The Program V3 Announcements
Prologue[edit | edit source]
The wail of air raid sirens was not quite commonplace in Bellington, but it also wasn’t far enough out of the norm to arouse particular shock. Fear, of course, was a different story. While the American planes made their runs quickly and at a relatively high altitude, the damage was still real. There had been deaths—not many, but all it took was for someone to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. More than that, the bombing runs provoked a sort of tired resignation among the populace. Even if the vast majority of the ordnance failed to make contact with anything of note, someone’s house would be partially destroyed or some business would be wrecked or some little area of peace, a pond or a bench under an old tree, would be obliterated. Every time the planes came, life became just that little tiny bit worse.
Saint Editha Academy was no stranger to this process. The school had sustained damage in bombing runs before, and in fact some parts of the building were still undergoing repairs. The evacuation process was familiar to all the students. As the sirens screamed throughout the town, classrooms emptied one after another, clusters of students making their way in quick yet orderly fashion towards the bunker built into the bottom of the school, below even the gymnasium. The teachers shepherded them, demeanors grim but stoic, shouting clipped corrections to any who strayed or took the process anything less than perfectly seriously. It was efficient, practiced, safe.
For the most part, anyways.
Two classes faced a slightly more chaotic process. Due to lacking classroom space because of the damage, a few courses during the busiest times of day had been relocated to an old stone outbuilding across campus from the primary facility. When the sirens began, a maths course and an English course were in progress there, a few dozen students either doing their best to focus on their lessons or to avoid doing so. The outbuilding was a fairly popular location, in part because the greater distance from the main campus provided ample excuse for a measure of tardiness and in part because the instructors exiled to it tended to be lax.
Mr. Shaw, in charge of English, was an oddly cheerful, careless sort, and in fact when the racket began he almost sprang out of his chair, clapped his hands, and beckoned his charges after him as he set out across the open field with long, loping strides. By contrast, Mrs. Horton let out a little shriek, though quickly took to yelling for order.
The populace of both classes merged into one big mass, absent the careful coordination of their peers indoors. This, too, was not uncommon. Haste was the order of the day, but still the threat did not feel overly real. The early warning system was advanced, and sometimes the Americans just buzzed the town. Bellington was not a high enough priority target to really justify heavy expenditure of ammunition.
Today, though, something went wrong. Mrs. Horton was leading the charge, less an inspiring leader and more the one most concerned for her own safety. Perhaps that was why, when she stumbled and dropped to the ground, Mr. Shaw giggled. He didn’t realize what had actually happened, didn’t notice the puff of blood that exploded from her chest, until a second later. He didn’t hear the gunshot over the keening. He didn’t know what was happening until he, too, was under fire. Two quick shots caught him in the throat and temple, and this was harder to misunderstand.
Some of the students screamed. Some turned to run. Nobody got far, though. The span between outbuilding and school was wide open grass, lined with hedges, and over these hedges now hopped a dozen heavily armed, armored figures. They shouted to each other, accents all-too-familiar from movies and the news. Americans.
“Freeze,” the man who must have been their leader called out. “You all are coming with us. Any resistance, you’re dead. Hands over your heads. Now.”
One boy decided to chance it. He made it two steps before he was cut down by gunfire. After that, nobody had much resistance left.
The Americans marched the students away. Though they did not yet know it, they were bound for a pair of helicopters, and thence to a United States facility in Ireland, where they would be drugged into unconsciousness and across the ocean. There was no discussion—their captors made it clear that would not be tolerated—but private speculation ran high. Were they to be hostages, prisoners of war offered up for trade? The Americans were known for underhanded tactics that defied the typical rules of warfare, but this was a whole other level. Were they to be grilled for information? Used as propaganda pieces?
Nobody, of course, figured out their true fate. Not until they woke up again, lined up loosely, guarded by a different dozen soldiers as a man in fatigues with a loose, easy manner told them all of their doom.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege to welcome you to the United States of America!"
A harsh and blinding light flared to life, glaring into the faces of the group of teenagers whose last waking memories had been of terror and anticipation, a subdued and powerless flight aboard military helicopters. This, clearly, was no helicopter. Each of them sat at a plain wooden writing desk, their right hands ziptied to the crossed metal structure which fed down to the desk legs.
The industrial light was dazzling, fierce enough that it was almost impossible to discern what lay behind it, pinpoint the source of the voice. Instead, the Saint Editha abductees had to take stock of alternative surroundings. The wooden floor of their new abode was almost aggressively clean, bereft of any charm or life. The walls were bare and windowless, the ceiling high and raftered. Perhaps once this had been a warehouse. Now, it was something else.
"You're all looking a little squinty. Let's see if we can't... ah, there we are!" The strip light was extinguished and immediately replaced with two more, these overhead rather than front-on. The area ahead of the teenagers was illuminated by a spotlight, as were their own rows of desks. A blonde man wearing olive drab trouser fatigues and a white t-shirt stood bathed in the light. One hand rested on his hip and an easy grin adorned his face.
