by Shade Owens
“Then how do you know it’s electric?” I cut her off.
Rocket cocked an eyebrow and raised her knife; its tip was as black as coal, as if she’d twirled the blade around in a pile of ashes.
“I tossed it at the wire and it almost came back at me. This thing’s fucking power—” She lowered her voice, no doubt trying to avoid causing a panic among the women. “It’s basically an advanced electric fence.”
“So you tested it,” I said.
She nodded.
“Rocket, you could have gotten yourself—”
Playfully twirling the knife in front of my face, she said, “Girl, unlike some women here, I finished high school—”
“What the hell did she just say?” someone said.
Rocket laughed, her bright eyes turning into little moons. The woman who’d made the comment behind her—a half-toothed, middle-aged woman covered with sagging tattoos—craned her neck to look at us.
“All right,” I said. “Rocket, Biggie, show me the way. The rest of you—stay here.”
As we walked toward the Village gates, I twirled a finger in the air and the Tower Guards on either side opened them up. On the ground, two other guards helped pull the gates open, the weight of them making for a difficult task.
Behind us, women came in and out of their wooden tents, looking like curious hyenas around a dead carcass. They wanted to know what was going on, but they didn’t want to leave the safety of their homes.
It wouldn’t take long for word to spread, which also meant women would panic. I needed to find out what had been installed around the Village and how to go about removing it. The fact that one of the players had taken the time and effort to trap us inside meant they had another plan lined up, and it was most likely a plan that involved mass murder.
“Ain’t you worried we’ll get shot at?” Biggie hissed, her back so slouched her lips almost touched my ear.
“If this player wanted a few kills, they would have shot at you when you all came out here this morning,” I said. “It isn’t a few kills they want. They want to win, which means they want all of us. So until they make their big move, we have nothing to worry about. Besides, they aren’t the only ones with guns anymore.”
Behind me, the sound of a gun being cocked echoed, and I turned around to find Quinn following us with a rifle in her hands and a strut in her walk. She stuck her chin out, smiled with her eyes, and said, “Let’s get this son of a bitch.”
Quinn knew her way around a gun, and if there was one person I trusted more than Coin with a rifle, it was Quinn. Although she hadn’t gone into the specifics about her past, she’d made it clear that her knowledge of guns couldn’t be matched by anyone on the island.
“Long guns, shotguns, rifles, pistols, revolvers, semis, subs, automatics—” she’d rambled. “I’ve shot more guns than there are hookers in all of Toronto.”
The other gun had been given to one of Quinn’s friends—TunaHead. I’d asked her to repeat the woman’s name three times until Quinn lost her patience and said, “Forget her name. It doesn’t matter. The girl can shoot, and I promise you can trust her.”
So I did. Now, TunaHead sat in the middle of the Village with the second rifle on her lap, responsible for the protection of our people.
“If anyone comes in here,” I’d said, pointing a stiff finger in her face, “you kill them. Got it? And if that bastard inside the cabin somehow manages to get out—kill him too.”
She’d nodded, her face expressionless, and stared intently toward the closed Village gates as if trying to anticipate an attacker on the other side.
The moment we stepped outside of the gates, I stopped walking. A few meters away from our Village’s wooden blockade were silver wires intertwined to form a messy barrier. The first row ran at the height of my shins, the second row at the height of my waist, and the third at the height of my neck.
No way could we slip underneath without our backs getting caught, and with how high up it went, jumping it wasn’t an option, either. Whoever set this up had a lot of experience, and it was clear they went above and beyond to ensure that none of us were getting out.
“See,” Rocket said, standing stiff with her arms crossed over her chest. “We’re fucked.”
As I stared at the wiring that ran in both directions and around our Village, I realized something. “No, we aren’t. Follow me.”
CHAPTER 2
“Get the fuck out of there!”
“Get her out!”
“Mason, stop it! You heard Brone!”
With my stomach sinking, I sprinted toward the back cabins where a crowd of women had formed. The cabin’s door—the one in which Player 1 was imprisoned—was wide open with women standing in the doorway.
What the hell was going on? I’d ordered everyone to remain away from our prisoner. I’d even assigned four armed women to guard the door. Why was it open? Why were women inside? Had they killed him?
As much as I wanted the man dead, we needed him.
Shoving women aside, I cried out, “Get the fuck out of my way!”
They’d disobeyed a direct order and weren’t about to receive patience or kindness from me. My elbow caught a woman in the face and she stepped back, throwing her hands over her nose. But I didn’t care. After everything I’d done for these women, how dare they disobey such a simple command? I was trying to protect all of them, and to do that, I needed this man alive. That’s why no one was to go near him.
I understood the rage these women felt—the man had killed their friends. To compensate, I’d promised them that after the situation was resolved, I’d hand him over freely and allow them to do whatever they wanted with him. The one trade-off was that they had to remain patient and wait for me to hand him over.
“Mason, put the knife down!”
I stormed inside, the cabin’s door slamming against the wooden wall.
On the floor was Player 1, still strapped to the chair with his legs sticking out in the air. Behind him was one of my women, Mason, on her knees with a grimace so pronounced it made her look hideous.
