"Honey, how was school?"
Terrence's mom poked her head through the hallways when he entered the room. The smell of glazed ham hit his nose and for a short moment, he forgot his situation. He briefly thought of what he could say, but eventually replied with "Fine."
"Tough workout, clearly." She replied, looking at his sweaty and dirty clothes. "Be sure to clean up before dinners ready. Fifteen minutes, alright?"
Terrence did as instructed, cleaning himself fully before looking in the mirror. Tall and muscular, with short brown hair. He sighed about what he could do about the situation as he went back into his room, walking past his shelf of trophies and signed jerseys and jackets to his room. He found a football jersey from last season, orange with green sleeves. So he put that on before noticing something on his bed.
A cardboard box with a set of protein bars inside it, about 36, and two envelopes.
'Hello, Terrence Nash! Congratulations for surviving the first game.'
There were several rules below that, and finally.
'And because you landed a killing blow, you get an extra reward. It's in the second envelope, unless you opened that one first.'
Terrence opened the envelope, and within was two hundred foley, contained in four fifty foley notes. His heart sank as he looked at the blood money. But the question was what to do with the money. Admittedly, he didn't need it. And the idea of using it was disgusting. But before he could decide what was going on, his phone buzzed. He answered it, and it was a message from Mateo.
'You get a package from the hosts?' was what it read.
'yeh.' he texted back. 'you going to the next game?'
'haven't decided yet. Still, I'll pray for us all to get through it.'
'arent these guys gods?' Terrence typed.
'They're something else. God wouldn't do this.'
Terrence was called for dinner before the conversation was finished. He was never as religious as Mateo, but perhaps at this point, praying was all he could do.
Janet got home after what felt like forever. She adjusted her sunglasses slightly before walking past the oversized gate inside the Privis estate, walking past the portraits of all four previous heads of the family, alongside her mother as the current head. And she'd be next. But the long hallways were louder than usual. and as she traced the sound, it got loudest right outside of her room. Her mother talking to several police officers, all gathered around a letter she was holding. One cops head snapped to looking directly at her, and the others followed like a herd of predators finding their prey.
"Janet." Her mother asked as she scanned through the letter again. In her other hand was what looked like some kind of ticket. "What is this?"
"Why would I know, I just got here."
"It's addressed to you. So if you don't know, then who wrote it?"
"Maybe if you give me the thing, and I'll be able to narrow it down."
She took the note from her mother as soon as she approached. Inside was a note about the games, a set of rules, and that she won some kind of award for surviving the first round.
"So are you guys not aware of what went down during detention today?" She asked casually.
"The death of Darren, you mean?" One of the cops asked. He had a moustache that only important people would have, and a different looking badge to the others, so he was probably in charge.
"That, yeah. I think everyone in the building got some kind of power, and then we were telepathically told to kill each other. And Darren died, I guess. I wasn't there, and I didn't know the guy."
"And where were you during this?"
"Running around the building. Found a hiding spot and waited for everything to blow over."
"And power?"
"Dunno. Just know I have one now." She shrugged.
"That's probably all the information you're getting right now, officer. I'll update you if anything else happens." Her mother said, subtlety moving the ticket to see if Janet's face would follow it. It did.
"Alright. Well, I'll be seeing you." The police head replied, getting him and his boys out of the house.
When they were gone, Janet's mother handed her the ticket.
"I suppose this is from whoever forced you into this." She said. "Now Janet, whatever happens, you survive. Do whatever you need to. It's what us Felloni's are best at." She gave one look with her piercing blue eyes, that resembled a blizzard contained in a small sphere.
Janet didn't respond to her comment. 'Do what's best for the family name' again. She tried recalling the last time she recognized her for her own merits and not what she brought to her family, and nothing came to mind. Once she got to her room, she finally glanced at the ticket. Front row tickets to Mission Ivy's farewell tour. Somehow, these gods got them for her.
And she could also acknowledge how much this whole ordeal terrified her. She had to admit, her mother's influence rubbed off on her, and she was really good at masking her emotions. But now that she had a moment of privacy, she let herself freak out. She was doomed. Utterly doomed. The others were probably figuring out their powers and she didn't know what hers even was. But as her mother always said, panicking didn't solve anything. So the next best idea was to grab her trumpet, and put these feeling into the best ska punk album this city ever saw.
Tedros and Desta went home to their parents sat around the table in the living room. Their mom was on the phone, clearly horrified at what she was hearing. She hung up a few seconds later, and looked at her children through tearstained eyes.
"What happened at school?" She asked, trying to hold herself together. "Did somebody die?!"
"Someone died, yes." Desta nodded. She didn't know if she had to explain the further death games or not.
"We're part of some kind of death game." Tedros explained bluntly. "We have to kill the five hosts before we're all killed one by one. Next stage is in two days."
Their mother tried not to break down completely from the revelation, their dad trying to console her.
