The metal door folded back on itself as an opening slid apart. Two more soldiers entered the room; both of them were moving a large grate, like a large storage area, with several rows of shelves, made of a dull steel mesh upon a set of casters. Upon these shelves were many large bags, possibly sixty or so. All of them were an identical taupe colour; the storage unit seemingly straining under the pressure. Some of the bags looked bulky, whilst others were smaller and were squashed between the adjacent ones. Some seemed to have poles sticking out; these protruding pieces were wrapped in black bin liner. The class made no sound as the bags were placed at the front of the room. One of the soldiers retreated to the portal from which the rack had entered; the other took a black drawstring bag from the rack, opened it, and hung it on the coat hook nearest the door. He then went back to the portal where the other uniformed man was standing; they left silently and the metal door slid shut again.

The class was hissing uneasily. The mention of weapons had frightened them, and the fact that several sharp objects appeared to be protruding from several of the bags, from within their bin liners, left little to the imagination.
"They say that all men are created equal," Jeyes said, quoting a familiar philosophy. "This is a lie. Of course you are not all created equal. Some are richer than the poor, others are more sickly than the fit, others are cleverer than the norm. Make no mistakes: All men are created unequal. There are features that some of you possess, strengths of academic industry, sportsmanship and personal history, say, which differentiate you from everybody else in the room here, without exception. You are all different. But as a consequence of this, some of you will be better suited to the environment to which you are about to be exposed. This will give those people a natural advantage, and that's hardly fair on the other, less fortunate students is it, eh?"
Nobody spoke, they weren't sure whether this was a rhetorical question or not. At any rate, nobody was prepared to make any careless comments, following Luke O'Neill's question that nearly got Lucy Shale assassinated.
"At any rate, there is a way around this obstacle: the random assignment of weapons. We shall issue you each with a weapon," continued Jeyes, moving toward the nearest end of the rack. Some of these will be very useful in your mission, whilst others will not be much help at all. Naturally, the rest will be somewhere in between, effectively causing a continuum. At any rate, whatever you are assigned, it is down to you to use it to your advantage. There are some unusual ones in the fray, as well; more than just knives and guns! Be creative with your killings!"
"Y-you can't do this!" a new voice piped up, seemingly panicked. It came from a small boy with scrubby hair, a chubby face and spectacles. Jeyes frowned at him.
"You're... Ian Dunn," he asked, awaiting some form of confirmation. Ian Dunn nodded. "Well, then, Ian. Why can't we do this? What's going to stop us from giving you weapons?"
"The law," he squeaked desperately. "This is illegal, surely?"
"We are the law."
Ian reacted to this comment like he had been slapped in the face. He recoiled slightly, but soon continued, defiant.
"No, there must be other things that are being omitted here. Giving guns to minors? Overseeing the death of children at the hands of others? Ripping their necks open if they cause trouble? I don't see the rationale!"
There was uproar at his words. The points he had highlighted roused some of the more political members of the class. It was possible to see the likes of Sam Carter and Dominic Thomas developing logical arguments; Ian had given them an opening and, although he himself was not particularly politically minded, he was determined and driven enough to keep pushing his case forward. It took another round of gunshots fired into the air to quieten the class down so that Jeyes could speak again.
"Like I said before: We are the law. This is not just some random, unsubstantiated fight we decided to do on a whim. There is enormous political and legal support backing the Reform Bill. Our Prime Minister himself supports it as an emergency procedure. This is the eighth year of the Battle Royale; we average about three fights every two years or so. This is the twelfth one. So far, none of the participants were thrilled by the situation they were in, but it didn't stop them from fighting to the death. We cannot force you to fight. If you wish, you can all commit suicide together three days for now. If you don't fight, you don't live. Life is a struggle. If you want to succeed in life, you have to fight for yourself. This is a microcosm of real-life, enforced by laws that supersede petty debates. We are the law. Find something that contradicts the procedure sufficiently and we may let you go free.
"Gun laws," said Sam promptly.
"Yes," said Ian with an air of triumph. "In the UK possession of firearms is illegal! Using ones will wind you up in prison. Murder, even more so! How can you say that a winner will live a life of support from the civil government when they have violated one of the civil laws?"
Several students yelled, "Hear, hear!" at these words. This was it; the Bill was based on substantial hypocrisy! They might finally be free to leave! Jeyes put his hand up to silent the masses.
