What Game Will You Play

Chapter 34

(Edited)

I close the door behind me as I exit the maze. By the time I turn around, Aiden is already halfway across to the tree line. I run to catch up, and I reach him right as he is just entering the woods.

It is still dark out, but the sky is slowly starting to brighten. The sun must be coming up in an hour or so.

"Aiden, slow down," I tell him. "We need to talk!"

"Talk about what?" He says, sounding frustrated. "Talk about who my father is or talk about how I just killed someone?"

I don't even know what to say. Both of those things aren't sitting right with me, and I know they aren't with Aiden either. At least, I don't think they are sitting right with him. Who knows? Maybe Aiden is faking the whole thing. After all, if what the guard said was true, then Aiden is Governor Wood's son—the same governor who played a part in killing innocent people tonight.

I don't know anything about any of the three governor's children, certainly not Governor Wood's, and as far as I am aware, no one does. If Aiden is the son of one of the governors who planned these deadly carnivals, then how could I trust him?

"Are you really his son?" I ask, although I am afraid to know the answer. I like Aiden. I have just spent who knows how long running around this dam carnival trying not to get killed with him, and he helped me. I want the answer to be no, but I don't think it is.

Aiden stops walking and looks at me with a quick, sad smile. "That would be me. Atlas Wood, son of Governor Alfred Wood."

He looks me in the eyes and waits for my response. I am once again at a loss for words, and I stand there opening and closing my mouth, struggling to say anything.

After another minute, I finally regain my composure. "Do the Jumpers know?" It sounds like a stupid question, but I am curious.

"Only a select few," Aiden says.

"How..." I don't even know what I am asking, but somehow Aiden does.

"I lived in the town of Officials for fourteen years, and I hated every second of it." The look of disgust drapes over Aiden's face. "My parents were not the best, but I thought everyone else was relatively alright since they didn't bother me too much. The town of officials is terrible. No one there cares about anyone. I was at my breaking point when I overheard my parents talking about sending me into the military once I turned fifteen since that is the minimum age requirement. They wanted me to go over the wall and fight to steal what others had."

"You mean in no man's land? There are people there?" I ask in surprise.

Aiden leans back against a tree. "No. I mean over the wall. The wall is beyond no man's land. It is the thing separating us from the people on the other side. No man's land isn't really that bad. Most of the bad things people hear about it are fake and made up so that people wouldn't want to go beyond the town walls. The government did it to get better control of the people living in the New World."

"I didn't want to fight the people beyond the wall. They already have so little, and it wouldn't be fair." Aiden continues, "The New World destroyed most of the Fritts in the war. Only about a hundred survived and were let go once they promised never to return. I have no idea where they went, but I know they were not all killed like the history books tell people. The people beyond the wall aren't the Fritts. They have no country. They are all simply just trying to survive with what little is left of the world."

I let all of that sink in.

The Fritts were never all killed? Some of them survived? The government lied to us? Of course they did. They have been lying to us about the carnival. Why wouldn't they lie about everything else? They have been lying from the start.