Okay, so I've covered the disclaimer and the gore, but I did promise to put up a warning for anything overly violent. Which, lucky you, is this chapter. To me, it didn't seem so bad, but I have no idea what people consider 'gory'. There's detailed description of corpses, multiple deaths, and all that... Stuff. Yeah.

I awoke with a groan. My head was throbbing, sending bursts of pain lancing through my skull. The conversation with Emmett came rushing back, and I let my head drop onto the surface I was laying on. Expecting the cement of my room, I was more than surprised when my action resulted in a connection of skull and wood.
… I had been moved.
I sat up instantly, scanning my surroundings. I was on a broad deck that stretched across a yard of dark, lush grass. I could see nothing but the murky night, occasionally broken by bright, sweeping lights. Were they searching for me? I put my hand down, preparing to push myself up onto my feet, but instead of wood, I was met with paper. It crinkled underneath my fingers, and I brought it up to my face. It was an envelope, and it had my name written on it in a straight, blocky script. I opened it up, and a blood-red sheet of paper fell into my hands. Ugh, these people were just so fucking dramatic.

Recruit,
Congratulations on making it to Phase One. You have 24 hours in which your sole objection is to survive. Live for the next day, and you will proceed to Phase Two.
Nine other subjects will also be participating in this test, and it is them that you are required to compete against. You have ten minutes until midnight, upon which the deck you are sitting upon will reveal a staircase. Down these stairs, waits Phase One.
Those ten minutes would be wisely used to locate a weapon, for the subjects you are competing against are your enemies. Put simply, the last man standing at midnight tomorrow will progress. If more than one is left alive, all subjects will be killed.
This is a fight to the death, recruit. We sincerely hope that you are the one who will progress.
Good luck.

I returned the letter to the envelope, and considered my options.
Option one; I could run. Judging by the search lights, this would not be an easy task.
Option two; I could fight.
I ran my hand over my pocket, feeling the shape of the razor and the small vial. I had a better chance than the other nine people, already. What could they use as a weapon? A sharpened branch? I couldn't even see any trees.
Yes, I would stay. I had no desire to die any time in the near future, and if I was lucky, all the other 'subjects' would fight amongst themselves, and I could come in at the end. All I would have to do is plunge the blade into the remaining person's stomach. Usually, I would feel disgust… But now, I possessed nothing but a sick curiosity for what it would be like.
Decided, I jumped to my feet and began to stretch my limbs. If I intended to stick to my plan, I would need to run, and possibly also attempt to squeeze myself into a small crevice. I turned to inspect the deck, wondering where the mysterious set of stairs would appear from. There were no telltale crevices, or lines or anything of the like. Just flat, wooden planks. They were pretty, of course. Mahogany and gleaming. Come to think of it, they really had no place out in the middle of nowhere. And it was nowhere – I couldn't see anything past a few meters, apart from the random glimpses of more grass when the lights would illuminate it. I was tempted to race off into the darkness, and lose myself amongst the stars.

