The Kill Factor, page 13
10.
Llanzo Robinson
14
43,308
There had been some dramatic changes, but it was already obvious to all the remaining contestants that if you hung out with Imelda’s group, you gained followers quickly. Delilah Scattergood had gone up three places; Steele Sawyer had gone up fourteen places. Tiger, on the other hand, had dropped out of the top ten altogether and had fallen down to seventeenth. Harlow and Gwen’s prank show had clearly worked, as they had both jumped ahead of her.
The sun was just beginning to dip low in the sky. It was taking on that wavering orange glow that Emerson had noticed when she had freed herself from her grave, and she was starting to think that there wouldn’t be another game today when the three loud, ear-piercing beeps sounded from the hidden public address system and the Producer’s voice boomed out around the island.
“Contestants of The Kill Factor. Game number two is about to begin.”
For a moment, everyone’s social media personas fell away, and there was nothing but scared kids on the beach.
It was—of course—Imelda Fleet who responded first.
“Oh my God, I cannot wait to see what they have in store for us this time, you guys!” she squealed, clapping her hands together and bouncing on the spot like an excited puppy.
“Please,” the Producer’s voice blared out, “make your way to the other side of the island.”
The ground shook beneath them, but this time only one or two contestants fell. Muscle memory kicked in, and they quickly got into their rhythm as the island began to turn from its center.
Emerson had been standing with Never in her room. They quickly got out to the open beach, where Tiger ran over and joined them, followed by Teller and Alasdair.
“I’m not ready for this,” Alasdair said, avoiding a large plastic conch shell on the beach as the sand revolved beneath his feet.
“Hey,” Teller whispered as he caught up with Emerson. “I’m sorry about this morning. I was being stupid. I just get things in my head sometimes and I can’t get them out so easy.”
“It’s fine,” Emerson said, and she meant it. This was not the time to be getting caught up in such trivial things. Everyone’s emotions were high.
As the landmass continued to rotate, the group of five walked in silence, until the other side of the island came into view.
“Oh no,” Never said, and Emerson saw what it was that had struck so much fear into Never’s voice.
A structure had been built on the same spot where they had been buried alive. It towered into the air, presumably connected to the base of the structure that the island was built on. It would have surely sunk into the sand otherwise.
“What is it?” Tiger asked.
“Diving boards,” Teller replied.
He was right. A series of ladders connected three platforms that hung out over the sea. The first platform was about fifty feet from the calm waves; the second stuck out farther, and Emerson guessed it was about eighty feet above the water. The third was so high up that it was hard to accurately estimate just how high it was.
“Contestants,” the Producer said, standing at the foot of the first ladder. “Today you learn about Empathy. You see before you a series of diving boards, each higher than the last. Your task is simple. You must jump. Half of you will be jumping from the fifty-foot platform, and half of you will jump from the hundred.”
Emerson’s heart sank. She already knew which platform she would have to jump from. She looked up into the blue sky, where one white, too-perfect cloud was drifting above the hundred-foot platform. She was at the bottom of the leaderboard and so would be at a disadvantage. The same way that she was buried deeper and closer to the water in the first task, she would have to jump from the highest board.
“There are thirty-three of you remaining,” the Producer pointed out. “The sixteen contestants who make up the top of the leaderboard will jump from fifty feet; the seventeen who make up the bottom of the leaderboard will jump from one hundred feet. The winner—and the person who will receive immunity from the vote—is the first person to make it back to the beach.”
Nervous chatter broke out among the contestants. Never’s terrified eyes didn’t even glance at the diving boards. She was looking at the water. Number 12, Billie Joe Walker, was saying “I’m afraid of heights” over and over. Number 6, Gamble Delaney, who had an impressive set of huge white teeth, was talking about surface tension and how no one would survive a jump from the top platform. Imelda and her top-of-the-leaderboard gang were smiling satisfactorily at each other.
“I’m not finished yet,” the Producer said, and held up both hands, demanding silence. The crowd fell quiet, and the Producer smiled. “You may have noticed that there is a third diving board between the highest and lowest, this one positioned at seventy-five feet. You may choose to exercise empathy in this task, by which I mean, those on the bottom diving board may offer to split the difference with someone on the top diving board and you can both jump from the middle.”
The Producer left a long pause while the contestants put this information together in their minds. Contestants at the bottom of the leaderboard started looking longingly at their friends who were above them, trying to make covert agreements before the game even began.
“You have ten minutes to make a deal—to show empathy, or to appeal to the empathy of others. Your time begins when you all gather on the highest platform. Good luck, contestants.”
And with that, the Producer walked away.
“No point in hanging around,” Kodi said. He grabbed hold of the ladder and began to climb.
It took over half an hour for everyone to gather on the top diving board.
Kodi had climbed to the top in about a minute, followed by Imelda and Steele, but there had been a roadblock when Billie Joe had climbed up to about eight feet and frozen in fear. It took ten minutes just to get him to the middle platform, where he lay on his front, shaking in fear.
