The Kill Factor, page 9
None of this moved Emerson particularly; none of it really affected her at all.
She looked at the cruise ship, the Calypso, sitting stoically on the ocean. The lights of the craft seemed brighter now that darkness had fallen, and somewhere in the back of her mind she imagined swimming to the enormous vessel, breaking into the bridge, and figuring out how to sail them all away from this place.
Emerson glanced back to the dunes where the bodies lay. They were dead. They had been alive and now they were dead. This thought seemed so impossible to Emerson. They would never see another sunrise, never laugh at another joke. The world would keep on spinning. Their parents and siblings would keep on getting older, and they would always be dead.
There were eleven corpses on the dunes, and only thirty-five living contestants left, which meant there were another four dead in their watery graves. Fifteen dead in total.
“I didn’t think … I didn’t think it would be like that …” Tiger’s voice said, and Emerson turned to see that the young Topsider had sat down beside her and was staring out at the waves too. Her blond hair had come out of its pigtail braids and hung wetly around her face in sandy clumps.
“No,” Emerson agreed, “neither did I.”
“I’ve never seen a dead person before,” Tiger muttered.
Emerson thought about her mom in the hospital bed. How she had looked so different after she had died, as though some secret part of her had drifted away the moment her heart had stopped beating for the last time.
“Are we all going to die on this island?” Tiger asked.
Emerson’s fist closed at her side, grabbing a handful of loose sand and letting it slip through the gaps between her fingers. Suddenly, she was angry, angry at herself, at the Producer, at Jorgensen for not waking up, and at Tiger for asking senseless questions. “I don’t know, okay, Tiger?” Emerson snapped. “I don’t know! I’ve been dumped into this stupid game show the same as you!”
Emerson got her feet and walked away beyond the sand dunes and into the plastic trees. The rocks that dotted the fake forest were made of plastic too, and so were the vines that hung between the replica trees, and the grass beneath her feet. That too was an imitation of the real thing.
She walked to a particularly large tree with heart-shaped leaves. She let out a scream and then collapsed to her knees, sobbing.
Emerson cried for less than a minute before forcing herself to slow her breathing down, her hands to be steady, and her mind to let go of the anger and the pain that she was feeling. What replaced these emotions was guilt. She had yelled at Tiger when all Tiger was looking for was someone to comfort her.
Emerson stood up, took one last deep breath to calm herself completely, and then turned to walk back to the dunes, but before she had taken a step, the three high-pitched beeps of the public address system sounded, and the Producer’s voice echoed across the island.
“Contestants, congratulations on making it through the first game. Please meet on the beach in one minute.”
The voice fell silent, and Emerson felt that anger boiling inside her again, but she kept it at bay for now.
It felt strange walking through the fake forest, like she was on the set of a cheap movie, and when she reached the tree line and saw the perfect circle of the beach, her sense of dislocation grew even more.
She walked past the dunes, trying not to look at the bodies that lay there, unmoving. She joined the group of surviving contestants, who were all gathered together a short distance away from where they had been buried alive.
“How are you doing?” Emerson asked, putting a tentative hand on Never’s shoulder.
“I’m … I don’t know how I am, to be honest. I think I’m all right … as all right as I can be after … that.”
“They can’t keep this going, can they?” Emerson asked. “I mean, fifteen kids just died, they have to call it off.”
“He told us it was going to happen,” Never said. “He told us on the boat. He said: You will be fighting for your lives, but I didn’t think—”
Before Never could finish, the Producer’s voice broke through the muttering of the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to The Kill Factor!”
He had appeared from seemingly nowhere, like a magician at a kid’s birthday party, and he stood there in a dark suit, beaming with pride.
“What the hell was that?” Teller said, his voice immediately cracking with the emotional weight that was now forever on him. “You killed them. You let them die!”
“That, Mr. Sanderson, was must-see television! That was entertainment!”
“You’re a monster,” Vintage Patel said, and it was the first time Emerson had heard her speak and not convey some meaningless piece of trivia. “Everyone involved in this show is a monster.”
“This is illegal,” a tall boy with the number 42 branded into his wrist said. “We signed a contract to be on a show called Retribution Island, not The Kill Factor, whatever the hell that means!”
“Wrong,” the Producer said, a deceptive smile on his face. “Not one of you read the contract, so don’t come at me with your accusations. But you did ask a good question, Mr. Tremblay-Birchall. What is The Kill Factor? There are not one but many among us right here on this beach who have killed. Others, as we’ve seen today, who have been killed. Whether it is in our nature or part of our instinct to survive, we must seek to reform ourselves. We must seek to love ourselves and our fellow humans. We must seek to understand the point we reach that brings us to this instinct to kill, in order to overcome it. That is the meaning of The Kill Factor. And with that, congratulations on making it through the first game!”
