Part 9 - Day Two, 12:00 to 00:00
The pupils, once tranquilized, were transported to Battle HQ, where they were stripped of all weapons and placed, together, in a windowless grey basement room, with one solitary bulb providing just enough light to see.
The antidote to the tranquilizer was pumped in through the door, to make sure all participants woke at the same time. All participants but for Hannelore, who, for whatever reason, was not with her classmates.
Woozily, the French boy yawned. It had been some while since he had enjoyed such a good night's sleep, and he felt much better. However, he didn't remember his pillow ever being so hard before.
With a sudden sense of deja vu, he sat bolt upright, coughing violently and rubbing his reddened eyes, the smoke from the antidote still pumping into the room. He was surrounded by all his enemies, some still unconscious... and Delilah, dumped over the other side of the room, also out for the count.
The thought crossed Sylvain's mind immediately to go for her. He crawled on his hands and knees to her, and put his shaking hands around her throat - but before he could squeeze hard enough, a soldier who had been sitting outside the room guarding them spotted the blond's attempt to murder his ex-lover, entered the dank basement room and simply smacked the boy across the face with a gun butt, barking "Get away from her, sit DOWN and don't MOVE, Roberge, or I'll shoot you."
Sylvain cried out with the pain, waking some of the other contestants, an indigo bruise immediately swelling right across his pretty face from left eye to right cheekbone. He shuffled backwards into a corner and sat watching the psycho bitch he now hated with a passion for betraying their love... waiting and hoping she'd make a mistake, a mistake which would be her last.
But - why were they here? And where was Hannelore, had she been killed? His head was still swimming from the combination of tranquilliser and antidote, and yet again they had found themselves not where they had been before. 'What the hell is happening?' he thought, baffled, 'Are they going to kill us all together now?'
He slumped back, waiting until someone told them what was going on.
Bukiyo raised his head and cast a woozy glance round the bland, utilitarian room he'd awoken to. It made a change from the cold, muddy ground he'd been huddling on for the last period, but maybe...if presence of his fellow contestants and a stern-faced soldier said anything -- not a good one.
As soon as his sluggish limbs decided to comply he scrambled back across the floor, leaving a trail of grime and blood that was not his own in his wake and curled up in the very corner, making as small a target of himself as possible now he was truly defenseless.
"...park?..."
Despite noticing the acute lack of his lover, who'd only been sleeping by his side Buki failed to notice Hannelore's absence. He was far too caught up in frightened delusion and the fear of what they were to be subjected to next.
"...koibito...doko desu ka? Atashi...ko ai.."*
----------------------
* My love, where are you. I'm scared.
Hearing the gore-splattered Japanese kid's mumbling, interspersed with the name of his thoroughly dead boyfriend, Sylvain raised his injured face and scanned the room dispassionately.
Delilah was still out, and snoring quite loudly, which gave him a sour chuckle at her expense; Paul and Jennifer were equally unconscious still. The bitter-almond stench of the antidote to the tranquillisers was flooding the tiny dungeon-like room, irritating his sinuses.
Natsume's mumbling and crying was starting to get on the French boy's already-taut-to-snapping-point nerves.
"Bukiyo... stop being so pathetic. That f**king connasse Hannelore blew Park up. He's dead. He isn't here, is he?" Sylvain snapped, "So shut the f**k up, OK? Just shut the f**k up. He died. She blew his f**king legs off. And where the f**k is she? Did YOU murder her?"
Sylvain didn't care if his harsh words caused the grief-stricken Japanese to lose the plot, attack him or whatever. He wanted some goddamn answers, and he wanted them now.
"Bukiyo... stop being so pathetic. That f**king connasse Hannelore blew Park up. He's dead. He isn't here, is he?" Sylvain snapped, "So shut the f**k up, OK? Just shut the f**k up. He died. She blew his f**king legs off. And where the f**k is she? Did YOU murder her?"
At that Bukiyo whimpered, shrinking back even further into the corner and mumbled something that sounded like an apology. It didn't seem however that Sylvain's brutal words did anything to shake his firm belief that Park would come to rescue him any moment.
