Process of Elimination

Prologue: Faint of Heart

'Italics' - Any Thought

'I feel.. cold. This cold reminds me of the times when I was sick in bed and had the window blow in the cold air that would make me feel a little better. But, no. This cold feels much worse. Why am I cold? Why can't I see? Everything is straight up black. I'm feeling a warm touch to my face. It reminded me of my caring mother that would love me until she felt broken. This warm, soft, and fuzzy feeling. Where am I?'

I gently opened my eyes to see what was happening and what I was feeling. I saw a figure. It looked like it was my mother. She had been singing a song like she did to me before I fell asleep each night. I open them more. My eyes have deceived me. I was surrounded by a lot of people; some young, some adults. I gasped as I backed up quickly as I could. Why was I scared? Was it the memories of my mother that were completely false as of right now or was it the fact that I'm surrounded by so many people that I can't even process what was going on. I remember everything now. My name is Leo Buhride. I'm 15 years old. And I'm scared of my horrifying memories.

The people standing in front of me seemed to be very concerned. I look at them all. They all seemed scared. By counting, I noticed that there is an even amount of people in the room, including myself. 23 people stand before me. 12 female, 11 male. Including myself, 1 other male. There are 24 people in the room in total. The thought of being in an unknown room with random people was horrifying. I stood up. But as I did that, something fell out of my pocket. It was some sort of ID. It had my picture, information, and a bar code. What could this be? Everyone else had one as well. Wrapped around their necks with lanyards, clipped to their shirts or side.

The room goes black. A red light illuminates on a table. There was a box. "Please Insert Identification Card, immediately." it spoke. With hesitation everyone placed in their IDs to get scanned by the box, one by one. In order of the alphabet, the box spoke our names. "Bertrand, Maxence. Bolton, Nicholas. Buhride, Leo. Carlson Linette. Coolatta, Carmen. Dubois, Célestine. Effiong, Hasana. Firch, Kelvin. Gene, Jago. Hamilton, Xavion. Katsuo, Kuroda. Lancer, Morgan. Lou, Kichirou. Mansouri, Khuld. Marco, Zarita. Marino, Mariella. Mathis, Cale. Mishil, Seung. Moore, Maisie. Prosser, Renfrew. Robinson, Eloise. Ryan, Micheal. Sokolo, Kuzma. Zarakolu, Jale."

"Welcome to the game of Process of Elimination. On certain days, you will have an event of majority voting. The person who has been chosen by the majority will have to do a challenge. These challenges will have some difficulties. If you fail, you are eliminated from the game. If you pass, you move on and can't be voted until all participants have been up for elimination. The metal collar and bracelet are trackers. The bracelet shows your strikes and heart rate. Once you have 3 strikes, your collar will explode. These strikes are counted as rule breaks."

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Rules:

1. No physical violence towards participants.

2. Everyone must vote. Refusal to vote counts as a strike.

3. Refusal to participate in the elimination round counts as 3 strikes.

4. The last 3 remaining players win the Process of Elimination.

5. Enjoy the last moments of your life.

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Everyone's face turned dark and pale. What did it mean by exploding? What did it mean by the last moments of our life? Was it telling us that we are going to die? This wasn't true. I refused to believe it. "This can't be happening.." I said out loud. "Too bad kid. We all signed up to be here and there's no escape. Once we go in, there's no going back. It's do or die." a man told me. I looked around the room. "Maybe we should get to know each other before we die?" I suggested. Everyone agreed with me. I look around the room. There were a few people that looked much younger than I did, so I walked up to them.  "Hey there" I greeted them. "You look around our age. Who are you?" this girl asked. "Well, my name is Leo. I'm 15 years old." I tell them. "Nice to meet you Leo. My name is Célestine and I'm 16." she said. "It's nice to meet you too." I smiled at her. "I'm also a Botanist." she added. My eyes widened. "Wow, you're a scientist at just 16?" I wondered. "Oh no! I call myself a Botanist due to me loving flowers and other plants. I study them too." she laughed.

"Oh yeah, these are my new friends; Zarita, Carmen, Morgan, Mariella, Kelvin, Kuroda, Xavion, and Jago. We're all 13-17 years old. There's not much to know, you know?" she looked at me. "Yeah. I get it. We're kids locked up with adults to play a game of Do or Die." I sighed. "Basically. I just want to get out of here but we all signed up for this not knowing what it was. It was said that the 3 winners will get a $500,000 cash prize per person. All together that's 1,500,000." she kept going on and I was listening while listening to other conversations.