As the last P90 leaves the room someone shouts out. “Wait! The number is how many days we have to stay here?! I can’t stay here 85 Days! Please! Please!” That same sense of dread and realization shoots through the group as if it were lightening bolt connecting them all. They look down to their tags and then begin to look around amongst each other. The internal screams of “what number does he have?” “Did I trade a lower number?” “I want MY NUMBER BACK!” rage through their minds. Their eyes wide, starring at those who seem to be clutching their number even tighter now, and moving away from those who are openly sobbing as they look down at their numbers.
Bonny Winchester of Cleveland Ohio looks down at her number and sees the 88 looking back at her like a pair of deranged eyes cackling at her. She won’t be able to do this, she wants out now, her first thought is that she finds someone who’s in the top 10, preferably male, and ‘convinces’ him to trade numbers with her. She sees others walking around the room pleading and stating their cases in hopes of a trade, but most everyone is unresponsive. She tries to catch the eye of any man in the room and hopes that she can see that glint in their eye that she’s seen before. As she surveys the room she does lock eyes with someone, a man, and they stare back, she blinks, he doesn’t. She then moves closer to him, watching the others caught up in their stupidity. She knows she can’t be the first one to think of this so she moves as quickly as she can to the man who can’t stop starring at her.
Bonny crouches down and begins to go through the mans pockets searching for his number, he doesn’t react, he just stares. She finds it and throws it in her pocket, pats him on the head, “Thanks buddy”, and moves to the next corpse just five more feet away from him. She hits four of them before someone notices, she pretends to be crying and hugging him as though she knew him, then someone else in the room screams, they should check the dead for their numbers. “Crap!” She drops the dead body from her arms and retreats to a side of the room where she can review what numbers she’s picked up.
Jason Granger, or just Granger to his friends, moves to position his back to the wall and watch as some sense of order is attempted. “They don’t get it.” He thinks to himself. “Cipher said every day would be torture. Yesterday was the not knowing, and that fear drove us to kill. Today it’s knowing our fate, and he said he can’t wait to see what happens and wished us luck. He knows we’ll kill again, he wants us to fight for our survival. I get it, and I have no problems playing along.”
He watches everyone talk, move the bodies and go through their pockets to find the numbers. The plan is to take the 14 highest numbers and swap them with the dead bodies. One problem, 9 of the bodies are missing numbers and no one will say if they have two numbers or more. In the crowd of those watching he sees a younger guy, he’s got to be a couple years younger than he is, maybe 20, 22. He’s shorter than him, and roughly the same build but it isn’t these things that’s drawn his eyes to him. He sees him holding his tag so tight that his hand is red, he sees the sweat on his brow, what he sees is the wounded animal at the back of the pack and he’s going to strike.
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