I was even close to doing so, when the boards I was standing on shifted; causing me to tumble to the cold, wet grass behind me. The damp ground began to soak its way through my jeans, and it was freezing, so I quickly clambered back up to my feet. The deck split straight down the center, revealing a moss-covered set of stairs that led down to… Nothing. Just inky, black, nothing. I wasted some time simply watching the stairs, to see if anyone was going to come out and attack me. My hand had strayed to my pocket and was now holding the straight razor in a deathly tight grip. Nobody had emerged after ten minutes, and this deemed the stairs safe enough to venture down. I took one step down, and then stopped. Faintly, drifting out from the shadows, there were screams. An awful shrieking, much like someone being tortured.
Apparently, Emmett had not lied about what would happen during the next week. I gripped my razor tighter, and walked down the stairs. The temperature decreased with every step I took, eventually becoming a paralyzing cold that leeched its way through my skin. I was surrounded by complete darkness, not even able to see the stars behind me anymore.
The sound of my sneakers on the stairs was muffled, as if the darkness was absorbing everything it encountered. After five minutes of steadily going deeper into the earth, a weak light became present further down the stairs. I rushed toward it, almost tripping on every step, but just managing to keep going. It turned out to be a small burning torch set into a cobblestone wall. Beside it was a small, harmless, wooden door.
Using my stellar detective skills, I deduced that the door was my way of entering the… Testing area. This was confirmed by the words that were painted messily across the surface.
Good luck.
It would seem that those words would be the catchphrase of the week – they were the popular choice with everyone so far. As my plan involved waiting for everyone to take care of themselves, I chose my current position as home base. I could wait here until it was absolutely necessary to enter. That way, there would be no chance to make a mistake, or to be impaled by one of the others' makeshift weapons. Decided, I returned the razor to my pocket, and turned to look for a comfortable spot to settle into for the next twenty four hours. Instead of the small room I had originally started in, I now stood in a steadily decreasing space. The passage must have been closing up, now that it had been used.
"Oh, shit. Really?"
The wall continued on its way towards me, ignoring my exclamation. With no other option, I whirled to face the door and wrenched it open. A split second after I threw myself through it, it became completely closed up with impenetrable stone. Which, had I still been in the room at the time, would have crushed me.
I retrieved my weapon once more, and observed my new location. It was filthy, reminiscent of the room I had originally woken up in – coated with muck and things I could not identify.

I found myself in a shadowed corridor that went for about five meters or so. The walls were absolutely soaked in filth, and crumbling to pieces. There were three doors on each side, worn and damaged, probably leading into more rooms like mine. At the end of the hall was another door. Scrawled across it, was one word. 'Arena'.
I walked toward it slowly, dragging my hand along the dirty wall to my left. The grime came off onto my fingertips, leaving them stained dark. I tried all of the doors along the way, dismayed to find that they had all been locked. I came to the final door, the one claiming that it would take me to this 'arena'. I tried the handle, and of course it would be unlocked, and work easily. I opened the door cautiously, I may have not been frightened, but I was not an imbecile. The screams got louder the instant I opened it even a crack, so I took the opportunity to poke my head around and get a glance at what was happening.
The door opened into a large, circular room. Arena was a fitting word. There was no flooring, only dark, torn up earth. The walls were stone, and splashed with what I could only assume was blood. In the center, there was a small group of humans doing their best to obliterate each other. I opened the door a bit wider, so I could get a better view of the skirmish. Counting bodies, I noticed that there were only eight. The letter had said that there would be nine others competing. This meant that one of them was missing. I scanned the arena, hoping that somebody had already killed them, meaning that one contestant was down already. I found nobody, which made me a little sad. Returning my attention to the fight, I made note of the weapons they had.
Only five of them had actually managed to acquire something, leaving the other three to attack with their hands. The three who hadn't gotten anything, were, incidentally, women. Leave it to them to represent females as weak, and useless. I ran my thumb along the flat side of the blade in my hand, eager to prove that we were not all weak.
The five males each had some semblance of a weapon, and I was pleased to see one using a branch to beat one of the defenseless females into the ground. Obviously, I had been wrong about the trees. Or possibly, they had started in a different environment than I did.
Along with the branch, there was also a plank of wood, with the nail still protruding from one end – which was handy. One man appeared to have stolen a door knob from one of the doors that were in his corridor, and utilized it by taking off his shirt and putting the metal object inside the shirt. He was swinging it at the others like a flail. On the subject of clothing, a teenage boy had also removed his shirt, and was now trying to use it to strangle people from behind. Finally, someone had obviously taken the initiative and gotten a burning torch, the same as the one that lit the room at the bottom of the stairs.

The fight was vicious. They combined their weapons with their fists, and it was difficult to imagine anyone being the clear winner. One of the girls showed that she didn't need help to damage someone, as she launched herself at the boy with the shirt from behind, and hooked her legs around his waist. He did his best to throw her off, but she clung on admirably. She brought one of her hands around to his face, and dug a finger into the corner of his eye. He turned around then, so I couldn't see what she was doing. He yelled out in pain, however, and when I saw his face again, he was missing an eye. Literally. I didn't mean that h didn't have the use of it, or that it had come out of the socket… It was just gone. And in its place was a hole, bleeding heavily. He finally managed to loosen the girl's grip, and promptly kicked her in the stomach. She flew back onto the ground, but flipped back up and went at him again.

