Are You The Complete Player?

2/2 WHO WOULD YOU PICK TO DIE?

Liam had his fists clenched in anger. This psycho wanted one of them to die so that Adam wouldn’t be alone in his grieving? This was sick!

“Joanna, as the one with the gun, the decision is ultimately yours to make. Who would you pick to die? Men, it is your job to help her make that choice. Will you choose to save yourselves and kill Adam Evans? Or will one of you make the ultimate sacrifice and volunteer to die? You have ten minutes to decide. Choose wisely. Oh, and before you choose, remember that none of you are so innocent. You may open the envelope now, Liam. Good luck to you all,” the voice said and once again disappeared. They all removed their Airpods.

Joanna was shaking with nerves. She wasn’t sure if she understood correctly. Was WIC really saying that she had to choose between Adam and one of these three guys to die? How could she ever have someone else’s life on her conscience like that? She felt like she was about to faint.

“What’s in the envelope?” Pietro asked, swallowing hard at the lump in his throat. He was trying to sound brave, but deep down he was a nervous wreck. He didn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s death, but he knew wasn’t about to volunteer his own life either. Liam opened the envelope and removed three documents from inside. Everyone gathered close to look at them.

The first one was a report about how Artem had been caught having s****l relations with a teenage player a few years ago but had paid to make the accusations, and the girl, go away. Joanna gaped at him in shock. She knew the girl in question and had played matches with her in the past. She had been a promising young player who had suddenly retired from tennis all too soon. Joanna had never knew why and always wondered about it whenever she thought of her.

The next paper contained a text exchange between Liam and a drug dealer whom he was scoring performance enhancing drugs from. The paper included photographic evidence of Liam injecting the drugs into his arm. Joanna shot him a judgmental glance. Liam had a reputation of throwing tantrums on court, sometimes they were exaggerated and not proportional to the thing that angered him in the first place. Knowing how steroids can affect one’s mood, his behaviour now made sense to her.

The final document consisted of a few pictures of Pietro and a girl who certainly wasn’t Lucija. Joanna instantly recognised the venue the pictures were taken at. It was where one of their more recent tournaments was held at. The current year was displayed on a poster in the background of one of the photographs, proving that they were taken recently. She recognised the girl in the photos as well.

“Is that Mia Ricci?!” Joanna shouted in a scandalised tone.

“Shh!” Pietro shushed her and glanced over towards his girlfriend nervously. Lucija was curled up in her bed, not facing them at all. She was still mourning her friend Nika’s death and was not in the mood for movies or anything else. “It’s not what you think,” he added.

“Please, that is the oldest line in the book,” Joanna said. “How could you do that to Lucija? And with Mia Ricci? Everybody knows that she is a…” she stopped herself, her cheeks burning red. She never liked to speak ill of her colleagues, even those she didn’t particularly like. “There are a lot of rumours about her,” she said instead.

“So, I made a mistake,” Pietro said angrily. “What, are you going to kill me over it? At least Mia Ricci is of age, unlike Artem’s side piece.”

“Now, hold on just one second,” Artem said sternly. “That girl was never my ‘side piece.’ I never have and never would cheat on my wife. I love Galyna more than life itself. It is true that I had a fling with that young girl, but it was before Galyna and I were together and the girl also lied to me about her age.”

“Oh please,” Pietro snorted.

“It’s true,” Artem replied, then turned to Joanna. “I didn’t know how old she was until after we hooked up. When I found out, I got angry and broke things off. She threatened to ruin my career. I paid her everything she wanted but made her promise to stay away from me for good. That girl was never interested in tennis, she was just a scammer who happened to be decent at the sport, using players to make easy money.”

“She never came to ME for easy money,” Liam said. Everything in his tone implied that he didn’t believe Artem’s story. Artem shot him a glare.

“Perhaps it was because you were too busy blowing all of your money on drugs,” he said bitterly.

“Yeah, well, what I spend my money on is my business, isn’t it?” Liam shot back angrily. The three men began to argue over each other quietly until Joanna finally interrupted.

“Guys, please!” she said tearfully. She was having a hard enough time with this as it was, she didn’t need them fighting as well. “Don’t fight. Now isn’t the time to be pointing fingers at each other, we have to think.”

“What’s there to think about?” Liam said. “It’s obvious who should go. Adam Evans.”

“Adam Evans didn’t do anything wrong, he’s just understandably, very sad over his girlfriend’s death,” Joanna said.

“Oh, so you think one of us should die?” he asked, his nostrils flaring in anger.

“N—no! That’s not what I mean,” Joanna squeaked.

“Let me tell you something, Kaminska, the only reason your boy Evans isn’t part of this group right now is because he would volunteer his own life in an instant and WIC’s sick ass wouldn’t have any fun with that so they’re making us choose instead. But the answer is obvious. Evans wants to die, so you should kill him.”

