Battle Royale: British Juvenile Reform Bill

by anbyrobanby

Near-future London, and the rates of juvenile delinquency have clashed with civil unrest and political distrophy, and forced the murderous Battle Royale Bill through Parliament! This examines the lives and events of one set of students in such a game.

13. Scheming Girls

Charlotte Graves was broken. The guilt of having taken a human life was eating away from her from the inside. She was heading toward the outskirts of the village at C-3, hoping she could find shelter for a while, and get her thoughts into order. She flicked a glance at her watch; the hour hand was nearing the six, meaning she had perhaps ten or fifteen minutes to go until she heard the report that would announce Tom Clarke as being among the casualties. How many other people had died? None? Everyone? A dozen or two? It was impossible to tell. The machine gun was held limply in her left hand, and Tom Clarke's Beretta 9mm handgun was holstered in her pocket, the safety catch on so it didn't blow her leg off.
The nearest building was approaching. It seemed quite big, like a house or a small hostel of some sort. At any rate, it had two storeys and perhaps fourteen or fifteen rooms, though it was impossible to tell from the outside. She neared the building and opened the gate of the small garden at the front. She shone her torch on the door, which looked quite sturdy. This would be a perfect place to hide out, she guessed, as long as nobody disturbed her, or as long as nobody was already there. Almost immediately, as if she had tempted fate, a face peered out of one of the upstairs windows at her. Charlotte had a vague feeling she was being stared at, but then again she had been having this feeling ever since she started the Program. Certainly, though, she happened to look up at this time, and the torch hit the relief of a girl's face, which disappeared almost immediately. Had she imagined it? Could it perhaps be a ghost, the spectre of one of the students who was already dead, perhaps? It certainly looked pale and lifeless, that was for sure. Saying that, she wasn't even sure it was a girl's face she had seen. Maybe it was a boy. Maybe it was Tom, looking down at her, wondering how his executioner was faring.
It wasn't a ghost. There were two faces in the bottom windows, and they were both pointing guns at the girl outside. Bollocks, Charlotte thought; she had ambushed herself. A window upstairs opened, and a voice shouted out:
"Who's there? What do you want?"
It was Emma Newton's voice. Charlotte was reassured. She trusted Emma, though not a friend, Emma could always be counted on to save the day.
"Emma? It's Charlotte. I want somewhere to stay."
"What weapon do you have?"
"It's a HK MP-5KA4," Charlotte said, reading the title of the manual she found at the bottom of her bag.
"A what?"
"A machine gun!"
There was a pause, and Emma's voice called at her to throw it forward, at the ground. Charlotte obeyed.
"I don't want any trouble", she said as the door swung open and Paula MacNeill darted out and picked up the gun and ushered Charlotte inside. By now, Charlotte had deduced there were at least four people in the building already: Emma, Paula, and the two people at the windows who were still pointing guns at at the captive student. Charlotte, against her better judgement, entered the building.

He had been outside for over five hours now, but Phillip Robertson was not moving. He was sitting still, hidden in a crevice in the hillside, waiting for the dawn to approach. He couldn't do anything until then, other than to find a high place to position himself. The ledge he was positioned upon was not totally ideal, but it gave him a good vantage point should he hear anyone else approaching. He was in F-3 at the moment, but once it was a bit lighter, he would carry himself up to the summit of the hill at G-4.
And he would be carrying his trusty sniper rifle.
It was perhaps a little ironic that this had been the weapon assigned to Phil, for he had always been a little bit aloof from the rest of 11D. He was smarter than everyone in the class, he knew that, even when that acclaim often went to people like Emma Harris, who got the best marks in tests, or to people like Kavinder Khanum, who came in every day and did all her work on time. Those were no indicators of genuine intelligence. What did it matter about the marks and reputation? He felt what he possessed upstairs would carry him to success in this game, and to success in later life. Quite often, Phil would sit at the back of the room, write violent poetry and draw sketches of people in assorted degrees of pain and agony, the little people on his paper suffering physical torment. Sometimes, if someone were sitting next to him (which was uncommon, considering attendance rates were low, and there was always an abundance of free desks), his neighbour would look at his artwork and say something cynical. Phil would grunt in acknowledgement, and move his work further away from the nearest person, and continue with a less enthusiastic effort, and would invariably screw up the paper and throw it away at the end of the lesson. Freak.
So many people saw him as a freak. That was their problem; they were wrong, as Phil knew he wasn't a freak at all. Sure, he would often be a little withdrawn (a gross understatement, even he couldn't deny), but what was to be expected when he was in a class full of morons? They were why he was here; they were the reason his neck was on the line. There was absolutely no way he would ever let these pricks win, even if he had to go around the island and kill every last one of them with his bare hands. To hell with morality, he would not hesitate to kill anyone. They were all guilty; he would execute them from above, like a Horseman of the Apocalypse showering arrows from the heavens, so would he smite the scumbags with a shower of bullets.
But his friends? Yes, even somebody like Phil had some people he could call friends, even if they weren't perhaps as intimate as many other connections of friendship in the class. His mind scanned a number of names. Tom Clarke, who would often sit next to him, and chat with him when he was feeling low (I think I saw him dead, though). Ben Portwood, back in the days when students had to sit in alphabetical order, and when Fiona Powell was in the other class; Ben and Phil would often sit next to one another in class and collaborate in tests by not hiding their answers. Katie Smethwick, to whom Ben would often try to talk; causing Phil and Katie to get to know one another and to like each other by proxy. There was Jitinder Singh, who was considered a freak by most, and Steph Green, who was considered even more so, so the three of them fitted in very well together as social outcasts, even though the two other parties didn't seem to like each other that much. Yes, these were the closest people to friends he had in the class. Phil wondered how each of them were faring. He could not let his guard down; they were as much a threat as anyone today. This was a matter of survival now, and possibly the most lenient thing he was prepared to do was to shoot at this selection of friends to convince them to run. He would not run and kill people. No, his weapon compelled him to sit and wait for people to come to him, and that suited him just fine.
For the first time in hours, Phil actually moved, opting to check his watch to see what the time was. It was nearly six o'clock. That man said the first report would happen then. He needed to find out the danger zones, in case he would be required to move. He fumbled through his bag, and pulled out the map and torch, waiting for the announcement to begin.

