43
The Zeppelin hovers in front of me between the two mountains. Behind the glass, I see Prophet Xitler. A woman in her thirties, Eliza Day, is standing next to him. She is as beautiful as a doll.
The rain has stopped.
The glass opens, and I am face to face with Prophet Hannibal Xitler. I don’t know how I know who he is, but my heart beats faster. I am surprised he is even real.
Prophet Hannibal Xitler is sitting upon a fancy throne made of glass inside the helicopter. He is wearing a golden-striped robe, an outfit out of this world, and he is holding a strange cane with a snake crawling around it in one hand. The snake is alive. I see him pat it on the head. Xitler has long fingernails, like a woman. His hair is long, white, stiffed though. He must be like a hundred years old. A thousand? The lines underneath his eyes are nothing but grooves that could hold something in between them. He has a scar on his cheeks, and his eyes are the color of maroon. He looks ill, yet strong. Although he sits, I can see he is a tall man.
“Are we off camera, Timmy?” Xitler asks in his iAm.
“Yes, my Prophet,” I hear Timmy say.
“Hello, Decca,” says Xitler. “Now we can talk. Face to face, and away from the world.”
“I suppose I am the first to ever see your face. What do you want from me?” I ask.
“I want to know who you really are.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want to know what keeps you alive. What keeps you hanging on? What makes you refuse to shoot your friends for the price of your life? What makes you keep insisting on saying ‘I am alive’ in the iAm, even when the battery dies on you? What makes you want to save Leo and stay behind? What in the Burning Man’s name makes you want to fight Carnivore?”
“It’s a survival game, isn’t it? I am surviving. Until I win or lose.” I shift my eyes between him and Eliza, not trusting them.
“So you’re just playing?” Xitler chuckles, gazing at Eliza. “Didn’t I tell you? They’re just kids. They still think this is a game like any other,” he says to her.
“I am not a kid!” I snarl at him.
“I know, I know.” He bows his head slightly, as if paying his respects.
“What do you mean by us still thinking this is a game?” I wonder. “Isn’t this sick Monster Show designed for us outranked kids to get a second chance, so we might get ranked in your stupid system?”
“It’s a stupid system indeed.” Xitler nods.
I am puzzled by his honesty. He looks at me for a moment. I can’t make out what the look means. When I stare back at him, I feel like I am staring at a void, an emptiness, not a human being.
“Everyone in my nation has a number, Decca.” Xitler licks his reddened lips. It’s not lipstick. Could it be the blood of the outranked shed in the fields? “A number that lets me understand who they are, what they are made of, what they need the most. It’s called stereotyping, if you’ve ever heard of that. It’s a word that was cherished by the Amerikaz. I like stereotyping. I can control my nation with stereotyping, because now everyone has a number. So here is what I want to know. What is your number, Decca?”
“What’s the number of the human spirit?” I say, wondering where that came from.
Prophet Xitler considers my sentence, not looking happy. He takes off one of the fancy white gloves on his hands. As he does, Eliza tries to stop him.
“It’s all right,” he tells her. “We’re off camera.” He takes off the glove, and stretches out his bare hand.
Then he easily peels off the flesh of his hand, the way you peel skin off a banana. No blood comes out.
I shriek, hand on mouth.
“It’s all right,” he says to me. “I am not going to hurt you.”
Underneath his flesh, I can’t believe what I see with my own eyes. It’s a mechanical hand. It’s silver, wired with green liquid. It’s as if he is a robot or something, but there is also what looks like living tissue between the steel of his hand. It’s like he is a mix of both: machine and man.
“My whole body is like that,” says Xitler, pulling his flesh back over his hand, and pulling the glove back on.
“And you call us monsters? Huh,” I say.
“We’re all monsters, Decca,” Xitler elaborates with that plastic smile on his face. “Some of us have numbers, some of us don’t.”
“Why are you showing me this?” I wish I could get further back away from him. “Is everyone like this? Oh my God. Is the whole world like this?”
Xitler chuckles again, exchanging looks with Eliza. “No. No.” He — or it — waves his hands. “It’s only me. Even Eliza is human — I am also human, but let’s just say I am modified. The world is still human. Don’t you worry. If they weren’t human, they wouldn’t have fallen for my numbering system like lab rats running after a cube of cheese every day. I give them the same piece of cheese, and they just go get it, and wait for the next. Only, when you pull the cheese away, they start asking: who moved my cheese?” Xitler’s extra white teeth show through when he smiles.