"M--maybe they...maybe..she got another beating?" He whispered, already bracing himself for another sharp reprimand.
"She m-might be like us...no more weapons now.."
There was a note of hopefulness in his voice now, despite the tears still trickling freely down his cheeks, cutting fresh paths through the blood and muck. He glanced from Sylvain to the door and back again.
"M--maybe they...maybe..she got another beating? She m-might be like us...no more weapons now.."
No weapons?
Sylvain's red-rimmed eyes widened, and he suddenly realised why he had felt like something was missing. That hard-earned gun, the one his evil slut of an ex-lover had finally deigned to allow him to wield, had gone from his possession. None of them had any weapons left. Even Delilah looked as though she had lost her beloved cleaver.
"I want these other culs to wake up so I can get some damn questions answered," Sylvain snapped, his French accent returning to its natural syrup-thickness (he had tried very hard to Anglicize it for Delilah's sake).
"If one of them killed Hannelore, they can tell us. Otherwise - where the hell is the evil bitch? And why are we here - what the f**k has happened? It must be something bad, otherwise they wouldn't have had to send soldiers in. And from what I could hear, there was something about a riot going out over the damn tannoy system..."
Sighing, he shook his head to clear it. However, when he saw Kyo's expression, a mixture of utterly destitute despair and horror, he felt sorry for the other boy, and dropped his shoulders limply.
"Sorry about your boyfriend, man. That was a horrible way for him to die. And sorry I was angry at you. There was no need for me to take it out on you. This is so f**ked up..." and he rubbed his bloodstained hands over his bruised face, compulsively pulling on his dirty blond locks to try and bring himself back to some kind of reality.
"You're not lying are you.." Bukiyo murmured as he crawled closer to the grubby French boy. There wasn't even a hint of a question in his reply, only dulled shock and dejection.
"He's not coming back." The red-head whispered as he reached out and tucked a few limp strands of blonde hair, dyed almost beyond recognition by blood and muck, behind Sylvain's ears with trembling fingers.
He knew little enough about Sylvain's dealings with the murderous witch Haddington, who still lay sprawled out gracelessly upon the floor beside them, her lips parted to emit an un-lady-like grunt as she rolled over, cushioning her tousled black hair upon one blood-splattered arm, to still trust the other boy like this eventhough they'd rarely spoken during their time at the institute.
Using the back of his sleeve he rubbed away some of the dirt from Sylvain's cheek and then sat back, gazing down at the floor desolately.
".....I don't know what to do without him..."
Sylvain felt extremely uncomfortable in this position: he didn't like to be touched at the best of times, and he certainly wasn't appreciating being oddly... pawed over by the now-openly gay Japanese boy.
As for being taken into his confidence - well, he had the feeling Kyo would talk to anyone right now. They had never been friendly, and existed pretty much at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.
"S'il te plait - don't touch me, I don't like it," he said, but not in an unkind way. "I know it must be hard for you, but now you must think of yourself. I am certain that Park would not want you to just die without a fight - he fought for you, I think, so now you must not let his sacrifices go to waste, hein?"
"Maybe it is that they have brought us here to kill us all now, but I don't think that can be so. Harvey would never allow Delilah to be killed en sang froid* without a fair fight."
He sighed, and chewed his ragged thumbnail absent-mindedly.
"So... I think maybe that something very bad has happened, something which should not have happened. I don't know what, and I don't know what has happened to the German bitch. Maybe one of those-" he jabbed his thumb in the general direction of Paul, Delilah and Jennifer, "- will know what is going on."
* in cold blood
Although he knew deep down that his classmate was correct Bukiyo still wasn't quite ready to accept everything he'd been subjected to in the last period. The horrific images that would remain burned into his memory no matter what was to come.
"Gomenasai..." He murmured, purposefully pushing himself away from the French kid. For a few awkward moments he remained silent, but then raised his head once more and opened his mouth to reply. However a sudden rustling from the other side of the room cut him short.