On cue, white noise issued from nearby, as a loudspeaker further down the hill sprang into life. It was mounted on a pole, and at its base (though Phil couldn't see from this distance), two white lines ran at right angles from one another, crossing at the mast of the post. Music began to play, and Phil looked at the base of that pole, and saw with relish there was torchlight down there.
The torch belonged to Fiona Powell, who was walking alone in the darkness. She hadn't a clue what she was doing, nor what she would do with her weapon, a syringe, but at any rate, she recognised the music being played as being Vivaldi's concerto: 'Spring', or 'La Primavera' in E Major. It seemed appropriate to the impending dawn, though strangely at odds with the crisp white ground frozen underfoot. At the same time, the music was calming and soothing, yet it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She was quite an expert on classical music, she felt, and played the flute in the school band to Grade 6 standard. Music like this often filled her heart with calm, but in this instance there was nothing but fear. When Jeyes started speaking, this feeling was intensified.
"Good morning, class 11D! The time is now six o'clock, time to rise and shine, kids." Jeyes was pacing back and forth in the control room, with a microphone in one hand and a computer printout in another. Somebody had put the two corpses into body bags, and had cleaned up the worst of Adam Garrety's vomit. Elsewhere on the island, students were stopping, listening intently to the impending name list, all of them fearing the worst for absent friends.

"Here is the list of your fallen classmates, in the order in which they died. From the top: girls number twenty-four, Lindsay Vaughan; number two, Samantha Carter; number five, Sophie Easton; number six, Julia Edwards. Boys number six, Ian Dunn; number nine, William Hutchinson; number four Thomas Clarke; number twenty, Jitinder Singh. Girls number ten, Stephanie Green; number twenty-two, Katie Smethwick; number twenty-five, Melissa Williams. Boys number sixteen, Benjamin Portwood, and finally, boys number twenty-one, Harry Smith. A total of thirteen dead. Lucky thirteen!"
Nobody really thought it was lucky. At best, they thought it was unfortunate, and all of the class felt the impact of their dead buddies. As Jeyes read out Tom Clarke's name, Charlotte sobbed into her hands, as seen by Paula, who was bringing her a glass tumbler to pour some water into.
"Okay! That's a big number of people dead, as you've undoubtedly noticed," Jeyes called to the island, stating the obvious. There are thirty-six of you left; eighteen boys, eighteen girls, so it's even Stevens now. I'm not at liberty to reveal who killed whom, but I suggest you don't dwell on the fallen. Right: the danger zones."
Many of the students who froze on hearing the announcement snapped back to life and picked their pens. Fiona for one had taken out the pen and map, and was leaning against the metallic pole, waiting anxiously to mark her paper, as if she were in a game of bingo.
"These zones are randomly chosen by the computers," Jeyes clarified, in case any of the students had forgotten in the course of events. "At eight o'clock, A-5 will become active; stay out of A-5 from 8a.m., which is two hours from now. Then at 10 o'clock, H-5 will, too. At noon, B-1 will also become a danger zone, at which time you will be hearing from me again. Stay out of those zones after those particular times, otherwise your collars will explode. If you're unsure where you are on the map, I advise you to work it out quickly. That is it; I am out. Good luck, 11D!"