When, finally, they had all made it to the top platform (even Billie Joe, who had to be carried by a fed-up Steele Sawyer), they quickly got to work making deals. Emerson told a terrified-looking Never to make a deal with Tiger, which she did, and Alasdair made a deal with Teller. As the deals were made, Emerson had a thought—no wind. Strange that there is no wind when we’re this high up. Suddenly, Emerson realized that she had run out of friends. She also realized that the atmosphere up here was becoming desperate as others ran around searching for someone in the top half to make a deal with. Emerson’s eyes were drawn to Imelda Fleet, who stood with her arms crossed, watching the whole situation unfold with a curious look in her eyes. She was planning something, but Emerson didn’t know what.
“Hey, last place,” a voice said, and Emerson turned to see Kodi sitting on the edge of the platform, his legs dangling out into the empty air as though he were on a bench in the park instead of one hundred feet above the ocean.
“That’s what you’re calling me now?” Emerson replied.
Kodi smiled. “You make a deal yet?”
“Not yet.”
“All right. You and me can go from the middle board. Jumping from the bottom board would be too easy anyway.”
“Thanks,” Emerson said, telling herself to sound cool and then chastising herself for wanting to sound cool at a time like this.
Kodi got to his feet and held out his hand for Emerson to shake. “It’s a deal, then?”
“Deal,” Emerson agreed, and shook his hand. She held on for a beat longer than would be considered normal, and held Kodi’s eyes. There was something there. Inconvenient as it was, untimely as it was, stupid as it was, there was something there. “Why the change of heart?” Emerson asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Back at the docks, before we got on the ship, you were pretty adamant that you weren’t here to make friends.”
Kodi smiled. “I guess … I guess I just changed my mind.”
“Hey, Mr. Finch,” Imelda called from the middle of the platform, interrupting Emerson and Kodi, who had unconsciously moved closer and closer together.
This can’t be good, Emerson thought, finally looking away from Kodi’s blue-gray eyes.
“Imelda Fleet,” Kodi said, turning to face her as she marched toward them. “The leader of the games gracing us with her presence.”
Imelda laughed, a loud, fake laugh, and then put a hand on Kodi’s chest before throwing a glance at Emerson. “I was just about to offer our unfortunate friend here a deal, but it seems that you have done just that.”
“That’s right,” Kodi said, sharing a look of uncertainty with Emerson. Imelda was up to something; she always had an angle.
“You’re so nice and kind,” Imelda said, putting an arm around Kodi’s waist now. “Helping out the … less fortunate.” She rested her head on Kodi’s shoulder and smiled at Emerson.
“Yeah, I don’t know about that,” Kodi said, gently pushing Imelda away from him.
Imelda’s eyes lit up, and in that moment, Emerson knew what she was going to do. Imelda had seen something between Kodi and Emerson. She knew that Kodi was high up on the leaderboard, and she had calculated a way to eliminate him as a threat.
Emerson wanted to call out, to tell Kodi to get away from Imelda before it was too late, but she couldn’t. It all happened too quickly.
Imelda screamed a bloodcurdling scream and threw herself off the top diving board, tumbling and turning through the air until the last minute, when she maneuvered into perfect diving form and cut into the water with barely a splash.
All eyes turned to Kodi.
“You pushed her,” Levi Russo said. “You pushed her!”
“Just like he pushed me off the boat!” Teller said.
“No!” Emerson cried. “He didn’t push anyone!”
But her voice was already drowned out by a cacophony of accusations as the crowd closed in on Kodi.
There was a kind of mindless determination in the eyes of the group that gathered around Kodi. Most of them were the kids in the top half, the ones who had formed a kind of faction around Imelda, but there were others too—some from the middle of the pack who desperately wanted to break into the popular group.
Just as the first hand reached out to grab Kodi, the now-familiar beeps of the speaker system sounded, and the Producer spoke.
“Your ten minutes is up. Any deals that were made still stand, but there will be a punishment for Kodiak Finch, who intentionally caused another contestant to fall from the platform. Mr. Finch, your side of the deal will not stand. As punishment, you will jump from a further twenty-five feet.”
At this, a mechanical whirring sound came from beneath their feet, and a section of the one-hundred-foot platform that they were standing on extended out to the right and rose up above their heads.
“Can all contestants make their way to their platforms immediately. Thank you.”
“No, wait!” Billie Joe screamed from his convulsing position on his side. “I didn’t make a deal! Someone has to make a deal with me! I can’t jump from here, I can’t!”
Contestants stepped over and around him as they made their way to the ladder.
Emerson turned to Kodi. “They know she’s lying,” she said. “They have all the footage from the drones. They know you didn’t push her.”
“It’s not about the truth,” Kodi said, and the way the setting sun shone through his messy hair, turning his blue eyes golden, made him look like an angel to Emerson. “It’s about the best story. Just because she’s lying doesn’t mean they can’t spin it into the truth.”
“But this isn’t just some stupid TV show, this is your life!”
Kodi smiled. “Our lives don’t matter to them. They’ve already decided who’s going to win and who’s going to lose. They won’t air anything that casts us in a good light. I’m the villain who pushed the hero off the diving board. You’re the jealous Burrower who threw her belongings overboard. That’s the way it is.”