"I've come to know you all in the past twenty-four hours, so let me return the favour. My name is David Adams, but you can call me 'Sir'. I'll be your master of ceremonies for this, the all-new, all-British edition of the Program." He paused. "Apparently a couple of you aren't actually from sunny England originally. How lucky for you."
He surveyed them for a long moment. "See, Her Majesty the queen decided that rather than keep our war on the up and up, she was going to launch an attack on our soil, murder our children, then try and claim the moral high ground against this great nation's great Program." Adams smiled, broad and cold and vicious. "So, really, if you're going to blame anyone, blame your own military. The US won't stand for such cowardly attacks, and you, kiddos, are the living proof." He paused. The edge of his mouth twitched. "Well, figure of speech."
"For those of you unfamiliar with how this works, listen up. Outside of these four walls is a little piece of American paradise, a town which the locals have kindly donated to us for our great work. That town is your battleground. Each of you will receive a pack with provisions, some basic gear and a randomly assigned weapon. Guns, blades, tools; remember it's not about what you get, it's how you use it."
He cast his arms wide with theatrical flair. "And the task we're setting you to is killing. Specifically each other. The last one standing gets to go back home to jolly old England, isn't that nice?"
Adams' expression stilled, losing even his dead smile's facsimile of good humour. "Now I'm sure you're all thinking 'our army managed to pull one over the US before! They'll come save us!' No. No they will not. If British aircraft come within a hundred miles of the US, they'll be blown out of the sky. Shipping? Sank to the bottom. Land? They're not even clearing the border. Nobody is coming for you."
He let that hang in the air. "I'll keep the rest simple, don't want you straining yourselves. Get cute with the cameras and we'll shoot you. Try to leave the town and we'll shoot you. Attack the soldiers, your exciting prize will also be a bullet. Rest assured, we're packing much heavier hardware than anything we put in your packs." The smile returned. "In any case, I'm sure we'll have a much better relationship than that. Think of me as your mission control, your eye in the sky, keeping you posted with regular updates about the progression of our game. Every twelve hours I'll give you an announcement detailing the dead and who killed them and any other important information you need to know. Any questions? Eh. I'm sure you'll figure it out."
Adams fired off a lazy salute. "Tally ho, chaps. See you in twelve hours."
Thick white gas flooded the warehouse, obscuring everything from view.
The First Announcement[edit | edit source]
This wasn't how it was supposed to go. That was what Major Daryl Yancey was thinking as he made his way, slowly and with trepidation, to the announcer's booth. This was all wrong. This wasn't what he'd signed up for.
And yet, orders were orders. He'd been there in the command center, supervising both the team keeping tabs on the captured Brits and the team keeping an eye on the skies in case any surprises manifested, as Brigadier General Adams compiled his notes and readied himself for the first announcement of the session. The man seemed full of energy, perhaps even relieved to be back in charge of his pet project, and that had been good for Yancey's morale as well.
The truth was, he personally felt rather differently about The Program than Adams seemed to. It was important for security and national unity and such, yes, but it was also a waste to fritter away key military resources upon it. Adams, Yancey, and the others here now were soldiers, and damn good ones, so why were they administering what was effectively a combination execution and glorified field exercise? And it had seemed the higher-ups were beginning to understand that too, right up until Colonel Ammerman and his whole crew had gotten themselves killed and lost hold of a couple dozen of their charges. The repercussions of that blow were still echoing, in the US and around the world, and so it was back to the primary team.
But Adams was a man who knew what was best for the country, and if he was engaged and focused and prioritizing The Program then it couldn't be all that bad.
And then, twenty minutes before the announcement was set to go live, he'd been summoned for a direct personal call from The General. Adams had kept a straight face, but everyone else in the room had, as the news was delivered, made faces like they'd just bitten into lemons. The distraction at a time like this could mean something was going very wrong. On the other hand, however, it could signify nothing more than a fit of pique from high command, a needless moment of micromanaging or a poorly-timed intrusion to discuss some less-than-vital business.
Of course, Yancey would never express such an opinion publicly.
But in any sudden change of plans, someone had to suffer, and today that someone was Yancey. Adams had handed him a small bundle of papers, covered in scribbled yet remarkably legible notes on potential jokes, jabs, and wordplays, and had congratulated him on his field promotion to acting commander of The Program for the next hour or so. And with that, Yancey was on his way, desperately trying to remember how the few announcements he'd ever paid attention to in the past had gone.
"Good evening, British nationals."
In the booth, Yancey had a very hard time imagining how his voice would sound, amplified and twisted by distortion, coming out of speakers seeded throughout the whole arena miles away. His mouth was dry, his hands shaking, but his discipline held and kept his voice clear.