"We have already considered that problem. That is why we are no longer in the United Kingdom. Your bodies were transported to this island, about two hundred miles away. Technically, where we are now is under land owned by the Dutch government. British law no longer applies. It's a loophole that we are using to facilitate our Battle Royales. Did you think it would be that straightforward? Of course not. Now, unless you want to be the first to die, I suggest you pipe down."

Ian opened and closed his mouth, trying to decide if he dared press the issue further. Eventually he deflated slightly, defeated. A few of the people who had rallied behind him now fidgeted awkwardly. The room was quiet once more, quiet enough to distinctly hear the word "prick", issue from somebody's mouth.
"Who was that?" Jeyes demanded, making a big play on being offended. Nobody admitted anything. It had been a girl's voice, and although a few people knew who it was, nobody dared say anything. He signalled something to Meyer, who started whispering into a handset, but Jeyes himself had returned to the rack; he had apparently let it go.
"Now, what I said about us being in Europe is true. The time is oh-one thirty-two; change your watches." Jeyes watched with certain satisfaction as there was a flurry of activity as the students who were wearing watches busied themselves with rectifying the time difference. Whilst they were doing this, Meyer signalled something back to Jeyes. Only Natasha Timbershire saw the hand movements from her spot against the metal wall: Meyer had put one fist on top of the other, only the top one had two fingers extended. He then repeated the gesture, but with all the fingers on his right hand extended, keeping the thumb in its hidden position. She had no idea what this meant. She also didn't have a watch, but it appeared that Jeyes was soon to address that.
"Now, I know a lot of people don't like wearing watches, but don't you guys worry!" Jeyes indicated the drawstring bag on the peg nearest the door. "We have provided a lot of wristwatches for you all to use. Feel free to help yourselves to one from that. All of them are at the correct time. If you don't want one, then please yourself. At any rate, I will be announcing the danger zones at 6am, along with a list of your dead classmates. After that, the next announcement will be at noon, with the newest list of casualties and danger zones. After that, there will be announcements every six hours. I advise you to pay attention to them."
His arm contracted slightly, so his pointed finger was directed at the hooks where many coats were hung. Some of the students saw their own coats among the mass.
"The weather outside isn't great, suffice to say. It's currently snowing. We brought your coats along, or rather, the ones we managed to locate. There are some standard issue ones as well, so help yourselves to these, as well if you need them."
One of the unnamed soldiers picked such a coat from the hook, and threw it to Jeyes, who promptly put it on over his suit. The coat itself was black and waterproof. It didn't look particularly warm, the kids thought. The soldier had knocked one of the other coats, a red waterproof, to the ground. William Hutchinson recognised it as his, but said nothing.
"Okay! Now a bit more on the contents of the bags!" Jeyes grabbed the nearest bag and put it on the table. The whole classed peered forward a little, their fear being pushed aside by curiosity. The bag itself seemed neither bulgy nor empty; it was quite average considering the others.
"Inside your bags there is a map and compass, as promised," Jeyes said, lifting them out of the bag in turn, and placing them on the desk. Charlotte Graves, who was standing nearest the desk, saw that there was a list of student names running down the side of the map. "Also we have a pen, to mark on the danger zones as and when they occur. In addition, we have some basic rations for you all: water and bread. And then we have the random weapon." The class watched with bated breath as Jeyes made a big pantomime of the weapon in the bag he had emptied, and several people yelled slightly when he pulled out the weapon itself.

It was a top hat. The students chuckled slightly in spite of themselves as Jeyes picked up the sleek, black hat, and tossed it to one side. It was caught automatically by Lindsay, who put it on, the hat making her head seem bizarrely disproportional.
"You don't want to do what I just did, kids," Jeyes said. "Never throw away your weapon, however worthless it seems. You'd probably want to keep hold of it. Be creative!"
He then proceeded to turn back to the rack, pull off the next bag, open it and pull out what looked unmistakably like a small harpoon gun.
"Of course, there are some weapons that are self explanatory," he said, correcting his handgrip on the gun, and shooting Lindsay Vaughan through the stomach.
She hadn't even been given time to defend herself. One second she had seen Mr Jeyes pull a weapon from the bag, the next there had been a searing pain tearing through her gut; she was knocked backward by the impact, blacked out and lay still.
