Shades of Wolves

Chapter 7: The first exam

November 10th, 2100.

A diary? What do a w***e need to remember? She doesn’t need to remember who she slept with. Losing memories should be better.

When I said my tricks in bed, that Malvis girl laughed like she saw a piece of delicious meat. In this suffocating era, not many people are interested in s*x anymore. They are immersed in the suffocating atmosphere, debt and work, enormous pressure makes that basic instinct more and more blurred. I bet the office ladies enjoy my experience. They want something different and rough.

There is a dead guy. Such a boring death. The stupid people deserve to die after all. Among them, there some guys that are quite dangerous. That's more fun, isn't it?

Tajina

1 am. 6 hours before the first eliminating round….

Room 067.

Sitting on the balcony, Tajina looked out at the night sky in front of her. She tore the page of her diary which had been just written. She made it into an airplane shape, then burned it, and threw it into the big space around. The flame gradually dissipated and was swallowed up by the darkness without a single piece.

Tajina took out the pill from her pocket. The red color shining from it was really beautiful, but also very poisonous. She gently licked the outer shell of the pill with her tongue. It tasted very sweet. Her eyes sparkled with joy, like finding gold in a pile of sand.

Suddenly the doorbell rang. Tajina frowned. Was there actually anyone looking for her now? Tajina cautiously peered through the gap in the door. Her eyes were lighting up with excitement. Her hands were quickly pulling the lever.

"What now? You want me to please you?"

………………….

The morning finally began. Everyone knew that this was a decisive day in their lives. From early in the morning, Mahoney had made a couple of knocks on Hoa's door. She was quite nervous, as if there was no next day.

Hoa sat up, stood in front of the mirror, looked at herself, and plashed some water to regain her composure. It's surely time to go to the war.

"Are you done, Hoa?" Mahoney urged, even though they had more than half an hour to gather all at the required location.

"I'm done!" Hoa changed into a simple outfit. She combed her hair to unknot those tangles. Then she left the room with Mahoney.

However, while they were walking down the corridor, they saw people hurrying to the direction of some certain room. Curiosity was clearly showing on their faces. Some people seemed to be satisfied as if they intended to witness a fun game.

"What's going on?" Mahoney asked as she saw a group of people gathering all together over there.

As fast as the flash, something hit them. Everything came to light just as quickly. A guy dressing in white from head to toe, apparently from the medical team, was controlling his robots to carry something out of the room. When they went passed Hoa, the thing lying on it startled her. It was Tajina's body. Her mouth still had a long black streak. It was dried blood, for sure. Those white eyes of hers could not be closed. It must have been a sudden and painful death.

“It’s definitely that blind man. Must have been him. He’s done it, for sure!” The guy named Hwang Hee shouted. He cried in pain.

Malvis held him back, trying to calm him down. She then told everyone.

“Everyone, please gather to the designated location. We only have 15 minutes left. We will announce the exam questions on the time we have told you all. If you're late and miss it, it's your loss."

Malvis announced that in order to disperse the crowd. And as expected, no one cared about the death of the victim anymore. It’s because there would definitely be more deaths in the next rounds. The reduction of competitors was truly a huge advantage for them.

Hoa heard that, this morning Hwang Hee came to find Tajina. He called her for a long time but couldn't have any answer from her. Finally, he broke the door and found the body lying on the floor. He said Tajina's body was not beaten or tortured. She died just like Falcao. Her hands were clutching her stomach, black blood soaking all over her body and the body was on the wooden floor. The only person that could have the ability to make her volunteer to be in close contact like that, besides him, could only be Sammul, with whom she found interesting and wanted to have s*x.

……………

At WIC Audiovisual Room,

This was clearly a large classroom that WIC invested in its private university. This classroom was in the form of an inclined slope, from the top down. The rows of seats looked like fan blades, towards the center, where the teacher's desk was a touch screen with thousands of saving storage in it. But for some reason, WIC also installed a blackboard, a kind of tool that’s clearly out of dated. It’s like nobody had ever used it for decades. But Hoa found it understandable. The old professors preferred the ticking sound of the chalk to the touch on the touch screen. Probably to please them, WIC had to build something that was old fashioned and didn't fit in with the rest at all.

The seats were arranged in pair. On the table, there were the electromagnetic board, a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen. In front of the entrance door, there was a big square with 100 smaller squares which showed the order of players’ seats. Hoa looked at the numbers. Hoa looked at the numbers. She put one of her fingers on the map of seats, moving it up and down to figure out where she was supposed to be. Hoa and Mahoney were quite far away from each other. Her 029 was sitting next to 035. Who was that 035?

Hoa sat down in the specified position. But all of a sudden, a figure in black blocked her eyesight. He wanted to go inside, his position. Hoa widened their eyes when she looked up.

035 was Sammul's number? He sat in the chair next to her. Hoa thought, kept those thoughts in her mind, that was this their intention to make them sit next to each other or they were just predestined? He was truly unlucky. Nothing had started yet, but two murders had already linked to Sammul. She was afraid that the next person would be her, at some point.

“Did you kill Tajina?” Hoa looked over and asked in her most quiet voice. She was a little bit backing off. It was because so far, every time she talked to Sammul, she blamed the murder on him.