"My name is Major Yancey, and I'm here tonight to give a casualty and action report. Despite a slow start, you have done well embracing the nature of our exercise, and over a tenth of your number have now perished. In Roman times, they would have been referred to as decimation, and would have ended the disciplinary exercise, but for you it is just the beginning.
"First to fall was Cedric Isaacson, shot down as he struck at Yian Griffiths."
Adams had apparently planned some quip about Griffiths' absurd weapon, but it was all Yancey could do to try to pronounce "Yian" properly and he was pretty sure he'd still come only close enough to be comprehensible.
"Next, Lena Bianchi displayed some real gumption in carving up Calista Carpenter. Be careful who you take meals with, or you may end up the prey.
"In a similar reversal, the hunter became the hunted as Rue von Schroeder struck out at Victoria Amaro and then fled, only to be shot in the back by her target. Learn to double-tap to avoid such surprises in the future.
"Finally, in the middle of a struggle, Morton Bishop's knife got turned around and jammed into him by Michelle White. It reminds me of an old joke: how do you tell who won a knife fight? The loser dies in the street, and the winner dies in the ambulance. Not that White is dead yet, of course.
"Keep up the good work. Remember, the last one standing will be allowed to return to jolly, dreary old England should you so choose. The rest will be dead. Keep an ear out for a further update in twelve hours' time. God bless America. Major Yancey, signing out."
The moment the tech signaled that the line had been cut, Yancey slumped forward resting his head on the papers in front of him, most of the material upon which had gone unused. The perspiration on his forehead made the top sheet adhere to it. His decorum was out the window, but in this one moment he couldn't care.
"Thank fuck," he mumbled to the room at large. "I don't know how he does it."
The Second Announcement[edit | edit source]
As Captain Jerome Gunnarsson read through the after-action report that had landed on his desk, he felt the makings of a tension-headache coming on. It was that small knot that started in the front of his head, sitting there and waiting for the opportune time to spread its wings, digging in beneath his eyes and flashing agony throughout his whole skull. It had been one of the pitfalls of getting promoted and earning more responsibility; he had the foresight to see when someone's hasty decision would end up in a mountain of paperwork and meetings to explain it all. It hadn't been on him personally, but when you had a battalion of men under your leadership, every decision had to go up the chain-of-command, and in this particular instance, that ended with him.
For a Captain in the United States Armed Forces, Jerome was younger than most of his peers. His rise was in great deal due to his uncanny ability to know the perfect time to play the political game, balanced with an equally innate understanding of when to shut his mouth and become part of the wallpaper. It was due to his youthful countenance and the fact that he was a career officer that he was often reticent to truly come down on the men under his command. Some of the other battalion leaders would at times yell and scream with a fury that would strip the lacquer off the floor and risk waking any dead that happened to be nearby.
Since he had been assigned to the Program, Jerome had never seen any need to enact strenuous discipline upon any of his officers. Had someone in the upper echelon of command not had the genius idea to take a mulligan of this quarter's program using foreign students as a form of retaliation against the Brits for their interference, he surmised he would have had to break that streak. Things had gotten messy, and mistakes had been made. The last man who had commanded the patrol units on that fateful day had been "reassigned," though word through the grapevine said that his new assignment was at the bottom of a ditch somewhere.
The General didn't tolerate failure, and that meant that they could not afford any mishaps. Not again.
Which also meant that when some obnoxious British student decided that wrecking cameras was a good idea and your superior officer instructed you to "eliminate the offender," the superior officer expected an appropriate amount of force to be used.
Employing a grenade launcher to kill one student was like using a flamethrower to kill a cockroach; not exactly what Captain Gunnarsson would have considered "an appropriate amount of force."
Scanning over the report in his hands one more time, he closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, already feeling the knot that was starting to form. Use of rocket ordinance was specifically against regulations unless absolutely necessary, and this report's justification of its use was flimsy at best. Opening his eyes, he read over the last lines of the report once more.
The student had been ensconced within the structure with little hope of retrieval without a ground incursion. Sergeant Brown believed that a ground incursion would present an unacceptable risk to the air company and authorized use of heavy ordinance. Heavy ordinance requested at 1531. Sergeant Brown approved use of heavy ordinance at 1532. Target was eliminated at 1535 without other casualties.
Ensconced. Jerome scoffed to himself and rolled his eyes. That was a great six-dollar word that Sergeant Brown had dug out of a dictionary to justify the fact that he was too lazy to take the helicopter in and wait for the target to present an opportunity. Perhaps he'd been talked into it by one of his men; he'd seen Brown fraternizing with his subordinates on numerous occasions, breeding a degree of familiarity that was inappropriate for day-to-day operation. Jerome ran his fingers through his thick blonde beard. On days like this, he was glad for its presence. Without it, he looked as baby-faced as ever, and his youth was on full display. While looking youthful may have been a gift from his Scandinavian ancestors, when demanding more comprehensive answers than the target was ensconced, it helped not to look like you were fresh out of the academy.
