42
“Hello!” I scream, standing over Leo on the edge of the ledge. The rain shatters my words into shards of splintering hope, falling from the sky into the river.
I inhale deeper and deeper, filling my diaphragm with all the air I can, and scream “Hello!” again into the void. If I am a bad singer, I am not a bad screamer. The void that once echoed back and forth is now dead, blunt, and too wet to resonate. No word echoes. No scream awakens the fluttering birds hiding in their caves from the rain. No Monster is heard in the rain.
But I scream for help again, staring right into the eyes of the dead iSees hovering around me. The world can watch me and see me, but I can’t communicate back. Saying I am alive in the cameras of the iSees doesn’t count. It has to be in the iAm.
My iAm is dead, but I am not.
I am alive.
I scream for help again. There must be someone here who can help me. Maybe the girl I saw has a family that lives here. The battlefields can’t stay abandoned all year. It doesn’t make sense. Like an abandoned building, closed amusement park, and all empty haunted schools in every town and city, there is always someone living inside for some reason. I don’t mind if they are ghosts, let them answer me.
But no one answers me. No one is here, but me and Leo.
Only one other creature hears my scream. It’s the only one who could be interested in me. It’s Carnivore.
Looking up, I see it roar at the edge of the cliff, sticking out its head, looking for me. The rain has washed it clean. It is all white again. What kind of creature is it? How genetically manipulated is it? It looks so beautiful — the one eye aside — yet it’s so vicious and lethal.
“You’re a coward, you know that?” I say to it, as rain trickles down my throat. “I dare you to come down here. Spend one hour in this cave.”
Carnivore grunts at me. It’s astonishing how it understands. It wants to get wings and fly down here, and rip me apart. Who created this creature?
I kneel down beside Leo, begging him to wake up. Leo is gone, but breathing.
I sit back in the cave with the bee floating heavily in the air around me. Its wings must have caught the rain. I used to be afraid of bees. She won’t sting me though. We’re friends.
“Hang on, Honeybee,” I say to her. “You mind if I call you Honeybee?”
The bee buzzes around and flutters its wings twice.
“I take it that twice is yes, once is no,” I mumble.
The bee flutters its wings twice.
“Do you like the rain?” I ask for experimentation.
The bee flutters once.
“You like Carnivore?”
It flutters its wings once.
“You miss your flowers now that they’re soaked in the rain?”
It flutters twice.
“Okay,” I chuckle. “I guess it’s working.”
It flutters twice.
“You think Leo’s nose is made of honey?”
The bee flutters twice, and circles happily.
I laugh, my chest shaking.
So it’s Honeybee and me after all. I wonder how I’d feel if I got transported back in time, and my mom crashed into my room reminding me of my homework. How much would I laugh at this?
I look at the iAm lying dead on the cave’s floor. Even the iAm dies. How about that. The machine that decides for us who we become lies dead with its battery empty.
I remember Woo telling me to never give up. Never give up.
What have I got to lose?
I pick up the iAm again, and hold it tightly in my hands.
“Do you think I’ll make it?” I ask the bee. It flutters twice.
My thumb flirts with the button on the iAm. I swallow. Maybe this is what they call faith. I push the button.
The green light flashes on.
“I am alive,” I shout into the iAm. Timmy is staring at me. “I am alive, Timmy. Hello world. I am alive,” I repeat, holding the iAm tightly in my hands.
“I know. I know,” Timmy replies. “The world is not deaf, you know.”
The world is welcoming me back onto the network. They’re not asking about Leo. They think he is dead. I check Leo’s pulse. He is not.
“And Leo is alive,” I say.
“Leo doesn’t count anymore,” says Timmy. “He has to speak. Bzzz. Bzzzz. You know.” Timmy’s sweet revenge.
“But he is alive,” I insist, my thumbs pressing harder on the screen, as if wanting to choke Timmy through the iAm.
“If he can’t talk, he is no use,” explains Timmy. “For all I know, only one is still alive in this game. It’s you.”
“What if we trade places?” The words just slip out of my mouth.
“What do you mean?”
“Leo needs medication right away,” I explain. “His leg is hurt, and turning blue. I am afraid it will have to be amputated if he isn’t saved now. I saw this once on TV; a man was stuck alone in the mountains like us, and was bitten by a snake. If you send someone to save him, I’ll give in.”
