Block 23

The Justice Games take part in Block 23 quarterly. Can a man who has everything to lose win?

Adrenaline coursed through me as I ran down the narrow corridor, my shirt catching and ripping on a rusty nail but nothing could stop me now. He was hot on my heels, I could hear his ragged breath only seconds behind me and the thud of his heavy footsteps as they gained ever closer. I had learnt earlier that looking in the face of your would-be killer was the mistake. Letting them get too close was the second. I had been lucky so far, I had been mostly ignored by the other inhabitants of the house and had been able to sneak around the more deserted corridors and rooms unnoticed. Twice I had been surprised and it was mostly luck that had enabled my escape rather than skill or deliberation. I thought of my daughter, who would have been made to watch the events unfold live on television, and I could feel the bile rising in my throat. Don’t think of her now, I told myself, you’ve just got to get out of here alive. A chance that was growing slimmer as the seconds ticked agonisingly by. I gripped the handle of the sharp blade tightly in my hand, hoping that if he grabbed me I would at least have a chance to take a swipe at his face and fend off the attack until I knew what I was dealing with. I had been unlucky with the choice of weapons available but I had convinced myself that this was a good thing; I knew that I wouldn’t lose my head and turn into a mindless killing machine. I would only kill in defence, in order to survive and return home to my daughter. Alexis’ face swam in front of my face and I stumbled, tripping over my feet and crashing to the floor in a sudden rush. I could hear him trip behind me as he fell towards the ground. Seconds ahead, I span around and extended my arm as he fell on top of me, his head hitting the ground beside me as he lay sprawled on me. I lay without moving for what seemed like an hour, slowly regaining my breath and trying not to panic, knowing that the cameras were watching my every move. I had been in the house for less than 24 hours and I had already made my first kill.

I slowly shoved the guy off me and got unsteadily to my feet, the sight of the blood dripping from his chest wound was making me woozy but I knew that I didn’t have long to act. As soon as the monitors throughout the house had registered the stop of his heartbeat, my face would have flashed up upon all of the screens as the most potential threat in the house. They would soon be coming for me. I looked down at the man whose life I had so easily cast away, and stored his features to memory. I would never forget the man I murdered. It was only when I reached down to gently pull my knife from his chest that I realised that his features were a little too perfect. Glancing down the corridor, I quickly lifted his head and saw the logo branded into his neck that confirmed my suspicions. He was a designer human. Brought into the world and created by scientists that were insistent on taking over the world with their creations, the designer humans were discarded early on if their intelligence showed no signs of excellence at an early age. The majority of them died fairly soon after life on the streets, the lack of parental guidance and love left them with little survival skills and soon they perished, vaporised in the early hours of the morning by the hovercrafts on rubbish patrol. Once again I swallowed my bile as I thought about the upbringing this man must have had, for having the perfect looks does not guarantee everything. Especially in this day and age, I thought bitterly to myself. I closed his dead eyes and made sure the knife was safe in my hand before setting off swiftly down the corridor, I knew that it wouldn’t be long before they found me.

I slammed the door behind me and frantically looked for something to hold it shut but the small room was bare. There wasn’t even another door; I had backed myself into a dead end. Cursing under my breath I tried to re-open the door but it was sealed shut. I banged on the door but it remained locked. At least they can’t get in here, I thought, exhaustion getting the best of me. I slumped against one of the white, bare walls and sunk to the floor, all of the energy and adrenaline leaving me. Making sure I still grasped the knife tightly in my hand, I closed my eyes and tried to doze off. The sudden beeping startled me and I jumped to my feet, the knife held out in front of me as I tried to rub the sleep from my eyes. The wall opposite me was no longer blank, it had transformed into a large screen and I realised in an instant that I was looking at my daughter’s new room, Alexis lying on the bed. I crossed the room and reached out to touch it but suddenly it was gone, I was touching the white wall. I span around in confusion and saw that the same live feed had appeared on the opposite wall. I approached carefully, not daring to reach out and touch. As I got closer I could see that Alexis was watching a small screen that hovered in the corner of her room. On the screen was me, stabbing and killing the designer human. I watched in horror as the video replayed itself over and over as tears streamed down her face.

“Alexis!” I yelled, desperately reaching out but the screen going blank before I could touch her face. Tears now streamed down my face as I realised what I had done. Being entered into the house was through no choice of my own, but by doing exactly what they wanted me to do; I was becoming a pawn in their games. Even if I survived I would never be able to just live in peace with Alexis, I would constantly be hounded by the press and the public. My face would be projected onto the screens that were on every level of Block 23, until the new winner of the next competition that is. The quarterly held contest between prisoners of each block was a guaranteed way of ensuring public order. Or so they thought. But how did it really work? The winner of the games was being sent back into society a free person after publicly killing 9 other human beings? And that was supposed to be justice? I smashed my fist into the wall, again and again until blood ran from my knuckles and my tears had turned to anger. Anger against the authorities, and the justice system that took such pleasure and made such profit into turning their race into killing machines for the hope of a glorified celebrity status. The contest was aired live throughout the blocks and the inhabitants would constantly place bets on potential winners and the methods of execution. Someone out there in the skyscraper would have made money out of me killing that man with a knife over a gun. The winner was automatically promoted to a high status within the community as they were perceived as the source of a lot of wealth for a lot of people. I would rather be dead, I thought harshly before remembering Alexis’ face as she watched me on the screen. How can I leave her to fend for her life in a world as brutal as this one? As if sensing my grim determination, the door suddenly swung open and I headed out into the silence of the house.

