The signs above the four doors light up with our unit name. The doors slide open and everyone enters. Our weapons are waiting for us at the end of the hall, but the door to the battle floor is still closed. The three of us belt our sheaths around our waists, and wait.
Fifteen
“Players,” a voice booms over our heads. It’s not Hammond, so perhaps it’s one of the Keepers. “Once the doors open, you each will be swept to a different area of the battle floor. If you look down at your wristbands, you will see the total count of those currently alive in this round. When someone is killed, a chime will go off and the number will update on your wristband. Good luck to you all.”
The door opens exposing us to a blinding light. The three of us hesitate before stepping forward. I go first and immediately loop, landing at the base of a tall metal structure with blown-out windows. The concrete below my feet is cracked and burnt, with small grasses trying desperately to grow through. In front of the building is a plaza containing a fallen statue of a woman with a gold crown atop her head, and holding a long spear in one hand and a shield in the other. She had to have stood at least a hundred feet if not more when she was built. Below her feet is an empty pool covered in what once must have been blue tile, each engraved with a green laurel surrounding a silver infinity symbol. Beyond the pool is a road with a few rusted vehicles sporadically spaced.
This battle floor looks and feels different than the others. The textures are grittier and the air thicker, which makes me wonder where they’ve placed us. Or, what they’ve moved onto the battle floor.
Could they have teleported the Dead Zone to the battle floor? Is that even possible? That’s if this is the Dead Zone, but nothing else around resembles this type of landscape.
The sky is slightly overcast, but I hear rumbling in the distance of an approaching storm. I climb up several thin steps, cross a large patio, and enter the building. The entrance must have once been a lobby. In the center of the open space are three lifts, all rusted and collapsed. Their cables drape over the enclosure and across a couple of broken wooden tables outside a defunct café. The ceiling of the thirty-story structure consists of broken glass panels that allow anything from the outside in, which explains the birds that are flittering about. The lobby’s interior is grimy, covered in either mold or moss, I can’t tell which. The air is scented in decades-old decay.
I meander around the ground floor, taking in as much as I can. Monitors that once clung to the walls lay smashed on the ground. I try every doorknob I come across, but they’re all locked, except one labeled “Emergency Exit”. I open it and step into a stairwell. One of the walls that supports part of the stairs has crumbled away, revealing the plaza outside. I need a good vantage point to locate the other players, so I decide to take the stairs up. When I come upon a gap too large to step over, I loop myself to the next safe landing. I could probably loop all the way to the top of the building, but I actually want to look at how everything is laid out.
The entrance to the twentieth floor is the first unlocked door. I step out of the stairwell and onto a floor covered in broken computers, demolished desks, and partial walls that have been burned. I step carefully across towards a wide hole in the far wall. My boots crunch the glass that still sits in the window frame as my toes dangle over the edge. A decimated landscape lies before me. Skyscrapers reduced to only a few stories, highways either cracked or totally destroyed and covered in vehicles in various stages of disintegration, and a building a great distance away that looks to be completely intact.
Am I actually in the Dead Zone? I’m not on the battle floor any longer? That’s not possible. No one can survive in the Dead Zone’s atmosphere. This has to be another trick by the Keepers.
I shake my head to clear the thought. An explosion a few blocks away catches my attention. A chime rings on my wristband and the tally of players reduces by two. I tap the tiny screen and it shows that a Nius and a Rapid have been killed. My gaze changes back to the building in the far distance and a new plan forms in my mind. I decide to forgo the battle and make my way to the structure. If I’m lucky, the rest will just kill each other off. I go back the way I came, exit the building, and follow the crumbling asphalt. I keep my Kopis at the ready and my shield up as I make my way around the wreckage.
My progress is slow since I have to keep an eye out for the other players, although I’m guessing they’ll get to me before I notice them. I can’t tell how much time has passed. The clock on my wristband is currently turned off. Apparently the Keepers don’t want us to know. The rumbling I heard in the distance earlier is closer now. I glance back towards the direction I came from and see rain pelting the building I’d been in. Lightning strikes the top of it and radiates down the outside of the structure. If I had stayed there, I’d have been electrocuted. Weather was never a factor in the previous battles, so I wonder what other changes the Keepers have made to the battle floor