I watched them attack each other, entranced. I was almost so focused that I didn't noticed the soft steps approaching behind me.
The ninth one.
I spun quickly, brought up the razor and brandished it wildly. It was a boy about my age, tall and broad shouldered. He had straight, auburn hair that fell across his forehead, and amazingly dark green eyes. In the faint light he looked half-transparent and bleached of color, though his skin was not quite so pale as Emmett's. His hands had risen up in surrender the moment he saw the blade, and I could see his chest rising and falling, betraying how rapidly he was breathing.

"Please. Don't hurt me," he panted. I waved my weapon around threateningly, and he took a step back.
"Why shouldn't I? You're only going to kill me when you get the chance". He looked at me in astonishment in response to my words, and shook his head adamantly.
"How would I do that?" I considered that, along with his lack of a weapon, and then decided that I didn't like people undermining my authority. I made a few jabbing motions with the razor, and his eyes went wide with fear.
"You may not have a weapon, but you could still be dangerous. I've just seen a girl take out an eyeball with her bare hands. What's to say you won't bite off my ear, or something?" The expression of mild disgust on his face was contributory towards his innocence. In any case, if there was an emergency, he would be a useful distraction. The pretty boy spoke again.
"That is… Disgusting. But I won't do that, you can trust me. I was already out there, I know they're all attacking each other, it happened to me too. It's like this sudden rage came over me, and I just had to hurt someone. I don't know what it is, but I don't like it. I came in here, and it stopped." His excuse seemed plausible, not counting the 'rage' portion. I would trust this boy.
"Alright, we can team up. Did you get a letter, too?" He lowered his hands at the same speed that I was retracting the blade from the air between us. When his hands were at his sides, and the razor was in my pocket he spoke again.
"Yeah, I did. It's fucking weird, isn't it? Like, are we meant to kill each other? Is it some kind of sick game to these people?"
His casual mention of whoever was running this gave me the idea that he could know something.
"Do you know who 'these people' are?" I said, emphasizing the words by tapping my hand against the blade in my jeans. He looked off to the side, avoiding my eyes. I discreetly got my weapon back out, just in case.

"Uh… Yeah, I do. They're… Different. Different to us, I mean". By that, I could only assume that he was aware of what Emmett was. Maybe, whoever was behind this, was a vampire too. That would probably explain their demand for violence. It did not, however, explain the boy's theory about what went on in the arena.
Uncontrollable rage? Bullshit, he was just in it to win, as were all the other psychopaths. My plan was still in place, for the moment – only now it was better. With this boy, I could survive. He would trust me; maybe even defend me if the others came after us. With a little bit of convincing, I would be set. When everyone else was dealt with, he would be my only adversary, and an easy one at that. He didn't even have a weapon. Also, he seemed to have information on the vampires, which could help me figure out what was going on.
I smiled at him, and he tentatively returned the expression.
Gotcha.
"By different, what do you mean?" He looked from left to right – which was a rather stupid gesture, considering we were in a narrow corridor. Honestly, what did he expect, someone to come out of a wall?
"Well… Do you believe in monsters?" He asked the question eagerly, eyes alight with excitement. I rolled my eyes internally, and then fed his enthusiasm with an awed gaze.
"What kind of monsters?" He bent his head closer, as if imparting some sort of great secret onto me.
"Vampires," he whispered softly, "they're the ones running the show". I laughed in response, perhaps a bit hysterically. He seemed hurt, so I tried to tone it down a little.

