The Elite

by K. Weikel

  The Elite

  By K. Weikel

  The Elite

  Copyright © 2017 by K Weikel

  Cover art by K. Weikel

  Smashwords

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Praise for The Unnamed

  “Interesting concept. I really want to explore this world further.”

  -Finn O’Connor from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

  “…It does have me asking why on a lot of things… I’m glad your main character is in the dark. I like him and don’t want him getting sucked into something that gets people killed.”

  -Kevin Bender from Maysville, Oklahoma

  “…I ATE UP the dialogue. It was engaging, and realistic. And this plot sounds INTERESTING….”

  -Snicker Sneebee, Author of The Duplicate

  “Very, very interesting and cool concept.”

  -Christian Edwards, Author of Skyfall

  For my parents and my family.

  The Elite

  1: Trust

  Daniel’s legs shake as he watches Rose be escorted out of the building. He tries to reassure himself that he’s doing the right thing, that he’s saving tons of lives... but something nicks his heart, making him hurt a bit for the Unnamed.

  “I trusted you!” She calls, her eyes full of angry tears. The burst of emotion exploding from Rose takes Daniel by surprise, just as it had after they watched Jim burn... “I trusted you, Runner!”

  With that last word, the doors are slammed shut and the Elite Leader claps slowly, murmurs circling around the room.

  “Well,” the Elite Leader in the red blazer smiles and crosses his arms, his eyes full of something mysterious. “Looks like you had it in you after all, boy.”

  Daniel shakes his head and leans on the wood in front of him. His head throbs.

  “We didn’t think you’d do it, but you did. You ratted them out.”

  “Well,” Daniel chokes out, closing his eyes for a moment before standing up on his quaking legs. “I couldn’t let anyone else die, could I?”

  The Elite Leader shrugs. “You could have. You could have kept your mouth shut. Either way they would have never been able to penetrate these walls.”

  “What do you mean?” Daniel asks, genuinely confused.

  “We knew this year was going to be big. We found their city, thanks to you. But whether or not you would have taken the leap you took just a minute ago, we came prepared. There are Protectors guarding every inch of this building. If someone even tries to come in without permission, they’re shot on sight.”

  Daniel feels as if he was punched in the gut. Shot on sight? How many people have tried to get into the building since they caught Rose?

  The Runner suddenly feels as if he wants to throw up. But would he have chosen differently if he had known?

  “You did well, Runner,” the Elite Runner smiles. “Oh-excuse me, Elite Runner Daniel.”

  After a long day of trials, the Runner stands up from his chair. His legs hurt, but most of all his heart hurts. He never knew that there were so many rules or that there were so many people who break them. He almost feels sorry for them, as if he should say that they’re all innocent.

  But the other parts of him tell him that he followed all the rules himself. If he let these people get away with what they’ve done it wouldn’t be fair to those people like him-the good people.

  He can feel a bit of him grow cold and hard, as if that side of him believes they deserve their punishment, no matter how harsh it may seem. But he pushes it away and pretends as if it’s nothing and it won’t change him any.

  As he makes his way down the stairs, he notices the rooms’ light is on that rests at the foot of them. His footsteps are light on the wood as he rounds the corner to peer into the room.

  “Hello Daniel the Elite Runner,” the Elite Leader smiles as he takes a sip of some sort of liquid from a cup. “Come, sit.”

  The room is small and has several things placed inside its walls. There is a couch on the left hand side, pushed all the way up against the blue walls, with a clear glass coffee table before it. Two reclining chairs are on either side of the table, just waiting to be occupied. A square dinner table sits in one of the corners with one chair poking out from beneath it. A fridge, sink, and stove are all placed next to that, followed by another door that is open enough to see a toilet. Last but not least, there is a cot folded up in the last corner.

  The room is decorated with black and white objects, including fringe, flowers, and sculptures. They’re placed in such a way to give the room life without seeming cluttered.

  Daniel hesitantly glides across the floor and, when the Elite Leader motions for him to sit in one of the recliners, he sits. His heart is racing in his chest from anticipation of what’s to be said and what’s to be heard.

  “Welcome to your office,” the Elite Leader smiles at him and looks around. “Soon someone will be by to show you to your mansion and introduce you to your new staff. Well, new staff at least for the next twenty-four-or-so hours. Then, if you choose, you can replace every one of them.”

  “Where will they go?” Daniel asks.

  The Elite Leader shrugs. “Back into the choosing pot. The Elites do get to choose new ones this year. If you decide to abandon these Servants and replace them, they will be picked first, and the other Elites will get these Servants along with a majority of their original choices. So no worries there, Runner.

  “Meanwhile, tell me everything about the Unnamed and who they are.”

  Daniel looks down at his hands as they sit intertwined. Something tells him the Elite Leader is crossing a line, an invisible one, but still crossing it. Should he name these people? Give away who they are and what they do? Should he tell the Elites everything?

  He looks back up at the man sitting in the center of the couch, sipping his drink silently.

