles made that unmistakable, and even Spencer Tsai (designation: B23) could tell that. It was frustrating to know that the others were receiving the message that he was denied, but there was no way around the reality.
Spencer could accept that he was in a Battle Royale. He could accept that the only way to ever return to not home, not even a normal life, but any semblance of living was to play the game. He could even accept that he was armed with one of the more trickier weapons in the game to handle. The path to winning would require nothing short of the utmost stealth, guile, and determination, but Spencer was certain that he stood a chance of pulling it off. What he couldn't accept was that the suits had no intention of him having a fair chance at the game. The announcements weren't just a scoreboard, that he could live without. But the danger zones, that was something he had no visible way of knowing.
Still, the fact that he hadn't been blown up probably meant he was still in a safe zone. It wouldn't be easy, but he'd have to obtain that information from another student. He'd either have to force them to reiterate the zones, or pray that they'd written the information down. Either way, he had to move fast to make his first ki-
The vibration in his jeans pocket disrupted his line of thought, scaring the boy more than he was willing to admit. Quickly pressing his back to the nearest wall, Spencer fished out his cell phone and flipped it open. The screen shone with its digital inscription of '1 new text'.
He didn't have to read the text to know who sent that message. Spencer was reasonably popular for being a great reporter, but at the same time he was reasonably unpopular for being the freak who read your lips and talked with his hands. He knew perhaps everyone in the game purely for staying in the know, with connections in every clique from the hotshot jocks to the lowliest nerds. But there was maybe just one person he would consider to be on his side a hundred percent, almost naively, charitably so. It had to be her.
And it was. Lydia Shumway (designation: G23) was indeed the contact at the top of the screen. 'Get out of C8 before 0603. Check PDA for list of dead, MVP/LVP, and danger zones. Play fair.'
He didn't even have to worry that someone else was pretending to be Lydia using her phone. The message couldn't have been more rife with her signature if she had made a conscientious effort to do so. The terse, to-the-point sentences, the use of the Oxford comma, the utter lack of trifling chitchat... all signs pointed to Lydia as the originator of the message. It made perfect sense to him. Chief editor and his superior on the school magazine, Lydia was not the only student who'd have thought he was disadvantaged, but she was possibly the only one with enough of a sense of justice to right that wrong. Would she have done the same if she knew he was planning to play? Probably. True, they had never really gotten along, but Spencer and Lydia had clashed enough times that they'd developed a mutual respect, kind of like a camaraderie between foes. She was a controlling bitch, but she was at least just. There was every chance that karma would bite her in the ass, but Lydia was never the type to accept a disparate edge. It didn't surprise Spencer that she had not compromised her morals even in life or death. Then again she was a conservative... She'd probably take right to the Battle Royale then. Likely she was already holding a gun to some poor bastard's head.
A soft texture brushed up against the back of his head, and instinctively Spencer batted away the mosquito before it could sting him. Something about the rain seemed to bring out the undesirable side of the biosphere. You'd think the insects and vermin wouldn't be a problem in an urban setting, but you'd be wrong.
He pulled out his PDA and quickly brought up the information from the announcements. Danger zones, check. MVP and LVP, check. Death list, check. Three people dead so far, none that he had pegged for cannon fodder at first though. All three were in the popular crowd to varying degrees, and all three were (or had been) athletes. The nerd crowd had to be playing more aggressively than he would have assumed. Then again, Charlie aside, it could be a dog-eat-dog situation that did the other two in... It wouldn't surprise Spencer if they had killed each other fighting over something trivial, like a lifesaver mint.
Gathering all that he could from the information on his PDA, Spencer collected his mind together. It was a lot easier deciding to play with the right skill set and the right tools. His assigned weapon, or as it turned out his weapons, were going to pave his way to victory. Right off the bat, a guy like him could never win by playing the aggressive game, but Spencer had patience in spades. Lucy Carlyle, runner-up to the last cycle, had nearly seized the game-winning title by camping near the starting square to shoot the last man standing in the back, but she had been weak. Her only weapon was a screwdriver and the pillowcase she had started out with, but she had gotten far by laying low and letting the other kids take each other out. She could have gone further too, if she hadn't hastily attacked her killer and the eventual winner, not realizing they had started the game with one of the most effectual weapons in their pack.
