An Unexpected Party

#1

G12: Start

Kari woke suddenly, falling out of a dreamless sleep to find herself sprawled on the wet ground. For a moment, she struggled frantically to remember why she was there. She knew it was something important. Something big.

Seconds later, she was on her feet, panting, trying to blink away the curtain of darkness in front of her face. She was on an island somewhere, and she was supposed to start killing her classmates. And, more immediately relevant to her safety, her classmates were supposed to kill her. She picked up her bags and looked around. She was on an island (supposedly), but where on the island?

Stepping around a large tree, a bright shaft of sunlight caught her eye and she turned to see a lake glittering suddenly before her. That was one question down, at least. No doubt something that size would qualify as a major landmark. The obvious question still remained, though. She dropped her bags again, stepping into the sunlight, and started to pace the grassy shoreline. She knew she was on the side of some lake on some island somewhere in some ocean, which was well enough, but the big question, the one thing she really needed to figure out was: what next?

Well, for starters, she was going to get home. That was obvious. She was going to win. Honestly, that wasn't even a question. All she needed to do was beat out a bus full of classmates. A dormant coal within her chest took light under the stream of adrenaline. That wouldn't be such a hard fight. There probably wouldn't be more than a dozen who would pose any threat at all, and none of them had her indomitable spirit. Half of them would still be trying to fight themselves, trying to find another way out, letting doubt crack their resolve. And of those who remained, they'd see each other as threats, take themselves out. All told, there would really only be a handful of people standing in her way. Just two or three competitors she'd have to force her way through. She could do that. She could do that easily. Find out who her real competitors were, take top quarter, top third of the field. The burning feeling rose within her. If she'd ever not landed in the top echelon of her competition, it hadn't been for anything important. And if anything was important, this was. Winning was all there was. Winning was life itself.

Still, she didn't yet know what she had to work with. Not like that would matter. The fat man said they'd all get a weapon, and weapons were all more or less alike in that they could kill you. It didn't matter if it was a knife or a machine gun, you were dead all the same once your blood started flowing onto the ground instead of into your organs. She picked up the extra pack, hefting it in her hands. It didn't feel heavy and nothing was sticking out of it, so she suspected she'd drawn the short straw. Which was all fine. It made things fair. But as she opened the zipper, no stamped metal barrel presented itself. No glint of steel caught her eye. Her lungs froze mid-exhalation, but she searched through the contents expectantly. It didn't even occur to her that the man who would abduct a class and force them to kill each other might be lying, might not share her idea of what constituted a weapon. It was all a competition, and a competition had to be fair. Hell, they had a specific room temperature for her speedcubing competitions. There was no way someone could rig a competition of such higher gravity.

And then she found it. There was no alternative. There was nothing else in the bag. Map, compass, food, flashlight, first-aid kit. All presumably standard issue. All that, and a piece of folded paper. An invitation to Danya's birthday party. A gust of uncertainty rushed through her, fanning the competitive fire in her chest until it threatened to consume her, pounding her gut, forcing streams of tears down her cheeks. She scanned her memories of the bus trip for the names and faces of her competition. Some were smaller, weaker than her. But just as many were larger, faster, stronger. Uncertainty turned to horror. She'd have to kill them. Three dozen classmates, and they all had to be lying broken and bleeding on the ground before she could even think about returning home. If that part hadn't been a lie just like her weapon. Horror turned into cold disgust, finely-honed determination dripping down as slag.

No.

She looked around, searching for one of the cameras Danya had mentioned. There was one. And another. She didn't know if anyone besides Danya was watching, but he was audience enough. She couldn't let him watch her break down crying, throwing in the towel before the first round rang in.

"No."

She said it out loud this time. Hearing the word on the air was strangely reassuring. It forced her to keep going. She couldn't not play to win now. Not after vocalizing her refusal, making it something tangible. It was all on record now. She refused to give in for whoever was watching, and she wouldn't let them down.

She organized her things, dumping anything irrelevant for survival and placing them in her issued pack. Two things she kept on her person, though. Her Rubik's cube she slipped into the pocket of her hoodie. The invitation, she slipped into the back pocket of her jeans. It would get torn, wet, muddy, even bloodstained before this was all over. But so would she. And no matter how beaten-up, how frayed and shredded they both got, she'd know exactly why she was soldiering onwards.

She had a party to attend.

((Kari Nichols continued in Let's Go to the Mall!))