Game Over

Kiaras p.o.v


I poked the large sticks around the fire, chalky ashy smoke burning my nostrils red. I choked partly on the fumes, but my problems were so high-gripped right now the burning dizzy sensation was hardly a factor in my life at the moment. I sat at our base at dead night, feeding the fire while Tori sat on the log on the other side. “Well… we both know why we’re here.” Tori spoke, her voice smooth but a touch of sadness. I nodded faintly, my eyes reddened from the fire being too close… it was better than freezing cold at least. “What should we do, you think?” Tori looked over at Anya and Mark, me following her gaze to see them clear on the other side of the base in their sleeping bags. “How can she just trust that lunatic! It’s outrageous; she acted like she was leader of this group and brought him in without even consulting us.” Tori ranted. I sighed, looking into the fire, watching it flicker on the tops. “She said she brought him in because his friends died. She’s putting this team in danger because she felt sorry for him… how are we suppose to win this game if she goes all little miss angel of the game on everyone she feels sorry for?” I grumbled.

“We can’t. He can be a killer for all we know. He could be getting our game secrets or something and giving it to his other team, and in the end, he will go back to his team and kill us. It’ll make him that much higher in the game and his chances are that much more likely for good.” As Tori explained, I bit my lip, frustration tingling me pink. “Why does she care anyway? Why is she so nice around him? She’s a sucker to him, why is that? I don’t understand that bit.” I went back to looking at the fire, stirring the burning wood around and causing the sparks and ash to fly around us. “Because she’s got it bad for love.” My eyes widened and I looked up, my breathe hitched in my throat half way. She caught my thought, and added “it’s obvious. Open your eyes, its right there.” She said it like it was as obvious as it is that the sky is blue and the grass is green or something. “Well, what do we do about it?” I asked. She stared hard at the fire, even her breathing was hard. I took that as an ‘I don’t know’ so I just stood wordless, thinking hard myself over the situation. “We need to kill him,” Tori whispered, just barely audible for me to hear. My stomach automatically burned, like I’d swallowed some of the flames in the fire. I felt my face go pale; I looked at her in terror. She stared hard at me, super serious look.

“It has to be done.” I thought that over in a panic, “Is it really necessary?” I gasped. She nodded slowly, “It’s absolutely precaution, and we need it.” She got off her log and came closer to me. “He is here to kill us, it is obvious. And if he isn’t, we can’t take that risk. Anya will be destroyed, but it’s better for her to be hurt inside than destroyed outside.” I was speechless, broken, I couldn’t even swallow. “Are you with me?” She spoke slowly, giving me a hard look and inching back toward her log. I nodded, “I see why…” She looked down at the white beach sand covering around the base. The only sound being the crackling of the fire. “How will we do it?” I whispered. She glared at me, a look of hate which I was totally surprised from. “You need to promise that we do it carefully, like a full planned robbery. And of all things, Anya does not know we did it. God only knows what she would do if she knew we were the killers. It was strictly a different team…. Got it? For her and our safety, we need to keep this as low key as possible, and when she’s sad we need to help her through it.” I nodded. “We need to plan this out. We strike tomorrow; I’ve put a lot of thought into this procedure… We will simply wait for him to offer to get something, fire wood or anything. If he doesn’t quickly, we’ll ask him to go get fire wood or something and tell Anya to stay at base, we’ll go get food and go the opposite direction so we aren’t in the same group going into the woods.”

I nodded, taking notes in my head. “If we go as a group, she will wonder why we didn’t get attacked ourselves. This way we will be as far away as the ambush as possible, but really, we will turn around and meet him in the woods farther up where Anya can’t see us strike. There we will shoot him with arrows from the same perch; I will shoot him in the neck so it’ll be a quick death… But I will shoot him multiple times after he dies so it’ll look like a multiple person involved death and a few sword wounds. While I do it, you look for the other teams coming for US; our goal is quick, fast, and not painful. We’ll get back and wait a few minutes before going into base and gather some food to calm down after killing a guy and to collect food. We come in perfectly natural, asking if she’s seen him come back yet and that we heard a yell that sounded like him. Anya will probably want to go in the woods to find him, but we make sure she DOESN’T and convince her he’ll come back soon. When he doesn’t come back, we’ll say he probably is camping in the woods over night because he might have gotten lost or is far into the woods and didn’t want to travel at night and the next morning we will…” She slightly choked on the next sentence, “recover the body, drag it back and cry as we bring him to camp. We need to be perfect actresses, and act like we would, saying he was probably a back stabber on us anyway but still being dramatically sad over the death, and we will give him a grave next to camp… I’m hoping Anya will get over him quickly. But we need to help Anya with the death….”

I nodded, my breathe hitched in my throat again. “Do you understand? Got it memorized?” She asked. I quickly nodded, choking out “Got it.” She nodded, “Good, let’s get to bed because I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep tomorrow night and neither will Anya….” I nodded, my knee’s buckling. “Wait, do we do it first thing tomorrow?” I gasped, my heart beating double time. She looked hard at some random place in the woods, “We’ll see… if I got my guts gathered by then.” She sighed, before unfolding her sleeping bag. I felt like someone had just crushed a baseball bat into my head, and I slowly got into my sleeping bag dizzy and dazed. Looking at the stars, my heart was somewhere that my soul wasn’t…