Yes, the collar tracker was his sure-fire way to victory. Designed and built to track all fifty of their collars at every point on the city grid to a fifteen meter margin of error, it allowed him to, well, stay in the know as he was so fond of saying. Not only could he track any student's location (including when they hadn't moved for hours), but if anybody so much as breathed in the same city block as he did... well, his other weapon would make sure they wouldn't be breathing for long. For someone who had never really accepted his fortune in life, Spencer was delighted to find he truly had an edge in this game.
Ms. Fitzpatrick had said endgame would come to take place in the large natural park area that spanned more than ten city blocks in territory. The sizable park also housed a graveyard, a boathouse, a zoo, the city's largest museum, and plenty of open ground where foliage and shrubbery provided the perfect camouflage. There was no shortage of hiding places for an opportunistic player.
It was a fitting way to end the game. Spencer had often thought of himself as a man of the shadows. Unobtrusive by choice, Spencer knew the perfect way to minimize himself when the situation called for him staying under the radar. It had gotten him through middle school when he had to transfer in the middle of the school year because the debts had finally caught up with his parents after they went unemployed and they had to pull him out of the specialized school for kids like him. It had gotten him through high school when the bullies threatened to be worse than anything he had ever seen. But freshman year was when he finally realized being a victim was not his thing. Spencer could never touch a hair on them, but he had ways to payback all the same. It was all too easy to fool people into believing that he couldn't hear a thing because he didn't get a hearing aid. They never paid notice to the unspoken cues that he could pick up on all the same. That, and lip-reading at a distance was a fairly effective way of garnering intel at a party.
He'd initially done so to get back at Sadie Nevarez, a nasty trollop of a cheerleader who saw fit to make his freshman year the literal enactment of the word 'miserable'. After Sadie found her life in tatters after everyone found out about how she had been steadily nicking wallets, CDs, gadgets, and pretty much anything she could get her hands on from the lockers, Spencer realized that he had a calling for exposing what other people did not want exposed. He was a reporter not only to improve his social standing and his CV for the colleges, but because he was damn good at it. Okay, so sometimes he resorted to less than savory methods that Lydia didn't always agree with, but at the end of the day who had the story? He did. Just like he had the game.
Spencer was born to be a sure-fire winner. As long as he laid low, he could last long into the Battle Royale. With a healthy combination of luck and skill, he could even walk away from this game alive and well. There was just something he had to settle first...
Pulling out his collar tracker, Spencer narrowed in on his target with a confident smile. They'll never hear this coming.
The broadcast had ended ten minutes ago, but its ramifications lasted long after the loudspeakers had gone offline. It was the first and only sign of contact that the contestants would have with the world outside of the immediacy of the fighting. As many had awaited the announcements with zeal as they had with dread, but after the gravity had set in, very few could find themselves cheered by the prospect of more announcements to come. Perhaps the most conflicted of the many students in the city were the two skaters who had shacked up in a CD store in the south-eastern corner of the playing field. It was not the most fortified of hideouts, but its accessibility was what appealed to the boys. The last thing either of them wanted was to be backed into a corner with nowhere to run. The boys had been sitting on a decision to be made as the game rolled into its sixth hour, but the announcements had not made any part of that decision easier.
"Three people... that's not a lot dead, not by historical standards at least. And I'm sure what happened with Charlie had to be an accident. Maybe there's still hope for us yet."
The speaker was Stephen Park (designation: B15), the taller and more photogenic of the pair, though modesty would keep him from admitting it. Born to a second-generation Korean family, Stephen had inherited his striking looks from birth (though the suggestions of plastic surgery never seemed to disappear from the rumor circuit). Coupled with a unique charm and a penchant for extreme sports that afforded him his fair share of wounds and scars, it was no surprise that the girls at school flocked to him like flies to honey.
