The Adaptive Game

"KNOCK YOUR LIGHTS OUT"

- Eddie

What a challenge.

"267 players participated that round. 69 players were eliminated. 198 players remain."

The Square Guard puts down his megaphone and starts to hand out dinner.

It's a whole bunch of corn dogs and soda. It may not be a buffet, but after that challenge it's an entire feast.

"Tomorrow there will be two challenges. Lights will go out in 30 minutes."

Huh. Lights will go OUT?

Well, it's not much of a surprise since we're sleeping here.

But I'm afraid of what's to come.

"Hey! Eddie! Cmere!"

Buck gestures me over with his eager looking face. I wait and get my food, then I walk over to him and the rest of the gang.

"You made it!"

"Yeah, it was unpleasant being with a different group, but I carried them." I take a large bite out of my corn dog.

"We did pretty good! Although Vector had pretty much no idea what to do, we managed. Conner really pulled his weight."

Conner elbows him and takes a sip of his soda.

"I didn't do everything. Can we remember Fernando, who was the only person to die on our team?"

"It was out of nowhere. I didn't even think, man. I just thought of not ending up like him." Emilia says.

"More of us are gonna die, you know. It's gonna come to the point where we'll hate each other because we want to win." Conner replies.

"Sheesh Conner, really upping the morale over here. Totally needed to be reminded of that." Shaun scoffs.

We're all joking around, eating and drinking but it's surprisingly fast how fast the clock ran.

"Oh shit. Eddie, get back to bed. Let's not get killed over bed duty. Everyone go to their bed, We're done."

"What? Okay, fine."

I climb over a few stories of bunk beds and almost step on someone on my way up."Oh, pardon me."

When I get up to my bed, it's on the highest spot it could be. It would be dangerous to fall off of one of these, as it seems there are about 12 layers on the very highest position.

"Hey, Eddie. Don't let the bed bugs bite." Buck waves from a few beds aside me.

The computerized voice starts to count down from 10.

"Lights out in 10... 9... 8... 7... 6..."

Everyone is staring right up at the ceiling. Like they're waiting for something.

"5... 4... 3... 2... 1..."

All the lights go out row by row, and everyone is silent for about 30 seconds until someone screams from the other side of the room.

Pulling the sheets off of myself, it takes me a few moments to realize what's going on.

It's a riot. People are fighting.

There's yelling all over the place, but the one thing I can think of is going to Buck and grouping up with the others.

So, I hop across a couple beds beside me and start to scale downwards to look for them. Most people are scared and defenseless, but I can see some with a weapon.

"There's Eddie, there he is! Come down here!"

Buck grabs me and pulls me down.

"Stay low. We don't want to be targetted. It's really dark in here."

"Okay, whatta we do?"

"Conner, David, and Vector are here. We have to find Emilia and Shaun. They'll get overwhelmed in this mess."

"I can go find Shaun."

"Okay, Conner, David, find Emilia. Vector, Eddie, go find Shaun. Rally up here when you're done. Watch out for anyone with weapons. Try not to get in the line of fire."

"Right. Let's not get someone to knock your lights out."