The fact of the matter was that the whole operation had been sloppy. One shot had been taken at the target, and Brown had very quickly authorized the flyover when it had missed. No waiting, no patience—nothing. It was that kind of overzealous behaviour that was the reason the Brits had been able to take them by surprise the first time.
Zealousness leads to sloppiness, and sloppiness lead to mistakes. Mistakes got people killed, and Jerome Gunnarsson didn't plan to be one of those casualties.
Picking up the phone on his desk, he pressed the button to connect him to his assistant. The young woman answered quickly and assertively, a style that he'd come to appreciate since she'd been assigned to him.
"I want to see Sergeant Brown in my office at 1800."
The gears set in motion, Captain Gunnarsson set the phone's receiver back down upon the cradle and once more rubbed his temples. The headache's tendrils were starting to set themselves throughout his head properly, and his now-imminent meeting with Brown was liable to set them off into a migraine were he not careful. Opening the drawer of his desk, the Captain reached in and retrieved a small bottle of Motrin. Giving it a small shake, he turned the cap but hesitated.
Ensconced within the structure.
Grunting in annoyance, Jerome tossed the pill bottle back into his desk. No, for this particular meeting, it was best that he feel the twang of irritation that a headache brought on. To dull his senses would render him ineffective and could sabotage his authority. After all, the whole point of this exercise was not to illustrate how effectively the American military power could strike down upon its foes. They'd been doing that for years already. No, this was far more of an insidious show of force—one that Jerome personally approved of. Brown needed to be reminded that the children needed to be the cause of their own undoing. Explosions looked pretty, but they were messy and attracted attention. To watch a teenager actively submit to the basest urges? It was like something out of a documentary. It was something fascinating; something glorious.
If he needed to be reminded of that, then perhaps Captain Jerome Gunnarsson might have to ensconce his foot firmly up Brown's ass.
God, he hated that word.
"Good morning, British nationals. This is Major Yancey once again."
The voice that echoed from the speakers remained clear and disciplined, but there was something else behind it, a note, perhaps, of weariness or deeply suppressed irritation.
"You have continued on-pace, further reducing your numbers and bringing us closer to a conclusion and to the release of the ultimate victor, should they so choose. Allow me to read the roll.
"Penelope Franklin was impaled with a farm implement by Tiny Sterling, though she did not go into death alone; as she fell, she fired her gun and fatally wounded bystander Barry Taylor.
"Shortly afterwards, Fleurette Lussier decided to ignore our instructions to avoid damaging monitoring equipment, and was eliminated by our forces. If you heard the helicopter or the explosion, that was why.
"I have been asked to remind you all not to sabotage any equipment, and to note that doing so will not represent either a hindrance to our operation's ongoing function or an effective form of ideologically-barbed suicide. Lussier, being the first, was allowed to go fairly quickly and painlessly, but any further vandals will be dealt with in increasingly protracted and agonizing fashion. You don't want that, and neither do we, so do play nice.
"A rather abrupt exit was what fate had in store for Lena Bianchi who fell through a weak point in the pier and plummeted to her demise. Awareness of your environment is the hallmark of a good soldier, and negligence can so easily lead to death.
"And then we returned to some more violence committed by you all upon each other. Cassandra Argent made use of what she could scavenge, and stabbed Daniel Newhouse fatally and repeatedly with a shard of glass.
"Finally, Oliver Davies took onboard my advice about double-tapping, and lit up Anvi Parekh with an entire cylinder's worth of bullets.
"We will now offer a moment of silence for the fallen."
For two seconds, the broadcast consisted of nothing but faint, hissing static, before it was broken by the unmistakable sound of a door opening and shutting. A second later, a buzzing, humming sound cut through the air, taking a moment to resolve itself into Taps, played mournfully on a kazoo.
"Hey there, kiddos," said a different, but recognizable voice. "This is Brigadier-General Adams, stopping by to pat the good ol' major on the back for the wonderful job he's been doing while I've been occupied making sure that we won't see any interference. Heard you've been committing some lovely violence upon each other. Very good, very good.
"I just wanted to make sure you knew I hadn't forgotten about you. Keep up the good work, pip pip cheerio, and all that. You'll be hearing from us again in twelve hours, unless you mess up and die."
With a click, silence returned to the arena.
The Third Announcement[edit | edit source]
Adams missed the days when the General didn't feel the need to conduct briefings with him every three hours.
He got it, of course. There was a lot going on and this was a major operation. More major than normal, actually, given he was pretty much sure this counted as an ongoing act of war. The thing about that was that Adams was good at running this show. He'd spent literal years iterating upon and then executing it. Program went wrong when he wasn't at the wheel, not when he was large and in charge. Every big fuck-up had been when they'd put someone else at the reins. General didn't appreciate "I'd have done betters" and Adams wasn't usually much for them either, but on this occasion? Yeah, he'd have done better. This was why you didn't take away his baby and give it to an amateur.