"That's still two people dead... and I'm sure there's more to come. People are just biding their time."
The responder was Diego Vega (designation: B25), a wiry boy with lean, tanned muscles and spiked hair that would've given any afro a run for its money. Most people knew him as Stephen's sidekick, the slightly less hot, slightly less funny, slightly less clever guy. There was a time that Diego would have been displeased to be cast in the perpetual shadow, but frankly he had bigger fish to fry.
"Maybe you're right, maybe I'm wrong. The only way we'll know is the next announcements right?" Stephen said with an inquiring flair. With a slight tremor that betrayed his false airiness as he stuffed his PDA back in his back pocket, he turned to look at his friend with... caution? Suspicion? Either way, it was a look that Diego didn't like.
And he knew the reason. It all had to do with him.
"What's to say we'll last that long?" Diego mused. "For all we know the psycho bitch that killed Sofia and Michael is lurking just outside, wielding some sort of, I don't know, flaming knife-club."
Stephen's eyes widened. "How do you know it's a girl?"
"Just a guess, fifty percent chance I'm correct. Probably more than that considering how often girls end up killing each other. I mean, not in real life, but in Battle Royale. Maybe in real life too, I don't really know." Diego grimaced as he tried to mentally repel the image of a triple-wielding dominatrix armed to the teeth with fire, blades, and a bludgeon. "Guy or girl killer, I think it's a safe bet that we'll be hearing – or heaven forbid, seeing – more of them around."
The morbid thought seemed to drain the animation from his face. "Shit. I don't think I can bear that."
"At least we won't be defenseless, eh?" Diego raised the sleek Vesper M60 submachine gun in his arms. Secretly, he thanked whatever goddess or lady luck that had caused one of the best weapons to somehow end up inside his pack. He could tell the relief was showing in his demeanor, and not wanting to make things awkward for Stephen (who had received one of the few truly crapsome weapons in the game), he eased into a lighthearted comment. "And in case we run afoul of an enemy bullets can't take down, I'm gonna throw them right at you, 'cause let's admit it, you've got the perfect weapon for that."
Stephen laughed lightly. "If they're vampires or poltergeists, then sure. I don't think a Bible's going to do much harm to a son of a bitch who's packing Kevlar."
"I'm gonna play." Diego shot out suddenly, then immediately sucked in a breath in the wake of his surprise at having said something he had been planning to say without any possible way of wording it that wouldn't make his intentions immediately hostile.
To say the silence was deafening would have been a cliché, but absolutely accurate. As a skateboarder who dabbled in tagging on occasion, Diego was familiar with the late night silence that would have unsettled others who were more used to the bustle of daylight. He had an ear out for the telltale noises that indicated human presence. But despite standing face-to-face with Stephen, it felt like he had literally gone deaf with shock. Instead, he was only able to rely on his other senses to convey the utter shock that mirrored in Stephen's wide, stricken eyes, the way his hands gripping the straps of his pack went a bit slack.
There was a click of teeth as Stephen finally regained the sound of mind to close his gaping mouth. "You can't be serious."
Diego wanted to acquiesce, say anything of the sort that would have smoothed things over. He could have feigned frivolity and played it off as a joke that had gone over terribly wrong. But... "I'm dead serious, Stephen. I don't have a choice... I just can't die here."
Stephen said nothing for a long time, then finally let out a stale, resigned breath. "Okay, look, Diego, I have to ask you just one thing. Do you consider me as a friend? Not just someone you hang out with, but like truly a friend?"
There were a million answers to that question, many of which could spark the dynamite that they were steadily tiptoeing towards. Diego settled for the easiest. "Of course."