It wasn’t really a house, I realised as I crept down the ever winding corridors and staircases. We were just in another part of Block 23 that was separated by remote access and disguised to look like houses of old. Like everything else, the contest was designed to mess with your head in order to create more enjoyment for the audience. An audience that included my daughter, I reminded myself as I was constantly aware of the ever watching cameras. I tried to keep a neutral face and not show the dread that filled my entire body, the pounding of my heart and the roaring in my ears. I hadn’t encountered anyone else for a good couple of hours and I was starting to feel suspicious, I couldn’t be the last one left surely, they would have announced it already. Unless it was another mind game, designed to mess with my head and leave me quivering wreck for the monstrous public to enjoy playing with. How did I come to be in this place? I wasn’t a criminal like the others, I wasn’t a bad person, I’d done the best raising my daughter with the resources that I had. Her mother had died giving birth to her so from the beginning, we were all we had. And now she might get left alone. I halted on the stairway; the constant jumble of thoughts in my head was making me less cautious than I should be. I hesitated, my instinct was alerting me that something was wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I crept down the rest of the stairs, my ears alert for any sign of danger. As I reached the bottom I looked quickly back up the narrow stairs to see if anyone was following me in the dim light. And that was when he came from behind and knocked me to the floor.

I was so surprised that I took two hits to the face before I realised what was going on. I was right; they had been hunting me all night and had lain in hiding, waiting for me to appear. Too busy worrying about Alexis; I had walked straight into one of their hiding places. Blood filled my mouth and I forced myself to swallow before I risked choking to death. I saw the next blow coming at me but I was recovered enough to roll out of the way and was half way to my feet before I was grabbed and yanked back down to the floor again. I realised he had straddled my chest and had one leg either side of me, pinning my arms to my side and thus rendering me useless. In the faint light I could just about make out my attacker. He had been in the cell next to me in prison and had seemed harmless enough until I found out from one of the guards that he had killed his own mother. He came into the contest willingly; ready to fight and kill for his freedom, no matter the cost as he’d already sold his soul. The hatred in his eyes burned through and I tried to struggle but he was just too strong. I realised I still had the knife in my right hand so I tried to break my arm free enough so that I could gain some leverage but he knocked me back as easily as if I was a small child. I wasn’t a particularly small bloke but this man was fired by pure hate and even the strongest and biggest of men would struggle to fend him off. He turned his head, caught by the sudden reflection of the knife in the light. He grinned at me as he slowly peeled my fingers uselessly away from the blade and gripped the handle in his large hands. He hovered for a second, almost savouring the smell of fear and panic that must have been coming off me in fumes, before plunging the knife straight into my heart.

***

The camera zoomed in and I could see the fear in his eyes as his face filled the screen. I desperately scanned his face, looking for the fight in him that I was sure was still there, that I was sure would bring him home to me. But I saw nothing, nothing but fear and pain. I touched the screen and felt it vibrating slightly under my fingers as I stroked his cheek, wishing so desperately that I could be there with him, wishing that it was his stubble that I could feel under my fingers instead of the cold static from the television screen. A tear slid down my cheek but I wiped it away angrily, I would not cry, even though he couldn’t see me, I knew he would always want me to stay strong. Show the strength that he had always encouraged in me, right up until this very moment. I could see his jaw tighten as he realised that this was the end. And I could see the pain in his eyes as he realised that he would never get to say goodbye, never get to say goodbye to the only person he had left in the world to love. He tilted his head to the camera and I could see the effort it took him, the blood was running down his arm and his chest was a congealed, bloody mess that turned my stomach but I didn’t look away once. The corner of his lip rose ever so slightly and I knew that he was trying to smile, trying to show me that everything will be okay. How could it be okay? Without my dad I would be left with nothing, a young girl with no parents, no hope, and no future. I would be cast out into the streets, the worst prospect for someone like me who had been raised in the confines of Block 23 my entire life. The skyscraper had been my entire world for the last sixteen years, raised by a father who overcame everything to give his daughter the best possible upbringing in life, against all the odds. Until his arrest, my father was a respected man in the block, we had one of the biggest apartments and I had always looked down on the other children who I would see running through the corridors and would have to be taught in a classroom instead of by a private tutor. But that all changed the day the police had arrived at our door one Tuesday afternoon as dad had got in from work. Everything happened so quickly, he was taken to the prison block and I was placed in the orphan apartment on the lower levels. Now I was the child being laughed at and sneered at in the corridors so I stopped leaving my room. I lived for the visits once a week where I would be set up in a room with a live webcam feed and I could actually see my dad’s face. He had explained that the whole thing had been a mistake; he had been set up for fraud from the company’s manager who felt threatened by his sudden popularity and consistent results at work. And so my dad had been arrested and kept from me for months. The day that I found out he was being entered into The Justice Game was the worst day of my life. Until now, when I was faced with the harshest reality that I would lose my dad far too soon, and I would be forced to watch the entire thing. I dug my nails into my palms to keep my focus and watched as my dad formed his last words before closing his eyes and drifting off into a never-ending dream where I couldn’t follow.

“I love you Alexis.”

Reviews

[Ballpark Frank]

Woe. You are an excellent writer. Seriously. I am humbled by your ability. This is a very good story idea. I think as far as feedback all I can offer is that of spacing. Personally I think spacing (since its free), is nice. Its makes thr reading easier on my eyes as I read a longer story. I hope this doesn't sound negative.

The story is terrific though.