The Kill Factor, page 24
When the patched and uneven road finally began to rise up to meet New Third Avenue, Emerson dared to let herself feel a moment of relief, but when she made her way to the Topside, there was no ambulance.
She stood there, a little girl with a dying infant in her arms, and wondered if she was too late. Had the ambulance waited around, assumed it was a prank, and then left?
Kester had fallen silent, and Emerson began to cry.
More than anything or anyone else, she hated her father. This was his fault.
When the blue and red lights finally turned the black street into a disorienting strobe of color, Emerson closed her eyes and prayed that her little brother was still alive.
The paramedic stepped out of the cab and wandered casually over to Emerson. “This is the boy?” he asked, scratching his nose.
“How could you not come down to get him?” Emerson asked. For the first time in her life, she could not hold back the anger inside her. “You’re a bad person. You’re bad people. He’s a baby! He’s sick and he’s in trouble and you wouldn’t come for him!”
“Hey, little girl,” the man with the short, curly hair replied. “It’s company policy. It’s not personal. Now, do you want us to help the kid or not?”
Emerson handed over her feverish brother and got into the ambulance.
Hatred and disbelief filled her. The world wasn’t fair. It was clear and obvious and no one was going to do anything about it. The people who had the power to change it didn’t care, and those who did care didn’t have the power to change it.
But all of that had been years ago. Now she was somewhere else. On a beach. On an island.
No, Emerson thought.
She did not want to come back to reality. She didn’t know what awaited her there; she only knew that it was a chasm of unfathomable pain.
Please, no.
But things were coming into focus now. Senseless stars in a wrong sky, a moon that was backward, an island where the wind never blew and the rain fell straight down. An island where she had fallen in love with a boy name Kodi, and then watched him die.
No.
It hit her like an avalanche of misery. All the things her brain had been keeping from her were released at once and it was like a swarm of locusts in her soul.
Emerson lay on her bed, wishing she could return to the bliss of ignorance, but that refuge was gone forever and she knew it.
Kodi had lit the fire that killed Marvin Tzu. He had been there that night to rob her. He was the reason she had been caught by the police. He was the reason she was on this hellish island … and yet she loved him still. She didn’t care about all the things he had done wrong—he had given up his freedom to come here and protect her, he had tried so hard to get them off this island, and he had given his life so that she could remain in the game.
Lying asleep beside her was Tiger, one arm draped across Emerson’s shoulder.
Emerson stirred and felt Tiger’s arm pulling her close, comforting her, and she felt the faintest moment of light. That light went away as quickly as it had arrived, though. Yes, there were good people in this world, but good people rarely were allowed to shine. Never had been poisoned. Alasdair had been taken away. Kodi had been killed. Tiger would go soon too, and so would she, and maybe that was okay.
There was no way out of this. No way off this island. Kodi’s plan to use the Nicotine Patch drones had failed. Her own plan to write out a warning had failed. They could not outsmart the Producer (or whoever was really in control of the games). They could not escape the island. They would all die here, she knew that. There was no prize; there was no freedom even if you won the whole thing.
Emerson felt an acceptance growing inside her. Why fight when you can’t win? Why bother?
She watched the stars and planets and galaxies moving slowly clockwise across the sky, and she tried with every fiber of her being to think of absolutely nothing at all.
It would be over soon regardless; why suffer? Just think of nothing and wait for the end.
No more anger.
No more rage.
No more pain.
No more …
No more.
Dawn broke.
Emerson watched the sun throw orange rays across the water, and saw the grayness of sunrise give way to the stinging brightness of morning, and none of it mattered.
Somewhere in the far corners of her mind she wondered if Kester really would get the benefit of her now over two and a half million followers, or if that was a lie too. She hoped—with whatever ability she had left to hope—that he would.
Tiger stirred, clambered higher up so that she could kiss Emerson on the cheek, and then rested her head on Emerson’s shoulder.
“Are you okay?” the little girl whispered.
Emerson closed her eyes, opened them slowly, then replied, “No. I’m not okay.”
“I know,” Tiger said. “I’m so sorry.”
Again, Emerson felt that flickering light inside her, and again she let it die. She loved Tiger, but love wasn’t enough anymore.
“Hey, Emerson,” the lost voice of Gwen Perez called out.
Emerson turned her head and saw that Gwen too was lying in her bed, unmoving.
“Yeah,” Emerson called back.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“I know,” Emerson replied.
“The Producer said it’s over,” Gwen said, her voice flat and hollow. “But it’s not over. I know it’s not over. Do you know how I know?”
“No.”
“It’s not over because we’re still alive. It’ll only end when everyone is dead, won’t it?”
“I think so,” Emerson replied.
And they were silent again after that. The whoosh and roar of the calm water breaking gently on the beach was the only sound.
Drones flew in with breakfast that no one ate, and sometime later they took it all away.