Phil said nothing. The air was becoming silent once more, as the background music faded into silence, only to be replaced with the sound of a distant flock of seagulls, soaring over by the cliffs to the north. She shone his torch at the map, and looked at the thirteen names he had blotted out. People were serious. Thirteen out of forty-nine was over a quarter, he calculated. If the class were really that prepared to kill their friends, who was he to go against the tide?
Either way, his was freed somewhat, now. He looked at the list of names once more. Ben, Jitinder, Tom, Katie and Steph had all been named among the dead. The misfits were dropping like flies already. Even though he was slightly disappointed about this, it meant that he would be able to use his weapon with more zeal, and would not have to discriminate between potential victims as much any more. He also realised he would be able to climb to the summit, as G-4 was not becoming a danger zone in the next six hours. He would climb at first light, but no sooner, as the terrain was unfamiliar and probably unsafe to climb in the dark, especially with a heavy weapon on his back. His eyes had lit up in the barracks when he first received it; it stuck out of the end of the bag, and was covered in a mass of bin liner. When he felt the weight of it, he knew that he would almost certainly love it, even if its weight and bulk impeded his mobility somewhat.

A few miles to the west, another student was pleased with the announcement of the new danger zones. Emma Harris had been formulating a plan in her mind for a few hours now, and the zones meant they wouldn't have too much trouble in applying it.
The three girls had arrived at the building about two hours beforehand, and were trying to find a way into the building. They had found a door at the back was unlocked, so Paula and the two Emmas had entered the house. What they hadn't anticipated was that two students were already there. Martina Fennell and Lucy Shale had both shacked up there, both of whom were hiding upstairs when the door opened. They had accessed the house through the front door, having found a key in the bushes at the front. Lucy and Martina had hidden upstairs when the three intruders entered the room, and fired a warning shot downstairs. Emma Harris automatically fired a shot back up at them, and the girls squealed and requested the intruders leave. Having recognised Martina's voice, Paula identified herself and the two Emmas, and after words of apology, the group of five melded and decided to stay together.
"The fact Charlotte's here only strengthens the matter," Emma Harris said to Paula and Martina after the morning report. "Her gun will help in the plan."
"What plan's that then?" Martina furrowed her brow, her bayonet's pike pointing upward. "Do you know what you're doing?"
"Naturally," Emma smiled, and flicked her hair girlishly. It was usually the other Emma who created plans, but this one was Harris' brainchild, and she was eager to tell the world.
"Is Lucy okay upstairs?"
"Yeah, she's fine," the other Emma said, having just entered the room. "She's upstairs, reading her weapon. It was just a graze she had on her leg."
"Well, that's good, because we may need to move quickly."
"Why's that?"
"The danger zones have just been announced, and the barracks from which they're controlling all of this is still available for us to travel. I propose that we attack the barracks."
A stunned pause filled the air, all four girls in the room looking at Emma in sheer disbelief. finally Paula spoke: "And how exactly are we going to do that?"
"With a bit of help from the element of surprise."
With that, the shorter Emma sat down and began to relay her plan. It sounded simple, but if it were to be effective, they would need to meet up with more students, who preferably should have guns of their own.

Like the crazy boy from the training video had be equipped with one two years ago, Lydia Fletcher also had been given a cutlass, but the novelty of holding pretend swordfights with the air had worn off a while ago, and she was dreading the situation. Right now, there was only one person she felt concerned for (other than herself) and that person was Lena, of course. Relieved that Lena hadn't been on the list, Lydia sought to find her.
The girl was on the southernmost beach, and she was following the sand round the perimiter of the island. Lydia was plain, slightly short and rather fat. She knew that unless she could ride on Lena's coat tails for a while, her chances of winning this game would be remote. She had encountered a few people on her morning trek; the late couple, Harry and Melissa, had walked past her, but didn't see her. She had also seen Colin Nately and Adrian Masters, with whom she spoke briefly before parting. They seemed deadly, and would probably have killed her on the spot had they possessed good weapons (although Colin had been holding a bulging bin liner). Most recently, though, she had seen Steph and Jitinder, side by side, their necks broken by gravity as they dangled from a tree. Even those two had each other's company in death. Why was Lydia so alone? Would be a good idea to return to old friendships she had with Paula MacNeill, and hope Paula would be charitable enough to be a friend again?
Moping about it was pointless, Lydia told herself. If she wanted to find Lena, she would find Lena, no questions asked. It was more than a wish, or a desire. It was an obsession. The list of names she had heard moments before reminded her just how real this so-called 'game' was. There was something reassuring about having a friend for company during hard times, Lydia contemplated, her mind returning to Paula once again. This was the hardest of the hard, without a doubt, and friends and companions were the ultimate must-have. She couldn't risk being alone. She had to find an ally.

