Day 1 6:01 AM

Mr. Samuels's jovial death report continued.

"So now, onto the latest death toll; Fei Yan (Boy #2) decided to be a knight in shining armour for one fair maiden, but unfortunately he consequently had his hand dismembered by Tian Berkley (Boy #1) before Phil Argyle (Boy #15 ) wedged a sickle in his neck. Congratulations to Phil for drawing first blood, bad luck Fei for behaving like a naïvely romantic imbecile. Next on our list of deceased is Christopher Wendell (Boy #11) who managed to let the side down horrendously by spinelessly committing suicide. Now a word of advice to the rest of you; this kind of cowardice is both shameful to the reputations of your families and is also a needless sacrifice that only makes the game easier for others. However on a more positive note; the third and final kill of the six hour period was Jun Ishibashi (Girl #12), shot in the stomach by Frankie Almond Smith (Girl #14) and died a death of pure delicious agony."

Simon Holcombe (Boy #6) felt a warm tingling of relief sweep through his chest. Ben Ackart (Boy #8) was alive (though probably incapacitated) and Simon started to feel his guilt subside as he realised there was still opportunity to rescue him. He was about to vocally express his gladness at the lack of Ben's name on the list, but Tulista shushed him as Mr. Samuels's voice spoke again,

"Frankly your performance so far could be most charitably described as desultory, so if the kill count doesn't start rising soon, I'm afraid I'll have to enforce some rather undesirable punishments upon you."

"I now am going to dictate what the danger zones are and at what hours they're to become active; so have your pen and map at the ready. After that little digression, I will announce which student has won the audiences' award for 'Best Kill of the past Six Hours'." Mr. Samuels coughed officiously before proceeding, "At seven AM, zone F-2 becomes active followed by zone D-7 at eight. After that there is zone G-4 at nine, then F-6 at ten, C-2 at eleven and finally, B-4 at midday. At the next report, the danger zones will be reorganised; some of the previous ones mentioned will remain whilst others will be changed."

"But now, I am proud to announce that the audience have declared Phil Argyle to be the winner of the 'best kill' accolade. So stay where you are Phil, some troops are winging their way towards you with your prize. In the meantime, everybody else is required to refrain from attacking Phil until he has received his gift, unless they wish to have their collar detonated of course. Well goodbye for now, let the carnage continue!"

There was an unsociable pause within the living room, only broken by the relieved proclamation from Tulista that 'We're safe – none of the zones include us."

Joanna looked at Tulista with her bleary eyes and said, "For now Tulista, for now."

The girls sat alertly around the kitchen table. Anne Priestly (Girl #11) limply held her cigarette in her hand, coils of silvery smoke rolling over her lips. Sue Cathcart (Girl #3) had laid her map across the table; she and Daisy Donahue (Girl #4) were studying it closely whilst Jewel Siu Tung (Girl #10) sat back in her chair, shakily drinking her water and awaiting their verdict. She kept imagining Fei lying helplessly on the ground, hysterically pleading for mercy before Tian severed his hand with some kind of razor sharp implement.

"Ok, the cottage becomes a danger zone at ten o'clock and the log cabin at midday. The other selected zones are just an assortment of open spaces. We've a little less than six hours to prepare for our departure, however where we go is a matter of choice; personally I'd recommend the infirmary because it's nearby and probably quite well fortified. There's also the chance of medical supplies too." Sue firmly suggested.

"What are our other re-location options?" asked Daisy.

"Other than the Church nothing else is really in range," Anne replied, finally extinguishing her twelfth cigarette in the ashtray, "and frankly the church is an inferior hideout, so I say we go with the infirmary."

"I second that. What do you think Jewel?" Daisy inquired. Jewel took a swig of water, licked her lips with her characteristic (though unintentional) flirtatiousness and then spoke,

"Yeah sure, the infirmary's a good idea. However should we leave as soon as possible or wait until the last minute? If we leave soon we stand a better chance of getting there before anybody else, but staying here for as long as possible provides us with much needed security." Jewel stated matter-of –factly.

"I think staying here for the moment is our best bet." said Sue.

"I agree," Daisy concurred, "besides, we need more time to lure Sylvie out of the bathroom."

"Whatever happened to good old brute force?" Anne snidely asked.

"You must be fucking joking; that could plunge her into some sort of violent paranoid schizophrenia and as we don't know what her weapon is, I'm not willing to chance it." Sue retorted vigorously.