He didn't do well with micromanagement. Give him a task within his capabilities and he'd fulfill it; lean over his shoulder the whole time and he was probably going to do exactly as instructed. Adams had a good memory and a better sense of just how much rope he had. Seasoned by the appropriate amount of guile, malicious compliance was a wonderful thing.
Thankfully, the General knew him well enough not to tell him how to run the Program. The status reports, though, he could very much do without. Adams had considerable resources here, enough men, artillery and vehicles to fend off a good-sized naval landing, let alone a commando assault. He had state of the art technology pointed at land, sea, and air. If a fish sneezed fifty miles off the coast, Adams was going to know about it. However, he doubted in the extreme that the British were going to come around for another pass. Given the activity in the South American theatre, Adams was confident that the Brits were focused on abetting those operations. They'd shot their shot when it came to interfering with the Program, and while Adams admired the huge brass balls it had taken to enact that sabotage, no sane commander was going to order a repeat of the trick. It would be a suicide mission, and even if they did decide to employ some kind of idiotic "it's the last thing they'd expect!" type of logic, that's why Adams had all his friends with all their heavy ordnance.
The counter-operation had been a masterstroke, if he did say so himself. Flush off victory, the British were prepared for a retaliatory attack, not a surgical strike. In an instant, they pivoted from brave rescuers to provoking a kidnapping, and on their home soil no less. Anything you can do, the USA does better. How's that for a kick in the morale dick?
Still, not being in that announcing chair really fucked with Adams' good mood from being back in the saddle. Come on, now, it just wasn't the same without being the one to give the kids their half-daily dose of levity and crushing depression. There was a reason he tried to make every single opening game briefing and every announcement; it was part of the whole thing's identity, and the optics just looked better both in and out of game to have a consistent, steady presence. The announcements were once every twelve hours, General, how hard was it to plan around that?
But now, at least, all was well again, and so Adams slowly broke into a smile as he entered the broadcast trailer.
"Hello again, my patriots!"
A long beat.
"Wait. Hold on. Can't call you that. You're British."
A clearing of the throat.
"Hello again, citizens of haitch arr haitch's most British of Empires! If you're listening to this broadcast, then congratulations are in order; you're still alive!"
You could hear the grin, the faux doe eyes.
"I have to admit to some disappointment, though. I was pulling so hard for all of you to score just one more kill before this check-in of mine. Heck, I even pushed it back a few minutes—don't worry, I won't tell if you guys don't—to see if you'd maybe get over the line and take us to halfway, but alas, not to be."
Adams gave a dramatic sigh, then rebounded back into enthusiasm like a rabbit on speed.
"So, if you're doing the math...s, you'll have put together that another five of you are dead and gone. Wanna hear how it went down? Get comfy then, kids, it's story time.
"Freya Nygourd picked the wrong fight at the wrong time with the wrong person. Pippa Andolini, to be exact. Pippa retaliated with a knife to the stomach. To borrow a phrase, she had it coming.
"Next, Yian—" Adams broke off into an undignified snort of a laugh. "Sorry, sorry. Reading it brings back memories and just—damn, improvisation is a wonderful thing, kids. Yian Griffiths brought a water spout to a gunfight. Victoria Amaro shot him. Obviously. So Yian was the one who wound up hosed. But wait, there's more! Samuel Rosen got way too curious about the aforementioned shooting, decided to get a closer look, and was rewarded with the bonus prize of more bullets! That's three on the slate for your Vicky now, kids. Careful not to fall behind!
"I'm going to tell you a little allegory now, everyone. Once upon a time, a girl saw a boy. The boy had hurt other people, so the girl decided to pick up his weapon and stand around like a lemming until the boy strangled her. The girl's name was Lucy Arkwright, the boy's was Tiny Sterling. I'll expect your essays on the deeper meaning of the story by next announcement, kids!
"Rounding us off, Pippa Andolini picked up her second kill of the afternoon by shooting Kian Banks point blank in the chest. A convenient lesson in firearms by Pippa there; can't miss if the barrel's touching.
"That's all for now, kiddos. Remember, one more death and you're halfway home. Think on that tonight.
"See you in the morning."
The Fourth Announcement[edit | edit source]
For Michael Plant, working on censoring and editing the broadcast of The Program had always been a somewhat uncomfortable job.
It wasn't that he wasn't patriotic. Michael was patriotic as could be. He'd had the misfortune to, when he was four years old, be the passenger in a car driven by his parents that got smashed head-on by a drunk blazing home from the bars. Everyone except Michael had been killed. It was okay. He couldn't really remember his parents anymore. He couldn't really remember what it was like to have legs below the mid-thigh. Thank goodness, he couldn't remember the pain.