The rest of the class let out involuntary cries when they had seen the deed performed; few had been quick enough to avert their eyes, and all had heard the macabre ripping sound of her skin being severed. Jeyes said nothing. He walked over to where the body was, and looked down on her. She was quite plain, he mused as he looked at the spread-eagled girl, the top hat now on the floor, sprayed with some blood. She couldn't have been any taller than 5'2", but there was a certain amount of power in her body. Her jeans, that just minutes ago had been around her ankles, were darkening slowly as the blood soaked them. She had been the rude student just now. Jeyes wanted to make an example of her. He tugged the barbed spearhead from her stomach, which pooled with red instantly. Her eyes opened with shock and she struggled for air. The rest of 11D were panicking, not sure what they should do. Lindsay was twisting hopelessly on the ground, her tongue out, panting for air as she clung desperately to life. Jeyes bent over her, doing his very best to make sure most of the mess landed on the coat. He pulled her pale face to look up at his.
"The collars monitor who does what. You were the one who called me a prick just now. I don't like liars, and I don't like rude students." Jeyes brandished the bloodied harpoon dart before her eyes. She bit the tip of her tongue, concentrating on the blurred shape before her, trying to get the image to converge into focus. She only dimly understood what was being said to her. She felt a wet scraping noise against her neck, and realised it was the barbed dart. "Now that was a prick for you."
"Uhh..." Lindsay closed her eyes, trying to say something to her killer. "...'uck you, you asshole..."
Jeyes stood up and frowned. He stabbed her again with the dart, this time in her lung. Blood showered everywhere. Lindsay writhed in agony, unable to breathe.
"Should watch your mouth, girl."
Jeyes crouched down over her, his eyes fixed firmly in her face, inattentive of the cries and pleas of some of the other students. He touched her mouth with his bloodied hand. It was still thrashing slightly, only now it was a weak movement, losing life. He was struck with a sudden inspiration, drawn from her panting from air just moments before.
"Like I said, everyone," he said, addressing the horrified crowd, "if in doubt, be creative."
He then returned his attention back on Lindsay's mouth. He prised it open, and peered inside. The putrid smell of blood from her corrupted lungs was issuing from her mouth. He took her tongue in his cold hand and massaged it, so it lay long and flat, the tip protruding from her mouth. He grabbed the tip with his right hand, and holding her head in place with his left, wrenched the muscle out.

It erupted from her mouth in a shower of blood; the splattering of red fluid overriding the tearing as it was torn out of place. Lindsay herself lay still, unlike all of her classmates. They had started screaming at the bloody demise of their classmate, and once again were rioting. Jeyes walked back behind his desk and waited patiently for the soldiers to restore order to the classroom. For several minutes, 11D struggled against their captives, trying to save themselves, but again, none of them were thinking rationally enough to be very effective. The first of their classmates had been killed, and nobody was in any doubt any more that the situation they were in was indeed very real.
Girls #24 Vaughan, dead. 48 remaining.

"I think that's enough demonstration of the weapons for now," Jeyes said once order had been restored to the room. "Now we can return to the video."
He clicked the button at the television and minor celebrity interviewer Divine MacKenzie carried on her talk.
"Now, to all of you guys in 11D. I know you're probably unhappy right now, but the ends outweigh the means, trust me," she said. Had the class been anything other than shocked at the death of their comrade, they would probably have snorted something derisory at this blatant lie. "Which is why I have a special guest here with me right now! The previous Battle Royale did not produce a victor at the end of three days, however the one before did. On May the twenty-third two years ago, Hartcliffe secondary school, class 9PH, from Whitstable in Kent underwent the Program. For them, thirty-one students fought long and hard for over two and a half days, and eventually, a winner emerged. He is here with me right now. Hello there, Pat."
The forty-eight students said nothing. They looked at the boy on the screen, who was sitting in a deep red armchair. He was sitting there in a plain black T-shirt and faded black jeans. His shoes were also black, but there were green streaks down the sides. The boy named Pat would probably have been aged fourteen when he had undergone the Battle Royale program, so must have been sixteen at the time of the interview. He was of average height with short brown hair. Although he was of a seemingly average build, Charlotte Graves noticed he had a starved look about his face; large shadows lingered, hooded, underneath his hazel eyes.