“He—he killed them!” she shouted, slobber spewing across his body.
That’s when I noticed the knife she had pressed to his throat. For the first time, the man wasn’t smiling. With his bulging eyes rolling pleadingly toward me, he seemed afraid for his life.
“Brone, we tried to stop—” said one of the guards behind me.
I raised a fist to tell her to shut up. If I opened my mouth, I was afraid I’d say something I’d regret.
“Mason.” I tried to convey sweetness with my voice. “Let’s put the knife down, okay?”
“Why?” she shouted, squeezing her knife until her knuckles went white.
The blade was now pressed so firmly into his neck it made a bloody gash.
“Because this isn’t the way,” I told her. “As much as everyone wants this guy dead, we need him alive for intel.”
She hesitated, looking down at the slobbery mess beneath her, then regripped her blade as if she’d concluded that killing him was worth losing whatever intel we were after.
“Mason,” I said again, my voice hardening this time. “Think about your daughter—”
“I don’t have a daughter!” she shouted, her voice so loud that the women behind me stepped backward.
What was she talking about? Mason had a daughter. She’d named her Violet. Judging by how much her face had swollen and how deep purple it had become, I knew something was very wrong.
“I let her go with Schmitt to the Working Grounds this morning!” she shouted again. This time, she dug her knife so deep that Player 1 grimaced and tried to push his body off the ground with his head to alleviate some of the pressure. But with the restraints around his arms, wrists, legs, and shins, he couldn’t move.
“I-I didn’t shoot no little girl,” he said. “I swear. I may be a killer, and you may think I’m a psychopath, but I’m not a monster. I’d never touch a little—”
&
nbsp; “Shut up!” Mason cried. “Shut the fuck up!”
“I swear, I didn’t shoot—”
Screaming at the top of her lungs, she raised her knife, and clenching it in her fist, smashed him in the face twice. His jaw shook violently, and something snapped.
Turning around, I leaned into the women behind me and whispered, “Has anyone seen Violet?”
The women shook their heads.
It didn’t make any sense. If he hadn’t shot her, what had happened? Why hadn’t anyone located the child? I couldn’t remember seeing Violet when we’d searched the Working Grounds for survivors.
“Mason,” I said, fighting the urge to yell at her. “We haven’t found a body, which means your daughter is probably still out there.”
She breathed in and out through gritted teeth, bubbles forming at the corners of her mouth. If I hadn’t known what was going on, I’d have thought she’d been bitten by a rabid animal.
“Put the knife down,” I said, “and we’ll go look for her together, okay?”
But she wasn’t listening. It was as if she no longer possessed the ability to hear with her ears. Instead, she watched us as if we were the enemy, probably creating nonexistent conversations in her head.
“Put the knife down,” I said, my tone hardening.
When she didn’t obey, I stiffened my stance. Slowly, I raised my hand until I felt the cold handle of my knife on my belt—a metal throwing knife I’d found in Rainer’s lair. Mason was one of us, but she was still a convicted murderer. It was important not to forget how dangerous she, or any other woman in the Village, could be.
She would, without a doubt, kill this man if she was determined enough.
As the leader of the Village, it was my responsibility to do whatever was necessary to protect my people as a whole, even if it meant harming one of my own. She must have sensed my willingness to attack her; her wild eyes shot toward my hand and she growled something incomprehensible.
“Mason, I’m not going to tell you again,” I said. “Put the goddamn knife—”
Suddenly, she screamed out—an unsettling shriek—and the veins in her forehead inflated. Her entire face darkened several shades of red, and the muscles in her arms bulged as she forced the edge of her knife into Player 1’s throat. The entire event may have happened in all of two seconds, but the surge of adrenaline that burst through me at the sound of her cry slowed everything down.
Just as her blade punctured the side of Player 1’s neck, I whipped out my knife and threw it as hard as I could, straight for the largest target on her body—her chest.
The impact didn’t sound like impact all at—it was quiet, sliding right through her shirt and into her chest. The handle sat crookedly on an angle, which meant the blade had slipped through her ribcage. She sucked in hard, maybe the result of a lung being punctured, and dropped her weapon.
Falling back against the wooden wall of the cabin, she clawed at her bloody chest, the tips of her fingers hovering above the knife’s handle. It was as if she wanted to tear it out but was too afraid to touch it.
She opened her mouth to say something, but a raspy breath took the place of her words. Dark red blood pooled in her mouth before spilling over her bottom lip. Based on the knife’s position, it had likely punctured both her lung and nicked her heart, and with a blade that thick, there was no coming back from that.
As much as I’d wanted to catch her in the shoulder, or somewhere else without damaging vital organs, I wasn’t a professional knife thrower. I’d practiced several times with Quinn and Rocket, but I’d been unable to hit the bullseye every single time. The only chance I had at stopping her from killing Player 1 was to act fast, and at that moment, my knife was all I had and her chest was the biggest target.
I felt awful watching her panic. Blood spilled out of her mouth and her eyes bulged as if being inflated with air. She couldn’t breathe, and she had to be in tremendous pain. But what other choice did I have? She was about to kill the one person who possessed the knowledge to protect us from the other players.
