The Kill Factor, page 16
Emerson looked intently at him, and saw a look in his eyes that said trust me. She made a quick decision and followed Kodi into the plastic forest—dozens of drones tracked them into the dense and fake foliage. They sat down together at the foot of the same tree that Emerson had run to after the first game. The heart-shaped leaves threw scattered shadows onto the ground.
“I hate this place,” Kodi said.
“Well, I’m so glad you brought me here,” Emerson replied.
“I don’t mean this place specifically. I mean this whole fake island, it’s so … soulless.”
“I know what you mean,” Emerson agreed, and as she spoke, she felt Kodi’s hand take hers, their fingers interlinking. A rush of electricity ran through her.
“I keep thinking about how much I hated the Burrows and even the Topside, but I’d give anything to be back there now. Even the air in this place feels wrong.”
As he spoke, he moved both of their hands slowly behind his own back and against the rough plastic of the heart-tree’s trunk.
“Me too,” Emerson said, trying to act natural as the drones scrutinized them.
“I made a lot of mistakes in my life. I always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I just got out of eleven months in juvie a week ago, and I was breaking into Topsiders’ vacation homes the next day.”
Emerson felt her hand touch something that was attached to the roots of the heart-tree. It was something that shouldn’t have been there. A handle. She looked at Kodi, who gave her the faintest of nods before letting go of her hand.
“That’s life for a lot of us,” Emerson said, finding it harder and harder to act normally as her fingers traced the outline of a hatch in the ground beneath the tree.
“You’re right. We’re beaten to the floor and kept there, and somehow we’re the bad guys.”
Emerson’s eyes fell to her feet. “Yeah, we can’t win. They won’t let us.”
“You want to know what I got the eleven months for?” Kodi asked.
Emerson nodded.
“I assaulted an officer,” Kodi admitted, looking down at the ground. “He collared me as I was driving a stolen car to this garage I knew I could sell it at, and he dragged me out to the pavement and slammed my head against the ground. I got so mad that I broke free and hit him right in the mouth. I got tased and … anyway, the judge gave me eighteen months, but I got out on good behavior.”
Emerson looked at him for a moment. “If you were already out of juvie, what did you do to end up here?”
Kodi ran his tongue over the cut in his lip, then looked right at Emerson. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I deserve to be here, and you don’t.”
“No, it does matter. What do you mean?”
“I mean …” He looked like he wanted to tell her something, but instead he shook his head. “I guess I mean, I haven’t known you long, but it feels like I have. And I know you’re a good person.”
They sat in silence for a moment, Emerson letting Kodi’s words swirl around in her head. And then she spoke. “I was arrested for arson,” she said, and immediately she recoiled inwardly at the lie. She was here because a man died. She had been arrested for manslaughter, but she couldn’t admit that out loud to Kodi. “I was robbing a school—my old high school, actually—to help pay for my brother’s tuition, and a fire broke out, I don’t know how, but a fire started and the school burned to the ground. It wasn’t my first offense, so I was looking at some pretty serious jail time.”
“It’s not fair,” Kodi said, and then he leaned his head against the trunk of the tree. He stared off, lost in thought. For a moment, it looked like he wanted to say something, but he seemed to catch himself. He didn’t say another word after that. He didn’t have to. Emerson thought she knew what he meant. It was unfair.
Kodi got up and walked away. Half the drones followed him, and the rest hung around Emerson, filming her from a dozen angles. She felt one more time for the handle of the hatch beneath the tree, and wondered if it mattered. She would never get a chance to see what lay beyond because all of them were being filmed twenty-four hours a day.
Emerson stayed beneath the shade of the heart-tree for another hour or so, thinking about something that Kodi had said: that he felt he deserved to be on this island. She didn’t want to pry, and eventually, she let it go and wandered back to the beach. She lay down in her bed and tried not to think about what game they would be forced to play later that evening. She stared at the clouds, the perfect, almost cartoonish clouds rolling overhead, and she drifted off to a broken sleep.
When she woke, the sun had started to fall slowly from its highest point in the sky, and the light was turning gray. All the contestants who had been cheerfully performing for the cameras all day were now quiet and apprehensive as they waited for the Producer’s voice to boom out over the speakers and invite them to play whatever horrible game they would have to try to live through. The only person who hadn’t moved was Asim, who still sat beside the fire, staring into the dancing flames.
Teller was sitting with Harlow Wozniak, the girl with the shaved head and the tattoos under her eyes. They were talking quietly and glancing over at the group of top-halfers who were gathered in Imelda’s room.
There were clear and distinct groups among the remaining contestants now: the top-halfers, consisting of Imelda, Decker, Gwen, Levi, and Steele; the latecomers, consisting of numbers 48, 49, and 50; Emerson’s crew consisting of herself, Kodi, Never, Tiger, and Alasdair; and Teller and Harlow, who seemed to have formed their own little partnership in the last few hours. Nick the conspiracy theorist, Asim the fire watcher, Delilah the psychopath, Gamble who had just danced for his life, and Cobalt Skiba (who had been lost ever since Llanzo had died) spent most of their time on their own, quiet and introspective, as though they could see the growing crowd of dead contestants gathered on the beach, and they felt guilty about acting like nothing had happened.