It was warmer here....no annoying nature setting that messed up her equlibrium and worse still made it difficult to find those survivors she'd been so desperately wanting to finish off. In a flurry of torn material and slender, but still sluggish limbs she sat up and cast her cold gaze over the bare room they'd been dumped in. Her delicate throat felt strangely sore, but aside from that she could have conquered the world purely on the left over adrenaline from her earlier murderous activities.
This twist was interesting and yet....it obviously signalled trouble of some kind - although whether it was for Harvey or themselves to worry about she did not know yet.
Only two of the others were conscious --- her spiteful pet and that pretty, but clueless little Asian. And of course they posed no threat whatsoever. So she turned her attention to the boy and girl lying defenseless on the floor close by, crawling over to inspect them one by one and decide which to kill first.
However, it was when she went to look for her precious cleaver that she realised with growl of frustration that she too was ripe for the slaughter.
"Shit..."
Getting to her feet she stalked over to Sylvain and grabbed him by the collar, "Where are we love?" She didn't truly expect him to have an answer, but just the agression in her tone and movements was enough to stem a fraction of her darker impulses.
Sylvain's initial reaction to her, to cower and apologise like a beaten dog, would have been the sensible option. However, he was mad. He was more than mad: he was absolutely seething.
After the way she had treated him, as a piece of ass at best, as a human shield at worst, she was acting like the one with the beef?
The hackles on the back of his neck rising, he bared his sharp white canines at her in a murderously malevolent rage, lifted his good arm from where he had been cradling his injured arm, thrust his hand almost into her face and extended his middle finger an inch from the end of her nose, actually making her flinch with the unexpected speed of his reaction.
"Suck my dick, bitch, I wouldn't tell you nothing even if I knew," he shouted. "You tried to f**king kill me, putain*!"
* whore
The sound of voices broke Paul from his slumber. Opening his eyes, a ceiling hazed into focus. He was inside. Where? Last thing he remembered where the troops coming into the GZ. He hadn't even made it back to his bag before one came for him. The bayonet definitely cleared his belt before the soldier fired, but Paul couldn't for the life of him remember if he'd thrown it or not. His hands were empty.
Paul clenched and unclenched his fists. They felt sticky, he lifted them up to get a closer look. Harvey's blood had dried and hardened. The dark red smears reaching halfway down his forearms. Paul smiled at the memory the sight had brought back to him, before lowering his arms back down.
He didn't have to turn his head to see if there were other people in the room with him, he could hear them. Seemed the regime had unfinished business with them. Maybe they were to be exectuted? Paul stared silently at the ceiling, hoping they'd hurry up. He had a bitch of a headache.
Bukiyo scrambled back from where Sylvain and Delilah were glaring at each other, like two felines sizing up whether it was worth risking a proper fight or not. He pressed his back against the wall, aware that Paul Courtney had woken too and was now staring fixedly at the bland ceiling.
But what un-nerved the red-haired boy the most was the congealed blood coating Paul's forearms - if they were all, save for Hannelore present and seemingly un-injured then who except the amazonian blonde (who had been far too well-armed for Paul to take on in Buki's opinion.) could the blood belong to?
In the few moments that question occupied his mind Delilah made her move.
"You...call me a whore?!" Her fury had died down to a mere whisper, but somehow that seemed all the more threatening. As if something terrible was building up behind her blank china doll-like expression and cold gaze.
In one swift, fluid motion she leant over and bit down hard on Sylvain's finger - her grip as needle sharp and unforgiving as a rabid canine. There was a wonderfully grim cracking noise and then she sat back, looking thoroughly satisfied with her response as blood dribbled from her lips to splatter the remains of her muddied shirt.
In the corner Bukiyo hid his face and began to sob again uncontrollably.
For a moment, pure and complete shock dulled the physical response of nerve to brain for the French boy. He stared and stared at the ragged, twisted stump where his right-hand middle finger used to be, now a spurting fountain of blood and torn flesh with a broken bone protruding from the centre. It reminded him of the leftovers of a turkey drumstick after Sunday lunch.
She simply spat out the remains of his finger onto the grubby floor in front of him when he began screaming, unable even to apply pressure to stop the blood from flooding out down his arm, hot tears flowing down his face, his entire right arm an equally throbbing, hot mess of agonising pain as his left.
