He leaned his head against the door as he sagged to his knees. He sensed the animals just outside of the entrance clearing, but didn’t dare to look back. He felt them prowling in shade of the forest, their primal growls calling to him, challenging him to look at them. If he did, they would pounce. They wanted to see the fear in his eyes before smashing the life out of him. That’s what killer animals were like. They lived for blood. They lived to dominate, drunk on the power to take a person’s life.

The crunching of snow behind him sent chills down his spine. He held his breath, like breathing would give away his position out in the open.

The doors slid open bathing him in warm air. He stared as men and women jogged toward him, boots pounding against the grated floor. Everything moved so fast. He was pressed into a light weight gurney that hover no higher than his knees. Lights flashed into his eyes as the medics asked impossible questions. He found he couldn’t understand them, their words garbled.

He stared at the medic doing the talking. William couldn’t see his face. The pale blue masked covered the guy’s mouth, leaving him to search for the few other facial features. He choked on his scream and grabbed onto the nearest aid. She had no eyes. Thin dark skin covered her eye socket. Her mouth and nose covered by the same flimsy paper mask as the other medic. Gasping he launched from the gurney.

Hundreds of gnarled hands reached for him, grabbed him and pulled him back to the bed. He kicked but found that his voice hadn’t recovered. He felt the pressure in his neck before he fell unconscious.

“Vitals have stabilized,” a young woman spoke.

William’s view of the world had changed. His room was narrow as it was small. It had the warm soothing cream colours of the medical ward in the educational towers. His frosted glass door suggested that no one was waiting to find out that he was okay. The wall behind him maintained steady beeping.

He couldn’t move, so he screamed for help.

“It’s okay. You’re safe.” She had a calm nurturing voice like an old mother soothing a child. He saw the pinks of her nurses uniform. Not a medic yet who wore pale blue, while nurses training to be doctors wore purple. “Here’s a stupid question for you,” her voice suggested that he should find the following question funny and not all redundant. “Do you know where you are?” Her voice was a little above a whisper, forcing him to focus to hear her.

He stared wide eyed, trying to contain his fear. Her face was distorted, but at least she had eyes. Hundreds of eyes, each blinking as they waited for his answer. He pushed himself deeper into the bed, trying to get away from the monster tending to him.

“Can you tell me what you’re seeing?”

He struggled to get words out. “Face… Eyes,” he gasped.

“I see, may I?” she said before reaching for his hands and placed them on her face. He wanted to throw up. “Feel normal to you?”

He couldn’t will his body to move, not even his fingers. She moved his hands slowly down her face. “The paralytic we used will be wearing off in the next hour or so. You were in quite the state when we recovered you from the field. We’ve tended to your physical injuries. You’re mostly banged up, but nothing serious in that department. We’ll want to check in on you in a few days to make sure there aren’t any complications.”

He stared her, caught in his horror. “Close your eyes,” she told him and brushed his fingers against her face a second time. She felt normal. Were his eyes lying to him? “Take a deep breath and when you’re ready, open your eyes.”

He waited a long time before he had the nerve to look. Staring back at him was a mild improvement of the monster that was serving as his nurse. She was a strawberry blond, whose hair was held back in a skinny pony tail. Her face was melting like candle wax, with one green eye sitting much lower than the other. Her pink lips held onto to its drooping smile.

“Is my brain broken?”

“Not quite right still?” she smiled. She reached over and pressed on the screen panel that hung on the backwall over his head. The screen changed, shrinking the monitoring data to make way for larger picture of his brain. “They look pretty normal to me, but I’m just a nurse. Doc wouldn’t have cleared you if you had shown signs of head trauma.” She stared at the screen a while, tapping a finger to her teeth as she thought. She looked at the scans as though she knew what she should be looking for. “I’ll have to recommend counselling. As things are, you’ll find classes very stressful.”

Would they all look like her? Like some bastardization posing as human. He stared.

“I can see that I’m not helping with your comfort. The doctor will be in shortly to look you over personally.” She pressed her cool hand to his head. “Hrm, a slight fever.” She pulled the blanket up to his chin and tucked him in. “I’m leaving a cup of water and a food cube. Please eat as soon as you are able to.”

Food cubes. Yuck. Food cubes were grainy and had the sort of heaviness to their texture that turned to powder when wet. There was no easy way to eat the inch thick cube. Taking it dry was just as bad as trying to chase it back with water.

After she left, he fell asleep. He heard the doctor storm in like man in with far too much to do. He thud around the room positioning his tools for easy access. William braced himself for another terror. He looked to the doctor who looked down at him. He was normal. He had wispy grey hair that refused to stay groomed back. He was clean shaven and frail.

“Everything okay?” the doctor asked with a sad smile touching his lips.

William nodded.

“Looks like the symptoms have dissipated.” He flashed his light into William’s eyes and ordered him to look this way and that. He peered down his throat, and pulled at his lips to press on his gums. He nodded to himself with each inspection. “Sit up.” He still felt groggy but did as he was told. The doctor checked his reflexes. “Nothing in your scans suggests anything physically wrong with you. But we’ll do a follow up screening in a few days. You need to eat that if you want ever leave this room.” The doctor winked at him, smiled, and left the room in the same hurried whirlwind in which he came.