“We never got off that boat, you know?” Nick Mason said.
Emerson sat up and saw the gaunt Burrower standing at the frame of her bedroom. “What?”
“Think about it. We died on that ship, all of us. This is purgatory. We’re being tested … and we’re all failing.”
He walked away then, his head twitching slightly as more wild thoughts sped through his fragmented mind.
This place is starting to break people, Emerson thought as she watched Nick walk away.
Emerson jumped as the ear-piercing beeps echoed out of the speakers. Fear exploded inside her, making her hands shake in a Pavlovian response.
“Contestants of The Kill Factor,” the Producer’s ethereal voice boomed. “Game number three is about to begin. Please make your way to the other side of the island.”
Imelda clapped her hands and cheered, but there was less enthusiasm this time. Perhaps the island was starting to get to her too.
The island revolved; the contestants walked.
The Producer came into view, and instinctively, the contestants gathered close and walked in a group.
The sun was a particularly deep shade of red as it ushered in the evening, and the shadows thrown across the Producer’s face made his normally straight white teeth look like sharp, pointed fangs.
“Contestants, today you learn about Work Ethic.” The Producer’s eyes seemed to glow as he spoke. “The game is simple: You must run for your life.”
The crowd of gathered contestants looked at one another and began to murmur. The Producer held up his hand and continued talking. “You must keep a pace of six miles per hour, and the last person left standing wins. The contestant at the bottom of the leaderboard must begin immediately; every ninety seconds, the person above you on the leaderboard joins in.”
“We just have to run?” Imelda asked, a note of hope in her voice.
“That’s right,” the Producer confirmed. “All you have to do is run … on the running track.”
As the Producer said these words, the ground beneath the contestants’ feet began to shake, and suddenly they were being lifted into the air. Quickly, all of them jumped from the narrow structure that was rising up, surrounding them. It grew into the air, higher and higher. It was a running track, just as the Producer had said, but it was only the width of a single lane, and it was so high up in the sky that it gave Emerson a sense of vertigo just looking at it.
“Contestants!” the Producer said, and all remaining contestants looked from the top of the running track back to him. “You will be running fifty yards above the ground. This will focus your mind on the task at hand. The game begins when the contestant in last place—Mr. Gamble Delaney—steps onto the track. Oh, and the track gets lower with each person who is eliminated from the game. So, hang in there, and good luck.” With that, the Producer walked away, exiting through a door in the curvature of the structure.
The contestants said nothing for a long time. They all stared at the smooth metal walls that encircled them, and thought about the daunting task that awaited them.
“I … I’m first?” Gamble Delaney asked, biting down on his lower lip with his enormous front teeth.
“Yeah, then me,” Nick Mason said, and then let out a short snort of laughter as his wild eyes twisted around in his head.
Emerson knew that it would be Kodi who would be third on the running track, and then her. She did some quick calculations in her head, and worked out that Imelda, who was still in first place, would get thirty minutes of rest on the sidelines before she had to join in. She tried to be grateful for the four and a half minutes of rest she would get, but it didn’t seem like much.
“Right then,” Gamble said, his voice almost cracking into tears. “How do we get up to the …” Before he could finish speaking, the perfectly smooth surface of the structure split into dozens and dozens of steps that led precariously up, fifty feet, to the running track.
“Oh,” Gamble said, and then began walking up the steps.
Emerson counted the steps as she walked. There were exactly one hundred of them, leading up in a steady curve to a platform beside the running track.
Most of the twenty contestants were already out of breath from the walk up here, and Gamble wiped sweat away from his forehead as he stared at the narrow lane that arced lazily around and around.
“How fast did the Producer say we had to run?” he asked.
“Six miles per hour,” Kodi replied.
“How will I know how fast I’m running?” Gamble turned to face the gathered crowd. Nobody had an answer for him. He turned back to the track. “All right. I guess there’s no point waiting around.”
Gamble reached out a nervous foot, and stepped onto the slim track.
“Oh God … Oh God!” he whispered as he looked down at the sand far below. And then he screamed as the track beneath his feet whirred into life.
For one moment, it looked like Gamble was about to fall fifty feet down onto the island below, but he threw his arms out, maintaining his balance somehow.
“It’s a … it’s a treadmill!” he yelled. The panic in his voice caused it to raise several octaves. “Oh my God, it’s like a giant treadmill!”
The whirring of the track beneath his feet got louder as the pace picked up to six miles per hour. It wasn’t a fast pace by any means—it looked to Emerson like a fast jog—but the thought of Imelda not having to join for another half hour really made the frightening prospect of this game sink in.
Gamble found his feet and got into a rhythm.
“It’s not so bad,” Gamble said, and a slight smile appeared on his face. “It’s not so bad!”
“Not yet.” Delilah Scattergood smirked.
The Producer’s voice came echoing out of the speakers down below. “The next contestant to join the running track is Nick Mason.”
The Producer’s voice was replaced by a robotic female voice counting down from ten.
