Are You The Complete Player?

1/3 THIS IS A COMPETITION, REMEMBER?

CHAPTER TEN: THIS IS A COMPETITION, REMEMBER?

A fire alarm began to blare all throughout the building. Along with it was a robotic female voice repeating the words, “Fire! Please find your nearest exit,” over and over. The players who had not been part of the escape plan and were asleep in their beds began to wake with a start. Carmella and Krystupas exchanged an alarmed glance as the room began to fill with smoke.

“Oh my god, what do we do?” she cried. Her eyes, which were already red from crying over her brother began to sting as the smoke hit her in the face.

“Get down!” Krystupas replied hurriedly. They both crouched down to the ground. “Put your shirt over your nose like this,” he paused to demonstrate, lifting his shirt up to cover his mouth and nose like a makeshift mask. “Hold your breath as much as you can, try not to talk.” 

He quieted down, doing the same. Carmella did as she was told but was finding his instruction not to breathe difficult. Her anxiety was kicking in hard, and she could feel herself beginning to hyperventilate. What happened when the others tried to escape? If there was a fire, how would they get out of here? Were they all just doomed to die? What about Will? Would her effort to save him end here? As far as she knew, there was no obvious exit from this place. It was as if the robotic voice from the alarm was taunting them by instructing them to find the nearest one. Almost as if sensing her panic, Krystupas reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. He was trying to hold his breath, so he didn’t say anything, but he gave her a look that reminded her to stay calm.

Over in the corner, over a dozen players came rushing into the room, away from the fire’s origin. It was the group who had attempted and failed to escape. Crina Aldea doubled over, letting out a hacking cough. Marco, who felt guilty over his lighter being the one to cause this fire, gave her a hard shove to keep her moving. He didn’t want more deaths on his hands after what just happened to Lev Ivanov. 

“Don’t lag, the fire is going to catch up to here quick, we have to keep moving away from it, come on!” he shouted as he moved along. 

Crina pulled her shirt over her face and kept moving, grateful for the reminder. Adam, Joanna, Hana, Adela and Lucija had all joined hands and were moving through the smoke together, although it was becoming more and more difficult to see anything. The smoke was growing thicker by the second. Lucija who was the last in their chain suddenly felt someone grabbing at her free hand. She looked back and squinted through the smoke, seeing that it was Selene. 

“Luce…” Selene breathed hoarsely. “Help me.”

For a fraction of a second, Lucija remembered her pain at losing Nika and instinctively wanted to let Selene hold onto her, but she quickly remembered how fake her “friend” was and elbowed her in the chest, causing Selene to let go of her. She shot her a glare and moved along with the others, not bothering to say anything. Selene wasn’t worth breathing in smoke over. 

Selene stood there scared and alone, unable to see much of anything. The room was filled with the sounds of shouting, coughing and hurried footsteps. She heard a whooshing noise and to her horror, saw flames rounding the corner, washing her with a wave of heat. She began to run blindly, not knowing where she was going except away from the fire. 

The screams grew louder as the flames travelled deeper into the room, forcing everyone towards the farthest wall. The sound of WIC’s laugh began to boom over everything else. 

“Jeez, you guys. If you wanted to go outside, why didn’t you just say so?” it said in an amused tone. “There’s no need to burn the door down…”

Like magic, four windows appeared on the wall everyone was backed into. Directly outside each one was a balcony with a fire escape.   

“Make your escape…or die trying,” the voice continued, laughing as the flames grew even closer to everyone, devouring bunks along the way.

Joanna Kaminska frantically tried pushing the window closest to her open.  

“It won’t budge!” she shouted. “It doesn’t even have a lock!”

“We have to break them!” yelled Adam.

Everyone began to pick up on this and got to work quickly, using their feet or body strength to c***k each of the four windows open. A group of guys worked on one window and Dragan was the first one out as it broke against his shoulder and sent him tumbling out onto the balcony. One by one, each window broke open and players rushed out into the balcony and down the fire escape, some of them gaining cuts and scrapes as they brushed past broken shards of glass. The pain was cancelled out by the pleasure of being outside and breathing in fresh, smoke-free air. Borysko was the last one down, coughing hard as Krystupas helped him down from the ladder. The smoke had not been kind to him, judging by the way he could hardly hold himself up and quickly collapsed onto the ground in exhaustion. As soon as he did, the fire escape and the building above it disappeared out of thin air, as if it never existed in the first place. The fire, too, had gone.

“Well done, everyone, well done,” said the disembodied voice, still appearing mysteriously out of nowhere. 

Carmella looked around at her surroundings. They had arrived at a jungle of sorts. There was nothing but trees and plants around them, though if she listened closely, she could hear the sound of waves crashing in the distance. 

“You all made it out of the fire alive. Well, all of you except for Lev Ivanov, that is.”

The voice laughed evilly. Aksel and Emerson, along with a few other guys, bowed their heads sadly remembering the loss of their friend. 

“Poor Lev,” the voice continued. “I guess you could say he BURNED HIMSELF OUT trying to figure out how to escape our competition,” the voice said, laughing hard at its own joke. Emerson looked like he would punch whoever was it behind that voice if he could. Lev had always been the kindest of everyone in his crew. His death was no joking matter.

“What? No laughs? Come on, that was funny!” the voice said, sounding as if they were pouting. “Jeez, you guys are a tough crowd. Perhaps a challenge will lighten the mood.”

The players all exchanged dread-filled glances. They were exhausted from escaping the fire, many of them felt sick from the smoke inhalation. A challenge was the last thing any of them wanted to do in this state.