"Well if Sylvie poses a threat," said Anne, eyeing her Colt 45.suggestively, "I'm more than willing to put one right between her eyes."

"You're a bitch," said Daisy without a trace of irony.

"No darling, I'm not a bitch, I'm the bitch." Anne slyly responded.

"If you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to do something worthwhile." Daisy coldly informed them, getting up from her seat and strutting away towards the cabin's corridor.

"So what do we do now?" asked Jewel.

"We do what any sane person does in the face of insurmountable odds." Said Anne, Jewel looked expectantly at her with endearing (though insincere) wild-eyed innocence. Anne grinned and said simply, "We watch TV."

"It works?" asked Jewel, obviously sceptical as she looked at the widescreen TV that stood inactive against the far wall.

"It does indeed," affirmed Sue, "though it only has three channels; BBC news, The National Geographic channel and some strange golden oldies TV station that constantly shows Starsky and Hutch re-runs."

"We're forsaken to die and they couldn't even let us watch MTV one last time..." Jewel quietly mused, shaking her head with a mixture of amusement and sadness; the TV almost emblematic of a carefree past existence she had led that could now never be regained. Jewel stood up and walked away towards the door leading to the corridor.

"Where're you going Jewel?" Anne called after her.

"Oh you know – I thought I'd powder my nose and dress up in my ball gown, maybe even change my underwear too..." Jewel answered; pleased that even in the face of death she still retained a certain dry wit.

Poor Fei, he'd had more decency and civility than almost the entire year group put together and this was the treatment he received? Still, Jewel wasn't about lurch and flounder in masochistic recriminations over his death; it was Fei's decision to help her (one that she would be eternally grateful for) and thus the consequences he suffered were not her responsibility. Still, she couldn't help but feel a pang of sorrow for the loss of not only Fei but also Jun, who'd been unjustly murdered by the hands of her supposed 'friend' Frankie. Six hours and already two good people had bitten the dust – and who was to say she wouldn't be next?

She opened the door and stepped into the narrow and unlit corridor. There was an empty cupboard at the end and two plain wooden doors, one on each wall, which led off into the comfortably furnished bedrooms. The door on the left was slightly ajar, a slim shaft of brilliant light visible through the crack, Daisy's soothing tone of voice clearly audible as she beseeched the infuriatingly mute Sylvie to leave the bathroom.

Jewel couldn't help but smile in spite of her fear. Daisy was currently the only person giving the group any kind of cohesion; though Anne and Sue had been close friends since the dawn of time, Sylvie was their object of detestation and it was only through her association with Daisy that they'd even allowed her into the building. As for what they thought of Jewel, Anne was too much of a cynical nihilist to really have any active feelings about anybody (apart from Sue perhaps – but that friendship seemed to spring more from a social survival instinct than anything else), but Sue was a different matter. For Sue, the holy grail of teen life was popularity and since her arrival at Bray Wood she had ruthlessly strove to attain it. However, though immaculately well-groomed, she was not particularly beautiful and her social status stubbornly remained at the semi-popular level, which to Sue was synonymous with abject failure. Jewel on the other hand had everything Sue aspired to, though unlike Sue she did not equate social prestige with self-worth, although occasionally she couldn't resist basking in her popularity.

However the old adage 'popularity breeds contempt' was always something Jewel was acutely conscious of and now she wondered whether it would hold true with Sue in regards to her; would Sue be liable to harbour a grudge against her out of baseless jealousy?

No – she mustn't think like that. Optimism and trust were vital right now unless the group wanted to cave in on itself, even though Daisy would be an adroit peacemaker if the worst came to the worst.

Daisy Donahue; a girl best described as Bray Wood's most prominent social anomaly. Despite being extremely popular she was neither affiliated with either the Bitches or the Beauties, nor was she a self-impressed primadonna, instead she was simply an attractive and amiable girl. That wasn't to say she didn't have her moments of vanity, bitchiness and egoism – as Jewel well knew, even the 'good' type of popularity required a certain modicum of callousness to uphold – but these indiscretions notwithstanding, she still remained, by and large, a decent and genuine kind of person.

The bedroom was lavishly decorated – almost to the point of being excessively grandiose – with a spacious four-poster bed, pink silken sheets, a soft beige carpet and the most extravagantly floral wallpaper Jewel had ever seen. Jewel approached the en-suite bathroom; it was similarly grand, with marble tiling and mock-gold taps. Jewel felt suffocated by the overpowering opulence of excess, it was too pretentious for words and had a bizarrely constricting effect on her as she hurriedly turned the tap on, relieved by the warm spurt of water that splashed across her outstretched palms. She brought the glisteningly transparent pool in her hands towards her face, revitalised by the delicate touch of water against her cheeks.