“What was the reason? I don't want to have s*x and she forced s*x on me, so I kill her?"

Sammul asked Hoa back. Indeed, Sammul's motives in this case were almost none. Besides, Tajina's body did not show any traces of scars or mark or signs of struggle, so forced s*x was not the case. It should be the first theory to be eliminated. But the two cases had the same murder method, probably by the same person. By the way, in the Falcao case, Hoa was quite confident in her theory.

“You can’t find out the reason, can you? Then I didn't do it." Sammul laughed. Only his lips curled up. That was the only thing that helped people tell Sammul's expression.

Ring Ring…

The bell rang for game time. Hoa cut her thoughts from Tajina's death and concentrated intensely towards the door.

A guy in a black suit, white shirt and red tie entered. He's the judge of this round, not Malvis anymore. The man bowed to everyone. He made no mention of the previous two deaths but got straight to the point.

“Welcome to the first challenge. I will be the one to announce today's exam questions to you all."

He looked at the faces in front of him and then happily continued.

“You will have to answer 100 questions that WIC gives, but not all for today. Every day we give you 20 questions and they will be displayed on the electronic screen in front of you, please fill in their answers on the next sheet of paper. On the fifth day, with the last 20 questions, you must fill out and submit to us, right after the due notification whistle blows…

We only accept answers that are chosen by the ink of pens on them. And remember, we don't accept any damage to the answer section. If so, you'll be disqualified."

Hoa looked at the answer sheet next to her. On the paper, there was the date, the box to fill in the name, the exam code. Below was a square that pointed the answers. There were 5 columns and 20 rows in total. But the strange thing was, question number 100 was not a multiple-choice kind of question. It did not have any answer to A, B, C, or D. In fact, it was just a blank space. Perhaps, it was to be filled in? But why not fill it straight on the screen? Why used paper? WIC were actually out of dated or did this with intention?

“Each question has one minute to answer. We will notify when each question comes to its expiration! Look carefully at the question and think it through carefully. Only 30 people are allowed to enter the next round.”

The heat slowly began to rise, as the people here finally knew their match ratio. It's 1 against 3, or even more.

“This game is to test your knowledge, so no internet connection is allowed. Now everyone has one minute to check the machine and the final exam paper. To be fair, your exam questions will be the same, so rest assured.”

Everyone pressed the start button on their computer. All screens were fully visible. Obviously, a technology pioneer company like WIC would never fail in their equipment. This game was recorded and would be broadcast widely. If there was a mistake, the product on the market would likely be boycotted. The consequences could lead to the stock plummeting, assets quickly vanishing, which no one would want.

The judge held a board cleaner up, then wiped away the chalk on the board from earlier. He then drew a bar graph of time divided into five parts. When he finished, he turned towards the players.

“The game, officially begins…”

The atmosphere became unusually quiet. Everyone was extremely nervous looking at the screen to see the questions pop up.

Hoa looked over at Sammul. He was blind. He obviously didn't see anything. Then, how could he know what the questions were? But very quickly he was able to manage. He pressed the button on the touch screen then spoke loudly.

“I need the touch panel!”

An infrared screen on the table protruded, where lines of text were formed allowing him to touch to understand the question. A kind of Braille text.

“Question 1: What is the answer to the calculation 1+1? We have the following answers. A, B, C, D?”

Hoa’s eyes widened. This was the exam question? 1+1? A math problem for a three-year-old kid? But very quickly Hoa regained her thoughts and pulled herself together. She thought this was a favor from WIC to their players to relieve their mind and reduce the stress. Hoa did not fill in the answer yet, she was waiting for the next question.

“Question #2: What is the square root of 4? We have the following answers. A, B, C, D?”

Murmurs began to spreading in the hall. Hoa could clearly hear someone's laughter.

The next questions were also completely extremely simple. There was no puzzle at all. Perhaps, the most difficult question was probably the 20th. “What was the abbreviation of America?” Twenty minutes had passed, they also finished the exam. The examiner used the chalk to cross out the first part of the time bar, leaving the four parts of it remaining. At this point, Hoa still could not imagine that she had just completed 20 questions of this game.

Hoa took a ballpoint pen to fill in the answers. But when she looked over at Sammul, his papers were still empty. It seemed like he had no intention of completing them with a pen.

"Why don't you paint the answers?" Hoa asked.

"Then why haven't you painted yet?"

Hoa knew about Sammul's sense of smell. He probably pointed out the fact that she did not finish her exams yet due to the smell of ink was not found on her sheet of paper.

"I'm waiting for you" Hoa laughed. She wanted to wait to see how Sammul would handle it.

He didn't answer her. He just stood up, took the answer sheet, folded it carefully, and put it in his pocket.

"Why don't you just leave it there? We still have more questions coming anyway" Hoa found his actions were quite difficult to understand.

Sammul walked gently past her. His voice stayed calm and cold.

"Because I don't want to die yet"

Hoa sat still in her place. She was thinking about it just now. Right, the judge said, if there was any damage in the answer section, players would be disqualified. Hoa was kind of relieved and a bit happy that she had asked Sammul out of curiosity. That was quite fortunately somehow. If she left the answer sheet, she might not have a single piece of memory by tomorrow.