The Playground (Book #1)

nine

The package begins to travel underneath in the playground soil. My entire body is on fire, with the burns from the unusual electrifying creatures create a throbbing pain. When the package finally stops, the doors open and I open my eyes. It has dropped me inside a room--no a house. It's modern and sleek with hardwood covering the entire permit. It's spacious, with an open floor plan which allows full view of the kitchen, living area, bathrooms. A very large bed occupies one corner of the room which serves as a bedroom. My mind barely takes any care to the beautiful room and instead focuses on the awful pain that has been cast throughout my body. I collapse onto the wood floors of the place, my body practically convulsing on the floor. "Safehouse" I hear Basil say. I hear footsteps coming towards me and hands hoisting me up. . "OW!" I say. I look up and meet Olivers eyes. He looks as just as much as I am but somehow he has enough strength to carry me over to a couch in the living area. "Sorry" Oliver mumbles. He grabs some supplies from his pack and sets them on the floor. "There's medicine for the burns in the left compartment!" He says to the team. I hear the trinity dash over to it, groaning in painful unison.  "How do you know it would be there?" I ask him.  "Honestly it's just a hunch." That response makes me laugh a bit. Opal comes running over with a white bottle in her hand. "Well you were right. There's loads of it. Here you go." He hands it over to Oliver. " "It's a good sign. It means we've won the game. We're being rewarded." She dashes back over to go patch up Raveena and Basil. It annoys me how she's trying to prove her loyalty back to the Raveena cult, but at the same time we are a team and I suppose we should help each other. Oliver opens the bottle and begins to smear the ointment over himself. He gives me a glob to work with and I begin to do the same. I feel better in an instant. The suite begins to regenerate itself and soon I feel absolutely no pain at all and my suite is patched back together. "Guys look." I hear Raveena say, her eyes glued at the large screen that seems to be starting up on its own. There is a large digit map of The Playground that appears on the screen. It shows our location on the bottom left side, beneath the Jungle Gym. On the right side, a picture of about 100 test in the world is set, including their stats, vitals, which team they belong to, their home village and sector, their percentage points, and if they are on the losing or winning team. "No one's dead....right?" Halen says. "I don't think so. They wouldn't start the game off with a ton of casualties. " Opal says. "Yeah, This should've been easy peasy," Basil says. "Is there any food in the cupboards?" Raveena asks. "Yes," Opal replies. "But only for winning teams. If we were a losing team, we'd have to hunt for our own." "Seriously?" Savannah says annoyed. "The disc confirms it." Opal says. "This place is huge." Oliver says turning in a 360. "I mean not just the safehouse but The Playground itself. It's like some sort of another world completely.If there are 100 in just this one, I imagine there must be tons more they built just like it in this facility."  "And It all feels so real too. It's like we're reliving our childhood in some really messed up way." Basil says. "Well, that's the point smart one." I say. He rolls his eyes. "Well, my point was that The Enchantment really outdid themselves." "The Enchantment wastes no expense." I say flatly. The screen changes Peter Vanderbilt, who looks just as perfect and poised as the last time. "Hello, students. It seems you have all completed your first game of the Playground and have found yourself in the Safehouses. These will harbor you until your next game. For now, we are here to review the lesson you have been taught by playing. Listen wisely, they will go into your final perfection percentage." With that, Peter's face clicks away and instead a petite doll with red outfit appears on the screen. "Welcome to this games lesson." She says. Her voice his monotone, her expression blank, her hands discreetly at her sides. "Today you played The Silent Game. In which you were to escape the triggers that made you want to speak or scream, in order that you were not shocked. This game represents the human character flaw of wasted words" The screen fills with people in the time before the catastrophe, bickering, and fighting, hurting each other through the use of words. "Destructive words or words used at the improper time turn society into chaos, something that perfect Dolls avoid completely. The tongue could've been used to save our planet those many, many years ago but, in contrast, it led to the downfall of a society of humans with so much potential. If you were to be seen as perfect in the eyes of The Enchantment, you were to have made sure you spoke at the appropriate time, so that you wouldn't lead to the downfall of your own teammates." I can see Raveena glaring at me from the corner of my eye. "Continue to show the perfect trait throughout this test, in order to be seen as the maximum level of perfection. And remember, what better place to be than in The Enchantments hands that set us free." Then the screen goes dark.  With that, a bell goes off and before our eyes, a delicious meal is set before us on the table by small metal robots. Immediately, we bolt to it and dig in; savoring every bite. We don't speak for the entire meal, and Basil's eyes don't stop staring. When it's finished the robots that epically emerged before take our plates and trash and disappear into the walls with it. The screen tells us that we must be in bed in 15 minutes and a timer begins to show up on the screen before us. It also instructs us to drink a purpled liquid that emerges in five vials for each of us before we sleep. If we don't follow the rules, the screen says our team will automatically lose and we will be killed. We head over to the large bed that spans about half of the back wall so it accommodates all of us very comfortably.  After drinking the liquid, we climb it into it. Raveena and Basil sleep closer together farther towards the left. Opal takes refuge on the far right, as she is still a traitor in Raveenas eyes and so Oliver and I go in the middle. I hate the middle, always have. I always sleep on the left. It takes me a while to finally sleep, but when I do, I find myself dreaming about the most unpleasant things. Nightmares, that makes me want to scream louder than any creature from The Silent Game has ever been able to muster of its victim.