“No!” Joanna repeated. “I can’t – I don’t want to kill anyone. Please, there must be some other way. We just have to think.”

“Liam has a point,” Artem said with a serious look on his face. “I would prefer not to kill anyone either, obviously, but the guy wants to die. If I didn’t have a wife maybe I’d volunteer myself, but I can’t leave her. I can’t put her through all that. We were planning to start a family soon, I can’t—” he trailed off, his voice breaking. Whether the story about his past was true or not, it seemed like he was being sincere now.

“I am not killing anyone,” Joanna said stubbornly. She had tears streaming down her cheeks. She knew that if she didn’t follow WIC’s rules, she could end up dead herself, but it wasn’t like she could live with the guilt of killing another person anyway. No matter what dirty things these guys had done in their lives, they didn’t deserve to die. She wasn’t going to do it. Not if she could help it. “I’m not killing any of you guys and I’m not killing Adam Evans.”

The guys all exchanged frustrated stares. The clock was ticking. If they didn’t follow through on WIC’s demands, it was possible WIC would kill all five of them.

“Well, if you’re not going to do it, then I will,” Liam said as he yanked the box of candy out of Joanna’s hand and pulled out the gun.

“Liam, don’t!” she shouted.

But it was too late. Liam had grabbed a bullet from Pietro’s bucket and was making his way over to Adam while loading the gun.

“LIAM, STOP!!!” Joanna shouted again, this time gaining a few looks from other players who had no idea what was going on. A few people gasped as they watched Liam run over to Adam and point the gun right at his head. He was seconds away from pulling the trigger when suddenly he was lifted into the air and thrown against the wall, sticking to it like a magnet. The gun fell to the floor and vanished out of thin air. Liam’s girlfriend Freja Larsson screamed upon seeing her boyfriend pinned to the wall that way.

“Liam, oh my god! What is happening?!” she cried.

Krystupas and Carmella exchanged a worried glance with Borysko, who had joined them on Carmella’s bunk, and then looked back at the scene.

“Everybody, calm down,” said the robotic voice of WIC. Everyone froze automatically, too scared to make any movements. “Let me explain what is happening here. You see, we wanted to further prove the importance of following rules, as we felt Charlotte’s death was not quite enough. So, we chose a few players to hypothetically take a pick which among them and another player would die. However, that is ALL we asked them to do. To make a choice… to PICK one of the four to die. We never specifically told them to KILL anyone. Who remembers what rule number four is on the list we handed out earlier? Anyone? Dragan Pavic?”

Dragan’s eyes widened at being called on. He was a remarkably tall man, but in that moment, he cowered like a little boy.

“Uh… it was, um… don’t kill anyone outside of challenges?” he said nervously and unsure of himself.

“Precisely,” said the voice. “Very good, Dragan! Rule number four is indeed ‘any attempt on another player’s life outside of the games is strictly prohibited.’ Now, we explicitly stated to this chosen group that this was an EXPERIMENT, not a game or challenge. An experiment. You broke the rules, Liam.”

“Man, go to freaking hell!” Liam spat, struggling hard against whatever force was pinning him to the wall. “You tricked us!”

“We did no such thing, Liam. We gave you simple instructions, which you failed to follow. It was all hypothetical though. If you’d simply pick someone like you were asked to do, all of you would have lived, but since you decided to go on and make an attempt on Evans’ life, which wasn’t even YOUR assigned job…”

A knife suddenly flew at Liam’s head and struck him right in the middle of the forehead.

“No!” Freja screamed in agony just as a dozen more knives flew at him, landing in various parts of his body, as if his body were a bloody portrait and the knives were the nails hanging him up on the wall. Freja fell to her knees, continuing to scream her lungs out. She couldn’t believe she had just watched her boyfriend die.

“QUIET,” the voice boomed, now sounding more angry and less amused. “LET THIS BE A LESSON TO ALL OF YOU. ALWAYS FOLLOW THE RULES AND FOLLOW THEM CAREFULLY. READ EVERYTHING. LISTEN CAREFULLY TO *EVERYTHING.* IF YOU MESS UP, YOU WILL DIE. THERE IS NO ROOM FOR MISTAKES HERE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.”

The voice faded away, leaving the room quiet except for the sounds of Freja’s sobbing and the ironically happy and upbeat music from Grease that was still playing on the screen. Liam’s body remained on the wall for the rest of the day and all through the night as an example of what happens when one does not play by WIC’s rules – rules that were sometimes designed to trick and confuse the players.

Freja was inconsolable through the remainder of the day, as well as Joanna. She felt responsible for Liam’s death. It was her task to make a choice and she had not been brave enough to simply pick someone. Had she done so, Liam might have still been alive. She continued to sob as she made her way back to Adam’s side and sat down. It was true what WIC had said, misery does love company, and now, she had become the company.