Jewel retrieved a comb from her pocket and began to tenderly brush her sleek black hair. She was not oblivious to the vague irrationality of this ritual; time was now precious, should it really be spent doing facile things such as brushing one's hair? Jewel looked intensely at her face. Well, at the very least she still looked great; mercifully not particularly ravaged despite her unfortunate encounter with Phil Argyle. As far as Jewel was concerned, if she was going to die she was, at the very least, going to die beautiful.

"Jewel and Daisy, get the fuck back in here now!" screamed Sue from the living room.

Jewel sprinted out of the bedroom into the corridor, nearly colliding with the equally hasty Daisy on the way.

"We're not being attacked are we?" Daisy whispered frantically.

"Bloody hell, I hope not." Jewel answered.

The shrill ring of the alarm woke Anthony Stapleton (Boy #6) from a self-absorbed reverie. Saul Emerson (Boy #13) grabbed his Colt 357. revolver from the dining table and rushed over to the nearest of the cottage's windows, beneath which Jeremy Callaghan (Boy #7) tremblingly squatted.

"Anthony, sit your fat arse down on the floor now!" hissed Saul, warily peeking over the windowsill, before quickly ducking down again.

Anthony rolled his eyes and levered himself off his seat, taking up a hiding place beneath the table. Sure he was - for lack of a more flattering euphemism - fat, he'd never been anything else as far as his memory could tell him, however it was the punishing exam revision schedule he'd forced upon himself several months beforehand that had caused his food intake (and consequently his girth) to outright balloon in size. And now he was in a game where anything less than an Adonis physique was dismally inadequate and almost guaranteed to lead to certain death – why, he asked himself, had he not simply taken his own life to save others the bother and spare himself a potentially painful demise?

But he already knew the answer to that question: firstly, he hadn't been the recipient of a weapon that could be used offensively - he'd been given four small black proximity sensors, each of which possessed a detection radius of approximately twenty five metres, were no more than an inch in length and half an inch in width and had a conveniently placed plug on the end to stick them into the ground. There was also a slim rectangular monitor that accompanied the sensors, which emitted a cacophonous alarm wail if anybody strayed into the sensor's scope of detection.

Secondly, Jeremy and Saul had rendezvoused with Anthony before grimly suicidal conjectures could even penetrate his frailly calibrated mind and in next to no time the three of them had settled themselves within the confines of the cottage; the four proximity sensors placed at each corner, an impregnable defence line that gave them a satisfactory quantity of assurance. At Bray Wood they had been dubbed - by Frankie unsurprisingly - 'the freak clique,' a sobriquet that had dogged them for the entire duration of their three years spent at the school. Anthony was moderately tall, though seemed smaller because of his large width, with eternally untidy ginger hair and comically large spectacles that he wore solely because he feared the idea of sticking contact lenses in his eyes. By contrast, Jeremy Callaghan was Anthony's physical polar opposite, standing at well over six feet and with an unmistakably gangly frame. Saul Emerson would have perhaps been quite handsome were it not for the permanent scar that ran from the right hand corner of his forehead across the bridge of his nose and all the way down onto his left cheek. He'd obtained the scar as an infant, in a particularly serious accident that had resulted in the death of his older sister, an event he refused to talk about in even the smallest of details (Anthony suspected it had been an automobile crash, though he wasn't entirely sure). Together, these three disparate and marginalised students found the acceptance their 'socially superior' peers had denied them, though the fact that they had managed this small accomplishment only seemed to have increased the acrimony of the other pupils and the level of taunts they underwent dramatically increased.

And now they sat huddled and afraid in the cottage's economically sized kitchenette, as the figure approached the building.

"Is it male or female?" whispered Anthony.

"It's a boy...or it could be a girl," Saul vaguely asserted. There was a painstakingly slow creak as the front door was cautiously pushed forward by the mystery intruder. Guarded footsteps against the hall's bare wooden floor were indistinctly heard, Saul got to his feet, pistol clutched firmly in his outstretched hands. The Kitchen door swung open; instinctively Saul fired two shots at the top of the door frame which ricocheted off towards the ceiling, whilst his intended target dropped to the floor with a high-pitched scream of panic.