“What?” Timmy scratched his head. “You want to be left behind in that cave, to save him? How many times do I have to remind you that this is a survival game, so you can finally be ranked? This is not about love and stuff.”
“Timmy,” I plead. “Please—” The iAm’s battery indicator starts flashing and fading. I have no time.
“No,” says Timmy firmly. “The Summit doesn’t approve. Besides, what fun will that be? The audience wants to watch a game, not another episode of ER.”
Think, Decca, I tell myself, holding the iAm as gently as possible, as if that will prevent the battery from giving up for good.
“Let’s face it, Decca,” says Timmy. “You have got nothing the audience is interested in anymore. Nothing but watching you trying to survive in that cave. Even that is starting to become boring. It’s over, Decca. The iAm’s battery is going to give up on you any minute now. Unless you have a spare battery, you’re toast. And I really want to go home and get some sleep.”
“There must be something I can do, Timmy,” I say. “Please. I want to save Leo.”
“What could you possibly have that you could bargain with?” Timmy sighs.
I hear Carnivore roar again through the rain. An idea pops into my head. A deadly one, but I have to save Leo. “Let me fight Carnivore,” I offer.
Timmy stares at me again, not saying a word. He looks as if he wants to look at me closer through the iAm, to see if I am for real. He can’t believe I’ve asked for it. I can’t believe I have asked for it either, but I did, didn’t I?
Timmy moves off camera for a moment, summoned by someone. What’s going on? I have no time for this. The iAm will give up.
“Think of it this way,” I try to persuade the Summit. “Another last game. The infamous Carnivore game. The whole world will be watching,” I say, implying that this will bring them so much money. Besides, they know that no one can survive Carnivore, so they will find a good ending to the games. Only Leo will survive. Leo is still a Nine to the audience. If he misbehaved, then he has been punished in the games already. They won’t mind making him a winner.
“It’s a generous offer, Decca,” says Timmy, showing back on the screen. “But the Summit has to say no. Although the audience loves the Carnivore game, they hate it too, for they can’t see it clearly. You know its theme is all white. Carnivore is white, and the sands are white. Our cameras can’t broadcast it properly. There is nothing to see until the contestant dies and we see the red blood. We love Carnivore, but we’re considering cancelling his part of the show. This is why we have invented the game you played this morning with Carnivore and the mud.”
“I can make this game better,” I say without thinking.
“How so?” Timmy is fed up, praying my iAm just dies on me right now.
I don’t know what to say, staring at the iAm, waiting for a genie to pop out of it and help me. The iAm shows my screen saver. It does that when I don’t talk into it for a while. The screen saver shows Woo’s favorite words:
If I could only see with your eyes.
I touch the screen saver away, and then something strange happens. The Summit broadcasts footage of the kids who were watching the game from their Zeppelins this morning, wearing their ClairVo glasses so their friends could watch the game with the exact same emotions from far away.
It finally clicks. If I could only see through your eyes.
“How didn’t anyone ever think of this?” I whisper to myself.
“Excuse me?” says Timmy.
“I have it, Timmy,” I say enthusiastically. “I have it, world. I know now what I have that I could bargain with.”
“Enlighten me, princess,” says Timmy.
“My eyes,” I say. “My eyes, Timmy.”
“Are you hallucinating there in your cave?” Timmy mocks me. “Please give me some of that stuff you’re smoking there, because it seems really wacky.”
“What if I enter the Carnivore game wearing the 10D glasses, the ClairVo?” I say. Timmy shrugs. “What if I fight Carnivore with the glasses on? What if you can see me, and feel the same fear and anxiety the Monster feels while playing the game?”
The world shrugs.
So does my iAm. It gives up on me. I’ve used its last dying breath. I throw it to the side and lean back again, not knowing if I have been persuasive enough.
“Not good, huh?” I ask Honeybee.
The bee flutters its wings once.
“I know,” I say. “I was just one hour away. Just one hour, and I could have won the game.”
The bee flies closer to me. It lands on the tip of my nose.
I laugh again. “So my nose is honey now?” I mumble.
The bee flutters twice.
Carnivore roars from above.
Wait. That is not Carnivore.
It’s the sound of an engine. It’s one of those Zeppelins.