“Who are you people?” I try not to stare at him too long. Xitler is like a contagious disease.
“We’re what the Amerikaz called the future.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s hard to, if you ask me,” he says. “Humans becoming so aggressive, youngsters fighting for their lives to get a number. If my ancestors had foretold that to the Amerikaz more than a hundred years ago, they would have been called madmen. People would have claimed that human nature is good and blah blah blah. They would have insisted that human evolution would never go down that ugly path. But anyway,” Xitler stops for a sip from a glass nearby. “What’s done is done, and my new system works. For the Summit, at least.”
“You mean you don’t approve of the games?” I ask.
“I mean they are not only games. They certainly do look like games, and make our nation ridiculously rich and dominant, but they’re not just games. The games have a greater purpose that has never been met in the last ten years. A purpose only I know about. I have a feeling it could be fruitful this year.”
“You mean all those kids and my friends have died for your… purpose? How sick are you?”
“Very.” Xitler chuckles.
I am speechless. Why is he talking to me? What is he?
“My sick purpose of the game is to find the—” Eliza touches him on the shoulder again, as if not wanting him to spill out the secret. He pats her hand for reassurance. “Ten,” he says to me.
“What?”
“I am looking for the Ten,” he repeats. “The number we all believe is a myth. The pinnacle of human power. The one and only. The zenith of what the human creature can become.”
“Ten is a myth.” I chew on the words, trying to avoid the million other conclusions in my head.
“What’s a myth, but a god turned fictional? What’s a myth, but a human turned monster, or a monster turned human?” says Xitler, cocking his head with amusement. “Why do you think we all love movies and stories about heroes? Why do you think we’d love to be like them? Because deep down inside, we know they exist. Somewhere. Somehow. The problem is that they don’t know who they are. Most humans don’t know who they really are, if you ask me, but that’s not the point. How can you know if you’re a Ten, if you don’t play the games?”
“You mean a Ten is one who survives the games?” I ask.
“Indeed,” Xitler nods proudly.
“How so? If there is a Ten, they should be smarter, brighter, and genetically better than a Nine.”
“Those stupid numbers,” says Xitler. “Didn’t I tell you they’re lab rats? None of them can be a Ten. They’re just disposable parts of the clockwork. The more you stick to the number the iAm gives you, the more you lose your humanity. A Ten has to rise up from the ashes, from a Monster.” Xitler claws his hand and raises it with his palm up, gritting his teeth. “A Ten is all human in a world where humans have become numbers. He — or she — is the one you leave behind in the jungle for dead, but then they come back like Tarzan, after killing the lions, the wolves, and the tigers. They come back and shout in your face that they are still alive,” says Xitler theatrically. His last sentence pretty much sums up all the levels in the game.
“But if your ranking system works just fine for you, what do you need a Ten for?” I ask.
“Who isn’t looking for a superman?” Xitler chuckles again. “Besides, that’s none of your business.”
“Yeah? So what is my business? Why are you here talking to me?”
Xitler leans back in his flying throne, resting his hands on his big belly. “I am here because there is a possibility you are a Ten, Decca.”
“Me?” I let out an exhausted sigh. Everyone thinks I am a Ten now. The Breakfast Club, Xitler, and God knows who else. “I am a barely sixteen-year-old girl who wishes she could sing. Which reminds me, I am a Seven.”
“You are.”
“You mean you know that I am a Seven?”
“Actually, you’re an Eight, because your friend Ariadna, who is a Nine, had some extra points in her results, and gave them to you.”
“Ariadna did that?”
“Yes, she did it. But I don’t want to talk about her now. It’s beside the point. I mean that if you didn’t switch the iAm and enter the games, I would have ordered them to throw you into the games anyway. Some of the Monsters in the games are not monsters at all. Some of them are potential Tens.”
“What?” I jump out of my place to the edge of the cave, wanting to punch him in the face, but the Zeppelin is still far from the edge. I couldn’t do it.
Eliza clicks her fingers, summoning soldiers, but Prophet Xitler stops her again, staring admirably at me. “Let her show me what a Ten can do,” he says.
“I am not a Ten,” I say, still clenching my fists.
“That’s not what Dame Fortuna, the gypsy woman said,” Xitler says. “Did you forget that this is the Year of the Ten? The prophecy could be right.”
“You design a strict nation built on the iAm’s calculations, and end up believing that old creepy woman?” I wonder.
“It’s human nature, Decca, to look for the unknown, and the unpredictable,” Xitler replies.
“You really confuse me with your answers. Forget about all that Year of the Ten thing. Tell me why you did this to me?”
