Watchers

Chapter 17: Meet and Greet at the Elimination Game House

Daniel got out of the shelter alive after Father Gary knocked him out. He survived a couple of months on the streets before that, and he's determined to get out of here, too, and bring Sasha with him. He yanks open the front door and the first thing he notices is the heat.

It's summertime here, a hot sun beating down on the house's front yard and making him squint into its brightness. It's disorienting, and he can't fathom having been knocked out long enough to travel to another climate.

"Come on," he says, pulling Sasha quickly down the sidewalk.

They're on a residential street. A white picket fence hems in the edges of the property, a few cars go by, and he can hear birds chirping in the trees. He's so distracted by the unexpected weather that he doesn't even notice what's wrong about it - the unnerving way that the street feels flat - until he's almost to the fence.

He stops abruptly and Sasha collides with him, her hand still clenched tightly in his.

"What is this place?" he asks, putting out his free hand.

Where there should be wooden fence posts, he touches a television screen, the picture warping slightly beneath his fingers.

"Oh my god," Sasha breathes from over his shoulder. "It's fake."

"It's a set," comes a voice from behind them, the teenage girl. "We could be on the lot of Universal Studios, for all we know."

Daniel turns around to get a better view of their surroundings. The screen walls are thirty feet tall, or maybe more, and the sun is projected rather convincingly across a fake sky streaked with a few wispy clouds. The house takes up most of the space, with a small yard running all the way around it.

Sasha bends down and runs her hands through the grass, then stands again, saying, "Astroturf."

"Welcome to The Elimination Game," the girl says pityingly, like she's had this conversation a number of times already. She says, "I'm Francie, by the way."

"Sasha."

Daniel doesn't want to tell this girl his name. He doesn't want to provide any information at all - he just wants to get out - but since his name is on a door upstairs, he figures she probably already knows. He says, "I'm Daniel. Any ideas on how to get out of here?"

"Win or get eliminated," Francie says. Then she laughs and adds, "But you don't want to get eliminated, and nobody ever wins."

"Great," Daniel says, turning back to the screen behind him. A powder blue station wagon chugs its way down the peaceful street, and it even has current tags on its license plates - whoever's running all of this has thought of everything.

Daniel puts his hand on the screen again, giving it a push. The image distorts, then he jumps and jerks his hand away.

"What?" Sasha asks, going quickly to him.

"It shocked me."

"Yeah, they don't really like people messing with the screens," Francie says. "If you're trying to find a way out, you're not going to have any luck with them. Somebody tried breaking through the screen a while back. I wasn't here yet, but I heard about it. All he found was a steel plate, and the house was on punishment for two whole weeks afterward. It's not a good way to win people over."

"What's punishment?" Sasha asks.

"Getting locked in your room," Francie says. "Twenty-four hours a day, like prison."

Sasha twined her fingers in the sleeve of Daniel's shirt and he said, "Don't worry, we're going to find a way out. Francie, how long have you been here?"

"Three months," she said, and he felt Sasha tighten her grip on him. "If you make it a year, you win, so I'm a quarter of the way there."

"And how do you get food?" Daniel asks. "How do new, umm, contestants come into the house?"

"They bring everything in at night while we're asleep," Francie says. "We never see them."

"But if someone's coming in, then there has to be a door," Daniel says.

Maybe this girl has been here so long that Stockholm Syndrome has taken hold and convinced her that the sick people keeping them hostage here don't have a need for doors, but he's not convinced. He puts his hand on the screen again, lightly this time so it doesn't shock him again. He's going to walk the entire perimeter of the area, feeling for seams in the screen. One of them has to be a door.