Are You The Complete Player?

2/2 ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?

Sometime later, whether it was minutes, hours, or days, no one knew, everyone awoke to the sound of an alarm blaring loudly. Krystupas shot up from his bed – no, it wasn’t his bed.

“What the hell?” he said, feeling around. It was pitch dark in the room and absolutely nothing could be seen. He was on the floor, that much was for sure. He could feel the cold, hard ceramic against his palm. He could also tell that he was surrounded by the equally confused bodies of all the other players. Everyone was feeling around, and some hands made it onto his body. It seemed like at some point; everyone had been moved from their beds to the floor, all dumped near each other. He could hear some scared screaming around him.

“I’VE GONE BLIND!” shouted a guy.

“THEY’VE BLINDED US!” shouted another person.

Everyone seemed to be freaking out. Rightfully so, as this was a very scary way to wake. The alarm stopped ringing and the voice came back over the speakers – or wherever it was that it came from.

“I see that you’re all awake. Good. It’s time for your next game,” it said.

“What have you done to us?” said a girl, sobbing. Krystupas couldn’t tell who anyone was in this darkness. It felt so unsettling. “Why did you move us to the floor?”

“Good question, player,” the voice responded, giving no indication of who the sobbing girl was. Perhaps he couldn’t tell either, though Krystupas doubted it. This person, or monster was more like it, seemed to know everything that was going on around here.

“You’ve all been placed on the floor in a random location. The purpose of this was to shuffle you around, like a deck of cards, so to speak, so you do not know where anyone or anything is,” the voice explained. “The game is to find your other teammates and reunite with your groups. Any group that has not joined together with all five members holding hands by the given time will be eliminated. You have until the end of the song. Good luck, players.”

Immediately after he finished the song “Reunited” by Peaches & Herb began blaring loudly. Too loudly. It made hearing anything else difficult.

*Oh crap*, Krystupas thought and began shouting Carmella’s name.

Meanwhile, Carmella was elsewhere in the room, trying not to panic. She slowly lifted herself up off the ground, careful not to trip over anything or anyone. She couldn’t see anything and all she could hear was that awful song mixed in with the frantic shouts of all her peers searching for their teammates. It was complete chaos.

“Krystupas?” she said way too quietly. She wasn’t used to shouting and had to force herself to repeat it more loudly. “KRYSTUPAS?” she shouted.

She moved around, pushing past the frantic, sweaty bodies of everyone around her. She screamed when someone suddenly grabbed her by the arms and leaned close to her face.

“FREJA?” shouted the guy who was grabbing her.

“NO!” she shouted back. “Let go of me!” He did so and kept moving along, shouting Freja’s name over and over.

Carmella felt scared. She didn’t know what to expect when they were choosing teams earlier, but it wasn’t this. She kept calling for Krystupas when she suddenly felt someone shove her hard.

“Move out of my way,” said a girl. She sounded familiar, like someone she had interacted with before, but she was not familiar with anyone’s voice well enough to pin down who it was. She tried not to take the insult too seriously as it may not have been personal. Everyone was on edge right now, including herself.

“KRYSTUPAS?” she shouted as loudly as she could.

“CARMELLA?” someone shouted back, but it didn’t sound like Krys to her. She felt this person reach out to her. “It’s me, Borysko.”

Who was Borysko? Carmella didn’t remember anyone with that name. He seemed to guess as much because he continued.

“Adamovich, the other guy on your team.”

“Oh, sorry,” Carmella said. Of course, it was the nerdy-looking guy. He must have remembered her name from when she was answering the challenge question, but she had never learned his. “Have you found anyone else from the team?” she asked.

“Just you so far,” he said. “Here, take my hand. We have to stick together.”

He held out his arm. She felt around for his hand and held it once she found it. Together, they moved along, shouting the names of their other teammates. The song kept blaring loudly through everyone’s shouts, its lyrics almost mocking them.

*As we reminisce on precious moments like this, I’m glad we’re back together ‘cause I missed your kiss, hey, hey*

The romantic lyrics mixed together with holding this stranger’s hand and the terrified screams all around them, made Carmella feel like she was at the strangest, most morbid school dance ever.

“FREJA!” she could still hear the guy from earlier shouting.

“HANA, WHERE ARE YOU?” another girl nearby was shouting at the same time.

Carmella could also hear another girl crying about how she didn’t remember her teammates’ names. She felt for her. That could have easily been her if she hadn’t made friends with Krystupas. The WIC person never told them they needed to familiarise with one another’s names.

Carmella continued to shout for Krys when suddenly she heard it.

“CHIMAERA!”

The code word! It was him!

“I hear him! He’s nearby” she shouted to Borysko. “KRYS!!! KRYSTUPAS!”

“PAVLIS!” Borysko joined in the search.

“OVER HERE! CHIMAERA! I’M OVER HERE!” they both heard him shout somewhere to their left. They headed over and after a few more seconds of shouting back and forth, Carmella felt Krystupas reach out to her and take her other hand that wasn’t holding Borysko’s.

“Thank god,” he said with relief. “We need to hurry and find the others.”

“I’m already with Borysko,” she replied to him.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Borysko answered. “We just need to find the other two, Lucija and Pietro.”

All three of them began to move around, shouting their names, until they finally heard a response.

“We’re over here!” they heard a guy, presumably Pietro, shout. He and Lucija had found each other at some point, and they all joined together. It was right on time too, as the song appeared to be reaching its end already.

“Oh, thank god,” Lucija breathed. Her voice sounded shaky. “That was so hard! Is everyone here?”

“Yes, we are all here, let’s all make sure we are holding hands like it told us to,” said Krystupas.

They stood together, holding each other’s hands, and waiting. The shouting sounds had died down a bit as if plenty other groups had already found their teammates but there were still a few voices shouting for each other as the song faded out and ended.

“Time’s up,” said the disembodied voice. “To those of you who managed to reunite with your teammates, good job. You’ll each be receiving points based on how fast you found each other, with the group that reunited first receiving the most points and the group who reunited last receiving the least. As for the rest of you… bye-bye!”

Screams of terror were heard as five loud explosions went off, one after the other. Whatever was behind that voice could see them clearly even though they couldn’t see each other.

A bright light suddenly turned on, illuminating the entire room. It turned out that they weren’t all actually blinded, the room had just been manipulated to become very, very dark. There were a few shouts of pain now that the lights had turned on so suddenly. It made everyone’s eyes hurt. Lucija let out a scream upon seeing who were among the dead bodies.

One of them had been her close friend Nika. The others were a Portuguese player named Justino Silva, a Swiss player named Emil Vogel, an American player named George Walker and one of the best female tennis players in the world, Rodica Baciu from Romania. Their bodies lay bloody and scattered across the room, Emil and Nika’s close together, their hands still held from when they had found each other. A few of the survivors standing near the bodies were splattered in the deceased’s blood.

Carmella felt like she was going to be sick. Everything about this was so sick.

The voice spoke up again, in a perky, almost hospitable tone.

“Now, who would like some breakfast?”