In some other country, some deep European shithole, that sort of bad toss of the dice would've left Michael doomed forever. A maimed orphan? He'd freeze to death on the streets. But in the good old USA, the government was right there to step in and take care of him. Uncle Sam set him up with a place to live and a top of the line chair and an education. Uncle Sam gave him a purpose, and shielded him from the cruel, misguided wrath of those classmates of his who couldn't understand how anyone could dare to be a little bit different.
When he turned eighteen and graduated, the first thing he'd done was get his first mandatory term of enlistment started. Service was service, legs or no, and Michael had gotten good at a lot of things in class. He knew the rules inside and out, and he knew how to articulate himself and convince people. He'd been so afraid he was going to get some meaningless pity shift, but the powers that be had come through for him again, and he'd landed on this team assigned to turning bad news about foreign campaigns into good news about America's ever-increasing borders and reach. And he'd been good at it, so good that, three years later, he'd been pulled for a team tasked with making a really hard sell go down just a little easier: a deathmatch for the glory of the nation, peopled by high school students drawn by lottery.
It wasn't the arbitrary nature of it that got to Michael. No, he was so familiar with that, with how fate could give you a once-over and mess you up. And it wasn't the death. To put it bluntly, working on The Program was a walk in the park compared to the war beat, in terms of the sheer magnitude and brutality of violence on display. It took a few days, a week to see fifty kids ground up into paste. Michael had watched tapes of artillery barrages pulling four times that much carnage in ninety seconds.
What nibbled at him just a little was the waste of it all. There were a lot of ways to inspire fear and obedience and loyalty. He'd worked on his fair share of them. The Program was vaguely elegant in the simplicity of its design, but time and again Michael watched it turn loyal citizens into traitors, then kill them. And that wasn't the end of the story. Yes, it had certain boosts to morale and loyalty across the country, but the effects on directly-targeted areas could be dire. Many family members of those chosen bore it stoically, but some took to subversive activities themselves. Morale plummeted. There were incidents, which had to be hushed up or spun, and these in turn rippled further, a cascade of entirely preventable resistance.
And the worst of it was, Michael got it. He'd been married about two years after The Program started, and now he had three kids. He wouldn't go on a tear if one of them was picked. He knew fate, and he could accept it. But when he looked at his daughters and his son, sometimes, he felt this pang. He asked himself whether a better way could be found.
Which brought him, in roundabout way, to the current situation.
Michael was smart, and he even got tapped for suggestions from time to time, but never for the high level stuff. And yet, he had faith, and it had been rewarded. A better way had been found. He wasn't sure if it had been the plan all along, or if it was an improvisation due to the colossal wreck that had been the last attempt (and oh boy had that one kept him up overtime; he'd been broken of the sympathy he'd held for those Denver kids pretty quick by the twin facts of their actual survival and the level of unrelenting misery it had meant for him personally), but this new thing, taking prisoners from the enemy and making them fight, that was genius.
More than that, it was working great. The last run had been a real wash, morale plummeting, people sort of but not really convinced about the Brits killing everyone. It was what it was, but it just didn't make sense. Why would they do it? And, more than that, the outrage just wasn't there. "Foreign adversary kills population of death row" just didn't inspire that much anger. But when the other shoe dropped, and it was British kids thrown into the game to finish what their nation had started? The country ate that up. There was none of the fallout, none of the local dissent. When they sent that helicopter in, Michael was told people had cheered so loud you could hear it on the street in some places. Exaggeration? Perhaps. But it was kissing cousins to the truth, and, as he'd learned, that was what mattered most.
Oh, and of course, the Brits were expected to be loud, nasty, treasonous little shits. All kinds of stuff that would've never made it to public consumption could thus be cheerfully waved through, which meant that Michael's job was a whole lot easier than what he was used to. A small thing, but a pleasant one. It let him sit back and, well, not enjoy the broadcast, per se, but appreciate it a bit more.
He could really get used to this.
"Good morning, campers!" David Adams' cheerful voice burst across the airwaves. "You'll be pleased to hear that you good little beefeaters not only hit halfway, you blew right by it! Kids, it is my very great pleasure to announce that if you are alive right now, you have officially reached the final ten of The Program!"
Canned applause.
"Nine between you and life. What's it gonna be, kids?"
There was a long pause, long enough to make one wonder if the broadcast had cut out entirely. Then, Adams resumed speaking.
"That halfway mark was brought up by the death of Ashley Pontecorvo, who got her skull cracked against the ground by Sofia Chiles. Never too late to learn, kids, and here, the lesson is that if you smack somebody against something hard enough, that body is going to break sooner or later.
"A real crowd-pleaser up next. Molly McKenzie went all out Gallagher on Nastya Zharkova—" Adams stopped for a moment, and some indistinct speech drifted across the PA, then the sound of a scraping chair. "Lieutenant Daly here informs me that you philistines probably don't understand that reference, so let me rephrase. Molly smooshed Nastya's head like a watermelon. Unfortunately for Molly, she got herself shot in the process and hop-skip-jumped right into the grave. Close, but no cigar for both of those girls.