When the soldier stationed outside the room heard the racket, he entered the room at a leisurely pace, sized up the situation, cracked Delilah across the forehead with his gun butt, causing her to cry out with the sheer unexpected force of the blow, but did not hit Sylvain again. He figured the French kid had probably had enough punishment in this situation already.
Faint with pain, Sylvain staggered backwards, sliding down the wall next to the Japanese boy who was crying, leaving a bloody pool on the floor.
His mind was filled with one thought and one thought only: "Please God, don't let her survive. Let someone kill her. Please let someone kill her this time."
Upon hearing the screaming, Paul's head turned. The sight of Sylvain staring at his bloody stump made him chuckle.
Hearing the soldier enter, Paul quickly sat up, all at once alert, the smile fading from his face. But upon seeing the butt of the rifle smack Delilah in the forehead, he couldn't hold the laughter for long.
Paul smirked at the soldier as he walked back out, before turning to face the transfer, the sly grin spreading into a beaming smile.
"You have no idea how happy I am to see you're still alive"
Suddenly, the door swung open and two heavily armed guards wheeled in a TV. One aimed his rifle at the remaining classmates while the other turned it on. As the screen flickered to life, a familiar, blonde figure slowly appeared out of the blackness.
"Really, I thought you could have at least waited until the next zone to start fighting."
The students recoiled in shock as they realised Hannelore, dressed impeccably in a black men's suit with white shirt and black tie, was not only alive but now talking to them on the TV.
"You deserve, I suppose, some sort of explanation of what's going on. For those of you that don't know, I'm a Regime agent. I have been in training for this assignment for many years, and I was promised, if I succeeded, I'd become a general. If I refused, I would have been executed - and I thought your lives were far less valuable than mine. Besides which, the post of General carries prestige and a fat pay cheque. Money and power are very sexy. Very sexy indeed."
Hannelore's eyes glazed over for a second.
"Harvey gave me the details of my tasks as he beat me up as we first arrived in the Battle HQ. After all, he had to make everything look authentic, ja? I was told to look after Jen, to ensure her victory, as she was seen as the best prospect for a model Good Citizen. To be honest, I wasn't keen... I thought Paul was always a better prospect - Jesus, he's sexy. Somebody almost as insane and sadistic as myself. But I couldn't have promised not to... well... not to have got up to some naughtiness."
She paused and put her little finger in the corner of her mouth, coquettishly. But her eyes were blank and dead.
"And then, yes, I ran down Marriah Moon, shot Tsutsuno, f*cked Hans then gave him an overdose, blah blah blah... you mean you hadn't guessed all this already? Those f*cking Jap twats did for Ami Hodges before I could get to her, but they didn't do a bad job - I would have done better. Still, can't win them all."
"In the last Group Zone, the crowd got out of control, especially once Paul did his butcher's job on Harvey. You mean, you don't know about that? Yeah, after Harvey killed Delonge - you knew about that too, right? I must admit, I have been lax with the announcements, and you were sleeping so soundly. And these suits don't get themselves fitted, you know? - Paul used a petrol bomb on Harvey and cut him up good. Left him for dead, though, and didn't finish the job. Tsk Tsk. A couple of bullets in the head was the kindest thing I could do. The crowd was rioting, wanting to tear you all limb from limb for killing their hero, so we removed you all, to keep the integrity of the game and... well, nerve gassed the lot of them."
"So, I'm afraid all your relatives who bothered to show up are probably dead. We're still clearing up, but sarin is terribly effective. I commiserate your loss, but you'll be seeing them soon, if you believe in that sort of thing."
"I'm in charge now. And if you thought Harvey was a mean bastard, you seriously underestimate my power."
"Olley, give them the leaflets."
"This is the end, beautiful friends, the end. The final chapter. And now, the end is near, it's time to face the final curtain. The Final Zone will take place in this area - in a valley to the west of the game map. You can see the features marked on it. At dawn, you will be shipped out there, and stay there until there is a victor. Tonight, you will be taken to an individual cell, your wounds will be cleaned and dressed and you will be fed. I shall speak to you again at 4am. Good night, darlings."