"Then just this once you have to listen to me." Stephen closed his eyes, then opened them with a new resolution. "You and I both know we don't always agree on things. I think we're friends too, and that's why I'm always going to give you my opinion on things even when you don't wanna hear them. Especially if you don't wanna hear them. And you don't always take my unsolicited advice but I'm okay with that, you know? We all make our own mistakes. Point is, don't do this. I didn't think it was a good idea when you started mingling with Tyrell's crowd. I didn't think you getting into dealing was a good idea. But this time I'm not letting go without a fight, okay?"
"You don't underst-"
Stephen snorted in disdain. "You think you'll live if you play? That's just a load of bullshit they're feeding you, so you'll contribute to the bloodsport that this nation feasts on, like maggots on a chunk of rotten meat. Look at South fucking Korea, man, or what's left of it after the takeover. I'm not letting you go out there in to that scorpion pit, not because I'm afraid you'll kill. It's because I know you will die."
"And if I don't play, what?" Diego was undeterred, however. Part of the reason was the anger that had been manifesting for a long time, anger at the gamemakers, anger at Stephen, anger at the rich bastards that watched their quarrel behind a scene, probably hoping one of them would kill the other. "So what if I don't fucking play? A magic portal will open in this godforsaken shithole? We'll just jump right through and be home in a matter of hours? Every fucking thing will just be sunshine and dandelions?" He swatted angrily at one of the CD racks, toppling the metallic stand and noisily spilling Kelsey Clark's greatest hits everywhere.
"I'm not going to fight lies with lies. By all rights, we'll still bite it when they blow our neckbombs up." Stephen shrugged, though his tone suggested anything but nonchalance. "But at least we'll die with peace and dignity. We'll know we defied them to the last minute. We'll leave this world with the people we love, knowing that we at least prevented it from becoming a worse place."
He let out a half-chuckle that didn't form fully due to the bitterness that choked his throat cruelly. "That's the difference between us, Stephen. I don't have a girlfriend to bang while forgetting about my people at home."
"Helena's not my – you know what? Never mind. Forget I said anything in the first place," Stephen said contemptuously as he reached into his pocket, finding and revealing an easily concealable butterfly knife. "I don't need you or your goddamn gun. Just know that you're walking to your own death."
The sight of the weapon that he had known nothing of was the tipping point. "Then I guess there's no hope for me."
Diego's words carried a tone of finality that even a pained Stephen couldn't help but pick up on. There was nothing more he could say to sway the boy from his decision, and wisely he made no further attempts. Instead, he stood by the cashier with eyes shining with remorse, wringing his pitifully small blade in his hands, as Diego quickly prepared to leave the premises. His supplies were packed to go, saving him the trouble of having to gather his things together. Food and water in his pack, PDA in his pocket, his incongruously dangerous Vesper gun in hand... he was set to leave. Making a break for the door, Diego unexpectedly whirled around as his pack swung around his hip.
"You've given me plenty of advice over the years, man, so here's my attempt to repay you for all that," Diego said as he tried his best to keep his shaky smile from faltering. Stephen was caught off guard, but he did seem at least willing to hear Diego's final offering. "My advice, stay out of the way. Don't take your chances on the outside. I'm not gonna come after you if I can help it, but sometimes a guy needs to do what he needs to do."
If possible, Stephen appeared even more rattled by Diego's words, but in any event he merely nodded. Standing in the doorway of the music store, he watched with a gnawing despondence as another eager player joined the fray.
The riverfront was lined with a succession of Mediterranean-inspired buildings that housed the former Barkley citizens' livelihoods – their apartments, workplaces, and stores that vended anything from terra cotta pottery to counterfeit gadgets and trinkets. The architecture was admirable in an outlandish sort of way, but Barkley's riverside was not a place that most contestants of the Battle Royale had chosen to frequent. For one, there was the concern that standing on the unobstructed river banks with only crudely erected tents at the fish market or the odd warehouse to shield them from sight might expose their presence to a watchful eye on the opposite shore. In reality this was a frivolous concern, as the rainstorm and the night's poor visibility had rendered that possibility as far low as it could go. For another, there was simply no shortage of other locations that offered greater comfort. Buffeted by the rain-encrusted wind at a nightmarish sixty miles per hour, anyone caught on the shore without adequate protection would soon find the city's climate to be a harsh and unyielding mistress.