"Hello," he replied, his deep voice flat and slightly distant.

The boy's voice was hauntingly flat; the students all fidgeted uneasily at the sound of his greeting.
"So," the woman on the tape continued, professional as ever. "You are a survivor of the Battle Royale Program. What was it like to win?"
"For a few seconds, I felt great," the boy said, his face taking a lop-sided grin, before it broke into a pout. "I'd killed people... I was a murderer. A dirty murderer. So many people didn't survive because of me. I started to cry..."
From their different locations in the room, Emma Newton and Lucy Shale were staring so intently at the screen, their jaws were sagging slightly, making them look slightly gormless. Adam Garretty was standing quite close to the dead body, which was now issuing a vile, bloody stench; he had his hand over his mouth and nose, squinting his eyes in nausea.
"Now, tell us all what your original weapon was, Pat."
"It was a cutlass," the boy said, making swishing movements with his arm, apparently in reminiscence. "I knew I had a chance to live with that and a chance to find the girl I fancied: Ellen Constantine."
The picture on the screen faded out from the face of the victor to one of his face among a group of friends: the former class 9PH from Kent. Everyone was smiling happily as they posed in front of a coach. They looked like they were all on a trip somewhere, perhaps in Wales, as it was set on a hilly landscape; all of whom were smiling contentedly. In the middle was a teacher, a woman who looked like she was in her late fifties, a thin grin on her face. The students around her looked like they were all aged thirteen or fourteen. Matt Sherman deduced the class in the photograph must have been captured on the return leg of this trip. It was hard to believe that all but one of these children were dead. Pat's face was grinning behind that of his teacher; he was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt. Did he kill these people around him in those clothes?
"Who was your first kill, Pat?"
"A boy called Lloyd Jacobs," Pat said, the picture switching to a boy on the inside edge of the group, wearing a childish grin and sporting scrubby hair over his Tottenham Hotspurs top. "He was hard of hearing, so I guess he was an easy target. I brought the cutlass down on the crown of his head from behind, and sliced his face as he screamed on the floor... again... again... took off a big chunk from his jaw. He wasn't a threat, he had a traffic cone for a weapon. It was a nasty thing to do, but I needed to do it to prove something to myself."
"What was it like to take a human life?"
The voice hesitated, whilst 11D listened on with bated breath. "The first time, after Lloyd... I stumbled away and threw up. I felt ill whenever I saw his blood on my clothes. But it became easier as the game went on: them or me. It was quite simple."
This was too much for Adam; the talk of blood and vomit make him fall to all fours and retch copiously over the floor. Some of the class looked like they wanted to join him, but none did.
"Now, during your time in the Program, you must have encountered several of your friends-" the voice of Divine said, partly drowned out by Adam's vomiting. Patrick interjected with an urgent-sounding, 'Yes', and started counting on his fingers (the photograph had gone and the two people in the studio was back on the screen), a child-like mannerism in his behaviour. "There was George and Helèna and there was Jack and Robin and Jade and Anne-Marie and Ellen and Billy. I saw those people."
"How were they reacting?"
Pat leaned back in his chair and inhaled deeply, staring skyward.

"After Lloyd I saw Anne-Marie and Jade first," he said, carefully thinking through the course of events. "They saw the blood down my front and ran off before they got too close to me. They were scared, and were dead by sunset, I think. I saw Robin dead at the bottom of a hill, his neck broken. I don't know who did it, but I took his jumper, as it was black and would cover up the blood on me. Then a few hours later, George and Helèna. They were friends of mine."
The screen turned to a photograph of a group of three students: Pat, sitting with a can of soft drink in his hand, next to a thin boy with a tall, wiry build, whose arms were round a pouting black-haired girl with glasses. The couple must have been Helèna and George, 11D reckoned, with Pat and George making immature gestures at the camera.
"Yeah, George didn't even get a chance to react before I cut his throat. Helèna pleaded with me to spare her, as she only had a paper bag for a weapon. I couldn't take any chances. It was funny, her pleas stopped sinking in the instant I picked up George's pistol. Four bullets solved my problem," Pat said, his voice suddenly making four quiet gunshot noises, like was firing at an invisible girl. "At any rate, Jack was a fighter. He was like me, out to get anyone who crossed his path. He had a katana, a helmet and a flak jacket, and he looked like he was going to defeat me until someone came out of nowhere and shot him. He was distracted, and I slashed at him, and he fell to the floor. It was Ellen, and she was horrified at what she had done."