He unwrapped the silver wrapper from the pressed brown cube when another person came in. There was no knock. No acknowledgement of his need for recovery or privacy. The man was tall. He wore black and gold robes with a stupid looking tall hat that had a veil attached to cover his face. His hands were hidden in massive sleeves that were always set in front of him, as if he was using the robes to keep his hands warm.

He was an agent of the Gaming Commission.

He stood in front of the door, blocking William’s view of the hurried traffic of the medical staff and their patients. He had never seen an agent outside of the arena. They looked out of place. Like an ornate doll in a tool shop.

“You were in today’s game?” The man’s voice carried a tone that meant business. It wasn’t aggressive, just too the point. These were the questions he needed answers to and the sooner he could get through it, the sooner he could get on with important business.

“I-I guess so.” He was in a game, that much he knew for sure. As for why or how, he dreaded having to answer those questions.

“Which teams were playing?”

Orange and white vs gold and white. “Squad IV vs Squad III. I could tell because of their uniforms.”

The pause made William uncomfortable.

“What is your name?” What a weird question. “Full name please.”

“William. William….” He had to think about it. “Mathers. William Mathers.” It was his father’s last name, part of his heritage as a member of the Red Order. His last name was one of the few non-negotiable items in the marriage contract to his mother, who was a devotee of the faith, which was just a fancy way of saying she lived her whole life at a monastery but hadn’t served as a Hunter.

“Date of birth.”

“June 15th, 441.”

“What’s the date?” What was with these stupid questions?

“I don’t know. Sunday. October 24th.” It had to be the day after Squad VII handed their victory to Astral. It just didn’t make any sense as to why his team would be playing almost a month early.

“You’re in what year?”

“Second year. General studies.” Serious second year students started funneling themselves off into disciplines. William didn’t like deciding what he was going to dedicate his life too so early. What if he chose wrong? What if he ended up in a field he hated? If he didn’t choose, he’d have to go through a skill assessment and the system would choose for him. At least it would be something that he was good at.

“Do you know where you are?”

William nodded. “Educational tower at the Council’s Academy.” He put enough pieces together to figure out that much.

“Are you a member of today’s competing squads?”

William nodded. “Squad IV.” He hadn’t been kicked had he? He was supposed to do something for his captain, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what it was.

“Why were you without your helmet? It’s against regulations.”

Was he going to be punished? “I-I didn’t have a helmet,” he said. Why didn’t he have a helmet? He tried to work backwards but found his memory patchy. He couldn’t think past the dead kid in the creak. He corpse floated in his mind, bobbing with arms extended on either side almost like his spirit was stopping from going any further into his mind. “I don’t think I had one when I got in,” he said after some thought. Why was he in the middle of the field? “I just… I just remember standing in a bunch of snow. No idea how I got there or why I was there. I don’t even remember my orders.” He stared into the air hoping that something in his memories would connect.

“Did you confront the opposition?”

Did he? There were the girls in the forest, but he didn’t do anything to them. “I saw… There were two girls under a tree. And this guy, one of theirs, just starts beating them with his gun. Like didn’t even try to shoot them to you know....” He made a shooting gesture with his hand toward the agent, “game over I guess.” He wiped his sweaty palms against the blanket.

“One of theirs, you say.” Again William nodded.

“I don’t know why. But after that, I ran. To- to get help.” Of course he ran to get help, that’s what any sensible person would have done in his situation. Maybe that guy had a grudge against those girls. But killing them? That was little extreme and there was no way he’d get away with it, he had his helmet on. They had a recording of the whole thing. Maybe he didn’t care anymore. William shuddered.

“What happened before you were in the field?” the agent said.

He thought about it but could only see his squad mate floating in his vision. “I…don’t remember.”

“What do you remember about Squad VII’s game?”

“Seth won. He gave the victory to Astral,” he tried not to sound bitter, but she didn’t deserve the credit for Seth’s hard work.

“How did he win?”

Good question. How did Seth win that game? He remembered watching the game on a screen. He had been with his squad. He remembered being upset about not being able to watch the game in the VIP lounge of the arena with Sarah and Reginald and their friends. “I don’t know, I don’t remember seeing Seth’s feed.” Why was that? “Oh yeah! The game went dead about half way through. I think something exploded or something.” He looked to the agent for confirmation, but he didn’t budge.

“What did you do after the game?”

“I had to do a thing for my Captain. You know, one of those things you have to do ‘cause you’re the new guy and if you don’t, you get the boot. Seth worked hard to get me a spot in the games. I didn’t want to waste it no matter how stupid the chores got.”

“What was the chore that Captain gave you after the game?”

He didn’t know. It felt like she had given him the bullshit job ages ago. “What’s the point of all this?” he shouted. He regretted his outburst. This was a representative of the Gaming Commission. These were the people who could make the games really difficult really fast. They oversaw all sorts of details like which challenges teams got, which arenas they fought in, and if they so chose, they could scrutinize players eligibility for participation.

William shook his head. “Didn’t the captain log it?” She would have unless it really was just busy work. But if she planned on ditching him, she would have had to have logged the job just so she could flag him for failing. He must have failed the job.

The agent said, “You may return to your dorm. We may have questions for you in the future. Failure to cooperate will impact your standing with the games.”

Was that a threat? No, must have been a standard statement. People died in today’s game, so of course they’d want him around to answer questions. He hoped the other players would be more helpful.

Food cube chased by water consumed, William changed into the uniform that had been set out with his food.