"Sadly, our very own Sofia Chiles joined the butcher's bill not too long afterwards. Seems that she sustained too much damage fighting against Ashley back there. Turns out 'any fight you can walk away from' isn't quite the only metric you should be using.
"Victoria Amaro, after such a strong showing last time, was next to die. Not all bad though, she was knocked off by a returning favorite, Oliver Davies, who's been quiet for a while but is right back in contention with that crack shot. Good on you, Ollie."
Adams chuckled.
"And our next death was, oh man, was it everything we hoped for when we first assigned the weapon. Headline for all of you: bee stung to death. That's right, Phoebe Quincey misthrew her wonderful jar of hornets and, well, bees don't do so hot against those. Sorry, honey, turns out your chances weren't antenna-outta-ten.
"Lastly, and one more reminder, taking us to our final ten was the death of Michelle White, who went toe-to-toe with Pippa Andolini and took a bayonet for her trouble. She kept on trucking for a while, but that ain't something you sleep off, folks."
A pause.
"Well. No need for me to overstate things, kids. You all know what you need to do. Nine to go. I'll address whoever's left around this evening. We're in the final stretch.
"Time to step up and be counted."
The Fifth Announcement[edit | edit source]
For Corporal Ramona Pack, service in The Program had come as an accident, but she would be lying if she called it anything but a happy one. When she'd volunteered to test her aptitude for the sniper training regime, she'd told her superiors it was because she'd always thought she'd be good at it. This was not true. Her understanding had been that snipers, while often isolated, were still generally nice and far from the frontlines. That sounded pleasant to her. That was one thing her father had impressed upon her again and again as he sat beside the fireplace in their little middle-of-nowhere New Mexico home: only suckers went to the front.
"I was a sucker, Mona," he'd say, running his thumb over nubs of missing fingers. "Don't you be too."
She'd thought she probably wouldn't cut it as a sniper. It was tough, so the others said. She'd already taken a few shots at alternate placements, but, while she hated to admit it, she just didn't have the proper creativity and cunning to work out how to dodge trouble. The Coast Guard had been a wash—she hadn't even known how to swim. Artillery had sounded intriguing, but she lacked the mathematical and mechanical aptitudes. Slowly, inexorably, she'd drifted towards a posting in the army, try as she could to avoid it.
But, just her luck, it had turned out she was a pretty good sharpshooter after all.
Some of it was manual dexterity. A lot more, perhaps, came from the mentality. Ramona was patient. She could be meticulous. She could practice. That had been how she got through school, when a number of the subjects were so difficult for her: drilling and repetition, again and again. Practicing shooting was meditative for her. Pretty soon, she was making a name for herself. She'd never truly excelled at anything before, so it was exciting. Being good at something, having skills that brought her respect, it made her proud. Her father had been proud of her. He'd told her often, in his last days.
It was, then, a shame that her talent didn't transition too well to practical application.
The first cracks showed in live-fire exercises. All that patient, meticulous practice didn't mean much when her heart started hammering so hard that her hands shook and she couldn't hear. She could be incredibly accurate when she was in the zone, but under that sort of pressure? Impossible.
They'd talked about kicking her over to a training role. "Those who cannot do, teach," that was what her father had said, usually followed by "...and those who cannot teach, teach gym." Ramona couldn't teach, turned out—not marksmanship, at least. It was far too physical, too instinctual a process for her. Whether she could teach gym, the verdict was still out. She hadn't gotten the chance. The army didn't need that.
No, with her inability to perform under pressure, it'd seemed like she was headed straight for some hellhole frontline support responsibility—that, or dishonorable discharge and court martial. There were other roles, of course, for the incapable, but incapable was a designation reserved for those who couldn't physically hack it. She was, as some of her officers had so succinctly put it, simply a coward.
What use was a sniper who was also a total coward?
But then, when all hope had seemed lost, she'd gotten the call: a spot had opened up, one that called for an extremely specific set of skills and values. One of the enforcers on The Program had retired, and they needed someone new, someone with pinpoint accuracy and no particular moral compunctions about blowing some teenager's head off for telling Uncle Sam to shit on a yucca plant. Did she think she could handle that?
In the old days, firing squads had included one gun filled with blanks, just so everyone could feel better about themselves, tell themselves maybe they hadn't been the one to contribute to the deed. The Program didn't work like that. Ramona had helped kill, oh, seven or eight kids over the past few years. Give or take one or two. She'd had the number down pat at first, but that was a while ago.
She hadn't been on the helicopter ride this version. Not her shift. She hadn't had any action in a while. Had been getting worried, actually—the collar thing they'd tried, she'd hated that. Had railed against it in meetings, spun a whole line of hooey about how it made patriots come off like common criminals. Maybe everyone saw through her. Adams did, she knew that. She'd only met him a handful of times, but she could tell when he looked at her that he knew.