“It’s not fair,” Emerson said, looking into Kodi’s knowing eyes.
“No,” he said, pushing a strand of Emerson’s hair out of her eyes. “It isn’t.”
“I’ll jump with you,” Emerson said, suddenly sure that was just what she was going to do.
“No,” Kodi said. “You’re going down to the middle board and you’re going to swim back to the beach. You’re going to stay alive, and you’re going to stay in the game for as long as you can, do you understand?”
“No, I’m coming with you,” Emerson repeated.
Kodi took her gently by the shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “I’m not going to let you do that. After everything it took to get here, I can’t let it end like that.”
“What do you mean?” Emerson asked.
“Listen to me,” Kodi replied, ignoring her question. “It’s very unlikely we’ll both survive a jump from that height. I used to cliff dive with my friends off Monument Point—it was probably only fifty feet, but I have some experience with this at least.”
“I can’t just let you do it on your own.”
“Yes, you can,” Kodi said. “Yes, you can, Em. I made a deal so that you could jump from that middle platform; don’t waste that. Do it for your brother, okay? This isn’t about me. This was never about me. You’re here for your brother, Kester, right?”
Emerson looked at Kodi, conflicted. Finally, she nodded.
“Then go. I’ll be fine, all right?”
Emerson nodded again. There were tears welling in her eyes, and she had time to think, What happened? When did I start feeling this way about this boy? Before he turned to climb the ladder to the highest point, Emerson grabbed Kodi’s hand, pulled him toward her, and kissed him.
She felt the softness of his lips, the imperfection where he had been hit during the fight on the top deck of the cruise ship, the way his hand brushed against her cheek—and then he was gone.
He climbed the ladder quickly and didn’t look back.
Emerson watched him until he was standing on the edge of the highest point of the structure. Before she climbed down to the middle platform, she looked out to the prison and saw it standing there, somehow both imposing and unreal at the same time. She made her way down to the middle platform, which now looked as if it were miles below where Kodi stood.
There were three people on the bottom platform: Levi Russo, the arrogant Topsider in second place in the leaderboard; Delilah Scattergood, the Topsider with dark eye makeup and in third place; and Decker Shimada, the only Burrower in the top five. Decker’s impressive Mohawk was starting to wilt to one side as the heat of the sun melted whatever product was in there.
On the top diving board there were five unfortunate contestants. Among them was the trembling figure of Billie Joe Walker, who was now periodically spasming as he lay on his side.
The remaining contestants were huddled together on the middle platform, nervously awaiting whatever came next.
The Producer’s voice came thundering over the speakers. “Contestants, when the alarm sounds, you have four minutes to jump from your platform. Good luck.”
There was a brief moment of silence before someone near Emerson shouted, “What happens if we refuse to jump?” But there was no time for theories or best guesses, as the alarm squealed out through the speakers and the game began.
There was a scream from several members of the middle group as the platform beneath their feet began to move. They all realized at the same time why they had no choice but to jump within four minutes: When their time was up, there would be no platform left to stand on.
Levi, Delilah, and Decker jumped first. Delilah even took a second to wave up to those on the platforms above her before she leaped, the shadow of her black eye makeup making her look like she had no eyes at all from where Emerson stood.
The next to jump was Kodi.
He seemed to hang in the air forever, suspended in time. Finally, as he fell toward the water like a rocket, he turned and arced his arms over his head. He hit the water almost perfectly straight, but he was at enough of an angle that the water dragged him around, turning him violently to the left and sending up a cascade of foamy water high into the evening air.
He didn’t resurface for what felt to Emerson like minutes. When he finally did, his body was limp. Lifeless.
“No,” Emerson whispered, and tried to make her way to the front of the group so she could leap in after him, but the more the platforms retracted, the more shallow the water was becoming below—the ocean’s contents continuing to drain as if it were a giant bathtub.
Now everyone wanted to get off the diving boards as quickly as possible.
The sound of bodies hitting the water below filled the air, along with the screams of falling kids.
Emerson was dragged along by the moving crowd, and knew that jumping in a pack was so much more dangerous than jumping alone; she could hit someone in the water and break their neck. She could be hit by someone falling after her and drown. But all thoughts evaporated as there was suddenly only air beneath her feet. She had been pulled along with the horde until there had been no platform left to stand on. She was falling among a dozen other people.
There was time, during the drop, to look out to sea where the Calypso stood still and white, and then down to see the thick, inky water undulating beneath her: It looked like gray-green paint swirling and churning below.
The shock of the water was familiar, and she adapted more quickly this time. She had one thought in her mind: get to the surface and find Kodi.
It took a long time to break through the waves to the fresh air above, too long. There were still bodies hitting the water, sliding down into the depths, narrowly missing her, slamming into others. There was blood in the water—from where, Emerson didn’t know.
Finally, she made it to the top and hauled in air until her desperate lungs were full.
She looked around, frantically treading water, searching the chaotic ocean for Kodi, but she couldn’t see him.