“What the hell do you mean congratulations?” Imelda demanded, her silver hair swaying as she stormed toward the Producer, pointing at him the same way she had pointed at Emerson in their cabin when they had first met. “People died! They suffocated and they drowned! You killed them. You’re responsible!”
She had gotten within ten feet of the Producer when he held up a hand and spoke.
“Ms. Fleet, I wouldn’t come any closer unless you want to be lying next to your friends on that dune.”
The Producer’s voice was calm and clear and there was a hint of pleasure in it.
Imelda stopped in her tracks. “What … what do you mean?”
The white-haired man smiled at Imelda, and the cruelty that was barely concealed in his beaming teeth made her take a step back. “I mean that you signed a contract, young lady. You all did. You’re on the show now, and you must play by the rules. If you do not play by the rules, you will die a quick but painful death.”
Imelda looked nervously back at the group of surviving contestants. All her bravado and arrogance had disappeared, and she looked only like what she was: a terrified teenage girl.
“What do you mean?” Teller called out from somewhere near the front of the group.
“Each of you has a number burned into your wrists, correct?” the Producer said. Emerson, along with almost everyone else, looked down at their numbers. “Beneath each of your numbers, a small capsule filled with a fast-acting poison is implanted. Attack me, or anyone else involved in the show, and the poison will be released. You will be dead within thirty seconds.”
Emerson ran her thumb over the number 16 burned into her wrist, and felt a hard lump beneath the skin.
“I don’t believe you,” an angry voice from somewhere near the middle of the group said, and a boy who Emerson didn’t recognize ran toward the Producer.
“No, wait!” Emerson called, but the boy with the long brown hair either didn’t hear her or chose not to listen. He ran as fast as he could, sand kicking up behind him, his hands balled into fists.
The Producer’s smile grew even wider. The moon was rising behind him now, big and white, turning him into a silhouette.
The boy ran past Imelda, and Emerson thought, He’s going to reach him! He’s going to … but the boy’s footing became uncertain, his left leg seemed to be unstable, and then his right knee buckled. He managed to keep his footing, but he had stopped running. Now he stood still. He was so close to the Producer that he could’ve reached out and grabbed the lapels of his suit, but instead he fell to his knees, and then fell forward onto his face.
He was dead.
“Any more questions?” the Producer asked, smiling at the crowd of kids. Stunned silence filled the night air, colliding with the rip and boom of crashing waves. “No, I thought not.”
“That was awesome,” contestant number 21 said, smirking. Emerson didn’t know the pale and slender Topsider’s name, but she did not like the look of intense pleasure in her eyes.
Emerson moved quietly over to where Tiger was standing alone and took the young girl’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was scared and … I didn’t mean to shout at you.”
Tiger looked up at Emerson. “It’s okay. I’m scared too.”
“You may have noticed,” the Producer continued, “that in the first task you were not all buried in a uniform row, and you were not all buried at a uniform depth. No, you see, the game began the moment you were arrested. When you signed the contract, you agreed to let us use archival footage of your arrest, your interrogation, and any footage of you that existed from your past. We have been broadcasting for days now. We filmed you waiting at the dock, boarding the ship, and every hour of our voyage to this island. We have used footage from Ms. Fleet’s successful social media career, Mr. Mason’s conspiracy theory show, Ms. Ness’s old Content-Plus channel.”
Somehow, despite everything that had happened, this announcement rocked Emerson, and she wrapped her arms around herself.
The Producer continued. “You started collecting followers immediately, and some of you have done very well. Others, not so well. Now, as you know—the winner of each game receives immunity from the public vote. The winner of the first game was the person who escaped their grave the quickest … That person was Kodiak Finch. Congratulations, Mr. Finch.”
Absurdly, a few people actually clapped at this announcement.
“The loser of today’s game, and one of two who will face the public vote, was the last person to escape their grave—that person was Zach Dobler. Commiserations, Zach.”
The red-haired boy who Emerson had seen struggling out of the wet sand hung his head in shame.
“Now, if you will follow me,” the Producer continued. “We will get to the second part of tonight’s entertainment.”
The Producer gestured with one hand, encouraging the contestants to follow him, and as the white-haired man turned and began walking, the entire island shook beneath their feet.
Emerson stumbled and fell along with almost every other contestant. It was only Kodi who kept his footing and began walking, but as he walked, he didn’t move anywhere.
What’s going on? Emerson thought, clambering to her feet.
Both the Producer and Kodi were walking in place, and it took another ten seconds for Emerson to realize that the entire island was turning, rotating from its center, spinning like an old-fashioned record.
The landscape around them slowly changed as the beach revolved. By now, all the living contestants had found their feet and were matching the pace of the vertigo-inducing turntable.