Collars meant killing kids with the flick of a switch instead of the pull of a trigger. That meant no need for snipers. That meant, well, Ramona would have to find something else to do to fill out the last two years of her service.
She tugged on her boots, checked her rifle. There were no collars now, thank goodness. Sometimes in the final stages, they would let kids go about their business, let them take however long they wanted to finally fight it out, but not this time. Too much risk, with such unknown quantities, foreigners without a total understanding of the proceedings. It was almost the hour for the final showdown, whether they liked it or not, and she was a key part of the enforcement mechanism.
If they didn't want to cooperate and go to the little arena prepared for them? Well, then she'd just have to rack up kill number eight.
Or was it nine?
Somewhat under eight hours after the last time, the speakers spread throughout the arena crackled to life once more, carrying the semi-familiar voice of Brigadier-General David Adams to those who remained to hear.
"Evening everyone."
A weighty pause.
"All four of you."
Another. Taking his time.
"I'd congratulate those of you left alive, but it's too soon for anyone to start throwing parties. You've made it this far, but if you take your eye off the ball, it will all have been for nothing. Put up or shut up. You don't want this to be the biggest disappointment since prom night, do you?
"Wait, do you have prom over there? ... Eh, details."
Adams cleared his throat.
"Annnnywhooo. I'm sure you're all anxious to hear who's still with us, so let me fill you in.
"Firstly... wait, let me get in the mood for this one..."
There was a repeated tapping sound, setting a beat.
"He's Sebbo Boston and he's here to say
He'll fight all night, and lose all day
When Cassandra Argent came along
Well my friend, that's when things went wrong.
He thought he was safe, a place to rest
But in Program you'll find unwelcome guests
Y'know what'll get a Brit kid's goat?
Stabbing 'em right through the back of the throat
So kiddos, in brief, what went down
Saint Editha's Academy: short one clown."
Dead air for several seconds.
"After that—okay you know what, usually I'm all about keeping this in order, being that these announcements of mine are a matter of record, but I am so darn annoyed by this I can't keep it in. So Cassandra Argent, fresh off of actually deciding to give a damn, has the brilliant idea to go for a swim. In the ocean. In the evening. Congrats, Cassandra, you made it to a hiding spot; none of your competitors will ever find your frozen corpse!
"In less idiotic news, we did get a classic double KO earlier on. Rajni Smith and—I'd just like to register my sheer disgust your parents are making me say this name—Katana Locke-Baldwin took each other out. Rajni took a stab wound, Katana got a net to the throat. Katana got a net to the throat.
"I'd call you a disappointment to your family for managing to get yourself killed by one of the least lethal weapons in the entire pool, but I think they have way too much disappointment-debt to work off after naming you, I can't stress this enough, Katana.
"As for Smith, well, if only she had some kind of reliable ally there who could have stepped in and prevented her from dying. I can't imagine who that possibly could have been.
"If I can take a moment for a quote, one Tiny Sterling gave us the following: 'You gonna shoot me? I fucking dare you.' Which is of course an incredible thing to say to someone who has already shot people. Oliver Davies accepted the challenge.
"After doing literally nothing to avert the aforementioned confrontation, Fisher Darden was then threatened and generally pushed around by Oliver, who was so goshdarned annoyed that Fisher didn't agree with him that he wasted all of his ammo and rushed at him. Davies was promptly shot dead, because even Fisher can eventually get around to stopping dithering if you give him literally every possible chance."
There was a high pitched toot, followed by a jaunty celebratory tune. Played on a kazoo.
"Then there were four.
"Fisher Darden. I can't count the number of times I've seen you walk into a situation with someone who should kill you and then somehow walk out unscathed. Credit where credit's due, you've demonstrated that you're more than an easy out. Too bad it's taken you this long to locate your spine. If you'd had this nerve from the start, imagine how many of your classmates you could have saved.
"Pippa Andolini. The driver, the one making things happen. I've liked your game from the moment you finally realized what had to happen to survive and you've proven you have what it takes. Still, we reap what we sow and you've got two gunning for you at the very least. Our past has a way of catching up. In any case, you've killed three. What's three more?
"Galahad Matthews. I can't decide whether you're the best and sneakiest actor I've ever seen, or a complete sadsack who got very, very lucky. Either way, there's nowhere else to run and nobody else to hide behind. You made yourself a promise and nothing I've seen from you suggests that you have what it takes to keep it. Feel like proving me wrong, o gallant knight?
"Virgil Raeburn. Another lucky son of a bitch. You've stumbled your way in and out of danger after danger, and I think even you might believe that you're bulletproof. Guess what? You're not, and you're out of time to let others do the work for you. Oh and... behind you.
"Endgame takes place in The Graveyard. Be there, or get real good at dodging snipers and mortar fire.
"I'm sure whoever turns out the winner will give us a jolly good show.
"David Adams signing off. See you in an hour."