“Nick!” Tiger yelled at the vacant-looking boy who was convinced that they were all in purgatory.
“What?” he replied dazedly.
“Get on the track!”
Nick looked confused, but wandered precariously onto the running track nonetheless, just as the robotic voice reached zero. Somehow he managed to keep his footing as the onlooking contestants gasped and screamed in anticipation of him falling.
Those who were waiting on the platform began stretching and warming up. Emerson knew she had less than three minutes now until it was her turn to join the game. She could see a problem already: They had this huge track to run on, but already Nick and Gamble were bunched together at the point they had joined. Neither of them wanted to waste energy speeding up to make room for the others, but eventually they would have to.
The Producer announced that the next contestant was Kodiak Finch.
“Good luck,” Emerson said as Kodi stepped forward.
“Give me a break,” Teller muttered.
Kodi stepped elegantly onto the track and was immediately stuck close behind Nick. He got into his rhythm, and lightly sidestepped Nick and Gamble until he was at the front. Both times he made his way around another contestant, Emerson felt her heart leap in her chest. A fall from this height would surely be deadly. But he made it.
Ninety seconds, Emerson thought, but even as she thought it, she knew she had even less time than that. She leaned forward and stretched out her left leg, bending at the waist and feeling the stretching of the muscles and tendons. She quickly switched to the right leg, and the Producer called out her name.
This is it, she thought.
“You can do this, Em,” Never called out.
And as the countdown hit zero, she stepped onto the whirring treadmill, and slipped.
Emerson Ness had been expelled from Stone’s Throw Public High School when she was fourteen years old.
She had been accused of stealing four times previously, and on the fifth time, she was caught red-handed.
The principal had sat her down in his office and sneered at her with absolute delight in his eyes. He had asked her if it had been her who had taken the money from the office on the previous occasions, and she had said no. It had been her, she was just too ashamed to admit it.
“You might as well be honest for once in your life,” Mr. Pembrooke had spat. “You’ve been caught now.”
But Emerson had shaken her head, refusing to let the tears come, replacing her embarrassment with rage instead.
Emerson had never wanted to take anything from anybody. She would never have taken a penny from the school if she hadn’t needed it. The worst part was—after the first two times she had been accused of stealing—rumors started spreading about her, and the other kids started laughing behind their hands when she passed by in the corridors. They made a point of double-checking their lockers were locked, calling her Magpie.
“Fine,” Mr. Pembrooke had said, shaking his head in disgust. “Deny it. We’ll see how defiant you are when the police arrive.”
He had left her alone in his office then. Alone to look at the certificates on his walls, the photographs of vacations on his shelves, the leather chair in front of his large desk.
“I hate this place,” she had whispered, and finally the tears had come, because there had been a time when she had loved this school. When she had first started, her clothes weren’t ragged and worn out, her schoolbag didn’t have a broken zipper, the sole of her left shoe didn’t flap every time she took a step. But after six months everyone knew the truth about her, and she had fallen down the social ranks. Her whole life had been dictated by scoreboards: where she fit in school; how well she did on social media; her criminal record slowly building up. She was assessed and ranked everywhere she went, and it hurt every time.
“It’s going to be okay, kid,” a voice had said from the doorway of Mr. Pembrooke’s office.
Emerson had wiped the tears away as quickly as she could and turned around to see the janitor standing there in his blue overalls.
“What?” she had asked, ensuring her voice came out flat and unbroken.
“I said it’s going to be fine. Everyone makes mistakes.”
Emerson filled herself with hate and anger, a mechanism she had been using for as long as she could remember to protect herself against the cruelty of the world. She looked at the name tag on the janitor’s uniform.
“Just like you, you mean, Marvin?” she had said, filling her voice with scorn.
“Sure, I made some mistakes,” the janitor replied, shuffling from one foot to another.
“And look at you now. You’ve reached the dizzying heights of toilet cleaner! Congratulations.”
“All I mean is, your mistakes don’t define you, you know?”
“Well, Marvin, thank you so much for your insight. That was very inspiring.”
The janitor’s face stayed stoic. “Just trying to—”
“Yeah, well, don’t,” Emerson interrupted.
The janitor had nodded and left the room.
As the anger faded away, Emerson felt guilt and sorrow rushing in. She thought about running after Marvin and apologizing, but she had just sat there in the uncomfortable chair that faced the principal’s big, comfortable leather chair.
She had been running for fifteen minutes. Sweat was pouring down her face as she tried not to bump into the three people in front of her, or the group behind her.
After she had recovered from the stumble at the start, she had felt out of breath almost immediately, but somehow, after five minutes or so, she had felt herself calming down, and her feet found a tempo.
The pace wasn’t fast, but up ahead she could see that Gamble, who had been running for only four and a half minutes longer than her, was drenched in sweat.
The Producer announced Never-Again Jones, and as the ten-second countdown began, Kodi yelled out from the front “Now!” and they all picked up the pace just enough to move forward, making room for Never. They had worked out this system over the last five or six minutes, and it was working perfectly, but there was—of course—a flaw to the plan. It was perfect until someone fell, or quit, or their pace slowed, but for now, it was working.
