Broken

16: Paintball

Aidan

I shoot random people from behind. I follow my team's plan; form a large circle around the opposite team, gradually getting smaller. I shoot a girl with short dark hair, she shrieks and turns around to see who shot her. I hide behind an obstacle, trying to wipe the smirk off my face. I glance at her seeing who it was, a random girl from the red team. I sigh, wishing that it was the team captain from the red team; Jack "forgot" to mentioned that you receive more points for shooting the captain of the opposite team.
I check the gun to see how many points I've received so far. 463. Not bad. I'm surprised that nobody has asked how we keep track of points, I find it quite fascinating. BFC has newer technology here, when you shoot, the gun can monitor the impact of the paint. If the impact is too hard, it obviously hit the ground or an obstacle. Then, the "paint" sends signals back to the gun, confirming the points.

I feel something hit my back; paint. I turn to see who had shot me. The person is gone, from what I can see. I turn and start jogging a bit to see where the person went, they couldn't have gone too far. Suddenly, I feel more paint splatter on my back. Who is this person? He or she has perfect aim. Noah?

"Hey," I say, not too loud, but not too quiet either.

I hear a couple of giggles. I run towards the sound. I see a couple of people and shoot without thinking twice.

"Ouch!" I hear a giddy voice say.

I look up to see who I had just shot. Noah, near the centre of his forehead.

"Sorry," I say, only half kidding.

I shoot the next person I see, Jordyn. She laughs and tries to shoot at me, but misses because of the tears forming in her eyes. Grace pulls Jordyn away from me leaving Noah behind. Noah starts to walk back, since, surprisingly, he's been shot three times. I run after Grace and Jordyn, but loose them quickly.

A paint splatters beside me, then on the other side. On purpose. I see a blonde head and shoot her in the back, Grace. Then I get a clear shot at Jordyn's shoulder, but hesitate. That's where she was shot, by a real bullet. It hasn't been too long since she was shot there, it might still hurt her a bit. Even when punches, I notice her punching is not as hard on that arm, but I choose to say nothing. So instead I shoot beside her, pretending to miss.

"I thought you were good at aiming!" She laughs.

"You've never seen me shoot," I say.

I shoot her back. She shrieks and shoots me back in the stomach. I sigh and walk back towards to bar area. I take one last glance back to see Jordyn sticking her tongue out at me. I've never seen her this way.

***

"Hey, man!" Noah waves me over.
"Hey," I sit beside him.
"Game over yet?" He asks. He still has the colourful mark of paint in his head.
"No, not yet," I say.
"Ahh, I thought you'd be one of the last," He nods.
Noah pours some liquid into his mouth.
"That girl," Noah says after a couple of minutes of silence. "Jordyn, I think her name is. She's pretty good at paintball,"
"Yeah," I lean back in my chair.
"You train her?" Noah asks.
"A bit... Toby started to train her how to use a gun, but... You know, now we know what- who Toby is... So I started to train her how to fight,"

"Mmm, Toby. He seemed so innocent on the outside, but he never shared anything personal, with anybody. He was always hiding something too, I never trusted that guy..."

I remember when he came in. Toby came in around the same time as I did. He would usually hang around alone, sometimes we would talk a bit, but when I was hanging with Grace and Noah, he didn't want to hang around us. Almost like he was avoiding us.

"Okay, everyone listen up!" Jack yells once the game is finally over. "The results were very close... Their were five people from the blue team that survived 'till the end; Derrick, Ellie, Edward, Albert and Dan, congrats!"
The room bursts into cheers as soon as the names were called. I clap too, even though I don't know any of those people.
"But, since the red team shot the blue team's captain, Andrew, it made their points higher as well,"
Another rule Jack didn't tell us was that your team receives more points if they're the last ones standing.
"So the blue team received a total of 10,935 points... But the red team received 12,369 points! Congratulations to the red team!"
Half the room cheers of excitement, and the other half either smiles or stares at objects with blank faces, some even murmuring curse words under their breaths. I approach Jordyn and Grace, along with Noah, and congratulate them. Jordyn has a smile spread across her face, bigger than I've ever seen. In fact, I'm not sure if I ever seen her smile before.