At some point, Emerson looked at the scoreboard. She could barely take in the information.
Place
Contestant Name
Contestant #
Follower count
1.
Gwen Perez
7
3,878,811
2.
Tiger Quinn
11
2,919,944
3.
Emerson Ness
16
2,523,016
It meant something, or perhaps it meant nothing. Emerson didn’t know and couldn’t make herself care.
She got out of bed when the sun was directly above the island and walked to the water’s edge. There was something distantly comforting about how the afternoon light turned silver and gold against the ripples of the waves.
She stood there for some time, allowing herself to get lost in the mesmeric dance of colors, but then came crashing down when the Producer’s voice blared out over the island.
“Finalists of Kill Factor. All of you should be very proud of yourselves. You have learned valuable lessons during your time on the island. You have transformed from criminals into valuable members of society, and for that I applaud you. But there can only be one winner. Please make your way to the far side of the island.”
“I thought he said there were no more games,” Tiger said, but her voice carried no anger or fear or any emotion at all, for that matter.
The island revolved and the three girls walked the familiar path to the other side.
As the staged area for the finale came into view, Emerson saw that each piece of apparatus for all the games they had played since the beginning were there: holes in the beach with coffins inside, the enormous diving board platforms, the fifty-foot-high running track, the huts for the sleeping game, the tubes for the Respect game, and the chairs they had sat in the day before. Emerson looked at the wooden seat where Kodi had died and felt the wound reopen.
The Producer walked on the spot among all the equipment and smiled as his finalists approached.
The island stopped spinning, and the four of them stood in silence for a while.
“Welcome,” the Producer said. “Here you are, the finalists of the first-ever Kill Factor. I told you a long time ago that we were going to make history here, and we have, by God we have! You don’t know this, but the world has gone crazy for The Kill Factor: Protests in every major city in America! Online frenzy begging governments to intervene, boycott threats, people promising to hack into our systems and find out where the island is, anger and furor! But most of all, the highest viewing figures of any show in the history of broadcasting.”
“But the people hate it,” Gwen said. “You just said there have been protests and threats and boycotts!”
“There is no better advertising than outrage, Ms. Perez. And the numbers don’t lie. We’re a hit. Yesterday’s game was watched by over two hundred million people worldwide, and when the figures come in for today’s broadcast, I think we’ll hit a new high.”
“How can they stand for this?” Tiger asked, her voice still vacant. “How can people … stand for this?”
“Oh, there is outrage, of course. There always is when something new comes along. It has been the same way throughout history. People like to think that they will fight for what’s right, and they will … for a while, but then something new comes along and takes their focus away, and that thing that so enraged them becomes commonplace. In ten years Kill Factor will be an accepted part of life, and no doubt there will be other presentations that come along and push the boundaries even further. Who knows? But for now, we are the only show in town, so let’s sparkle!”
“No,” Emerson said, sounding almost bored.
“No?” the Producer repeated, his voice full of good humor.
“I can’t. I won’t. I’m not going to do this anymore. You’ll just have to kill me. That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? Killing people?”
The Producer smiled. “Oh yes, I had forgotten that my darling son made many dying confessions. Needless to say, it only adds to the drama of the show! That being said, Ms. Ness, you will take part.”
“And what if I don’t? What’s the worst you can do?”
“The worst? The worst? That’s a good question. I suppose I’ll kill Tiger if you refuse to participate. And if Tiger refuses to participate, I’ll kill Gwen, and if Gwen refuses to participate, I’ll kill you.”
Emerson sighed. Once again she had been checkmated by a mind of pure evil. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
“Wonderful,” the Producer said. “When the cameras come on, all you have to do is beg for your lives. When the ten minutes are over, the person with the most followers will win the inaugural games. On this one occasion, the footage will not be edited, it will not be delayed; it will be going out live. You can say what you want, do what you want, but remember, you’re begging for your lives. Make the most of your time. Good luck.”
The Producer walked away. Emerson watched him go. She looked down at the sand and for some reason she expected to see that he had left no footprints, but instead she saw the half-moon shapes left by the heels of his shoes, and she saw something else too—the drawing that Alasdair had left in the sand during the sleep game.
Emerson walked over to the image, which was faded now. She could make out the circular shape of the moon, the points in the sand that represented the stars, and a crude image of the island beneath the celestial bodies. And surrounding all this was a half-circle, enclosing all of it like a snow globe.
… my friends here on this island, I want you to remember one thing: The moon is backward and the stars don’t make sense.
Alasdair had said that. Nick had said it too. And she herself had noticed that Orion was indeed facing the wrong way, but what did it mean?
Large camera drones, the same ones that filmed the video diaries, appeared from within the plastic forest, and the red lights came on.
Kodi’s last words echoed in her mind.
Please make it off this godforsaken island.
