33
Flip.
I open my eyes.
The sky is blurry. I think it is blue, with a tint of orange. The sun rays struggle to reach me, blocked by thick brown branches and green leaves. The thinner straight sun rays make it through, looking like piercing light behind shutters. My head feels heavy. I am still lying on my back. The earth underneath me feels like water; it helps me float, and prevents me from falling deep. I realize that I am hallucinating. No. I just woke up from a drug-induced dream.
I gather my strength to sit up, looking at the forest. It’s definitely morning, if not noon already. There is no one with me in the forest. There is an unfinished, melted chocolate bar next to me. Leo’s chocolate bar.
What happened to me? Am I still dreaming?
I don’t think so. The air I breathe feels so alive, and the world doesn’t feel secure like in dreams. This is the real world, as in-your-face as it gets.
No, I am not dreaming. But I am deaf.
My head feels so heavy. I shake it violently, hoping I can hear anything, but I can’t. The back of my head hurts. I look back at the chocolate bar, trying to resist the conclusions my brain comes up with.
I remember now. The chocolate bar. Leo sedated me.
Why?
Where is everyone?
What time is it?
Maybe all of this is just a bad dream. Maybe the Monster Show is just a constant nightmare, and all I need to do is wake up.
I walk around, lost, not thinking straight, wondering where everybody is.
Why would Leo do this? Is Leo my real enemy? Did he betray me?
No, I don’t believe this. We kissed yesterday. It felt right.
But the chocolate was an ambush. Why sedate me, Leo?
I see Leo’s backpack on the grass, closed and stuffed. As I kneel down to open it, I start to hear again. There is a faint sound coming from afar. The same sentence repeated over and over by different people, something that ends with the word knife.
I am not sure, hitting my head with my hands, looking around. The voices are approaching, but I can’t see anyone around.
I hear screams.
I get up, ready for anything. What is going on? I feel like something just popped out of my ears, like a huge amount of air pressure that blocked the sound from coming in.
I hear them now. They are screaming: “I am alive.”
The voices are coming from my iAm.
It’s Leo, Bellona, Woodsy, and Pepper. They are in the game. Why am I not there?
They look awful. Leo is cursing behind steel bars. There is a dead animal or some creature behind him on the ground. The picture is not clear. It’s phasing. Bad transmission. Why did they do this to me? Why did they leave without me? Anger fills my veins. Not because they left me, but because I am not fighting with them. I hear Timmy make fun of them.
So it’s almost noon, the third day of the games, and they decided to save me from dying? Whose idea was it to leave me behind?
Why didn’t I get an electric shock? No outranked can escape a game. They would be shocked instantly through the iAm.
Although I can hear, my left ear hurts badly. It hurts more in my neck, right under my ear. I reach for it. There is a wound with little traces of some liquid. I look back at my hand. It’s blood.
The first-aid kit! The one Leo and I got from the bus. He removed my receptor. Didn’t he say it was dangerous?
I look at the iAm in my hand. I am not connected to the network or the Summit anymore. They can’t track me. Leo and the others must have told them I died. This must have been their way of saving me, disregarding how I would survive here alone in the battlefields.
This is exactly what Woo would have done. Even though I doubt his survival. I am starting to believe that he couldn’t survive the Playa.
My stubbornness walks me out of the forest. I am not going to live a boring life down here. A life with no meaning. I am going to catch up with the others. I stop and look back at the bag, and go pick it up. I still feel dizzy and my head still hurts, but I have to fight, and I will give them hell.
The Monorail is not in its place, so I push the button to call it from a station called the Mirage. Why are they in the Mirage? Isn’t this supposed to be the Carnivore game in the Monsterium?
I keep thinking about Leo’s story about the Rabbit Hole. What is it that his mentor, Wolf, knows that we don’t? Does the Breakfast Club really exist, or is it only built in our minds? I don’t care. No turning back. I remind myself that if I die today, I will not die on my knees. I came here to bury myself in the Playa and hide forever with Woo, but today I will bury someone else.
The Monorail arrives. I jump in, watching the games. Timmy announces that two of the skaters are dead. What does this mean? Who is dead, and who is alive?
Timmy can’t track me now, so the Summit doesn’t know that I am coming. It wouldn’t be a good idea to call Timmy and declare that I am alive. The Monorail arrives at the Rabbit Hole, and takes the dive into the tunnel. After the usual crazy ride, it continues to the Mirage station. I can see the Mirage battlefield in my iAm. It’s like a huge desert with too many waterfalls, muddy earth, and… white tigers.
Is this what Timmy was talking about yesterday, when the audience said they were bored with the game in the Monsterium? The game is played now in this Mirage desert?
Timmy announces that the game is still on: they have only caged one tiger, and two are left. The game is about catching and caging the tigers, dead or alive.
Brutal and uncreative. That’s the plan. Brutal and raw enough to kill us all. It’s just like Ariadna said. The Summit doesn’t want to spend more money on the games, so they brought us a trio of tigers to chase us to death today. No more Artificial Sky or Breathing Domes.
There are eight million viewers watching today. That’s without me attending, I try to flatter myself. I need to boost my confidence even if my confidence is just imaginary. Belief and faith are the only things that are going to get me there.
I arrive. The Monorail doesn’t stop five stories high. It opens straight in front of the sandy desert, filled with the sound of Humvees and roaring tigers. I don’t have time to catch my breath.
“There she is,” Timmy screams through the iAm. An external camera must have caught me. So I am still connected to the network? At least they can’t trace me through the iAm anymore. “I know what you want, Decca,” Timmy claims. “I know what you want. You want to take a break, since you’re surprised you’re in the game already. But here is my advice to you: take a break when you are dead.”