Man Hunt

Chapter Thirteen - An Annual Occurrence

Despite my reluctance, I feel my eyelids getting heavier. They are begging for rest, which I cannot understand. I may have been woken up early by Eve’s screaming this morning, but I had slept a few hours before that. I should be able to function with the amount of rest I’ve gotten, I know I’ve managed well in the past with even less. I should be OK.

I yawn. Perhaps it is more so the mental strain taking its toll on me as opposed to the physical one my body is under. So much has happened in the last few days, so much trauma. I have had enough mental upset in the last few days to last a lifetime!

Maybe sleeping is better for now. I am safe at the moment, and I can’t see the red team attacking so soon again, not since they lost two people so quickly. It will also mean I can have some time away from my thoughts. Although the price of that is the distress I will most likely be subject to in my nightmares.

I sigh and succumb to the dream world.

***

I am back lying on the bed in the room from my previous dreams. It seems that I have took up where I last left off. The room is bustling with people. They are moving about the room, going from bed to bed and transferring my fellow candidates onto trolleys and moving them from the room. The room really is in a flurry.

It looks like chaos from where I sit. It is how I would imagine a motorway would be like if there were no rules or regulations for drivers. People move past each other in all directions, everyone seems to be in each other’s way. Hospital gurneys are pushed through the room, people duck and dodge them with annoyance. I am surprised there are no collisions between the gurneys and the people.

What could be happening?

I glance to my side and see the unnamed girl from the red team – who I now recognise as the only other person to be alive apart from Niamh and Alex on the red team. I watch as two men pick her up quite carelessly and place her onto a hospital gurney. She is quickly fastened onto it, and a woman wheels her out of the room and out of sight.She is lead out of the room and out of sight.

The two men then come towards me. They both stand beside me and lift me up off the bed– one has my shoulders, the other has my legs. I too am placed on the gurney.

‘’Why is this one awake?’’ asks one of the men as they fasten me in.

‘’Sometimes the injection wares off certain people before others,’’ explains the second.

‘’Will she be able to remember this?’’

‘’Doubt it, before they’re sent to the island they’re injected with a serum to block the last few hours from their memory,’’ continues the man.

As soon as I am fastened into it, the two men are replaced by a single woman and she begins wheeling the hospital trolley from the room.

I am wheeled down a long hallway consisting of white-washed walls and fluorescent light ceilings. I am led past a few rooms which I sneak a glace into and see glimpses of the other candidates – surrounded by adults who look like they are performing surgery on them.

What are they doing to them? What will they be doing to me?

I cannot empty my mind of fearful thoughts. Although this is only a flashback, it feels as though I am living it for the first time. It all feels so real.

I am led into a room of my own. It is no bigger than the room I woke up on the island in. However it does seem a lot bigger due to the mirrors lining the walls either side of the room and the fact that the place is cleared out – apart from a bed in the centre of the room and a small table of tools in the far corner.

I am wheeled up to the bed, transferred from the gurney onto the bed and then secured on it carefully as I was in the gurney. The hospital gurney is then taken from the room by the woman but she returns moments later.

The only person in the room with me is the woman that wheeled me here. She is observing me and has a clipboard grasped in her hand – which she scrawls notes onto. Every so often, she glances at me and I stare right back at her, trying to hide my fear by refusing to avert my gaze.

I once read somewhere that humans are like animals in this sense. By staring right back at the woman, I am trying to tell her that despite my conditions I am not afraid of her. This challenge makes me look a lot braver than I feel.

‘’Alice Embleton,’’ she states as a man enters the room, ‘’blue team.’’

‘’Anything special about her? Is she a mute?’’ asks the man.

‘’No, both mutes are male this time,’’ she responds.

‘This time’

Has this been done before? Have other children been kidnapped too and forced to play this horrific ‘game’ on this island too? How can they get away with this?

‘’That should be interesting,’’ smirks the man.

I want to jump from the bed and strangle the man. He is demented. He deserves to be lying dead on the floor. Not Robbie. Not Eve. Not anyone else.

How can he be so nonchalant about this? How are they both so casual about forcing children to murder each other? How is this a game to them? Surely they can’t believe that this is O

 Luckily for them, not only am I confined to the bed, but my body is also too drowsy for me to do anything. I may be awake, but the rest of my body is numb and I am unable to even wiggle my toes.

‘’Indeed,’’ replies the woman.

‘’How long is the flight to the island?’’ asks the man.

‘’Well about three hours, but the private planes will be leaving separately at hourly intervals,’’ she answers.

‘’How many are going this year?’’ he questions.

This is an annual occurrence! They do this yearly! I was right.

‘’Two, carrying five on each.’’

But that’s only ten? I think. There are twelve of us.

The man approaches me and takes my arm in his hand. He then clips the bracelet around my wrist and fiddles around with it for a few moments. Then, he looks down at my face with an evil smile.

‘’Enjoy yourself,’’ he grins maliciously.

‘’Fuck you,’’ I spit and the two of them laugh.

I stare back at him, hatred burning through my eyes and into the man’s skull even though I have no idea who he is. All I know is that he is a part of whatever sick force is running all this and he is enjoying doing it. And as for the woman, she is no better.

‘’You’re a feisty,’’ he laughs, ‘’you’ll be very entertaining.’’

Before I can curse at him, he injects my shoulder with something and the world quickly goes black.