“Because of Woo,” says Xitler.
I let my fist relax. Woo?
“I know you think that Woo is alive. That he has fooled us by not answering the iAm and saying ‘I am alive.’ But he is dead. Before Carnivore killed Woo, I asked him if there was someone he thought was a Ten. He denied it. But I knew better,” says Xitler. “You might not know, Decca, but Woo was one of the few left of the Breakfast Club.”
“The Breakfast Club?” I mumble to myself, wondering why I am so surprised. The Breakfast Club was the revolution, and Woo certainly loved that. “What do you mean by left?”
“In their last days, the Breakfast Club lived in ships out at sea, like pirates,” Xitler explained. “I am sure your soldier friends told you that they found the containers in the Arc before me, but they had to escape when I arrived, because I had an army ten times stronger than them. We chased them out of the Wastelands, and out of Faya, out to the sea.”
“So?” I find it strange that Xitler is telling me this. I am just a disposable girl, who could die at any moment.
“The Breakfast Club’s priority was to find the Tens. It seems to me that it was foretold to them through information they got from the Arc that they have to find Tens, as if it’s a prophecy or something. It made sense to me too. How could you oppose the Summit, if you can’t find the Tens? And you were one of those they believed were a Ten. Woo believed you were a Ten.”
“I don’t believe you.” Even though I know Woo did believe I was a Ten, I opposed Xitler, hearing Woo’s voice in my ears, “Tender.” “If Woo thought I was a Ten, he would have told me.”
“Woo lied to you, Decca,” Xitler explains. “Remember when you were seven years old and the iAm predicted you to be a Bad Kid, at a time when Monsters were called Bad Kidz? Remember when your mother wanted to kill you, and your father eventually sent you to a homeless neighborhood, so he could later report you as a missing child?”
“Vaguely, but yes,” I say reluctantly. I have a feeling that what I am about to hear will sound crazy.
“The iAm was right. We’ve added some factors to determine if certain kids are capable of becoming Tens. Since we’ve never met a Ten, the iAm results showed us that a Ten has to be a rebel. A rebel has to be one of the four lower ranks, Four, Three, Two, and One, which makes sense. A Ten is technically a threat to the Burning Man system, if not dealt with properly. To become a threat, you have to be one of those Monsters: those kids who cause hassles, those who do whatever they please, and those who are just kids like their parents made them, unwilling to do things except in their own way. You know that everyone who has ever done something useful in the world had those characteristics when they were kids?”
“That’s how all kids are,” I say. “It’s just you who doesn’t know that. I take it you’ve never been one. You, with your steel skeleton. What are you, Xitler? An alien? A machine? A monster?”
“A Monster?” He laughs, which gets on my nerves. “Believe me, I wish I were. And to answer you, yes, all kids are like this. But not all kids defy the rules they’re taught, and those are the ones I look for. The Monsters who could be Tens.”
“And how about those who were ill?”
“It’s a system, Decca,” says Xitler. “I never said I didn’t like my system eliminating each kid who doesn’t fit into my plans. I never said I don’t like making tons of money from people loving our games worldwide. In fact, I like it a lot. All I am saying is that there is a greater possibility that the Ten is one of the Monsters. And I want the Tens. I have great use for them. I will not tell you about it, and I will not tell you what I really am. At least, not before you prove that you’re a Ten.”
“I am listening.”
“So back to when you were ranked a Monster at seven. Your parents were going to send you away, and your mom wanted to kill you — I am not the only evil grownup you know.” He winks. “Woo decided that you were worth saving. I should add that he might have loved you as well, but that is off the subject. So Woo gave you his Woo-Chocolates.”
“What about them?”
“They’re not just chocolates, Decca.” Xitler bends forward. “They’re expensive biometric substances, disguised in chocolates. They manipulate your brain into following the system. It stops you from being a rebel, so you got fair results on the iAm. Woo gave them to you because he knew you loved chocolates, and those were pretty addictive. The Woo chocolates have the same taste, but they aren’t real chocolates.”
“No way,” I say, while actually believing Xitler. I was a rebel when I was young. I remember standing by the refrigerator, and my parents debating about killing me. I remember.
“Although Woo knew you were a potential Ten,” says Xitler, “it’s my belief that he wanted to save you because he loved you. But I could be wrong too. The Breakfast Club might have ordered him to keep you out of the games.”
“Why would they do that?”
“To keep you hidden as a Ten. Hidden from me. They must have figured out that my optimum purpose in the games is to discover a Ten.”