Paula's mind was flashing back to the day before when she and Emma Newton had been organising the party. It was supposed to be a for a birthday (a girl called Beth who was in another class), but these ideas seemed to pale in comparison to the titanic mission Emma Harris was suggesting they undergo. Paula didn't know which part of the plan she liked least: tracking down classmates with good assault weapons (who could take them all out if the plan backfired), or the actual attacking of the building (as the soldiers were sure to know they were approaching, and would surely take them out with expert precision). But she kept quiet, listening to Emma prattle on about her zany idea.
"Right, so what does everybody think?"
"Well," Martina said, feeling she should be totally honest, "I'm not comfortable with it. It sounds like suicide to me."
The other Emma and Paula nodded, and the shorter Emma understood her worries.
"Well, do you suggest we split up? Perhaps some of us should go and gather allies, whilst the rest work together to make an armoury of some sort."
"Sounds like a plan," Paula said edging backward out of the room, whilst Emma Newton fidgeted awkwardly by her side. "Shall we go and tell the others?"
"Yeah, I think we should," replied Emma Harris. "That is unless anybody has any objections?"
The other Emma opened her mouth to voice something, when suddenly a noise cut in, a noise that chilled her heart to the bone, a noise she had heard before and hoped she would never hear again.
Bleep.
Paula stopped in her tracks, and turned round to face her companions. All of them were looking at the same spot, which was at the red LED within Emma Harris' collar.
Bleep.
"Argh," she gargled, tugging at the necklace, trying to make it stop. "What's happening?"
"Emma!" Emma shouted, forgetting herself.
"The collar!"
"Shit!"
Bleep.
"Whats' going on?" Emma squealed, spinning round on the spot, trying to unscrew it somehow.
"They must have heard you," Paula said, her face deathly white. "There must be microphones in the walls or in the collars or something! They've heard everything!"
"Shit!"
Bleep.
Emma ran out of the room and across the hallway her face covered in blind panic, her squeals deafening. Behind her, the other Emma, Paula and Martina were running; the three girls were dancing around their companion, offering suggestions to her to make it stop.
"I didn't mean it," Emma said, breathing into her collar, hoping they'd feel remorse. "I didn't mean those things. I was joking, we weren't actually going to attack you lot at the barracks. Jesus, can't you take a joke?"
Bleep bleep bleep.
"JESUS CHRIST, CAN'T YOU TAKE A JOKE? HELP ME! SOMEBODY!"
"EMMA! DON'T! THEY CAN'T DO THIS TO YOU!"
"EMMA, STOP TUGGING AT IT OR IT'LL GO OFF!"
"SHIT!"
Bleep bleep bleep. Upstairs, Lucy Shale awoke from her nap in the most comfortable of the beds and wondered what the commotion was all about downstairs.

Lena had been awake for a few minutes now. It had been the six o'clock report that had brought her round, but she wasn't fully at her senses for a good five minutes more. Because of her drowsiness, she hadn't heard any of the names, nor the danger zones, which struck her as inconvenient. Lena never felt vulnerable; it wasn't in her nature to feel vulnerable. She stood up, and relocated her gun and bags. As she picked up her personal bag, she was struck with an idea. This was a game of survival, and there was only going to be one winner. Even though she didn't catch the names themselves, she was dimly aware of the announcer saying there had been thirteen deaths. There was a twig on the ground where she was looking at it, and she picked it up and wrote two words into the soft sand, whilst thinking of the dead:
SAMANTHA CARTER
Lena looked at what she had just written and furrowed her brow. The girl's name looked up at her from the ground. Sam had always annoyed Lena more than most, as she was both bossy and soppy, and yet people always seemed to obey her without question. It was not right, and she certainly wasn't special enough to be the centre of attention all the time. Lena scowled and wrote another two words in the ground, directly beneath the first:
GRAHAM BROOKE
Moody git, she thought, as he also looked at her from the sand. What cause did he ever have to be depressed? What had been so bad in his life that he had to be prescribed antidepressants? He was an attention-seeker, thought Lena. Nothing more and nothing less. She remembered a few occasions in which he had been so angry he had to be removed from school, and picked up by his embarrassed and stern-looking mother. He was an attention-seeker, which made Lena decide on a third name:
CATHERINE HARDING
Moaning little drama queen. There was that thing about her sister a few months ago, but why the hell couldn't she snap out of it? Maybe it was time someone made her do so. Perhaps Lena would pay her a visit and see whether Catherine could be made to stop pitying herself.
KIMBERLY SMALL
Jesus Christ, this girl was even more of an attention seeker. At least the ones before her on this list Lena was writing had reasons for drawing attention to themselves. Kim had none. She was of above-average intelligence, but not enough to be recognised as a brainbox. She was talented, her willing to start up the art club had proven testimony to this. So why the hell did she see it as being appropriate to be such a cow? Disrupting lessons, waging a one-woman war against the system, what good was it for when you're a comfortable, middle-class girl with everything ahead of you?
Her temper rising, Lena's blood boiled as she sat with the stick and carved a number of other names into the ground.

Bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep...
The collar seemed to be ringing out louder and higher, its warning alarm going on for an eternity. Emma had tried to detach it, but the seal at the back could not be taken apart by herself, and certainly none of her friends were going to go near her, so she was left with an ugly-looking rash from where her fingernails had dug into her skin. She had started to cry. She was crying because she was frightened, and in spite of the fact that just minutes before she had been planning an assault on the system, she feared death. Death was inevitable; she had perhaps under a minute left to live, then she would pass away violently, succumbing to the electric charge from the collar's pads. But as the collar turned into a continuous droning sound, a voice called from above.
"What's going on down there?"
Lucy was at the top of the stairs, gazing downward at the scene. She could hear the beeping, but it wasn't until Emma had turned round and looked that she realised what was going on.
"Oh, my..." Lucy breathed, her voice trailing off, as she looked down at the sorry sight of the girl. Emma saw a ray of hope; she hadn't been abandoned yet. She put her hand on the bottom, of the banisters, and called up.
"Lucy," Emma's voice was hoarse from all of the shouting. "Will you help me?"
Lucy said nothing. She didn't even dare move, in case anything happened to her. It seemed that the girl at the bottom of the stairs wasn't going to wait for an answer; Emma had begun to move up the flight of stairs, perhaps hoping Lucy could ask for divine intervention or something miraculous.
"You can end this," Emma said, an insane grin on her face, her voice partly drowned out by the whirring of the collar, and the whining from the other onlookers. "You can stop this now, Lucy. Need you to be able to-"
Emma's neck was ripped open.
In a second that lasted for an eternity, Emma's eyes focused on Lucy, then unfocused as a pulse caused her sight to blur, and her whole upper body to tingle. She fell backward, her head hitting the bannisters halfway down. It knocked against the rail a few times as the girl clung to consciousness for as long as she could. Her heart corrupted, her mouth frothed, and Emma toppled backward completely and slid down the remaining stairs, her brain shutting down for the final time.
"EMMA!" The four girls called Emma's name, only to be greeted with a fixed look of shock from the body. Lucy tried to work out how to get downstairs without stepping in the blood, but it was impossible, as at least five of the steps had been dyed red. She gripped her weapon, a book (more precisely, Inferno by Dante), and squeezed it for reassurance as she navigated the causeway. She failed, slipped on the blood, and skidded down the bottom few steps, kicking Emma's corpse in the thigh. Lucy lifted herself up hurriedly, and after making the sign of the cross over Emma's body by means of an apology, went over to the other girls to hug them all.
For a few moments, none of the four spoke; words had completely left them. But Martina couldn't even bring herself to think about the body. Instead, she was thinking about the plan to attack the barracks. It was presumably off, that much was sure. But what off the fighting ideal that Emma had treasured? The four girls had three guns between them, and they could surely stay until the end. Four girls? Something was missing. Martina broke away from the other girls, taking in each of their faces in turn.
"Where's Charlotte?" she asked, noticing the other girl had been absent throughout the whole situation.
"She's in the other room," Paula mumbled, her eyes red. "I gave her a drink about five minutes ago."
It seemed that the gaggle of girls had had the same idea at once: they had to tell Charlotte the latest disaster to strike. Yet it would be the four girls themselves who would be feeling shock and horror as they opened the door, and saw Charlotte slumped dead in her chair, both of her wrists slit. The girls huddled round the body of the girl with blonde plaits, and although Martina felt obliged to try and revive her, the others saw that Charlotte was undoubtedly gone as well.
Girls #9 Graves, #12 Harris; dead. 34 remaining.

Lydia was more inland now than she had been, even though she was still on the beach. Rather, she was ambling through the scrubland that parted the sand from the grass bank. She came across a cavern, which was small and set back from the beachfront. Her torch was shining straight at it, the sky now a royal blue. Dawn was approaching the island, and Lydia was approaching the cave. Glancing back at her map, she assumed she must be by the inlet at B-8, as the beach seemed to peter off nearby. She was as far away from the upcoming danger zones as was physically possible, and as she considered hiding in the cave for a few minutes, her torch came to rest on someone's back: a tall girl with black hair who was already in the cave. It was Lena.
"Lena!" Lydia called up the beach, hoping to get the other girl's attention, but the sound of the tide was probably carrying her voice away. She hurried nearer the cave and called out once more. Lena caught the sound of her name and looked over her shoulder. Someone who looked like Lydia was running toward her brandishing a sword of some kind. Not thinking twice, Lena picked up her gun and pointed it straight at Lydia's head.
The shorter of the girls froze in terror. Why was Lena doing this? I'm not a threat to you, damn it, I just wanted to find you.
"You gonna kill me with that gun, Lena?" Lydia was panicked and it showed in her voice.
"Depends," Lena said, her voice steady and breathy. "Are you gonna kill me with that cutlass?"
"Of course not," Lydia breathed, making a point of surrendering; her weapon being useless at this range. "I just was looking for you, and here you are."
Lena shone her torch at Lydia's face, and took in its details. She was as ugly as ever; that hadn't changed, plus there were beads of sweat on her brow. She must be cold, having walked so far in the chill, Lena thought. She neared the girl so they were in talking distance of one another, but still far enough away so Lydia couldn't change her mind a lunge forward with the blade.
"Why were you looking for me, Lydia?"
"You can probably guess, Lena, but you're probably the only person left on this island who I still trust."
Lena was taken aback, reminded of the fact that a certain number of the class were already dead.
"Thirteen people are already dead, aren't they? Who? I didn't hear the report."
"Erm," Lydia had heard the report, but under the current pressure she was incapable of recalling any of the names announced over the speaker. "I saw Julia dead just outside the exit of those barracks at the start, and then Jitinder and Steph had committed suicide together. Can't remember everyone, though. I'll check the map."
But Lena stuck her hand up to stop her friend and asked for clarification of something. "Steph and Jitinder committed suicide together? Are you sure?"
"Yeah, they hung themselves from a tree using a length of chain."
"Wow, I thought they hated each other."
"Lena," Lydia looked at her friend anxiously, who still hadn't relaxed the grip on the gun. "Just now when you asked if I was going to kill you with this cutlass, and I said no? Well, you never answered my question. You're not gonna kill me are you, huh?"
Lena smiled mysteriously at Lydia.