"What the...fuck are you doing here?" Saul spat as the trespasser's true identity was revealed.

Liz Dunn (Girl #6) sat in a heap on the floor, reams of crocodile tears streaking down her face.

"Please don't hurt me," she wept theatrically, "I was just looking for shelter; I don't mean any harm I swear."

A diffusion of pointed and hurtful memories seized Anthony's mind; Liz leaning against a wall, unleashing a tirade of insults against him; "pig", "fat ass", "who has the bigger tits me or you?" "is it a glandular dysfunction or can you just not regulate your appetite?", whilst Frankie rocked back and forward guffawing with mirth, Jewel looking somewhat disapprovingly at her, but giggling covertly nonetheless.

"What's your weapon?" demanded Saul. Liz weakly tossed her water pistol towards him, her sobbing still in full force. Jeremy felt curiously sorry for her; he wasn't used to seeing a girl like Liz in such a wretched state and he intuitively felt the need to offer her sympathy and support, even if she was an absolute – and self-confessed - mega-bitch. Despite allegations by his schoolmates to the contrary, Saul did not have a heart composed of stone and he too found himself reasonably convinced by Liz's apparently genuine demonstration of terror. Anthony remained unmoved; Liz was a deceiver, a manipulator and a remorseless social-climber, with an innate ability to latch onto others and exploit them for her own ends.

"Ok Liz, this cottage becomes a danger zone in a few hours, so we'll be leaving soon. No offence, but I can assure you we won't be taking you with us. However, in the meantime...I suppose it's alright if you stay here, as long as you let us keep your weapon until we leave."

Anthony looked doubtfully at Saul; after all the cruel barbs she had uttered about his deformity, he was willing to go out on a limb and not only help her but also trust her? For the first time, Anthony wished that his friend was just a little less humanely inclined. Saul looked defiantly back at Anthony, unfortunately missing the brief flitter of a smile that crossed Liz's tear streamed face as her diabolical plan kicked into action.

The girls sat rigidly on the sofas, transfixed by the events that were transpiring before there very eyes on the television. An anodyne blonde news presenter sat upright in her chair, relaying the details of what had occurred in a studiedly posh English accent, sporadically pouting with her voluptuous lips and generally trying to be sexually alluring in spite of the morbidity of the news.

"In breaking news, the government announced, in the early hours of this morning, the introduction of the notorious Battle Royale act, despite its earlier claims that it would not descend to the level of instituting a law that essentially constituted – as one former MP described it – 'primordial savagery'. Of the thirty two students selected from Bray Wood preparatory school, five are reportedly already deceased. Approximately 32 million viewers are estimated to have paid to view the game via cable TV and already outspoken left wing activists are criticising the government for endorsing what they describe as 'excessively cruel brutality against the youth of today'."

"A few hours ago, fifty four adolescents threw themselves in front of an oncoming train at Cannon Street station, in a mass-suicidal protestation against the Battle Royale act. A spokesperson for Oxford University's student's union has condemned the government for its decision to instate the BR act and has incited fellow teenagers to demonstrate their outrage in the form of riots and other violent tactics. The individual in question – Brian Johnson – is currently in police custody for questioning about his suspected participation in the drug smuggling underworld."

"The government has defended its decision with examples of the rapidly increasing juvenile behavioural aberrancy; citing incidents such as the Embankment tube station bombing and the recent armed siege of Harrods shopping centre as proof that this dramatic and destructive law was most certainly justified. We'll be hearing both sides of the argument from government representatives and liberal political critics later, however now we go to a BBC exclusive interview with the parent of one of the (still living) pupils involved in the battle, this..."

"I don't think I can take anymore of this," said Jewel, "can they be anymore exploitative – why don't they actually do something decisive rather than just conducting useless interviews?"

"Fifty four teenagers just committed suicide by being mowed down by a train – I'd call that pretty decisive, wouldn't you?" said Daisy, clearly still in shock. Jewel stood up and walked away towards the Kitchen window, gazing longingly at the outside sprawling landscape, a temporary thrill of escapism amidst the dirge of fear.

"Jewel," said Daisy with awed quietness, "it's your mother."

Jewel quickly turned to see her mother's stoic face plastered across the TV screen, bearing the same impassive expression she'd always feigned after her husband had finished a session of beating her.

Had Jewel looked at the window for a second longer, she would have seen the stocky figure of a male eavesdropper silently sneak away from the log cabin, having heard everything he could have possibly wanted to know.

27 Students Remain.