Kill Team XIV.

Chapter 3.

The alarm rang out loudly, and once again they all startled awake. They waited to hear the voice but this time it didn't come. They stayed still and silent for a moment before Grid stood up and starting doing body-weight exercises once more. Glaten, Last and Envin started talking. Wras and Praid walked over to the table in the center of the room, each picking up one of the food packets there. Sleus, who'd lied back down, sat up with his back to the wall and watched them eat. Finally, he said:

"Does anyone remember falling asleep last night?"

The other glanced at him, shaking their heads "no" with quizzical expressions on their faces. Wras asked him why he'd asked, but he didn't answer. She flexed her jaw for a second before saying through clenched teeth:

"Would you mind not doing that?"

"Doing what?" he said.

"Asking questions without explaining why you need to know," Praid answered.

The others had stopped what they were doing at Praid's raised voice and looked on.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Sleus said, sarcasm heavy in his tone, "do I need to tell you everything I think now?"

"If it has to do with anything happening to us while we're held captive by a bunch of psychos using us to kill people, yes you do!" Praid yelled. Wras, standing next to him, crossed her arms as the others stepped up closer to their side of the room.

"Fine, then, "Sleus said, clipping his word, irritated. "The voice called this a game, but a game is only fun if you can either play or watch. Clearly, they're not playing, which means they're watching. The doors open and close barely a second after we've stepped over the threshold but there are no cameras, therefore they must have put some sort of tracking device on us that tells them our position, which incidentally is also why they let us run around in a massive fake city without worrying we won't come back inside and also how we had access to the target's movements. Finally, nobody remembers falling asleep last night and there are food packets on the table that weren't there yesterday, meaning that someone came in here to put them there. Since no one woke up and they couldn't risk sending in someone if we could attack, they must have drugged us, most probably by gas through the only source of air in this windowless room which happens to be this air vent next to the door. Is that what you wanted to know?"

He didn't wait for an answer, lying back down and appearing to go back to sleep. The stunned silence stayed uninterrupted for a few seconds before Grid went back to grunting his way through his squats, more intently than before. Wras and Praid each went to their own mattresses, doing absolutely nothing. The other three hesitantly picked their discussion back up. For the rest of the day, nothing happened and they spent most of it being too bored to find anything entertaining to do, not that they had many choices in the mostly empty room.

The next day, when they woke up, without any memory of going to sleep, there were no food packets on the table. Instead, there were new briefing packets. As they noticed the sheets of paper stacked up neatly, tension filled the room. They read the information in silence, sometimes walking around the room to stretch their legs and backs before going back to studying the pages. Finally, the voice gave the signal again, and they followed the same path as last time, the diverging hallways still blocked off, to the waiting room right before the arena. They walked slowly, trying to see if they could detect any cameras they'd have missed last time. Eventually, it became obvious Sleus' theory of an implanted locating device was the most probable one.

As they came to the waiting room, though, they noticed the change immediately. So far, aside form the fact no voice had to explain the rules, everything had been the exact same. This time, right next to the door leading to the arena, leaned against the wall, was a metal stick, thin but heavy, gleaming in the artificial light of the room.