How did he find out about them? Had Emmett gone to visit him, also? I tried to see if there were any shapes in his pockets that looked like weapons. He caught me out, and questioned my actions.
"What are you doing?" Guiltily, I stepped back from him. He didn't seem to have anything on him.
"Uh… Nothing. So, how do you know they're vampires? Not that they're real, because that's just absurd, right?" I was laughing maniacally again, and interrupted him as he took a breath to speak.
"Surely, you just mean metaphorical vampires. You know, they want to drink your blood, but not…"
I quickly trailed off at the look he was giving me. He spoke again, exasperated.
"Yes, proper vampires. Because, when they took me, I was awake. I guess the guy didn't use enough chloroform, or whatever. Anyway, I was in the back of this van, with this absolutely huge guy, and a tall, menacing looking one. My mom was with me, and they bought me off of her. Which I know my mom would never do."
If his mother was taking his ego into account, I had no doubts that she would have sold him. I nodded, indicating that he should continue.
"So, the scary looking one goes over to her, and tells her to leave. I expected her to punch him, or yell, anything, but she didn't. She looked at him, took the money, smiled, and just left. She left me there, with two psychopaths". He looked rather upset, so I gave him a pat on the shoulder. After taking a moment to come to terms with the very thought of his mother leaving him –big shock, there – he kept talking.

"I fell asleep after that, but I woke up to this god awful screaming. I was on the ground, on some old country road. And there was this girl there, rolling around in the dirt, shrieking her lungs out. The big guy was dragging this body off into the trees, and he took it right past me. It was this boy whose neck had been absolutely torn apart. A full-on, gaping wound. And the guy that was dragging him had blood all over his mouth. Anyway, I couldn't see the girl, but I guess it's one of the ones out there."
I averted my eyes to the ground, and focused on a small blood stain in the cement. I was at least ninety percent sure that the screaming girl had been me, and was desperate for the boy to continue. I didn't remember anything beyond James' death, and this could be my only chance to find anything out.
"So, the scary looking one goes over to her, and puts a hand on her shoulder. She stops screaming, like, immediately, and then he starts talking to her in this creepy voice, real soothing, you know?"
I nodded at his words, and he resumed his story.

"So he tells her that everything's okay, and it doesn't matter. He kept repeating that. It doesn't matter. It was crazy, seriously. She was silent for a couple minutes, and then she just started laughing. It was like, everything he wanted her to feel – she would. I didn't like it, at all".
Well, that made no sense, whatsoever. Unless… But that didn't add up, either. When Emmett had been on the phone to the mysterious Jasper, he had raised his concerns about him 'going too far'. He'd also said that 'it was emotionless'… Was he talking about me, when he said that?
"Did… Did he call her by name, do you know?" The boy looked at me, confusion in his eyes. He was probably wondering why I would ask such a question. He answered me, anyway.
"Yeah… The last thing he said to her was in this intense voice, like he was willing her to believe him. What was it? Uh…" He paused, concentrating so hard that a furrow formed between his eyebrows.
"Yeah, those words again. 'It doesn't matter'. He called her Isabella, I think." He thought for a moment, and then nodded to himself with a smile.
"Yeah, that's it".

I gazed off to the side, considering the information that he had just given me. It was me, after all. That this… Jasper person had messed with. Did he alter my memories, or was the boy correct in his theory that I felt what he wanted me to feel? Was he responsible for my current total lack of emotion, or had I done that all on my own? I felt a touch on my shoulder, and dragged my eyes to it. I regarded the offending hand, and then looked to the boy and raised an eyebrow. He smiled, and I tilted my head.
"Why are you touching me?" His smile quickly dropped, and he removed his hand.
"Sorry, I guess you looked sad. And we have to stick together, right? There are all those people out there, and we're stuck in here. If we go out there, we'll die".
Truth be told, I had completely forgotten about the riot taking place just meters from where we stood. Reminded, I turned back to the door and opened it up the tiniest amount, just enough to see back into the arena.

It was a massacre. Bodies were strewn carelessly over the ground, each in a gruesome state. All five of the males were dead, their weapons having been proved useless against the sheer barbaric attacks of the defenseless women, who still ripped at each other on the far side of the room.
One man had been burnt beyond recognition, obviously by the fellow who had wielded the flaming torch. His hair was nearly all gone, only singed tufts remaining on his blistered head. The skin on the left side of his face had melted into an almost molten-like appearance and his eyelids were melded closed, as were his lips. The seared flesh was tightly stretched and discolored, bright crimson in some places and a faded brown in others. His death would not have been a quick one.
The other four were in a better state than him, if you disregarded the fact that they were… You know, dead.

