You Are Still In A Birdcage

#1

((Gary Greer-Wheatly continued from The Dream Machine Takes All Of Us))

"... I...

"...

"... Sorry."

Gary couldn't stand to be in this place for another second. Just seeing - no, merely thinking about - kasdjsdkjfn made him feel like his whole world would suddenly twist and break just like fjkdsabfuiwe. Shaking, he somehow managed to get back on his feet.

He turned around.

"What-" Qkjhfkjshfekjwsf started to say.

Gary stormed away as fast as his feet could carry him away from kjdsfahgewu. It was a hasty run who almost ended with a stumble several times, but Gary always managed to catch himself. This was the only thing he didn't fail in today.

He wasn't nearly fast enough to outrun the voice behind him.

"Wait! You can't just- Please, come back! Don't leave me here alone!

"THEY WILL DETONATE YOUR COLLAR, YOU KNOW? YOU HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING ABOUT IT YET. JUST WHAT MAKES YOU THINK SOMEONE LIKE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO OUTWIT THEM?

"Just admit it, buddy. You are way in over your head."

With a shudder, Gary woke up.

His first thought was about why the hell he had encountered this dream again. It had been weeks since the last-

Then he realised that he wasn't in his room. He lay in a barely comfortable position in a sleeping bag on the floor of what looked like a ruin, a capsized bed to his left and a wall to his right. Just what-

Finally his brain catched onto the fact he was awake, and the memories of the prior day came rushing in. It almost overwhelmed him, making him close to vomitting. Good thing that his stomach was almost empty anyways.

Instead of sitting up or doing anything productive, Gary fell back and just stared at the ceiling, the sleeping bag wrapped around his lower half.

After the attempt to recruit Isabella had failed, Gary had spent the rest of the day in the compound. One time he had believed to hear some sort of explosion, but decided against investigating. Wherever his classmates where, they managed to always be where he wasn't. Eventually he had just found a nice place to sleep. Using the bed would have been much more comfortable but foolish, so he had capsized it to create a dead zone. Anyone looking into the room while he slept would have just seen a capsized bed and nothing more. If said anyone took a few steps into the room, they would have spotted Gary behind the bed, but with so many rooms, this was unlikely.

Seeing how Gary's backpack was in exactly the same position as last evening and how he was still alive, this strategy had paid off. Which left him with a very uncomfortable question.

Just what am I going to do now?

Despite searching almost the entire building, he had found nothing that would ensure a safe removal of his collar. Which wasn't too surprising, if he thought about it. The terrorists had decided when to abduct them, so they had had as much time as they wanted to prepare the arena.

That meant he had to find some help in his other classmates. The owl lady had talked big about having prepared a countermeasure for every gift, but Gary didn't buy it. The very nature of gifts was that mankind still knew next to nothing about them. No one knew why gifts had appeared or how they exactly worked. And with every gift being unique, knowing everything about one gift meant jackshit about any other gift, even if they were similar. So no, he was sure that the terrorists weren't as much in control as they wanted Gary and the others to believe.

Yesterday had been a waste, but only because he had made the mistake of focusing on one single person that he wanted to team up with, meaning that hours had gone to waste with a single "no". If he instead tried to assemble a group as big as possible, the odds of making progress were bigger. It would be more risky since a bigger group would get more attention from the terrorists and not everyone he would recruit would actually prove useful, but this was a risk he had to take.

Gary took out his notebook and pen. After ripping out the first two pages that had already been written on, he started to write on the third.

Please don't react openly, we are being watched.

I am assembling a group to escape. We will find a way to remove our collars and get out of this shitty game!

If you are in, please use one the following three phrases during the remainder of this conversation: "greedy", "flying" or "expecting".

That would hopefully do the trick.

Freeing himself from his baggy bindings, Gary stood up.

It was then that the loudspeakers in the arena powered up and the voice of the owl lady gave them their daily update.

Gary listened intendedly. He didn't fully trust the terrorists to provide accurate information, but knowing what their abducters wanted them to know could be useful.

His breath had a short stop at the names of the dead. Many had been his classmates. People he wasn't that close to, but who he had seen every day in school.

Gone forever.

The announcement ended with the owl lady making a disturbing encouragement. Then there was silence.

...

Staying in this empty room wouldn't help him. Gary moved on.

((Gary Greer-Wheatly continued in Paint It Black))