Sixteen of them stood in each cube. Two-hundred-and-seventy cubes, eighteen environments, fifteen cubes per environment. Four predators, twelve prey. One lives, fifteen die. This was the first challenge in the box. There was to be four hunters, who would find and kill everyone else. The hunters would not harm each other, and only the hunters shall know who the hunters are. The prey must survive by using whichever means they are required to use, and be the last person standing. Groups of four would be split into alliances. If a whole alliance survives, they would all be allowed to advance, but if a single person is killed in an alliance, the only possibility of advancing will be to be the last man standing.. The first test was trust.
• • •
A slowly squirmed into consciousness under the bed of leaves and ferns he had created in the jungle. When he sat up, he was alongside his alliance. Matt, Sam, and Nick were all henchmen who's bosses were also in the box. The four had agreed that if one of them was a hunter, he would kill the other three last.
It had been six hours since midnight, which was when the challenge began. Bridger thought back to their encounter four hours ago, where three hunters killed their alliance-mate and attacked. Before anymore collateral damage could be done, Bridger had leaped into the are and slit the hunters' throats in a single slash. The final hunter had killed everyone else since then. It was down to him.
• • •
The alarms wee truly ear piercing. Hornet staggered back into the execution arena. The exits were flooding with Koytana soldiers. Kooi, Soren, Dane, Mike, Hornet, Tana, Liv, Zoey Darmanin, and Rachel Welker stood in a circle, facing outward at the adversaries that surrounded them. Before the Koytana soldiers could fire a single round, the walls on the left of the pillars came crashing down, thousands... Millions of alphas charging in, taking the enemies down in a single wave.
Tana ran through the hole in the wall meaning to escape, but was cut off by a security officer - with a shotgun. His weapon was of earth, not Ceres. Tana didn't even flinch. Before the guard could fire it, he was tackled by Soren, who forced the shotgun from his hands and pounded it against the man's temple, knocking him unconscious.
"What are you doing?" Soren asked, shocked that his new friend had failed to act when confronted with death.
Tana looked Soren in the eye and ran for the hangar, the latter doing nothing to stop Storm.
Zoey Darmanin, Rachel Welker, and Mike rushed out into the hangar where Tana began to prime the thrusters of a one-man shuttle. He began to close the canopy when he saw the trio rushing out to him. He leaped out from the cockpit and pulled a grapple gun from the man that Hornet had killed and took it back to the canopy.
"Is it true that you love me?" Zoey Darmanin said. Tana halted. "Garrett told me when you were out".
"I did" he replied in a sigh.
"You don't anymore? Have you found someone else since?" She asked again.
"I'd found someone else before you, I just never noticed" he replied, firing up the thrusters.
"Who?" Mike asked, curiously.
"Rachel Welker" he sighed in reply, looking up at Rachel Welker.
"I'm gonna enjoy my last months of life back on earth" he explained.
Before Welker and Darmanin could protest, Mike stopped them
"Do what you have to do" he said. Tana shook Mikes hand and nodded to him.
The three left the hangar and sealed themselves behind the glass panels. Tana fired the grapple toward the lever controlling the blast doors, and sealed the canopy, ditching the gun before impact. The doors slid open in seconds and the emergency hatches sealed, giving Tana barely enough time to launch the craft into space. Mike and Rachel Welker began walking back to the arena, ready to face the hell that awaited them. They then heard an explosion behind them and shielded themselves from shrapnel which flew through the glass panel.
When they ran back to the hangar, they saw Zoey Darmanin's smouldering necklace on the ground, embers still airborne with the wrecked shuttle burning in the centre of the hangar. Soren ran in at that moment, finding his friends standing agape.
"Jesus Christ! Was anyone in that?!" He said, removing his jacket, using it to shield his face from the embers.
Mike slowly turned his head, eyes watering. He slowly nodded to Soren, holding up the necklace. Soren raised his eyebrows, and Mike slowly and subtly shook his head.
• • •
"Fired up the engines before they were primed... Cold fuel ignited, there was nothing we could have done..." Soren said, examining the bulk of charred metal.
Rachel Welker slowly tossed pieces of Darmanin's belongings into a fireplace. All evidence of her life had to be destroyed. She looked down into her hand, where the burnt necklace rested. She looked at the fire, ready to delete her best friend's memory from the face of this planet.
• • •
A slowly slid the dagger from the last hunter's jugular. The doors opened. The alliance had advanced. Of 2169 people who advanced to the next challenge, only 1500 would advance again.
Rapidly extending and retracting poles and bars coming out of the wall were the biggest hazard. That was when the jumpers were not in pure alcohol. The tall shaft was full of the traps, and the floor was slowly retracting. 2169 people had to take turns at leaping up. Alliances would disperse at the end of this round. The floor was a pool of pure alcohol, pure. Contact between skin and the agent could be so destructive, the person could disintegrate before they could fully submerge.
At least twenty men and women tried to momentum the first level and fell into the liquid death. A decided to hold back his friends until the last possible second and try and memorise the pattern until the floor had given way completely. He waited until nobody was left. He stood alone on the platform. Matt, Sam, and Nick had made it to a checkpoint which stayed put one minute at a time. The floor was millimetres from the end, when suddenly, it was gone. He kept forward and realised that his calculations were correct. The first post would extend the second the floor would go. He hung on and swung forward, taking each post like a monkey bar. Suddenly, the next post retracted.
Shit he thought.
He decided that he would either make the jump or retract and fall into the pit. He swung in a 270° and released his grip. He flew forward and caught the tip just as it extended. He saw the alcohol below him and began to build up his momentum and let go, he fell feet-first toward the liquid death. His fingernails snapped on the edge of the checkpoint platform when he caught it. Th remainder of the bars were an easier task, and mainly a direct uphill slope to the completion platform. He counted no more than 1500 people left in the game.
YOU ARE READING
A is for Ares
Fiksi Umum[COMPLETE] A is a nameless man who goes by the first letter in the alphabet after a traumatic experience. He has found a cure to mental health - but he fails to realise his discovery's true nature. He doesn't know that he is a serial killer. Garrett...