If my assumption was correct, two had been victims of the guy with the nail-plank. They each had deep lacerations in their skin, stretching over their arms and faces. The marks were raw and bleeding, and looked very painful. The skin that the nail had been dragged through was ripped, and messy. One had been the boy, whose eye had been squished, leaving the socket a bloody, goopy puddle.

The remaining two had apparently each finished the other off, as they bore marks from the other's weapon. The branch and the makeshift flail, possibly the most useless out of all the weapons acquired. They had simply been beaten to death, with nothing but smashed teeth and split lips to show for it. They had died quickly enough that they didn't have the time to bruise, so their skin was relatively unharmed.

From behind me came the unmistakable sound of retching. The boy had a weak stomach. The stench of bile reached me, and I wrinkled my nose.
The three girls were screeching like banshees, swiping their hands like claws, and digging their fingernails into flesh. One girl was tugging on another's hair like her life depended on it, and was finally rewarded when the scalp it was attached to tore off, leaving her with a long lock of blond hair. She threw it to the side, and ran over to where the burnt man lay in a pile of melted skin and bone. The other two paid her no attention, and she took that opportunity to roll the corpse over onto his stomach. Sticking out of his back was the plank with the nail. It had been dug into his spine.

I wondered where that had got to.

The girl removed it with a squelch, and whirled back to join the fight. Now that she had the weapon, she was unstoppable. The nail tore at the girls' skin, and they wailed in response. Still, that didn't stop them from clawing at her with their hands, which soon proved to be useless against the power of her almighty plank. She slashed at them ruthlessly with her weapon, not slowing her blows until they were upon the ground. They lay there, curled in on themselves as the girl repeatedly raised her plank, and brought it down on them with a force I didn't believe her capable of.
The nail kept sinking into their skin, and they were bleeding profusely. Soon, they were dead. Nothing but mutilated bodies that the girl continued to bludgeon. She at last stopped, and looked down at what she had done. A laugh echoed around the room, high-pitched and girlish. Well, at least she could find the humor in the situation. I chuckled along with her, always having been a firm believer that nobody should laugh alone. Evidently, I needed to get some new beliefs, because this only managed to draw her attention to me. She turned slowly, and showed her teeth. I smiled, and held up my hands in front of me.
"Now, let's play nice".
She ignored me, and started toward the doorway I was standing in. To buy us some time, I took a step back and slammed the door. The boy was still hunched over at the waist, one hand on the wall supporting him as he stared intently at the pile of sick. He looked even paler, if that were possible. Oh, he was going to be useless in a fight.

"Hey, uh, you? We kind of have to go now… There's a crazy girl with a weapon out there, and I don't know if she thought I was laughing at her or something, but she's angry. And she has a plank with a nail sticking out of it".
He looked at me blankly. I groaned, and snatched his hand in mine.
"That means we run, you idiot". I dragged him along behind me as I sprinted down the short hall. We reached the end, and I noticed with dismay that the door was still blocked by stone. I tried the closest room, and it was still locked.
"Hey, do you think you could, I don't know. Use your shoulder as a battering ram and get us into this room?" The boy looked positively terrified at the suggestion, but he took a deep breath and stood up tall. He was preparing himself to do it, when his eyes caught on something behind me.
Fear bloomed in his eyes, and he pointed behind me with a shaking finger. I turned, and was greeted by a rabid brunette running down the hall to where we stood, holding her plank high.