"Charlotte! Charlotte, wake up! PLEASE!"
"It's too late, Martina."
"No! It can't be! Get off me, Paula!"
"Please, Martina; let go of her."
"SHE CAN'T BE DEAD! SHE'S MY FRIEND!"
"Don't do this, Martina."
"She was... she was such a great person..."
Martina's voice trailed off weakly as she held Charlotte in her arms. Her jumper was getting soaked with blood, but she didn't care. Why would Charlotte do such a thing? It's totally unfair. From one side, Lucy looked at the corpse and how it had such a pained look on its face. She had been snoozing when the sixth girl had arrived at the house, but was disturbed by Emma Newton's shouting in the adjacent room, demanding the visitor to drop her gun. She looked at Emma now and saw there were silent tears running down her long face. There was something primitive in those eyes, something ancient and primeval that looked like her soul was ebbing away right there. Were they all going to become savages? Lucy was reflecting on this thought right now, as the smell of blood filled the girls' nostrils once more. The people who were running this seemed to show great pleasure in detonating these collars. Also, that boy in the video: he was totally insane; he had lost any concept of what it was to be civilised, bragging about killings and brutal deaths he head seen. Was that their fate? Were these girls going to turn against one another, be consumed by evil and eventually self-destruct, one by one? It certainly looked like the remaining Emma was halfway there, her eyes were tired and red.
Martina wasn't hearing anything any more; she had been rendered temporarily deaf by the two emotional shocks she had just received. She was aware of a dim whining noise in the air, but didn't really pay it any heed. The floor was swimming in a puddle of red, undisturbed and growing steadily as Charlotte bled dry. Martina felt a hand on her shoulder, and identifying it as Paula's, stood up and hugged her. The former panic was issuing itself as sadness now, as Lucy and Emma Newton looked at each other awkwardly.
Martina's eyes fell on the bottom shelf in the room, and saw the abandoned razor blades and a few of the water bottles the girls had put down for safekeeping. It was at this point Martina's mind changed to suspicion, and she broke away from her comforter, and examined the bloodied blades carefully.

"Oh, God."
Lena had greeted Lydia's question with silence, and suddenly it became obvious to the girl what this implied: Lena would kill her after all. Wide-eyed, Lydia threw her personal bag at her friend and ran as fast up the beach as she could. Lena fired a shot after her, and Lydia tripped to the ground.
She was alive, but at any moment, the girl with the gun would be squeezing the trigger once more, and would not miss. Lena repositioned herself and pointed the gun at her friend's squirming feet and fired another shot; the sand exploded in a dusty fountain that landed on Lydia's clothes.
"I'm not going to kill you, Lydia," Lena said, moving closer still. "But understand that I will not hesitate in doing so if I have to in the end. I wouldn't expect you to do anything different. After all, survival is key."
"What... what do you want from me?" Lydia was panicked as Lena approached her and kicked the abandoned cutlass to one side, smiling all the time.
"I want you to do make me happy," Lena said, her proud face sphinx-like with mystery. "I want you to run an errand for me. Stand up."
Not daring to disobey, Lydia scrambled to her feet. It was like the olden days once again, when Lena and a number of others had picked on her for being fat and stupid. Only one other girl had stood by her at that time, and that girl was nowhere to be seen right now. Lydia was alone, and was being picked on once more, forced into doing something against her will. She hoped it wouldn't be anything too dreadful as the two of them made their way to the cave again.
Lena pointed to a list of names in the ground. There were seven names drawn into the sand, all names of 11D students.
"I want you to do me a favour," Lena asked simply, pushing the gun into the nape of her friend's back. I'd like you to find people on this list, and bring them to me."
"Why?"
Lydia looked confused as her companion breathed a chuckle, pointed the gun at the ground and fired two shots into the name, GRAHAM BROOKE. Fuck, thought Lydia. Lena has made a hit-list. She wants to kill all these people; she has an active strategy to go out and hunt people.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," urged Lydia, again putting up her hands defensively. "You want me to help you kill these people? I'm not sure if I can do that."
"Why not?"
"Because, well... it's just wrong!"
Lena sighed. She had expected this sort of response from Lydia, and she agreed on certain levels that this was indeed wrong. But people were dying already; thirteen had succumbed to the will of the Program that she knew of, so what was she meant to do if not fight for survival? After all, when in Rome...
"I'm not expecting you to like this, but bear in mind that I could have killed you already if I wanted to. Twice in fact," she added as an afterthought. "I think you owe it to me to try this. You won't actually need to get your hands dirty, either. And it's not as if you're doing all the work; I'll be hunting for people as well, you know. I really want you to do this for me, Lydia, because I don't want to hurt you, but if you mess this up for me and we run into one another... bang. Got it?"
She had phrased it like a genuine question, but Lena had really put Lydia on the spot. What was she meant to do? Run away and hide until the time limit expires? That wouldn't help at all. Besides, Lena knew exactly how her mind worked, so she would probably not have any difficulty in hunting the girl down. How could she fight someone so much stronger than her, sword against gun? She felt small and helpless like a maimed chicken that has the fox's fangs in its flesh, just submitting and wanting the pain and misery to be short-lived. Lydia pointed at one of the names.
"You can forget about that one," she said, indicating: SAMANTHA CARTER. "She had her collar detonated shortly after you left. But the others..."
There were six names on the ground, excluding Sam's (which was now defunct): Graham, Catherine, Kimberly, David Drake, Kavinder Khanum and Lucy Shale. Half of these names were obvious to Lydia, but she didn't dare question the others.
"I'll try."
"Good. Let me show you the route I intend to take until twelve o'clock. It more or less follows the southern shoreline, so you should be okay. I'll be on the line that separates D- and E-7. Find me there and I'll tell you my next route. I'll draw it on your map. Memorise those names and try and bring some of them with you. Okay?"
All Lydia could do was nod. Lena smiled, and after drawing on her friend's map, and making sure the list of names was memorised, she sent the girl on her merry way. Watching with some satisfaction as Lydia stumbled to pick up her abandoned cutlass and bags from the beach, Lena knew that the girl would never disobey her, and would probably fail in the mission and be killed.