Nevertheless, a lone figure still stalked the winding road adjacent to the majestic Holland River. This was in spite of the fact that in his mind, Andrew Lewis (designation: B12) knew he was possibly the least equipped person to play a game as harrowing as Battle Royale.
"Not like I've got a say in the matter," Andrew muttered to himself.
Physically, he was of no great threat. A dark-haired boy of short stature, he was easily dwarfed and outclassed by a good number of the girls, much less the guys. But his stepmother had always said that when God dispensed talents, he made sure to leave every baby's basket with an equal if diverse fill. In some ways, she had been right. What he lacked in physical prowess, Andrew more than made up for in terms of creativity and imaginative talent. He owed that in part to his late grandfather, who had brought him up on paints and charcoal since he was a toddler... before that, even. He had spent many a day by his grandfather's side, squirting the oil paints out of tubes with squiggly words that he couldn't even begin to understand. Then, he had recognized the dollops of industrial dye only as his grandfather named them 'Elmo Red', 'Big Bird Yellow', 'Barney Purple' and 'Benny Pink' (only later had Andrew found out that his grandfather was unable to read the labels either due to advanced age cataracts). It wasn't until years later that he found the dusty set of oil paints while clearing the attic that he was able to put a proper name to the aged pigments.
The hue of oil paints, all the smudges on an artist's palette, those he knew better than anyone else. Rose-madder and carbon-black and sepia-brown and malachite-green and pastel-pink and coral-orange. Thistle-purple and ivory-white and cerulean-blue and taupe-grey and chartreuse-yellow.
To him, each of these colors were recognizable as childhood pals. For a long time, they were his only friends.
It was art that made his life worthwhile, but it was also art that made high school that much more unbearable. Guys weren't supposed to be artistic, they were supposed to love sports and beat up women and act like Neanderthals in general. At least, that seemed to be the general attitude among the students at HMHS. His artistic accomplishments were no less impressive than Heath MacDougal's winning streak on the basketball court, or Travis Portillo's seven consecutive touchdowns in one game, or whatever that Blake Barreto constantly boasted of his wrestling feats. But while the other guys were constantly lauded for their athletic prowess, Andrew found only derision for his own, though even that could be tolerable when there were so many other ways to make high school a living hell.
Art was a dream, but it wasn't his life. It couldn't be so for too many reasons, but most constant of all was the family business. Formally the Red Dot Shooting Range, most inhabitants of Haven's Mill knew the establishment simply as the only gun lodge in town. Much as he hoped that his art would carve him a name in the art gallery circuit, the Red Dot anchored him to reality.
There was an unexpected side to working the late hours at the Red Dot. Though few contestants had the presence of mind to figure out their guns, Andrew knew near instinctively how to assemble and wield his Gaston XV. The most common firearm known to the trigger-happy populations of the good ole US of A, his pre-assigned Gaston pistol gave him more comfort than he thought. Still... what he wouldn't give to have his oil paints and canvas right here, right now. If he were to die, he'd rather be surrounded by the things and people he loved.
"At least I'm not going down without a fight," he said half-convinced, as he withdrew the sleek pistol from its holster. He had a way to fight back if his tormenters wanted any trouble. Andrew knew a few of them were in the game, Blake Barreto, Michael Torres, and-
Chris "Knut" Johnson (designation: B9) swung his assigned bolt cutters with great force into the back of Andrew's head. With a bone-shattering crack, the smaller boy was flung off his feet to collide with the base of a road sign, the entirety of his weight adding to the tearful winds that had the metal pole vibrating with conflicted momentum.
