17
“You can’t do that,” I protest. “Ten hours between the games.” I know he is punishing us for turning off the iAms. I don't even have time to look for Woo.
“Not if it’s for your own good,” says Timmy. “All of you need water for the rest of the games. The next game will earn you that water supply. In case you’re wondering, I will contaminate any lake or water source available in The Playa.”
I feel angry with myself. This means there are lakes and other water resources in the battlefields that we don’t know about. Even though the Playa seems infinite, I should have looked. Leo said that we needed water and a place to hide. I didn’t do anything about it, but complain.
Now we are going to bargain with our lives for water. It’s too soon. It’s unnecessary. I am anxious to know what sick game we’re going to play now.
In my iAm, I see Timmy standing behind a podium on stage in an opera hall. He is dressed in a tuxedo, wearing joker-like makeup, resting his hands wide on the podium, faking seriousness. “Ladies and gentlemen.” He coughs, covering his mouth with one hand, pretending to have said something wrong. “I mean, boys and girls of Faya.”
Timmy’s show gets the audience’s attention. Teens start posting comments and opinions about the game. The channel broadcasting on the iAm shows anticipatory boys and girls sitting in the sky-high Zeppelins, hanging in the air outside the Playa.
“Viewership dropped to one and a half million in the last hour, but I promise you that this..." Timmy points at a large screen behind him showing the glass dome, “will blow your mind.”
Even though I can see the dome in front of me, I prefer watching it on the iAm. The broadcasting is thoroughly detailed, and the dome looks beautiful. It is made of shiny, transparent glass that covers a huge circle of icy floor beneath, which is a little bigger than an ice-hockey field. The glass looks unbreakable. Footage from the iAm shows Timmy earlier, dressed in a military outfit. He is ordering soldiers to fire a cannon at the dome. The bomb simply glides over the dome like a drop of water. Another one of those silly Instant-CGI effects.
“What you see is state of the art, designed by our genius designers. This dome is made of glass, very strong glass. Its circular base is an ice-skating field. We call it the Breathing Dome. Interested?”
The broadcast shows videos of bored housewives, barely interested in what’s on TV. The Breathing Dome isn’t attracting a lot of viewers.
“Not interesting enough?” says Timmy, watching the counter. “I am sure we can work something out.”
Twenty men and woman start entering the dome, wearing black ice skates. They are muscled and huge, looking awful and scary. They look like wrestlers. The men are shirtless, and the women — who look like angry men — wear metallic bra armors. The men have big stomachs, as if stuffed with giant metal balls, and hairy chests like gorillas. The veins in their necks are visible. Their shoulders look like the curves on top of a mountain. Their wrists are as thick as Leo’s arm. They have implanted horns, sticking out their heads. The men have their heads shaved. The horns make the women look like devils. The horns are implanted into their skulls, not stuck on. All of them wear gas masks with the symbol of the Burning Man on it. The tattoos on their arms are Sixes, but there’s an X on top of the Six. I wonder what that means. And finally, they wear school ties on their bare flesh.
They look weird. I mean, they are intimidating, but they look like they’re showing off in a circus.
“Teenies and weenies, let me present: the Bullies.” Timmy points at the weird men and women.
Still, the crowd isn’t that excited.
“Wow. Look at those armored bras,” Roger This says. How did he survive the School Exploding Bus? No one pays attention to him.
“So what is the damn game about?” someone asks from the audience in the Zeppelins.
“The Breathing Dome has all the water the Monsters need underneath the ice. To get it, they will have to kill the twenty Bullies inside the dome. The catch is that there is no oxygen inside the Breathing Dome.” Timmy laughs. “How ironic. No air in the Breathing Dome.” He claps his hands together like a clown. “While fighting in the dome, the only way to breathe air is from within the breathing booths you can see inside the dome.”
He points at tall glass boxes that look like phone booths. There are oxygen inhalers inside the booths. The back of each booth is connected to a large blue tube that supplies it with the oxygen. The tubes, wide enough, run all over the icy ground, already posing an obstacle to the ice skaters. We’ll have to jump over them.
“The Monsters have to survive the Bullies with no air in their lungs. They’re allowed to enter the booths briefly to inhale the oxygen they need, and get back to the killing fields of the Breathing Dome — if the Bullies let them. When the Monsters are in the Breathing Booths, they are immune. I believe this is exceptionally fair.”
The viewers’ counter is alarming: two and a half million people are watching.
“Sick lunatic.” Bellona spits on the ground. “I am glad we know how to skate on ice, or we would have lost already.”
“I can’t,” says Leo.
Bellona and I can’t believe our ears.
“Then we’re all going to die in there.” Bellona lets out a painful chuckle.
“You can’t skate?” I wonder. Really? I thought you were some arrogant superhero who could do anything.
“Yes,” answers Leo. He is cool about it though. I don’t think he understands how this could hurt us. “I’ll walk barefoot.”
“You’re such a caveman.” I roll my eyes.