"Did she use this to kill herself?"
"She must have, yeah."
Martina was looking at the razor blades that sat on the side along with someone's bread, Emma Newton's winter hat and Emma Harris' pistol. The blades were bloodied and spent, small traces of skin and flesh visible on the tips. Other than that, there was a very small puddle of blood where the fluid had run off the blade and collected on the shelf.
Martina looked on the floor, suspicious that the ground should be so clean. Surely, if Charlotte had killed herself with these blades, there would be a trail of blood between the body and the place where she had put the tool by which she had opted to end her life? There was no evidence of this, not a splash of blood was visible anywhere between the body and the razors. Judging on how unlikely it was that Charlotte had slit her wrists and thrown them over to the shelf, Martina finally lashed out, grabbing the Taurus PT99 from alongside the razors, and pointing it at Paula.
"You did this."
"What are you talking about?" Paula said, caught off-guard by Martina's aggression. "I didn't make her commit suicide!"
"You murdered her!" Martina screamed, angry at Martina's bluffing.
"Mart, she killed herself," Lucy said gently. "It's not Paula's fault. Now, lower the gun..."
"Was it you?" Martina said accusingly at Lucy. "No, you've been upstairs all the time since Lottie got here. Unless it was you, Emma."
"Me, kill Lottie?" Emma said, her tone of voice wavering in the way any voice would when there's a gun pointed at it. "I don't know what you're talking about!"
"Someone slit her wrists and put the blades on the shelf," Martina yelled, her other hand waving around at the body and the shelf accordingly, before gripping the gun again and returning its aim at Paula. "It can't have been suicide, 'cause there's no fucking blood on the floor!"
"Mart, calm down!"
"I AM NOT GOING TO CALM DOWN!"
"I haven't done anything!"
"Is that so?" Martina said, sneering at Paula's cries from behind a well of tears. "You never liked Charlotte, and you were all against us getting too many people on our side. It must have been you, you fucking killer!"
"Stop it! Stop it, the pair of you!" Emma Newton had jumped between the two of them, trying to break the two apart. "None of this is helping! Now put the gun down, Martina, and get a grip! This is totally stupid!"
Paula looked gratefully at her friend, but this only seemed to make Martina angrier. "You've just taken someone's life, you bitch! Don't you feel anything, huh? You're disgusting, you piece of shit! You killed Charlotte!"
"NO I NEVER!"
"Martina," Lucy said from the side, trying an authoritative voice that didn't suit her. "I can see what you're saying, and that it does look like foul play, but I don't think you should be fingering Paula without any solid, substantial evidence."
It seemed that these words had a bit of an impact on Martina, as she looked at Lucy, apparently understanding her own irrationality for the first time since the death, when a sudden swift struggle made her panic and pull the trigger. When Lucy had distracted Martina with these words, Paula had dived forward and tried to seize the gun from Martina's grasp. The girls struggled for less than two seconds when the gun exploded once more into Paula's chest, and the girl slumped to the ground, dying.