As the island turned and the Producer led the contestants to the new area of the beach, Emerson watched their destination come into view. There were thirty-four wooden structures built up on a level area of beach. These structures were stages, on wooden stilts. They varied in size and shape, but they were all bedrooms—or certainly, they were made to look like bedrooms. None of them had walls, just wooden frames that outlined where the walls should be. You could look through one bedroom into another. When Emerson saw the structure that belonged to her, she stopped walking, and the mechanical island pulled her backward. She stared through the nonexistent wall and into her bedroom, hers from her home in the Burrows. It was a perfectly reproduced imitation of her and Kester’s bedroom: the damaged furniture that had been repaired a thousand times, the threadbare pillowcases, the melted patch of carpet near the door.
Emerson caught up with the group.
“Oh, lordy, that’s my bedroom,” number 15 said, sniffing through his blocked nose.
“Mine too,” Never said in a dreamlike voice.
Emerson finally managed to peel her eyes away from the reproduced bedroom, and noticed swarms of camera drones hovering like flies everywhere. On the beach itself there was a large bonfire sending crackling embers up into the sky, a small wooden platform that looked like a stage, and to the side of the bedrooms was an enormous screen that showed a photograph of all fifty contestants. The ones who had died were grayed out and at the bottom of the list. Emerson saw immediately that her name, number, and photograph were at the very bottom of the living contestants, right after Teller. There was an ever-changing number next to each contestant’s photograph. The contestant who was at the top of the list, number 33, Imelda, was at 56,433 and going up every few seconds. Emerson was at 3,101.
Emerson scanned the list quickly.
Place
Contestant Name
Contestant #
Follower count
1.
Imelda Fleet
33
56,433
2.
Levi Russo
17
39,067
3.
Kodiak Finch
1
9,437
4.
Cobalt Skiba
15
9,011
5.
Never-Again Jones
47
8,909
6.
Delilah Scattergood
21
8,800
7.
Tiger Quinn
11
8,569
8.
Decker Shimada
25
8,430
9.
Harlow Wozniak
26
8,286
10.
Llanzo Robinson
14
8,095
11.
Goodwin Goodhew
50
7,944
12.
Sadio Sarr
48
7,920
13.
Tanya Moon
49
7,707
14.
Genji Gao
3
7,599
15.
Hugo von Hugo
9
7,500
16.
Alasdair George William Tremblay-Birchall
42
7,371
17.
Andrew Matthews
23
7,370
18.
Cameron Angus
2
7,294
19.
Steele Sawyer
18
7,002
20.
Nick Mason
4
6,930
21.
Rose Pascoe
19
6,561
22.
Vintage Patel
38
6,517
23.
James Sunday
40
6,423
24.
Amelia Rock
8
6,288
25.
Green Glow Ali
5
6,106
26.
Asim Damji
27
5,541
27.
Gamble Delaney
6
5,309
28.
Sian McNamara
28
5,201
29.
Amanda Anderson
46
5,008
30.
Billie Joe Walker
12
4,704
31.
Gwen Perez
7
4,702
32.
Zach Dobler
29
3,656
33.
Teller Sanderson
20
3,205
34.
Emerson Ness
16
3,101
Emerson looked to the grayed-out photographs and names of the deceased contestants, including: Juliette Star (number 10), the violet-haired girl who had been pretending to film herself on the ship; Wolfgang Jorgensen (number 24), who Emerson had not been able to save on the beach; and Carter Boyd (number 36), the boy who had rushed the Producer and had been poisoned just five minutes ago. There were others too: 31, Alfonso Linari; 43, Tanner Crowley; 45, Fafali Aniwaa. All these names and pictures she vaguely recognized, but it was too much for her to comprehend.
“Your rank on this table corresponds to the number of followers you have gained so far. Those with the most followers earn perks in the games—for example, the person with the most followers was buried farthest away from the tide, in the shallowest grave, giving them the best chance at surviving. The person with the least followers was buried closest to the water in the deepest grave. You see how this works? The number of followers you have directly correlates to your chances of survival.”
Emerson looked at the enormous screen once again, and saw that Kodiak Finch had the word IMMUNE beside his name. If nothing changed, she would be facing Zach in the public vote. Her mind spun with questions, and without thinking, she raised her hand in the air.
“Ms. Ness, you have a question?” the Producer asked, smiling a warm, fatherly, evil smile at her.
“If you’ve been filming us from the start, then you knew who it was who pushed Teller overboard.”
“That’s not a question, Ms. Ness, that is a statement.”
Emerson thought for a second. “Why did you ask us who did it, and why didn’t you punish Kodi?” Her eyes scanned the crowd, looking for Tiger and Never. She hadn’t even told them about the ordeal.
