THE LAST GAMES: PROJECT PANDORA

CHAPTER IV: C O L D C H A I N S

I lie there. Not able to get up. How can he not see that? I stare into his careless eyes. He is not the person I saw in the hologram, not as old. He has a bushy brownish orange coloured beard, but bark brown hair. Looks . . .maybe in his early thirties. He wears a dark blue button-up shirt with nothing under, and jeans, with a strong build. He walks over to me, my body thrown against the far wall.
"Please," I spit out "please stop." He looks at me. The door opens again, and a skinny guy with glasses and lab-coat - your average nerd - walks in. He looks surprised.
"What is going on here!? I told you to fetch him, not kill the guy Tamaren!" He shouts at the man beating me up, who I assume is Tamaren. Thank God. Tamaren walks away, still staring at me, like I was the one who got him caught. How could a nerd have power over a tank of a guy that is three times his size?
"Hi, I'm sorry for what he must of put you through," the nerd says, eyeing off Taramen "The names Declan." He offers me a hand and helps my up, letting me lean over him for balance. I put my arm around him as best I can, and we walk - well, He walks, I limp as best I can - through a long corridor into another room. There is just one big table in the middle of four walls with a door.
"Sit." Declan tells me, and well, I don't really have a choice, so I sit down in the nearest chair to me. I realise his going to interrogate me. So I decide to start.
"Where are my friends?!" I say in a shaky voice. Yes, I am scared, but I confidently look him strait in the eye, demanding answers.
"Hey, I ask the questions here! Ok? Wow, isn't it funny how mood can change so fast. Don't push me." I nod. It wasn't a question, it was an order.
"Yes," I say.
"So," He begins "lets' start by you stop playing dumb and telling me; where are your friends? What are they plotting? And what have you and your mistevious little rebel gang have planed." He it yells in such a way he almost convinces me he has no idea of any of the answers. . . almost.
"Yep, sure. Oh, I'm sorry, would you like a nice cup of tea with that?" I mock, but then, when his face heats up and his eyes go insane with anger - which is sort funny when it's coming from a scrawny nerd - I know he's not joking and I have gone way to far.
"Get up."
"Now? Ok?" I get up obediently
"To the wall! Back against the wall!" I walk to the back of the room. I'm surprised at the anger in his voice. His eyes seem sharper than before, but maybe it's just me. He stands and walks towards me, stoping only three feet from where I now stand. I can feel his garlic breath running down my spine. I take one look at him, and then his fist. My eyes slam shut as fist smashes into my rib cage. Now they're defiantly broken. He is much stronger than he looks. Pain surges throughout me and I skid down the wall. I can no longer feel my body, like my consciousness is floating inside a helium balloon just hovering above my head, unable to grasp it. My body has now skidded down the rough cold wall and I topple over to my side
"TELL ME!" He roars. My vision fades as I slump to the floor, lifeless. There is too much pain to stay here, so I drift off to another place.

First I feel heat. But not the hot kind, the unpleasant, burning kind. No. It's the nice, warm kind, the kind that tickles your bones and makes you smile. The kind that you long for on a cold rainy day. Then I hear. I hear music, and laughter. I see glowing lights, people dancing. Having fun with each other. I remember when this all happened. It was just a few months ago. The festival we have at the end of summer. The one thing that seems to make sense out of all these secrets. The one thing that lets us be happy. We are in the dining pavilion, dancing, laughing, eating. But this does not make me happy. Instead it brings me sorrow. It pains me to see this place. All of this, everything I see around me is gone. All these people are dead for all what little I know. It was my home for years, but now razed. Blackened ash smeared on the ground it once stood proud on. But I cannot dwell on this. It will only bring me down further. I close my eyes, forcing myself not to watch this torture. And I wake.

I sigh and sit up. Wait, no pain! How!? I almost laugh, wish I could be so lucky that all that has happened in the past few days was just one, big, terrible nightmare. But I'm not. I'm just back in my same old cell I started in. I cannot catch a break.
Then the hunger sets in. A horrible gaping hole of emptiness that can never be filled. I get up, dust myself off, and knock on the heavy metal door.
"Hey! I'm hungry! Food please," I try. Nothing but loud echoes that repeat receding into nothing answer in return. I sit back down and let my hands sink into my pockets. I feel fresh cold metal, and remember my necklace. I take it out and lay it in my hand. I hold the small faded pendent in the centre of my palm. It's a dagger, only about six centimetres long. The colour of fools' gold, but you can see the metal underneath it. It hangs off ripped old leather, like it has been worn and loved too much. At the end is a small little clip that once held it together. But it was broken a long time ago. It is the one thing I have from the old life I can't remember. The necklace was around my neck when I arrived here. I smile softly with my cracked dry lips. When was the last time I have food of water I wonder? Then the door creeps open.
"Get up if you want food."

