Virtual Reality ✔

Raising Stakes

Nothing too out of the ordinary happened that night. We continued our usual activities and nobody dared mention what had happened earlier. Later that night, as expected, Duncan had left. Though this time Victoria was well asleep and I was on my way there too.

I found it hard to sleep last night because of all the things that were on my mind. Eventually, sleep had indeed won me over and I thought I would be relieved, I wasn't. No, I hadn't had the nightmare, but a vision of my mom standing. She seemed to want to warn me, and an anxious fear had eaten me from the inside out. I tried to ask her what was wrong but she didn't answer. Victoria had come to wake me and she told me there wasn't a letter today, however it was a verbal note. One that they couldn't read, but  were willing to retell for to me.

"Okay," I replied after she recited what they'd said. I only half heard her but it was something to do with the game. It was another where we had to keep the whole team alive. I was getting tired of those games, really, I was. I rubbed my eyes awake as she left the room to give me my space. I took out the orange suit and knew that the games had to have been close to over. I longed for the day when I could finally sleep in and not have to worry about competing in games, potentially being the reason we failed. Being first place had been a lot of pressure, but at least we had a lead.

I left the room once I was dressed, not feeling the need to formally brush my hair since it was so short. We had too little time to get to the lobby so I styled it with my hands as we walked there. It was, again, unusually quiet and I wondered if I had missed anything else. When I mentioned it nobody spoke up, and I just assumed it was the lack of people that had created the eerie silence.

"Why is everyone so quiet?" I whispered to Duncan. He seemed to take a moment too long to process my question before formulating a response.

"I don't know about everyone else, but all morning our team has been worried," he explained in a breath. His hair was styled much nicer than mine, I couldn't help but notice. I suddenly regretted my decision and wished somebody had told me to get ready properly. I was suddenly very aware of the cameras watching, that everyone at home would see my nasty bedhead.

"What have they been worried about?" I asked, suddenly stopping myself from being too ridiculous. I'd never worried about my appearance. When I say never, I mean it.

"All sorts of things. Family, consequences, we're all mentally drained," he explained, crossing his arms. He seemed to take a deep relaxing breath and said something I expected the normal Duncan to say, "I guess when you're worried about physical pain it can drain you." His joke came out dry but I smiled anyway.

Nothing more had happened before the people in charge started to speak. It was nothing of importance to me, just the same thing Victoria had recited to me this morning. I watched the regular routine happen knowing there was nothing special about this competition. The only things that were great about this game were the stakes. That was why everyone was so quiet. Some people had no chance of winning. Some people, like D3 were so close to winning. Then there was us, we had everything to lose.

When we entered the game this time we were in a replenished city. It reminded me so much of the abandoned one that I knew this was the same scene. Everything here looked so alive though, and it made me wonder what had happened to ruin it. I soon realized the answer. Theoretically, the people in the city had ruined it. No human other than us, the players, were there. Eventually in this timeline, the people would arrive and slowly deplete the city of its life.

I reminded myself that this was just a game, and that the creators thought it'd be fun to recreate a lively version of the rundown, ruined map we played before.

Without words we all walked in one direction. I wondered where the other team had been spawned in and guessed they were just outside the laboratory. "I'm not hallucinating, right? This is the place where we fought the zombies?" I asked, breaking the silence.