Emerson no longer believed that anyone was going to make it out of here alive.
Ten minutes of unedited time with her audience. Ten minutes to say whatever she wanted.
The moon is backward and the stars don’t make sense.
Ten minutes to speak the truth. Ten minutes to inform.
The moon is backward. Nick was right.
Ten minutes to talk to her brother one last time.
The stars don’t make sense …
Something clicked in her mind. Finally, she saw what Alasdair had seen, and what Nick had seen before him.
Emerson looked at the camera drone with its red light, and then back down at Alasdair’s drawing in the sand.
It was obvious to her now. The way the rain had fallen straight down, the way no wind ever blew across this island even though it was in the middle of the ocean.
They were living under a dome. Nick had said those words right to her, only she hadn’t listened because it had come in the middle of a string of conspiracy theories and crazed ramblings.
She had seen it when the Nicotine Patch drones flew too high and the seagull had disappeared. They had short-circuited the panels of the dome for a moment. The dome, which projected clouds and the sun and the moon—the moon, which traveled clockwise across the sky. And the stars, which were flipped the wrong way around. Someone, somewhere in the production team, had messed up and no one had noticed except a few kids who had been forced to live on this island. If she could somehow get this information to Kester, maybe—just maybe—he could use the massive electronic signal to figure out where they were and get them out of here.
Emerson looked directly down the barrel of the camera, and something else occurred to her. The Producer had told them that more than two hundred million people were tuning in, and yet only around ten million people were following the three remaining contestants. That surely meant that the other viewers were … what? Watching to see if something would be done? If law enforcement would intervene? If someone would escape? Maybe. It was her only hope.
And it hit her as clear as day. It would be difficult, but she would have to have two conversations at the same time: one with her hands, using sign language, and the other with her mouth, using her spoken words. She would sign all the vital information to Kester and at the same time speak directly to the people who were watching in hopes that this horrible show would come to a burning end.
The moon moves across the sky in the wrong direction, Emerson’s hands said.
“I had never been in love until I came to this island,” her mouth said. “I never had time for things like that. But here, in this terrible, terrible place, I fell in love with Kodi, but there can be nothing good here, so they took him away from me. I have never felt pain like it, and it will never go away.”
And the stars are backward, like I’m looking at them through a mirror.
“I know there are people out there who have felt this kind of pain before, and I wish I could speak to you right now. I want you to tell me it gets better, because right now, I don’t believe it ever will.”
The water is freezing cold. Too cold for the warm climate of the island.
“They tell you that they sent us here because we’re criminals who need to be rehabilitated, but there has been no rehabilitation, just trauma and pain and loss.”
We were injected with something on the cruise ship and were unconscious for a long time.
“I wasn’t born a criminal. I never needed to be rehabilitated. I was born into an unfair world. It’s the system that needs to change, not me … not us!”
The entire show is filmed beneath a dome. The sky isn’t real.
“Follow me. Get me off this island and I’ll show you what a criminal looks like. I’ll show you what vengeance looks like. I will spend the rest of my life tearing this show to the ground and holding every single person involved accountable for their part in the murder of dozens of kids. If the authorities have been paid off, and if the government won’t help me, I’ll take the law into my own hands, and they will suffer. I promise you they will suffer for what they have done. I know it goes against what you believe in, but follow me and together we’ll crush them! Join me and no one will have to suffer for entertainment ever again.”
Emerson had played her final game, and all there was left to do now was wait and see if she had done enough to win.
Tiger was talking quietly to her drone. Gwen had tears rolling down her cheeks as she spoke.
Time ran out, and the large camera drones disappeared.
Emerson made eye contact with Tiger, and smiled. Tiger smiled back. Emerson tried not to think about how hard she had worked to gain more followers than Tiger, how hard she had tried to condemn the little girl to whatever fate lay beyond the fake walls of the prison, inside the maze with its white walls.
I’ll get you out of here, Tiger, she told herself.
The sound of one pair of hands clapping interrupted the silence, and the three remaining contestants of Kill Factor turned around to see that the Producer had reappeared.
“The results are in,” he said. “We have our winner.”
The Producer did not announce the winner right away. No, there would be no theater in that. Instead, the island revolved back to the bedroom side. The bonfire was still burning; the bedrooms had been cleaned. The scoreboard was blank, however, so that the surprise of the winner would not be revealed.
The Producer ordered each of them to go to their bedrooms and change into their final outfits for the live show.
Emerson walked slowly toward her room, and saw that the green dress from the Infinity Suite was hanging on the frame of one of the fake walls. Emerson looked at it for a long time. She ran her hand along the material, felt it between her fingers. A pair of beige shoes with a short heel at the back had been placed beneath the dress.
She put the dress on and for a moment she wished she could see what she looked like. She sat on the edge of her bed and looked at the beige heels. She didn’t know why, but she decided to put her black boots on instead.