"We need to get out into the open space; we can avoid her easily there". He seemed to be paralyzed with terror, so I took it upon myself to save him once again. When she ran at us, I stepped to the side, taking the boy with me. This didn't slow her down; she simply spun around at the end and resumed her attack. I charged down the hall, holding the boy by the wrist and expecting his feet to know what to do. Luckily, he seemed to get the idea and we were soon flying down the corridor, leaving the ragged breathing of the girl behind us.
We burst into the circular room and kept going to the other side, I released his arm halfway across and he stumbled once before picking up his feet and running beside me. When we reached the stone wall, we turned to face the girl. She was just coming through the door, and seemed to have slowed down some. But when her feet touched the soil, she returned to a sprint with more energy than before. I snuck a glance at the boy, expecting him to look sufficiently horrified. What I was not expecting was to see him snarling, and preparing to launch himself at the girl.

Deciding that it would probably be best to sit this one out, I edged my way out of her line of fire. They met in a slap of skin, and the nail missed tearing the boy's ear off by less than an inch. She threw the plank to the ground, and struck out at him with her nails. They scored along his right cheek, leaving miniscule scratch marks.
I had thought that he would be wary of hitting a girl, but he proved me wrong by delivering a hard punch to her stomach, which had her doubled over and clutching her middle. He was ruthless, giving her no time to recover before slamming his boot into her face. I heard bones crunch, and she came back up with a bloodied lip, and an equally damaged nose.
The girl swung out her arm, but he brushed it away easily and unleashed a volley of blows into her upper body. It wasn't long until she had been forced to the ground, and was it not for her weak attempts at deflecting his fists, I would have thought she was dead. The boy didn't stop, though. He kept driving attacks into her until she was just a mess of split skin and broken bones.
Having managed to kill her, he stepped away from the body of the girl and looked at me. Slick blood coated his hands, and was splashed on his face. It had gotten into his hair, and matted the strands together. The scarlet hue of the blood contrasted almost beautifully with his pale skin, and made me think of candy canes.

I smiled at him, intending to congratulate him on his victory. Before I could draw up the corners of my lips, he threw himself toward me. I barely managed to get out of his way, but that didn't stop him. No, he rushed at me again, and this time I couldn't avoid him. His fist glanced off the side of my head, and I hissed in pain. The second he came into contact with my skin, the murderous look vanished from his eyes. He looked down at his hands, and then up at me. I squinted at him, trying to figure out if he would attack me again.
"I'm so, so sorry. Really. I don't know what came over me, I was just so angry, and I'm so sor-" I cut him off with words of my own.
"Don't worry, you kind of saved my life, I guess. We're even". He nodded, and gestured towards the corpse of the girl.
"Shit, I can't believe I managed to do that". I followed his lead, and surveyed his handiwork.
"Hmm. Neither can I, just ten minutes ago, you lost it at the sight of the other guys". At that, he inspected the other bodies in the room. He broke out in a sweat and turned a strange shade of green.
"That's revolting. But, at least we're alive, right? I'm Daniel, by the way, we never got to formally…"
Daniel looked down to where my razor was protruding from his chest, a cloud of blood quickly spreading out from the entry point and soaking the white cotton shirt he was wearing. It had been easier than I expected, to get the blade through the muscle and into where it really mattered – the general location of the heart. He gazed at me, horrified. I stared at the wound, awed.

"I think that straight razors are meant for cutting, and such. Not stabbing, but… It did the trick, didn't it?" He didn't answer me, instead falling to his knees and pulling the weapon from his chest. He dropped it into the dirt. When he spoke, it was with a weak voice.
"You… You stabbed me". I smiled at his words, and bobbed my head.
"Yes, yes I did. First time doing that, too. I think I did quite well". This time, he didn't reply. He was still on his knees, trying to stop the flow of blood – rather unsuccessfully, I might add. I retrieved my razor from the dirt, and wiped it off on my jeans.
"Well, I guess I should be going, now. Don't worry, I'll just be over there," I pointed to my intended destination, "having a nap. I believe I've earned it, don't you?"
He ignored my question. I picked my way through the corpses, until I reached the patch of dirt that wasn't soaked through with blood. There, I lay down and drew my knees up against my chest. A muffled choking sounded from where I had left Daniel, but it died down quickly.
I dreamt of candy canes and barber shops. It was the best nap of my life.

If I haven't frightened anyone away... Review. That'd be fun, right?