Children's Games: A Story of Modern Punishment

Chapter 3 - Emilia

~Emilia~

Kahulai was a town in Maui County of Hawaii. It was 1am when Emilia set out in the field next to where they landed. The grass was long but light and crunchy despite the humidity in the air. The atmosphere was warm for the middle of the night, cool enough not to wear a jacket and still be comfortable. There was strangely no wind which made everything very still. She was the only disruption as she weaved around bounds of shrubbery and kicked across the dirt roads that appeared every hundred metres or so.

She finally stopped twenty minutes later where the grass had grown softer and greener, and the air was finally filled with the sound of insects. She dumped her bag on the ground and sat next to it. She unpacked everything she had, repacked it, and unpacked it again, making sure she had everything. Everything for what? To fend for myself on this ghost island? She laid down on the soft grass and looked at the moon instead, surrounded by her few possessions. The moon was too bright and drowned out the stars' sparkle.

Emilia sighed and sat back up, bothered by the realisation that she needed to make up her mind about what she was doing. She could either trust these people or not. There was no in-between. But if she went out by herself, there was no going back, no security, no sanity.

A strange pressure pushed at her temples and her head felt hot. Her thoughts immediately raced to a strange green soup she had been given a couple of hours ago... But then she felt stupid for assuming that they'd be just like the monsters she used to work with. But also stupid for ruling out the possibility just because it had happened before.

"I don't know what the fuck I'm doing," Emilia mumbled to the insects as she threw herself back down. "I just want to be safe."

But that was a stupid thought. She wasn't the only one in the world trying to get away from the consequences of war. But it is what Unit 332 is trying to do... get everyone away from the war.

She grabbed the files and opened them to the first page. She told herself that there was nothing bad that could come from knowing... she couldn't remember anyway. So, there she sat for at least an hour, reading through the entire official document. She ignored pictures, forgot names, and only focused on the goals and the facts of the mission.

Her goal was to validate what Jonny had told her, which was hard enough since his information reflected what the Americans knew, and the document reflected what the Russians knew, and the truth was somewhere in between.

An hour passed before she discarded the document back into her bag and laid back down.

The Russians had reason to believe that Australia created the disease after multiple bouts of sightings of unmarked Australian military ships and aircraft spotted around areas that became infected mere days later. They gained an informant from Australia, a young woman who had moved there as a young girl and had risen in government rank until she was high enough to find out about their war crimes and decide her allegiances fell with her motherland; the top culprit for TB84 so far.

This informant helped them gain access to Australian soil, but every unit deployed was almost found out due to the lack of assimilation and cultural awareness. International travel and the sharing of culture had been denied indefinitely throughout the world for years, which led to the grand idea of using their prisoners of war.

They were already being studied to enhance the development of artificial intelligence by mirroring the human brain. But suddenly there was a need for brainwashing, so years and years of research and experimental psychological practices were reintroduced to master the art of brainwashing.

All prisoners of war used were people captured on the Australian front in Ukraine and the units depositing the disease.

And it was only encouraged further when The Games posted their award-winning bet to trick an army into attacking itself, or another division of its mother nation. There were countless other bets, all mostly relating to the number of deaths by battle or disease, which seemed to benefit no one except those who didn't live in infected lands. Australia perhaps.