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  The Elite Leader chuckles and shakes his head. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing,” Daniel snaps. The Elite Leader laughs at this.

  “Don’t get smart with me, boy. Are you asking me if you can trust me because you don’t want them hurt? Or are you asking me that because I’m an Elite and you really are part of the rebellion?”

  A spark ignites inside the Runner. How could he be a part of the Unnamed after all they did? They killed in cold blood. They were going to kill him. How could the Elite Leader say something like that to him?

  “I don’t want any harm to come to them,” the Runner answers, treading on thin ice. “Can I trust you with that, should I tell you who and what they really are?”

  The Elite Leader seems to ponder this for a moment, taking in everything about Daniel: his body language, his tone, his words, the passion in his eyes. And then he smiles like a Cheshire.

  “You can trust me, Elite Runner Daniel. I promise no harm will come to the Unnamed.”

  2: the Threat

  The Elite Leader listens intently to Daniel as he speaks about the Unnamed. He leaves almost nothing out, guilt holding him back on some things. Like Rose, for instance.

  “So they want to take the Elites down?” The Elite Leader asks.

  Daniel nods.

  “Okay,” he says slowly, processing the information. “They hate the government. Everything about it. Mostly the Unnamed part, I think. They ordered me to kill Blaise, even. I don’t understand them completely though. I can
’t tell you much more than that, really.”

  The Elite Leader nods. “You did a good thing,” he says. “You stopped a potential war.”

  He rises and straightens his clothing just before exiting. The Runner watches as he leaves. He hadn’t realized how tense he was. He was both dreading this moment and counting down the days until it. He hated the Unnamed, but he had no other choice. He stopped a war. He became an Elite.

  Daniel looks around at the room, distracting himself and trying to rid of the rocks collecting in his stomach. But however much he tries to get his mind off of the past few months, his thoughts always return to it.

  Mortimer the Elite Solver had been his Master since Daniel the Runner was five, before he was Named. When Daniel turned eighteen, he was old enough to enter the Competitions and compete for both a Name and a Title, and he would fight against whatever came his way to keep from becoming an Unnamed. That all changed when the Elites voted to place him in the rising rebellion as a spy: the Unnamed. A boy named Three, later to be named as Jim the Runner, made Daniel go through three tests to make sure he was Unnamed material—and to make sure he wasn’t a spy.

  Daniel passed and was thrown into the world he never wanted to be in, the world of the Unnamed. There he learns about rankings among the Unnamed and that they are planning to take down the government. Daniel became attached to his newly found friends, and trained with them every day, until he beat Blaise the Elite Runner in a practice run. From that point on, he was a target for every Runner, especially the Elite Runner.

  Blaise threatened Daniel’s life multiple times, sometimes close to taking it from him. But Daniel shone through until the night before the last race.

  Before the Competitions even began, the government followed him into the secret hideout for the Unnamed, Rose the Runner, an Unnamed Rebel, shot Mortimer, and Daniel was told he must kill Blaise, not to mention beat him. The poor Runner was having his heart ripped in two and tugged every which way.

  And the government was closing in, even though they didn’t know much about the rebellion, they just knew something big was going to happen during the Competitions.

  Daniel barely passed the First Race, and scores higher than even Blaise did on the Second. The Final Race was up next, and the top five of the last race ended up having to stay at Blaise’s house. One boy was poisoned by Blaise, and Jim dies in a fire trying to save Rose the Runner and Daniel. They learned about a power-hungry chef in Blaise’s kitchen, and she threatened to kill both Rose and Daniel if they don’t put her in charge of the Unnamed.

  They made it through the night, and the next day they were ready to run. It took some time for Daniel to catch up to Blaise, especially after he fell, but he does, and he wins, Rose coming in second place and Blaise in third. To say he was angry would be an understatement. He put Daniel in the hospital, where he was told he has become an Elite. He had the option to step down and return the spot to Blaise, which he considered only for a moment, but declined. He couldn’t have Blaise back in there, when he knows how he is.

  Daniel announced his first execution as an Elite. It was for Blaise. He sent him off to his death. And then Rose the Runner walked in, arrested, trying to signal to him that the Unnamed were in place and are ready to attack, he just had to say the words.

  And he betrayed them just like that.

  Daniel places his chin on his fist, staring out at nothing. He pulls his dreads back into a ponytail and sighs. He can’t help but wonder if he chose the right side: the people over the Unnamed, justice over Runner Rose.

  He groans. “What would you do, Mortimer?”

  A knot rises in his throat as he thinks about his dead Master. He knows Rose killed him under the orders of One, the leader of the Unnamed Rebellion. But did she have to kill him? It was himself they were paranoid about, not his Master.

  Daniel looks at the doorway, his heart pulling for him to stay in this room and never leave. But he has a mansion to fix, and a couple of cooks to take care of.

  + + +

  Someone eventually comes by and shows Daniel to his mansion and around inside. The Servants seem to be having a party now that Blaise is out of their lives, and Daniel couldn’t be happier himself. He’d been tortured and manipulated by him too many times over the course of the past few months.