“You will crack the ice. You are too heavy,” explains Bellona. “This is why the ice skates are thin. It creates as little friction with the ice as possible. With your weight, you can’t fight without breaking the ice. If you break the ice, you’ll drown in the water underneath, and contaminate it. Capiche?”
“I have clean feet,” says Leo. It's hard to tell if he's mocking her or not. He is in his machine mode again. Seek and destroy.
“And you said you don’t have enough ammo, right?” I remind him.
“Two bullets,” he says. “I have a knife. And my bare hands.”
“We need weapons inside. We can’t fight the Bullies without weapons,” says Bellona. “We have to think of some way to get weapons.”
Timmy demands that we put on the ice skates and grab the caterpillar tubes provided, which we will use as water containers. They are elastic bottles that look like a big worm, with a fixed curving straw that squeezes up the water from underneath the ice.
I don’t have a plan, neither does Leo. I am afraid his improvisation techniques are going to get us killed. I know that he will eventually find some heroic way to do his best. I need to learn that planning was in the past. Here everything has to be outsmarted on the spot.
“Entry to the dome is obligatory, or I will explode me some Monsters.”
“Can he do that?” I ask Leo and Bellona.
“It’s more of an electric shock like the one I had in the forest,” says Leo.
“You had an electric shock?” Bellona admires Leo with her eyes. “And you’re still alive. Man, you are strong.”
I am starting not to like Bellona. I don’t know why.
“Did Decca give you a hard time? Did you just want to end your life?” continues Bellona, touching Leo’s arm. Leo puts his poker face on. Actually, Leo has his poker face on most of the time. It’s more of a poker-slash-dumb-slash-Terminator face. How many times did girls hit on you, Leo? Of course, my question applies to your past life, when you were a rock star, before becoming a mindless killing machine.
“So we enter the dome, get the water we need, and get out?” I ask Timmy, neglecting Bellona's annoying comment.
“You enter the dome, kill the Bullies, fill your Caterpillars with water, each member has to leave with one, and get out,” explains Timmy. “Or you can take a shortcut: enter the room and die. I wish I could warn you of trying to break the rules. But don't worry; you won't break any, because there aren't any,” says Timmy, peeling off a banana.
Bellona is talking with the skaters. They are confident they can kill the Bullies, all of them, if they can get their hands on the swords. Which won't happen if we don't use the Breathing Booths effectively. This time, I don't pay much attention to Timmy's comments. I let his voice fade away, like a forgotten nightmare. We are sixty-six outranked about to enter the dome.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Slowly.
The skaters know how to ice skate. Bellona orders them to stand second row inside, ten feet away from the Bullies.
About twenty of us can't skate. They tumble, whine, and ask for help. No one can teach them now. Bellona orders them to stay third row. I wonder why she wouldn't let them be first row. We could sacrifice them. I hate that I even think that.
Leo is his own master, no one argues with him. He hardly manages to stand still. I don't know what he will do about the skating. I won't ask. All I think about is how to stay alive, wondering if my family is watching the games.
“The twenty in the back are dead,” Bellona whispers in my ear. “I say they are twenty extra razor-edged weapons. If I can’t get me a sword, I will use their skates as blades after they die.” I thought I was cold-hearted. “You and I will be up front,” she continues.
I am good at skating. Woo taught me. I was fourteen, and I became even better than him. I will manage, but I don’t understand why Bellona wants me first row. I suspect she is planning to sacrifice me too.
“No,” Leo interferes. “Decca stays close to me.”
“Oh, I take the kiss did its magic,” Bellona grins. “While my soldiers get the swords, and probably kill as many as they can, Decca and I will use a collision tactic.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“You will trick one of the Bullies into hunting you. I do the same to another one. We run into each other as they try to catch us, and we both duck at the last possible second. We crouch, and they collide into each other like heavy pigs. We pick up their swords.”
I think it over. It sounds good. It’s like ducking in Dodgeball. It’s going to be harder for Bellona, since she is taller. I am shorter than most, and lighter in weight.
“This is not for you, Leo,” I tell him. “You can stay close, considering you can barely skate.”
Leo doesn’t like it. He nods cautiously though. “Okay,” he says gravely. “You two breathe steadily. Inhale four counts in, hold your breath for one count and let it out for two. Do it now,” he tells us. “This will keep you calm before playing. Right before we put one foot in the grave, inhale as long as possible and give ’em hell.”
Woo taught me the same technique.
“All right.” Bellona’s eyes shine. “Twenty Bullies to kill. Easy peasy.”
“Lemon squeezy,” says Leo, and hits fist to fist with Bellona.
Suddenly, we hear a loud horn, and the glass door to the dome opens. Leo dashes in before us, and shoots two of the Bullies dead with the last two bullets. He loses balance and falls to the side, yelling at Bellona, “Eighteen left.”
Bellona’s plan flies out of the window. The horn was a surprise. In the blink of an eye, we're thrust inside the dome. No breathing, no preparing, and no plan. I have to learn this. Planning is not a strategy here. Being alert at all times is a necessity.