“Mason!” one woman shouted.
Footsteps echoed behind me but soon came to an abrupt stop. Someone else undoubtedly stopped her from coming too close.
“Do something!” that same woman cried. “She’s suffering!”
Fighting back the lump in my throat, I loaded my bow and aimed the arrow straight for her heart. She stared at me pleadingly, and I couldn’t tell whether she was begging to be saved or begging for mercy. Knowing her wound couldn’t be healed on this island, I stretched the elastic of my bow, my fingers grazing the side of my face.
Behind me, several women gasped and cried, but no one interfered.
Just as Mason gasped for another bubbly breath of air, I mouthed, “I’m sorry,” and released the fatal shot.
CHAPTER 3
“You fucking bitch!” the woman shouted.
The next thing I knew, someone was on top of me, blasting solid hits to the side of my face. I swung back as hard as I could, feeling cartilage crack beneath my knuckles, but still, I had no idea who was on top of me or how to dodge the attack.
Biggie’s silhouette appeared, and within seconds, the woman was dragged off me, fists pumping the air and feet kicking out as far as possible, trying to land a final blow.
“How could you do that?” she yelled, saliva landing all over Biggie’s forearm. She appeared to be Mason’s age—thirties or early forties—with dark skin and eyes to match. “She didn’t do anything wrong! This man’s a fuckin’ terrorist!” She kicked again, but Biggie didn’t let go. “You saved a fucking terrorist’s life and killed one of our own!”
This woman, whose name I couldn’t recall, was right—the man was a terrorist. He’d killed over a dozen of my women without so much as blinking and had done so for cash. What she didn’t understand was that the intention wasn’t to save him—the true intention was to save us.
Outside, women gathered and bickered with one another. News traveled fast on this island, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to discover that the news of Mason’s murder had already reached the other side of the Village.
“Brone wouldn’t do that,” one woman said in the distance.
“Are you sure? Let me see.”
“Stop pushing!”
Women shoved their way into the cabin, squishing the rest of the audience against the cabin’s interior like a bunch of sardines.
“Oh my God.”
Within the dimness of the cabin, all I saw were the whites of women’s eyes as they stared at me in disbelief.
Reaching for the swelling bump on my cheek, I said, “This man might be a terrorist, but he’s the only one who has the information we need. Without him, we could all die.”
No one said anything, which meant they were at least willing to hear me out.
“Do you think I wanted to save his life?” Suddenly, all I felt was loathing. I was disgusted that these women thought that killing Mason had been as simple as choosing between shorts or pants. Did they not know me by now? I didn’t mean to get so upset, but it was difficult to stay calm when I felt I was being attacked for making an impossible decision. “You think I enjoyed killing one of my own? Like this is a fucking game to me?”
No one spoke, and some gazes quickly fell to the floor. Others, however, remained fixated on me with such abhorrence it was as if they were plotting my demise.
“All right. Everyone. Get out,” Rocket said, assumedly realizing how angry I was.
“So she gets away with murder,” said the woman who attacked me, jerking her body from side to side within Biggie’s grasp. “You’ll fucking get what’s coming to you, you stupid bitch.”
This was it.
This was the moment I knew would affect my reign over the Village. Although we’d lived in peace for the last few years, and although many of these women were good-hearted people who regretted the mistakes of their pasts, there was no denying that many others were still cold-blooded killers who, if gi
ven the opportunity, would attempt to climb their way up the hierarchal ladder.
But with the number of women who respected me and looked up to me, the bad ones found their places and kept to themselves. The few who’d tried to stand up to me in the past had been banished, and on one occasion, killed by Fisher when she’d tried to attack me from behind.
As I stared at the woman, grinding my teeth, a thousand thoughts ran through my mind.
Was it better to offer her mercy? Or, should she be punished for using violence? She knew damn well that anyone living inside the Village was to abide by my zero-tolerance policy about violence.
But how could I punish someone after I’d killed another? Wasn’t my job to be a mentor and an example to my people?
Even Biggie couldn’t contain her shock. With bulging eyes, she chomped down on her bottom lip and waited quietly, her flabby arms still wrapped tightly around the woman.
I parted my lips, prepared to offer this woman a free pass given that I’d killed her friend, when I realized something: I had no one to answer to.
Not only was this woman showing utter disrespect to the leader of the Village, she was also blatantly threatening me. Not once had I been unfair to my women. If anything, I prided myself on being fair and practicing equality no matter the situation.
I was about to order Biggie to take her outside the Village gates and banish her from ever entering again when something overcame me.
Suddenly, all I knew was rage.
I felt betrayed, attacked, violated, and belittled all at the same time. I’d saved hundreds of women from a life of torture and enslavement. I didn’t deserve this.
With gritted teeth, I charged straight toward the woman, grabbed her by the back of her hair, tore her out of Biggie’s arms, and dragged her outside the cabin. She stumbled, tripping over her own feet, and reached for her hair in an attempt to free herself.
“What—what the hell—” she said, her strides long and awkward-looking.