  The time came for him to choose if he wanted a brand new staff or not. He only let two people go, afraid they were going to live up to what they told him the night Jim the Runner died in the fire set in Daniel’s room.

  Everything is nice for a while as Daniel learns about the other Categories and how they practice and train for the Competitions. It’s hard working in his own workout routine in with everything that comes with being an Elite, but he manages to do it, and gradually get faster and faster as well. There’s no way anyone could beat him.

  Not even three months later, there’s a knocking on his door in the middle of the night. The Guards that keep him safe were shifting around, two of them by each door, alert and ready. Some of them are from other Elites who know about the Runner’s situation: not all of the Unnamed were captured, and they want Daniel’s blood. He betrayed them. That’s something they can never forgive.

  One of the guards alerted Daniel, startling him awake. Once his heart stopped pounding, he made his way down the stairs. The rain outside is coming down hard, sounding like the drums that the Guards would walk down the streets to, putting on a parade when they would go to other cities.

  Daniel glances at one of the Guards on either side of the door, and he nods, cocking his gun and pointing it where the threat could be. Daniel takes a breath, wishing someone else could open the door, but he’d insisted that he would open it no matter what. He’d already felt bad about all the deaths that had happened when he wasn’t an Elite, and he was sure to diminish the numbers when he became one.

  He grips the cold doorknob just as four more light knocks echo off the wood.

  He swings the door open. There stands the girl that had written him the note on the napkin when Blaise had tried to poison him. Her hair clings to her face and red blood stains her pink, dripping wet nightgown.

  “Daniel,” she utters, trying to reach out to him.

  She falls forward, landing in Daniel’s arms, unconscious. Her blood mixes with the rain as it makes dark rivers down her body.

  The man with the gun steps onto the porch, making sure no one else came with her, while the other one pets her off of Daniel. Her head leans back as the boy holds her like a baby, and her breathing is inconsistent. The bleeding is coming from her midsection and collecting on Daniel’s floor by the minute. He had changed Blaise’s black and blue colors to blue and white, in honor of Mortimer.

  “Set her on the couch,” Daniel says, his voice quivering. He’s afraid. The woman that had wanted to control the Unnamed controlled her all of that time ago, and now here she is, bleeding. What does this mean?

  Daniel walks over to inspect her. “Go get one of my Doctors,” he says quietly, the rain almost covering up his words. One of the Guards holds out of the door, locking it behind him.

  The girl moves a bit, something poking out of the top of her dress. It shines in the lighting of the mansion.

  Daniel walks over and takes it, being careful not to touch her. It’s a laminated piece of paper. The words are written in simple print, but it sends tremors down Daniel’s back.

  We’re coming, Elite Runner Daniel. It’s time to face your punishment. You’ll never betray anyone ever again.

  3: Turning Tables

  Daniel’s breath catches in his throat as he looks at her. The Unnamed are coming back for him.

  “Elite Runner Daniel,” the remaining Guard says quietly. “What would you like us to do with her?”

  “We shall wait for the Doctor,” Daniel commands. He’s afraid to touch her, afraid to keep his eyes on her for more than a split second. What had happened to her?

  They wait. It seems like hours have passed. The other guard should have
been back by now. Where is he?

  Daniel looks up at the Guard standing by his side as he sits in the black chair, his head resting in his hands. The soggy note sits on the blue coffee table in front of him, the black letters staring back at him.

  “Check her pulse again,” Daniel says quietly, afraid to touch her.

  The Guard touches the side of her neck with his gloved hand. He nods and looks back up at Daniel, confirming the girl is still alive. But where is all the blood coming from?

  “Master, I’m worried about the other Guard.”

  Daniel looks up at the boy and sees his eyes glistening with fear. His heart breaks for him. He knows that kind of worry.

  “Go find him,” the Elite Runner tells the boy. “Hurry.”

  The Guard nods and bolts to the door, making sure to lock it behind him. Daniel sighs nervously. His front door is no longer protected. No lock could keep the Unnamed out. Rose proved that when she had shot Mortimer, Daniel the Elite Runner’s Master.

  Glancing up once more at the girl on his couch, he feels emotions swim through his body. She had saved him that first night in this house from Blaise. He hadn’t seen her since then, until tonight, and she shows up bleeding, soaking wet, and with a threatening note for him. Why her, of all people? Is it because she had, in fact, saved him once? Could it be that he knows her and she him? What games are the Unnamed playing on Daniel?

  “Strange how the tables have turned,” Daniel sighs as he slowly stands to his feet. Stealing a look at the clock, he begins to make his way over to the girl. It’s almost as if every step he takes is one step closer to his death.

  Her eyebrows are scrunched together, as if she’s having a confusing dream in her cold unconsciousness. Her lips are slightly apart as she breathes heavily, and her eyes dart quickly below her eyelids. The girl’s body twitches ever so slightly in different places as goosebumps rise along her skin.