I feel dizzy. Woo, did you keep me from the games because you felt for me, or did the Breakfast Club order you to? If you did it for me, should I be thankful for you deceiving me into obeying the system? Or should I be mad at you for being overprotective and interfering with what should have been my own choice? And if it’s all about this mysterious Breakfast Club that believes that I am a Ten, what is so special about me? Who am I, really? I have the right to know who I am.
My inner talk about who I am reminds me of Alice in Wonderland. Considering all the talk about the Rabbit Hole that supposedly can get us all out of Faya, I feel pretty much like Alice. I don’t know who I am. I do know that I want to stay alive, but what then? Will I finally know why Woo did that for me?
“You know those dreams you get of Woo training you?” Xitler asks, daring my eyes, almost slanting beyond my soul.
“How do you know about those?”
“Those are no dreams, Decca,” says Xitler. “They were real training sessions that took place before Woo attended the Monster Show. Woo trained you to become everything a Ten would be, if they were really a Ten.”
“What are you talking about? Those are only dreams.”
“No dreams are so vivid. You only think they are dreams because Woo fed you the chocolate after each training session, so you forgot about them and thought they were dreams. The chocolate interacted with the receptors we plant in every newborn’s head under the ears, and prevented the iAm from detecting the training sessions. When Leo removed it in the forest, you started remembering. Bit by bit. That’s why your full potential hasn’t surfaced yet.”
Oh my God. He is right about that. This was why I remembered how to use a bow gun when we were playing Wheel of Fortune, and why I found myself knowing how to shoot Carnivore in the Mirage if I got a chance, and how I felt funny and more confident since Leo removed the receptor. And … there are some blurry memories waving before my eyes now, like watching something in the rain. I know there is something happening, but I can’t interpret it.
“Why do you think you have good survival skills? Why do you think you can shoot a bow gun? How did you make it so far when I changed this year’s games to blow up all that preparation of yours? It’s all coming back to you, Decca, and I want to see how far you can go.”
Words escape me. I am silent. All I can remember is how reluctant I was after I switched my iAm with Eva’s. Looking back at it now, I should be laughing at myself. Look how far I have come. Look how far my path has changed from finding Woo, to becoming the only Monster left to win the games. Is this how I should expect the rest of my life to become? I plan one destination, and end up somewhere else?
“Is that why I feel confused?” I ask Xitler. What a great idea! But when the angels are gone, there is no one left to talk to you but the devils. “Is this why I felt contradicting emotions all the time?” A tear is about to roll down my cheek, but I hold back. Not in front of Xitler. “Is this why I feel like my thoughts are all over the place? I mean, all this time with Leo here in the cave, I have had thoughts about pushing him over to save myself. It’s not what I want to do, but the thought crossed my mind.” I hate myself for telling this to Xitler. I make believe that I am talking to myself.
“No,” Xitler purses his lips, seemingly irritated by my moment of weakness. I forgot he wants a superhero. They don’t cry. Do they? “The iAm didn’t cause those feelings. It’s called growing up, Decca. Something that I wish to spare the people of Faya of in the future, because it’s one of the hardest things to do.”
It occurs to me that, no matter how creepy and evil Xitler is, there is a shadow of humanity hiding behind his metal skeleton. The last words he said evoke questions about him and his childhood.
“However, there is still one thing that I don’t understand,” he growls. “Why did you have to switch the iAms and enter the game? Why?”
“You know why. I thought Woo was alive, and wanted to find him,” I slam back. Is this dude a douche, or is he a douche?
“You see. This explanation doesn’t add up, because you were still eating Woo-chocolates like I told you. One chocolate per week. Let alone that eating the chocolate for about seven years had already changed your inner system. Obeying the Summit had become a normal thing for you too. So planning to enter the games for a year, and risking your life is a very strange behavior that I can’t figure out.”
Finally something that Xitler doesn’t know the answer to. But I know. I didn’t enter the games because I had an epiphany of how bad the Summit was, and that I had to rebel against it. Nor did Woo tell me to do it before he entered his games. Xitler is right. The moment I entered the games, I was still thinking I was a Seven, and the memories of my mom trying to kill me were only vague and unimportant. There is one other reason I had to find Woo, and I will keep that to myself. It’s personal.
“I guess you can’t stop a Ten from doing what she has to do?” I wink, spreading my arms slightly, acting lightly so Xitler accepts it as an answer. “So tell me, Xitler,” I follow before he has a chance to think it over. Also I don’t call him Prophet Xitler to mess with him. “If Woo refused to tell you, then how do you know about me?”