It's another new face.
"So your gonna escort me to some canteen of something?" I ask. He just stands there and nods. "Great, I'm starved."
The "canteen" they call it, just happens to be as dire and bleak as I would have imagined. Just another four concrete walls, a floor and a ceiling, with a few tables and doors here and there. The same creepy cold feeling from my cell, with the same musty, unused smell too. Like the building was made because it had to, not so someone could live there. There is nobody here, with the exception of two armed guards at every door.
"Ok, so where's my food?" I yell, getting impatient. A man with a gun strapped to his back - the same sniper rifle Rachel had gave me - walks up to me and slams a metal tray onto the table I face. All I see on the plate is a pile of brown slop.
"Your kidding, right?" I say, not really asking a question. I can see he is starting to get a bit angry, so I don't push. I don't want the same thing to happen as what happened at the integration. As he walks away I see his gun again. That makes me wonder what happened to my weapon, but no answers seem to come to me. I pick up the soup spoon and try the mush, but spit it out almost immediately. Even as hungry as I am, I will not eat that stuff. I drop the spoon back in the slop. "There is no way I'm eating this," I argue, but I cannot see myself eating that. The man turns around to face me.
"You insult my cooking one more time and I'll blow your head off!" He slips his gun out of the strap that holds it and aims it at my face, just to make it that bit more convincing. I raise my arms in an "I surrender" gesture. I guess I have to eat it, even if it is poison. I let my right hand fill its pocket, just to feel my necklace again, but I feel something more as well. A piece of paper. . . No, I'll wait. Wait until no more harmful eyes can watch. Right now I will eat.

As I walk down what seems to be an endless labyrinth of doors, corridors and bloodstains, an idea is slowly forming. . . even though that "food" isn't agreeing with me very well. I am being escorted by only one guard. Why is that? If you have a prisoner that could be your only link to information, and you have like a bazillion fully armed men, why would you only have one of them escort him? I guess is doesn't really matter, but something just doesn't feel right. It doesn't add up. They have to let me go sometime. . . Don't they? I mean they cant just keep me here forever. I've got to escape, so why not now. No time like the present. There are no guards in sight, well, other than the one right in front of me, my escort. Plus, I'm interested in how this will turn out.
"Hey, so what's your name?" I ask, trying to make small talk.
"It's none of your business, just keep walking."
"And why is that?"
"Cos your the prisoner, and I've got a job that I would like to keep."
I stop, turn my head and smile. Not a happy smile, but a mischievous grin. I make it so that he will see it. He stops and looks at me.
"Hurry up!" He yells, obviously annoyed at me for stoping.
"No." I say. Not an angry "no", just a small emotionless one. He looks confused. I quickly gather as much strength as I can, and dent his face with my fist. He drops to the ground and I feel a tinge of guilt. But it's too late to turn back now. I grab a familiar gun and a small sharp blade from his clothes and - once agin - begin to sprint as fast as I possibly can from a force I know next to nothing about.

I have no idea where I might be going, nor where I am or where the exit might be, so I run blind through aimless corridors, trying to find a way out. I am starting to get a bit sleepy, but I have no idea why, I have had more than plentiful sleep. I'm also getting very dizzy all of a sudden, tripping over my feet because my mind is failing. I must find a way out I think, and I keep repeating it over and over in my head.
I find a dead-end. . . Well, it's a dead-end if you don't count the big metal door in front of me me, with the glowing neon "exit" sign above it. Wow. It can't possibly be more simple. It's probably a trap but I can't think strait. I see the heavy door slightly ajar, so I push it open.
The sun is just coming up, but it still blinds me at first. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. The place I was in has no windows at all. The dizziness keeps getting worse, so it's not helping me at all. I stumble outside and just then it all makes sense. Why I'm so sleepy, how I got out so easily, why I was only escorted by one guard. They must have had sleeping drugs in that slop and drugged me up so that I can't think strait or figure it all out. That means they must still think I know where the others are, so there are still others. Good, I hope they're all safe. Errrr. My brains going dead. So so, so that means they want me to lead them to the other survivors. But how would they track me? If I'm just going to walk off? I know I'm going to fall asleep any moment now, but I know I'm onto something. I stumble into a bush and fall into it. I have no bearings of where I am whatsoever. Think. I yell at my brain for answers and get only one. A tracking device.