"No!" Emma and Lucy scrambled over to their dead classmate, looking at her trembling face. Martina, horrified by what she had just done, dropped the gun, fell to her knees and gripped Paula by her school jumper.
"Why? Why did you do this? I need to understand..."
"I... I am..." Paula said, her mouth struggling to form the words that were still loud in her mind. "I am... I am innocent."
"Paula? Paula, what are you saying?"
"Just... it's not..." Paula's whispering ceased, as her faint voice disappeared altogether, her mouth miming words she was unaware that were not being spoken. Her mind felt like it was floating to unknown places, and with her last ever thoughts being of her father, she closed her mouth and smiled peacefully as the life inside her was extinguished.
"Paula? PAULA!"
Martina was clutching the girl's shoulders, trying to shake her back to life, but as was the case with Charlotte before her, Paula was gone, and never coming back.
"Please, God, why are you doing this?" Lucy had one of Paula's warm hands, her eyes closed in prayer, muttering to God the only comfort she could find in this situation. "If Paula really was innocent, make sure she gets comfort in your arms. If she was not, please forgive her. Amen."
"You know it was an accident, right?" Martina said, her eyes desperately looking into Lucy's. "You know I didn't mean it, don't you?"
"Of course it was; you're not a killer!"
"But I am though! I killed Paula!"
"And I killed Charlotte."
The girls stopped weeping and spun round in horror. Emma had stood up and taken Martina's abandoned PT99, pointing it at Lucy and Martina, whose expressions comparable to deers in the headlights of a car.
"Yeah, it was me who did it." There was something strange about Emma's expression: she seemed almost apologetic. "I'm sorry about this."
Martina and Lucy stood up, even more afraid now than they had been when they had been called forward to collect their weapons at the very beginning.
"I thought I could go on and win this," Emma said, frowning down at Paula's body, a victim of her classmate's paranoia. "It was all meant to be like a big game, right? Eliminate the opposition one by one, let the numbers slowly boil away until there was only one person left standing, huh?" It sounds so easy, doesn't it, to get a game plan up."
"You... killed Charlotte?" Martina said, seemingly still not comprehending the confession she had heard, trying to buy herself some time.
"I had to," Emma said, sounding quite matter-of-fact about the issue. "She came in and confessed that she had killed someone already. We got her sat down, and as the morning report was announced, I poured some of my chloroform onto my hat, and put it over her face to knock her out. The razors came next, as Paula had left them up on that shelf... It seemed so easy."
"How could you do that?" Martina said, her rage spent and replaced with a mix of fear and remorse. "Why did you have to kill Lottie like that?"
"It wasn't fun, but it seemed to be part of my plan. I had to do it for my own sake. At the end of the day, we've all got to do these horrible things for our own sake."
Lucy couldn't take any more; she dived behind Martina and bolted through the door and away from the room, totally forgetting about the pain in her knee. It was simple; turn as many corners, get as far away from Emma, as quickly as she could. It was as if she had taken Emma's advice to heart, and had abandoned Martina for her own sake. It was cowardly on both intellectual and moral levels, but she didn't care. Her legs took her into the kitchen, where Charlotte's machine gun lay abandoned on the table. As she picked it up, she heard a gunshot, then a thud, from the other room.
There was a silence in the house that seemed eerie and chilling. Another death had just happened in the other room; there were only two girls left in the house now. Afraid, Lucy held the machine gun and slid behind a work surface, trying to make herself as small as possible. There was a voice calling her name from in the hallway, and through the barrier of panic, she suddenly realised the voice was tearful, and that the voice belonged to Martina.
Girls #15 MacNeill, #17 Newton; dead. 32 remaining.

"Lucy? Where are you? God, help me! This is wrong, please, please make it stop!"
Lucy poked her head round the side of the work surface, trying to see Martina, but the girl was out of view. Deciding it was time to bring this chapter to an end, she tried to gather her wits and confront Martina.
"I'm in the kitchen."
Martina edged toward the door, but saw that the machine gun was no longer where it used to be. She called out to the room:
"Lucy, it's okay, I'm unarmed. Please, help me."
The tone of the girl's voice was genuinely fearful; Martina was scared, and crying like a child, clearly out of her depth. Lucy risked putting her head round the corner, and saw her comrade on the threshold, her hands gripping her black hair tightly, tears flowing freely down her face.
"I'm so scared, Lucy. Will you help me?"
Lucy's eyes scanned Martina's face, and saw the face of a broken young girl looking back at her. There was something unhealthy about the way she seemed to be crumbling before Lucy's very eyes, but at least it was obvious that there would be no more killings in this building. The girls hugged one another, filled with despair, not knowing which way to turn, other than out, away from the building, away from the murders and suicide that had scarred them both mentally and emotionally. It was not even ten minutes since the morning report had been announced, but already four names were ready for addition to the list.
"Get your gun; get Emma's gun," Lucy whispered finally, breaking apart from her ally, as the two of them ran around the building, trying to salvage whatever they could from the carnage. In a matter of minutes, the two girls were loaded with heavy bags, and with uneasy looks, they stepped out into the sunless blue outdoors.