.swayla.reality.

.TWO.

Blake's P.O.V
It's been a week and a half since Noah and I had our little fight. Since then I've noticed a few changes in him. He listens more to the news about team 199 and asks me more questions about them and past teams.

There's only seven of the original ten team members left. One of them refused to complete the given dare and died after their time was up. The other one shot themselves after not being able to cope.

Suicide was a common cause of death in teams. Almost as common as death dares. Almost 2/10 players in a team kill themselves.

Right now we were both sat in the kitchen. I was reading the news on my phone and Noah was reading some book about something that I hadn't bothered to read the title of because books bore me.

The internet still worked and there was quite a few sites that teens had created but the biggest one that the most people used was the team update app. It was an app that someone created to allow people to keep up with the latest news from the teams.

All you had to do was select your state or country and the team number and people would post updates about that team, sometimes even the players themselves did it.

I used to click random countries and number and read through all the updates until the very end but they were all incredibly sad and gory. I just stopped doing it because it only made me upset and Noah said I shouldn't.

I was checking the updates on the 199 team but there was nothing new except the dare that had been issued for the player today: 'crash a car'. That was it. No extra information. It could go okay or they could mess up and they'd be down to six players.

Noah slammed the book he had been reading shut suddenly causing me to jump slightly. "Oh sorry." He mumbled.

"Blake I want to talk to you about something." He said after a moment.

"Sure what's up?" I asked, switching off my phone and leaning on my elbows to look at him.

"Well..." he said rather unsurely and then he took a deep breath and his face went completely serious. He looked me dead in the eye and said something that made me gape at him in shock.

"I think we should activate a team."

"What?!" I blurted with a mix of shock and sudden excitement that shouldn't really have been there.

It was only now that I finally realised what he had been reading. 'The Game Rules'. It was a book that was issued to everyone at the start. I lost my copy years ago but Noah still has his.

"You don't want to anymore?" He asked suddenly looking unsure again.

"No no I just- I didn't think you'd say that-" I said quickly.

"Well I've been thinking about it a lot, about what you said to me. Even though I yelled at you for it I've changed my mind. Of course I still care about you and don't want you to die I think the best way I can make that happen is to do the game. If we don't then we'll turn 20 and disappear like the rest of them and we all know that's code for die so like you said I think we should try." Noah explained and I listened closely. "But first I want you to promise me something." He said and looked at me firmly.

"Yeah?" I asked, urging him to continue.

"I'll protect you as best I can but I can't protect you from the dares. You'll have to do them yourself, we all will because it's against the rules to help each other. I won't look at you any differently if you have to do something horrendous but please just promise me this: promise me that, no matter what, you won't die on me okay?" Noah looked into my eyes and I could see the hesitation and fear that he was feeling and I smiled at him.