“Because we know everything,” says Xitler. “We’ve been watching him train you, and let him think he was fooling us. The iAm detects everything, even Woo’s chocolates. We waited for you to see if you were a Ten, Decca. We’ve waited for others before, but they’ve all failed us, and died in the games. We even waited for Woo, thinking he could be a Ten, but he gave in to Carnivore.” Xitler spreads his hands. “Carnivore is the ultimate test, Decca. Even Woo didn’t know how to kill it. If you can kill Carnivore, you’ll be the one.”
“What? Why Carnivore?”
“Because Carnivore is my fiercest weapon. The optimum of my genetically mutated creations. And because of a prophecy.”
“Prophecy?”
Xitler leans back in his throne. It’s obvious he doesn’t want to talk about this. “There’s some kind of prophecy I found in the Arc containers I found under the Burning Man. It claims that whoever survives Carnivore is probably a Ten.”
“A Ten?” I wonder. “They couldn’t have prophesized that, since they didn’t have the ranking system.”
“Smart girl.” Xitler is impressed. “They didn’t say Ten. They said rebel. The ones who are capable of bringing down my system. I call them Tens. But don’t worry, I am not going to hurt the Tens, or I could have just killed them on sight. I have better and bigger plans for them. That’s all I can say for now.”
“So you’re accepting my offer? That’s why you’re here?” I ask, tiptoeing on the edge.
Xitler nods seriously. “How can I refuse, after you came up with that crazy ClairVo idea? We’ve sold about ten million glasses worldwide in the last hour. You know how much each one costs? If you weren’t a Monster, you would have been good in the marketing department in the Summit.”
“Will you save Leo? Can you save his leg?”
“Whatever you wish,” says Xitler. “We could buy your parents a better house too. Anything you ask for, as long as you put on the ClairVo glasses and fight Carnivore. I mean, I would dig up the presidents of the Amerikaz from their graves and tell them: ‘Look. Did you ever see anything like this with all your 3D movies and stuff? Here is the real future.’”
“You know I can’t kill Carnivore, right?” I say, wishing I could.
Carnivore roars from above, and Xitler chuckles.
“Shut up!” I shout desperately.
“He wants you, Decca,” says Xitler. “He wants you so bad. Maybe he knows you’re the one.”
If I can save Leo, I have to stick with what I have started. What difference does it make if I die? My parents wanted to kill me when I was seven. The Summit will not pick me up if I win, and I will die eventually in this cave. If I save Leo, he will be the winner of the games, and he will stay alive. Maybe that is what being a Ten is about. If I am a Ten.
“Okay,” I nod. “But you have to supply me with all the weapons I ask for to kill Carnivore, even if I ask for a bazooka.”
“Others have asked for it, and it never worked. But I promise you, I’ll give you whatever you think you need to fight it,” says Xitler. “I believe you have never seen the Carnivore games.”
“No.”
“Not even the one with Woo?”
“Not even that.”
“There is nothing to see, since it’s all white over white shades. The only one who sees what’s going on is the one who plays the game. Now we have you with the ClairVo inside the battlefieldz. How didn’t any of my lazy assistants think of that before?” Xitler grins at Eliza. “Imagine this headline: ‘One hundred million viewers watching with only one girl’s pair of eyes.’ My soldiers will save Leo, while I’ll send a special Zeppelin for you. You will spend the night in my Royal Tower, until the fight.”
“Spend the night? I thought I’d fight Carnivore.”
“Of course you’ll fight him, darling,” Xitler says happily. “It’s just, no one fights Carnivore at night. His powers are in fighting in the morning, so it’s all overly bright and white. This is going to be the best show in the history of television.”
“Okay. I could use the time to rest,” I say.
“Remember one more thing when you’re down there in the Monsterium fighting Carnivore.” Xitler leans forward again, closer to me. I feel like I am going to vomit. “They say whoever gets to see Carnivore in the game with his own eyes never lives to tell about it.”
“Yeah.” I pout at him and Eliza. “How about I teach you something? Especially Eliza.”
“Huh. Me?” she utters, pretending to be checking her nails.
“Yes. You. Remember when you told me every girl dies?”
“You’ve got such a black heart.” She raises her thin eyebrows and Xitler chuckles. “Yes. I remember. What about it? It’s true. Every girl dies.”
“Wrong,” I object. “You only got half of the sentence right.” Woo has taught me the full phrase. “Every girl dies. But not every girl really lives.”