"Did you hear that, guys?" Jeyes called suddenly. "There will be other kids out to get you, so be careful, okay?"
"We moved on together, but didn't really run into anyone else for a while after that," Pat said, seemingly enjoying relaying this story, like it were a light anecdote. "We saw that Billy Parsons had killed a girl with his dagger, so Ellen and I wasted him. It was his girlfriend, May. I was astonished it had come to that, and frankly he should have died for stabbing her in the back like that. But as the body count slowly built up, the Ellen and I knew we could win. We kept track of the names as they were announced every few hours, and after Ellen beat the other guy left standing, the inevitable endgame came. We kissed for the final time, knowing it was now everyone for themselves. She had a few bullets left, but they were wasted on the flak jacket I had. She ripped a huge gash on my arm with her katana, wounding me. I dropped my cutlass and fell to the floor. She raised the blade to kill me, but I took the dagger I had aquired the evening before and thrust it into her heart. It was over in an instant: she was dead."
At the back of the room, Chrissie Saxon sobbed into the chest of her boyfriend, Eddie Jones, whilst Katie Smethwick looked at the pair of them. This was truly tragic; the two lovebirds would be broken apart so soon, possibly turned against one another like the boy and girl from the tape had been obliged to do so. Patrick had raised the sleeve of his shirt, showing a long, pink scar that he had evidently obtained in that struggle with the girl he fancied. And as Divine asked him her final question, his face broke out into an inexplicable grin and he giggled happily, as if he was savouring his victory yet again:
"So how does it feel to kill your best friend?"
The boys eyes focused on the woman, and without answering her, swung his head round to look down the tube of the camera. His face went out of focus once more, replaced with a photograph of a girl with wavy, blonde hair; her innocent smile frozen in eternity. It could only be Ellen, the final kill of the student on the film, and the final victim of that year's Battle Royale.

It suddenly struck Charlotte Graves that the boy on the video was insane. His smile was uneven and warped, at odds with the cold, cruel look of his eyes. Whatever humanity the boy must have had once had been burned out of him, his teenage will utterly extinguished. What would happen to her, she wondered, should she live? Was it proper to think of survival as a possibility? It was unlikely that the victor would live at the end of the combat; they would only exist, an empty shell, like the boy on the video.
Suddenly, the main door swung open, and all but two soldiers left the room. The soldiers Meyer and Shepherd stood either side of the bag rack, their eyes lifeless.
"That's it! Teacher, I think everyone is ready to go!" Divine MacKenzie called from the screen. "Good luck to all students in 11D! Fight well and with gusto! Remember to fight for yourselves, for survival, for victory. The winner is the last person standing. We are going to let you all go now, one by one. You will leave the room in the order of your student number. You may take your personal bag if you have one, along with the equipment provided. Always remember: Life is a game: the last one standing wins. This ends your briefing. I shall now announce your student numbers one by one. Your teacher will pause the tape until you are adequately clear of the room. Do not linger."
"The student numbers you have," Jeyes explained further, "are simply a numeric reference we have devised to keep a tag on you. It is simply whether you are male or female, then alphabetically by surname. The count starts with the person whose surname is first alphabetically. When you leave the room," Jeyes said, gesturing with his left arm, "turn right and head down the hallway. The exit is the large door immediately ahead of you. There is a sensor near at the end of the corridor. When you tread on it, it activates this red light here-" he pointed at a red light above the door where Shepherd, the tallest of the two soldiers, flicked a switch, apparently to switch the light on- "which will tell me to release the next student. This will carry on until all forty-nine of you... sorry, forty-eight of you... have left. The game starts for you the second you leave this building. The time is zero-one forty-five hours. The game begins."
Jeyes pressed the button on his remote control once more, and the lady on the screen.
"Is everybody ready? When I call out your name, please proceed to the exit. You will have seventy-two hours from the instant the first pupil leaves the building."
She saluted briefly, then standing up against a magnolia background, her mannerisms changed. She was suddenly very formal and soldier-like. She was staring down the tube, looking straight out, with the type of eyes that follow you around the room. Everybody was anxious for her to call the first name.
"Boys number one," she said, like a general addressing her troops. "Aldridge, James."