Ozymandias Academy

Part 9

Elle hesitantly removed the goggles. "Malia, what just happened?"

Malia looked a bit suspicious of Elle's question. "Why do you ask? It was a normal game. You guys lost again, and I just scrubbed you. So you're free to go."

Elle opened her mouth to correct her, to say that she was pretty sure the rest of her team was still there in the game, but she ended up keeping it to herself.

Elle reluctantly left the room, still in disbelief over Malia lying to her so blatantly. Why wouldn't she tell her the truth?

As Elle walked back to her room, she thought about what had happened, and this is when she came to the realization that she hadn't forgotten anything from the game. She remembered the puzzles, she remembered P, and more importantly, she remembered the outside of the school, the edges of the simulation, and the strange group of adults she had encountered.

In that moment she was very grateful that she didn't look like herself within the game. Only Malia would know what she had seen, and maybe not even her. Elle had never gotten that far before, so she suspected that Malia had fallen asleep at her station. That had happened, before, Elle was pretty sure, although she couldn't prove it. There were just may

y times when Malia had been suspiciously quiet for a long time, or something in Elle's simulation would go wrong and she would just have to keep going and ignore it, because Malia was asleep and didn't help to fix it. In her defense, they did usually play very early in the morning, something that was irritating to Elle at first, but that she had since grown used to. It did not surprise her that Malia was not as adaptable as Elle was herself.\When Elle returned to her room, she found Linda missing. Unconcerned, and distracted by her many thoughts, Elle grabbed her trusty notebook and threw herself into her desk chair. She wanted to write down everything she had seen to make sure she didn't forget it.

The main question that occupied her mind when she finished was the question of why. Why had her memory survived the scrubbing? Why had Malia lied to her about her teammates still being in the game? This ushered in a whole new host of questions and doubts. What else had Malia been lying to her about? What else couldn't Elle remember that had been taken from her in one of the many times she had been scrubbed?

She didn't want to worry herself too much with the questions she couldn't answer, so she turned instead to theorizing about the game. She had yet to figure out what it was for, though it was safe to say that by now she had in fact determined what was wrong with it. The whole thing was built on lies.

While thinking about the lies, Elle came to another important conclusion. If everything was a lie, then so was the game itself! The game was never just a game. Yes, there were winners and losers, and it's true that nothing within the game had real-life repercussions... But it had. The realistic nature of the game had caused Elle to confuse reality with the game more than once, and she had no doubt that that had happened to others as well. She had become so desensitized to her own death within the game that she suspected she would react the same way in the face of real life danger - she would ignore it, because that was what she had been trained to do. What a scary thought.

The jokes they'd made about Dean Astor had been right all along. He was taking kids, the most promising students at his school, and he was turning them into his own personal army. That was the point of all the problem solving and magick use, he was training them to think fast under pressure but also to regard pressure as less of a threat. This scared Elle more than anything else. How was she supposed to fight back if she knew that she was unable to take danger or risk seriously anymore?

She was going to need help.

The first person she thought to ask was Jenna, of course, but Elle and Jenna had been drifting apart as of late. Elle of course had been absorbed by the game, and Jenna didn't seem to mind, saying that now she had the time to focus on her studies. But Elle knew that she had been neglecting her best friend, and dragging her into a conspiracy was the last thing she should have been doing. So Jenna was right out.

The next person Elle thought of wS Forrest, but she rejected that thought immediately and moved on to Linda. Of course, Linda was the obvious choice. Elle was pretty sure that Linda was in the game too, though she had never encountered another "L", which is what Linda would have been going by. Linda had been missing from the room all the same times that Elle had been, and she wasn't going to classes anymore, always seemed tired, the list of suspicious activities went on. So all Elle would have to do would be to ask her about the game, and then persuade her into seeing the truth. That shouldn't be too difficult. Elle knew she had all the facts on her side, though she would have to do a little more digging to make sure she was right.

Then Elle's thoughts drifted back to Forrest. If Linda didn't believe her, or wasn't really part of the game, then who else was there? Elle hadn't exactly been making an effort to befriend a lot of people. The only other person she really talked to at the entire Academy was Forrest. Well, there was also Dr. Capra, but Elle knew he would not be pleased with her for falling into the trap of the game in the first place. She hadn't talked to him since she was slated to appear in the Talent Show for Dean Astor, so she knew Dr. Capra was not interested in helping her anymore. At any rate, Elle did her best to push thoughts of Forrest from her head. He would be a last-ditch attempt. A Plan Z, if you will.

Linda stumbled into the room a few hours later, looking positively exhausted. Elle knew that now was her chance to make her move, so she was waiting for Linda in her desk chair. She spun around when Linda opened the door. Linda was too exhausted to be fazed by Elle's dramatics. "Where have you been?" Elle began.

"Oh, you know. Out," Linda replied noncommittally. She got into bed immediately.

"Look, I'll cut to the chase. You're playing the game too, right?' This was a chance, and Elle knew it, but he was hoping Linda was just tired enough for it to work.

Lucky for Elle, she knew Linda very well. Linda's back stiffened, the only part of her that Elle could see. "How did you know?" Linda said, facing the wall.

"I just told you, I'm playing it too," Elle said. Despite herself, she was getting a little excited. It was nice to be able to talk about the game with someone in real life, someone who understood. "It's the only thing that makes sense. We had consultations with the Dean around the same time, and we're both always gone from the room but we get back around the same time. I gotta say, though, it's kind of funny, I've never encountered another L while I was playing, and I think I've met most of the rest of the alphabet by now."

"That is kind of weird, but I do go by L. Huh. What a crazy coincidence, we've got the same name in the game," Linda said. "Look, can we talk about this later? I know you understand how tired I am. It's hard work tracking those guys down."

Elle;s stomach dropped. "What?"

"You, know, trying to find the other team so we can shoot them. It's hard work, especially when they're really good. I thought you said you played too." Linda turned over, confused. "We're the only players, the one's we're following are the computers. You knew that, right?"

"Yeah, of course, I just got confused. My tech never told me that the other team was computers," Elle said quickly, trying to cover her confusion and shock. Luckily, Linda was still really tired, so she just shrugged it off and went to sleep. But now Elle was way too wired to sleep. Her own roommate had been trying to kill her for weeks and she had no idea.

To be fair, Linda didn't know that she was trying to kill real people. And for some reason, Elle had been under the same impression that the people coming after her team had been computer generated as well, though Malia definitely hadn't told her anything of the sort. But it was quite the shock to find out that both teams were real people. That explained why the other team made mistakes so often, but Elle had assumed they were just on a different difficulty level.

Well, this meant that Linda's part in Elle's grand escape plan was right out. There was no way she could tell Linda what she was doing now. They were on opposing sides of the conflict. So Elle went back to Forrest. Plan Z it was, then.