[CG] rookie stockpile :: group △

I wait for the feeling of the bullet in the back of my skull, but it never makes impact.

When I finally pry my clenched eyes open, 005's dead body is slumped over and my heart is still beating. For a moment I just stare, looking from 006 to 011, and then I notice that my closed fists are covered in speckles of blood.

"Player 005 eliminated."

"Up!" the guns grunt, and I obey without question. I don't say anything, just gawp and stare at my feet as a handful are shuffled away. Can't bear to look at 006 after I accused him of stealing, nor at 011 who kept his cool unlike I. But it's hard not to look at the dead bodies or the pools of blood slicking the green floor something sticky, but I imagine.

Just, out the corner of my eye for half of a second. Gotta remind myself why I'm here, how lucky I am, but I just feel worse. That should be me, I'm sure of it. And god damn it, I had to lose my cool in front of 006 and 011?

It's fine, I tell myself as we're instructed to stay in some closed-off room from the dead bodies. It's fine, you're alive, it was just a slip up. It's fine, you're fine, it's just a game. It's fine, it's fine, it's-

I raise my eyebrow at 007, her words snapping me back to reality.

"You wanna go home after all that?" Each their own I guess, shrugging and opting to sit on the floor in the hopes the others can't tell that my arms and legs are still shaking.

Best leave out that I don't even have a home to return to.

She bits her tongue when she looks over 004 for the first good time, catching a sharp the fuck if I do? in her mouth. There's a spike of heat raising in her neck; Theo isn't a hot head, but damn have the last four days started to get under her skin. It's dog eat dog, she's been there before, she knows all about it, but this is a fucking child. 

"How-" fucking old are you, kid? 

"I mean," she cuts her squinted stare to catch what 006 is saying, the blond boy. 007 can't help but stuff her hands in her pockets and resign, she isn't in the business to yell at someone's high school sister. What the fuck. There's no way - she looks the player over as 6 talks about going home too, and there's no way this girl is older than 18. It's a sinking feeling in her stomach realizing. She never asked 015 his name, never even thought about how old he was. 

If he was still somebody's son. 

She thinks of Avriel and home, and bites her lip until she can't think of anything but that pain instead. 

How many of them are going to walk away from this thing? She slumps to keep the pipe from falling out her back shirt, pushing past 011 and shoving past 004 to peep down the near by hallways. There's got to be a way out of here. Something other than the revolving door of black boxes, she shivers thinking of what'll put her in there. First game: electroction; second game: a bullet. 

What's next, lethal goddamn injection? She takes a few steps down the winding path, medicinal round walls pathing like a tunnel she's worried to get lost in. Each wide turn reveals off-shoots without any sign of where they lead -- where the fuck are we then? All she's seen is the tower case, a gym and two play rooms, how much else could there be to this place? Her eye spasms as she thinks of where they must keep the bodies. 

Or, well, whatever they do with them. 

They hadn't carried the last two out before their group was escorted, 015's still somewhere at the base of Mah-jong and she fumbles with the stolen tile piece in her pocket. She counts who all is left in the competition as she paces back to the rest of her deserted group, December slumped against the wall with no light behind her eyes. 

Shit. Why does she care? 

Theo grumbles to herself as she takes her spot back, the guards still no where to be seen. 009, 015, the gamemaker's henchman, and, hmm. "Who did your group lose?" Process of elimination fails her, she can't remember all of the faces. When she thinks too hard, she just sees 018 refusing to play from the start. Maybe she had it right. 

"There's only 10 of us left," easy math, easiest thing in here, "maybe we're half way done." 4 dead each game -- 18, 14, 10, 6, 2? She looks at the four around her and tries not to dwell.



 

There’s blood on my hands. I keep turning them over and over, in time with my silent footsteps, ringing them together and waiting for crimson to spill across my palms – but they somehow stay stubbornly white. No matter the flecks across my cheekbones or in the split ends of my hair – the splashback of the mess I’ve made. It doesn’t seem like enough for another life lost.

Another ghost whose name I’ll never know, but whose face will surely stay engraved in my head until my own last breaths. I shudder to think it could all be over all too soon for me, too.

There’s another part of me acutely aware of the four bodies following behind me, as I follow the guard in front of me. It’s finally starting to sink in. In order for me to survive, most of them won’t. Those four bodies, including 007 – Theo – I don’t know what I’m supposed to call her now, this is getting too messy. Are we friends? Acquaintances? Accomplices in murder?

It’s as I’m pondering these life-changing questions that the guard in front of me stops short. I dig my heels in just in time, hear a soft gasp from behind me as another body manages to catch itself to stop from slamming into my back. 007’s voice cuts through the air, questioning, and I’m still in a daze of my own imagination that I barely notice the guard leaving. Barely hear the conversations of home, a word so foreign to me I wouldn’t know how to string it together in a convincing sentence of my own.

I take the distraction to rest my legs, feeling as though they’re about to give out from under me at any moment. I slump against the wall closest to me, catching snippets of words every now and again in the rise and fall of voices. Somewhere in the midst of it all, Theo – 007 – fuck, I don’t know – goes exploring, grunting her way around the room before giving up and falling back into line.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to leave,” I mumble, ignoring the double-barreled words and feeling all the more cold as their weight settles on my chest.