Rolling onto his back as he nearly lost consciousness, Andrew had only half a second to gather the senses that had been knocked loose before two hundred pounds of solid brickhouse muscle assembled in the form of a half-human, half-gorilla hybrid pummeled him into the ground. In reality it was Knut with his fists raised high, but given Andrew's disorientation, it wasn't a difficult mistake to make. Given how incredibly muscular he was even for a football player, his veins had to be swamped with testosterone or steroids. The former would explain the hair that covered his body all over (save for the top of his head, where even at eighteen his hairline was threatening to fade into oblivion); the latter would explain the perpetual state of heightened rage.
Andrew held his breath in expectation of the worst pain, an instinct honed by four years of beatings and swirlies and locker slams. The worst never came, not in the way he expected at least. Instead, he found himself unable to release the air in his lungs as Knut's massive paws locked in a cast-iron grip around his throat.
He struggled and tried to remove Knut's stranglehold with his free hand, but his fingers did not budge no matter how desperately Andrew pried at his neck. He writhed, he kicked, he garbled, he clawed, but try as he might the stronger boy was able to squeeze the air out of his lungs. Panic bubbled as oxygen was deprived from his body, driving him to struggle with even more desperation. He tried to gasp, but the fists around his neck kept the fresh, oxygenated air from entering his airway. Andrew wanted to strike back, to retaliate, but his fumbling hands couldn't get a firm grip on his pistol. His eyes rolled back into his eyes as the carbon-black rimming his vision closed in...
"Jesus Christ, Knut, you said you'd find us a weapon," said the girl as she appeared from behind Knut.
"Well I'm doing just that, aren't I?" Knut snarled as he tightened his grip around Andrew's neck. Little fucker's still got a pulse, he's not nearly dead yet...
"Are you gonna kill him? Seriously?"
Despite long, wavy hair and a pretty face, Cassi Reynaud (designation: G20) had gone unnoticed by most anybody for her first two years of high school. In junior year for some reason or other, she had reinvented herself, shed the dark, gothic exterior (still kept a bit of the punk though) and auditioned for the cheerleading team. That act more than any makeover had gotten her plenty of attention, and while not all was good – a lot of bad from Rosalyn's clique, actually, who seemed enraged that anyone had dared to intrude upon her squad – Cassi was actually popular for once. High on her trajectory, she'd even found a solid boyfriend in Knut, a guy who wasn't always the perfect gentleman but was at least dependable. That she had allied herself with him in the game came as a surprise to precisely no one except perhaps herself.
"Shut the fuck up. He's not dead, not yet anyway," Knut snapped gruffly as he adjusted his chokehold around Andrew's throat. "I can still feel he's got a pulse, and his collar's still lit up, which means unless you stop yapping your mouth he's bound to come to."
She crossed her arms with an expression like she had just stepped in something unpleasant. "Well, be done with it. I don't want to watch."
Turning her back as her beau Knut continued to choke the life out of some chickenshit kid in earnest, Cassi couldn't help but sigh. She didn't want to be a part of this, even if she had always stood by as Knut did whatever he could and then some to maintain his place in the hierarchy. She knew what it was like to be bullied, though not in her freshman or sophomore years, back then she simply went unnoticed. It was Rosalyn's girls that was the worst. From the beginning Cassi knew getting on squad meant clashing with Rosalyn and Blair, but she didn't anticipate it would be this bad. She was a cheerleader, but they still called her a goth... It wasn't ea-
Lost in her thoughts as she directed her attention to the stormy flux of the river surface, Cassi suddenly went down without a sound. Had Knut paid any less attention to the boy he was trying to murder in cold blood, he probably would have evaded the attack. And so he took a debilitating hit to the head that damn near knocked him out if he weren't so thick-skulled. Staggering off the near-dead Andrew, Knut found a flurry of metallic blows prevented him from regaining his footing. He tried to fend them off with his fists, but recoiled as the metallic weapon connected painfully his ulna to send a shockwave through his arm. As he fell to the ground, he tried to get a look at his attacker. It had to be another boy, of that Knut was sure. He had experienced far too many collisions on the football field to know that it could only be another guy with a large, muscled frame that carried enough physical force in him to bowl Knut over. Finally finding an opening in the seemingly endless blows (and realizing that his attacker was in no way experienced with a bludgeon), Knut swore as he sighted his attacker.
