He wakes up grunting, the warm rush he felt on the back of his head now feels like dried cake batter stuck in his hair. Slowly he opens his eyes, raising his hand to block the light and adjust to the lights of the room. The pain settles in like someone took a tack hammer and dropped it on the back of his skull. “What the hell hit me?” he mumbles out of his chapped lips.
“You mean who hit you? We don’t know.” Dalton kneels beside him and tries to help him up. “In the rush of the crowd we couldn’t see who did it, all we saw was you drop like a prom dress and then the crowd scattered.” Dalton gets him standing and brushes off his back and looks at the back of his head. “You slept through the night, its day 3. The P90s just came in the room.” He gestures to the walkway above with his head but doesn’t point.
The big screen comes on and Cipher speaks. “Good morning all. I see we have had some more casualties. This stops today. The purpose of this expedition is not to see if you will all kill each other like animals; the purpose is to have you grow as humans, and to have those watching grow as well. Yes that’s right, those watching. After today you will be monitored via surveillance cameras. We are announcing to the world why we are here, what number you each have and we will show them what you are going to endure. The world will watch you try and survive, they will feel your fear and from that fear we will become stronger and a greater nation. Will everyone please move to the center of the room; its time for someone to go home and the bodies to be removed from the room.” He pauses and ten more P90s enter the room and begin to remove the bodies. “P90s account for the bodies tags and we will remove their numbers from the counter board.” A large board lights up with the numbers 1 through 100 lit up in red. The number 1 goes out, then the number 87, 93, 95, 99 this goes on eliminating only ten numbers from the board. “Very well, it seems some of you may be hold on to multiple numbers, will number 2 please come forward?” Everyone pauses looking around the room, who avoided being caught with the valuable number 2.
“RIGHT HERE BABY!” A man steps forward, he’s of average build, so there’s no way he could have fought anyone off to hold onto that number. The women in the group stare him down, burning a whole through him, how could he not let a woman leave first, several of them bond closer together. Bonny looks at him with piercing eyes, disgusted she didn’t find him yesterday. Granger spits on the floor, he should be going home, he could have taken him out easily. “You all ignored me, you watched me cry, you don’t even know my name, not one of you came to comfort me, not one of you. So sorry to disapoint you.” he shouts.
“Move to the spot where the light hits the wall.” Cipher doesn’t even acknowledge his rants. The light comes on but it’s at a different spot than it was the last time. The wall once again spins and number 2 has left the expedition. “Moving forward you may trade numbers, but it must be agreed upon mutually. You will each step forward and state your name. I will then log into your social networking site account and change your status to read, for example, ‘John Doe is… number 3’. I have access to all of your accounts, logging in wont be a problem. Now you know how I found all of you.” There it is, the common factor, but still in a social networking world where 150 million people are a part of one site, why were they chosen? Several of them ponder this, while others curse the fact that they're even a part of the site.
“Everyone get their tags out and form a line, no fighting or you’ll be shot. One at a time step up to the microphone located on the wall, let us begin." Cipher spins in his chair, puts on a headset and logs onto the Internet and brings up the social networking site.
"This is insane." Dalton looks around the room and back up to the P90s watching, "how is no one able to track this guy?!"
"He was able to kidnap 100 people in one day, who's to say he's not some crazed government black ops agent gone rogue, or hell even human, this whole thing is insane." Daniel gets in line behind Dalton. "Still got 73?"
"Yeah. I don't know how I'm going to do this. 73days? You still got your 39?"
"Yeah I stuffed it in my pocket when the crowd hit." Daniel reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out his tag. "I'll stick with you for as long as I can, maybe we can figure some way out out of here or what... the... HELL!" Daniel stares down at the number in the palm of his hand.
"Dude, what is it?" Dalton looks down at Daniel's hand and then back at him and then his hand again. "How? Why?" He doesn't form sentences he just stammers.
Daniel stares at his hand, his entire body begins to shake and the key tag starts to dance in his palm. He tries to speak, but no words come out, barely a squeak of air. He can't even bring himself to say it out loud.
100
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