"Can we get them out? Can we get them out of the city?" She asked between heaves and sobs. "Can they stay with your brother for a few weeks?"
"That's probably the best idea." Desta nodded calmly, looking at Tedros. Tedros silently agreed. "I should start packing."
Desta went into her room, looking for her suitcase. But on her bed was a letter. Inside the letter was a set of rules about the game, most worrying was the rule that they couldn't leave. Next to the letter was a ball of some kind of fabric. After feeling it for a little bit, it felt like…cashmere? How were they able to get this much cashmere at once for her?
"Tedros?" She asked. Tedros popped his head out from his room, and in his hand was some kind of boxed figurine. "You read this?"
"Yeah. Pretty bad." He sighed. "Can you tell mom?"
As she went downstairs to do that, Tedros retreated into his room. He put the figurine, a hard to find one of Brokalos, an alien who's freakishly long arms made it hard to recreate to the point most toy companies stopped bothering. The death game was one thing, but Space Piece just updated.
He read the chapter, debunking his theory that commander Kaiko was going to recruit Empress Mallaka into the secret Blade branch of the space force. That sucked for his followers, but what could you do? Besides, Kaiko's current storyline looked really cool. So if he couldn't avoid the death game, he'd just add it to his schedule and carry on as usual. So he plugged in his mic and gave his thoughts on the chapter. He'd edit that for the next few hours, and then he'd give thirty thousand listeners his review.
Ines was tired. She was dozing off as she was being driven home by her worried parents, still clutching a box of toys she had made before her first nap. As she left the car, she was jolted upright by the neighbours dog barking at her. She stumbled back into her dad's arms before getting up again. The dog didn't seem to trust her, but she didn't mind. The small creature declared itself a protector of the house against any threats that came before her. She was admirable in a way. She walked into her room, her soft sanctuary. Pink and stuffed with soft toys. Despite her conditions, she'd have to try extra hard to get punctured or hurt in here. She set her box of toys on a shelf, the one corner in her room that had harder things in it. Mostly books and things to store plushies in. There was some dried blood from today's events, but she herself wasn't scratched up too bad. The plushies at the top of the box had blood on them. She'd figure out what to do with them after her nap. She grabbed her giant plush of Pulula, the psychic cat goddess from the show WonderCreaturesFromSpace, dozed off.
She woke up to some kind of scurrying noise. Her heart jumped in her chest as she worried about a mouse in her room. The sun was just starting to set, and she couldn't see anything suspicious. She heard another noise, and her gaze fixated on a moving shadow on top of her shelf. The shape wasn't a mouse, but it was…familiar. She got out of bed and walked towards it. And on top of the shelf was…one of the toys she made. Gloomy the greyhound. It was a personal project she made because it looked funny. A depressed looking greyhound with an extra long face, so she could say 'why the long face?' in two different ways at once. It was funnier when she was sleep deprived.
"Is this a dream?" She whispered to herself.
"Doubt it." Gloomy replied, not looking up from the letter he was reading. There was a faint smell of blood on him, which came from a small patch of dried blood on his head.
"So what are you?" Ines asked, picking him up. Gloomy wheezed as she squeezed him, and Ines put him in the palm of her hand.
"Look, I don't know what I am." Gloomy replied, sitting down on her open hand. "All I know is that I gotta protect you."
"Protect me from what?"
"The situation you're in? Check the letter, sweetie."
Ines put Gloomy on his shelf and read the letter. She was trapped in a death game. She couldn't leave down until it was finished. Which was either until she was the only one left or until the five hosts were killed. She sat down on her bed.
"Gloomy, you think we can do this?"
"I'd say we do." He nodded.
"I mean, I don't know if you're aware, but I have to be very careful to not die from tripping on a surface too hard. So wouldn't living instead of the others be…selfish?"
"Anyone you thinkin of savin?"
"Well, that part I'd need to think about." Ines sighed to herself. "Well, I don't have anything to do but survive for the time being, so I guess that can be my goal."
"Good, good." Gloomy nodded. "Also, can we ditch the gloomy stuff. That's an emotion, not a name."
"What name do you want?" Ines asked.
"Kyle."
Ines stared at Gloomy. Kyle. He's a dog. Who names a dog Kyle?
"Kyle is a human name." She said slowly.
"Damn, really?" Kyle replied. "So you won't call me that?"
"Do you have another idea?"
"I don't. What if we go splits on the names? Gloomy and Kyle. Glyle. How's that?"
"Sure?"
"Nice!" Glyle said with a thumbs-up. "Now look alive, solider! Sooner we get into another round, the sooner we get intel on how to survive further!"
Travis got home and lay on the bed. Elijah said he needed some time to think about what happened. He didn't specify whether he had work or if he was gonna hang in the junkyard, so Travis just went home. Said hi to the parents, all that. But the online order was finally here. So Travis took it and went upstairs. It was exactly what they ordered.
Time to try it out.