Namely, all two hundred and seventy pounds of her as the fiercely powerful girl wrested the aluminum baseball bat from his hands. Though he had only known her as 'that Muslim pig' and a plethora of less polite epithets in school, Salome Carras (designation: G3) had amazing strength in spite of her size and the fiery rose-madder headscarf wrapped over her head and neck.
For as long as Knut had seen the girl around, Salome had been painted a target of ridicule for a variety of reasons, her faith and her body size to name a few. In the Battle Royale, however, gone was the dogged spirit that had the girl's eyes constantly downcast and her movements meekly minced. For some reason though, Salome appeared to have come alive with brimming fire in the game. Neither her billowing hijab nor the thick-banded glasses resting on her pert, slightly upturned nose did much to distract from the glowering defiance in her mud-brown eyes.
Raising her baseball bat to its pinnacle, Salome brought the bludgeon down in a warning strike that got Knut to leap back in evasion. "I'm only going to say this once, GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
As it turned out, Andrew was not too far gone that he was unable to recover. He propped himself up and quickly drew his pistol with his other arm. Taking quick, practically instantaneous aim at the burly boy, Andrew fired the first gunshot he never expected to. With the explosive ejection of a brass casing, the bullet went skyhigh, but the deafening BANG of the gunshot was sufficient to get Knut to dial back his aggression.
"Jesus motherfucking Christ, you fuck! You and that bitch, you're both fucking nuts!" he swore rapidly as he backed away from the boy's smoking barrel. Gripping a weakly stirring Cassi by the forearm and bodily yanking her to a staggering position, Knut practically scrambled the wet soil at his feet to get away. Not wanting the fight to progress any beyond this point, Salome and Andrew made no attempt to stop them from fleeing.
"Need a hand there?" Salome asked as she helped Andrew up.
"Thanks, asshole got me good. Thank god you showed up," Andrew muttered as he got back to his unsteady feet. "Wait, I can say that, right? Thank god? Thank Allah?"
"I couldn't care less, your god, not mine," the girl said in a surprisingly upbeat way. "I'm Salome, nice to meet you."
"Suh-loh-mi?" he echoed. Damn, that definitely felt like a concussion.
"Are you sure you're okay?" she asked, concerned. "If you're bleeding, I took a first-aid class two summers ago, I'm basically a basic life support provider, only without the registration. Here, let me take a look."
"I'm fine, just a bit oxygen deprived. Give me some space," Andrew grunted as he took a great breath of fresh air. Once the swimming in his head had finally subsided, he looked at his savior with better clarity. One of the outcasts at HMHS, Salome was perhaps the last person he would have expected to owe gratitude to. Yet here they were.
"Considering I just saved your life, you probably owe me breakfast at least," Salome said with a twinkle in her eyes of sepia brown. Her smile revealed teeth as white as the purest ivory, which made a stark contrast with the brilliantly red headscarf she wore.
Under the circumstances, he would have been perfectly justified in distrusting the girl before him, even if she had just risked life and limb to rescue him. Hardly anybody would blame him if he had simply put a bullet between her wide, trusting eyes right now. In all honesty, Salome wasn't someone he knew well (aside from the mutual camaraderie that came from being a past victim of HMHS's number of bullies). She wielded a great bludgeon and had the right amount of muscle to use it despite her bulk. But did that make her an ally or an enemy? Guess there was only one way to find out...
"Considering you just saved my life," Andrew said, wincing as he felt a reddening bump on the back of his head, "I owe you a lot more than breakfast, but that's sounds like a fair place to start."
Salome laughed heartily in a way that instilled warmth in his chest. "That's an idea I can get behind. And well, I just so happened to notice there's a greasy spoon two blocks from here. Hope you like high-fat, high-salt, borderline disgusting fried food, washed down with the kind of stale coffee that puts a hole in your stomach, 'cause it looks like that's the best meal we could ask for."