Chapter 4

Leo is the next to arrive. Instead of sitting next to Kaite, he decides to go behind me. He’s still shirtless, for some reason. He hangs his shirt over his shoulder and takes a seat on Keagan’s side next to Liam. I can’t stand his ass. Leo’s a football and baseball player and one of the school’s most self-absorbed guys. He’s one of those guys that thinks he’s the shit because he sleeps with any girl who is willing to give it up.

“So, what the fuck’s going on,” he says as he sits down. “Liam, wha’s up? Why we hear?”

He turns to the Liam and Keagan, and Joe gets up and continues his gathering. Without even hesitating, he begins snatching food from the table. He stacks his plate high and waits for either Keagan or Liam to respond.

“I don’t know,” answers Liam.

“What bout you,” says Leo as he turns to me. “You know why we here?”

“No,” I answer him. “Drink something, though. You’re gonna choke on all that.”

“Drink some of this,” chimes in Kaite as she turns and rolls her eyes at me. “It tastes like shit. He made me drink it.”

Leo’s in Kate’s grade, so she knows more of his cockiness and of how obsessed he is with himself. I think they even dated at some point. Must have not lasted long. Both Kaite and Leo have strong personalities. Leo’s too focused on himself and thinking everyone wants to be with him or be him, and Kaite is bitchy. She’s nice but to a certain point and only to certain people. She’s okay with me. At least, she is to my face. I don’t know if she goes behind my back and acts differently. But I doubt it. She’s pretty opinionated and says things as she thinks them. I guess that doesn’t necessarily make her bitchy, just honest. I’m cool with that.

“Can’t be that bad,” says Leo.

“Then try it,” replies Kaite with her typical white girl sass.

Leo grabs the pitcher closest to me, the creamy white liquid, and begins filling up his glass. When he fills the glass about a third of the way up, he lifts it up, says, “Cheers,” and begins chugging the drink. He does not even drink half of the liquid in the glass before he starts coughing it back up. He pulls the glass away from his face, letting the remaining liquid to spill all over his already shirtless body. He spits the drink back at the table which reaches Heather, who screams and pushes away from the table. We’ve been focused on Leo that we didn’t even notice Heather sit down next to Kaite.

“Told ya,” smirks Kaite as she grabs a napkin and begins to clean off Heather’s leg.

“Tha fuck is this,” yells Leo as he too starts wiping his body with a towel.

“Try this one,” I say to Leo as I pass him the blue liquid.

Leo finishes cleaning himself off and this time, use a spoon to scoop some of the liquid to get a small taste. He likes that one, so now we just have a red, orange, yellow, and the creamy white drinks left. Heather is quick at taking the red colored liquid which she doesn’t spit up. I look at the ones at the table so far. Okay, so Leo’s the big asshole, Keagan is the wimp, Liam . . . I got nothing for him other than he knows Leo, and Kaite is the five-foot tall blonde that cries a lot. Heather’s a tall, muscular cheerleader.

The next to join us is Eddie. He is Hispanic, like me, but instead of playing soccer like the rest of the Hispanics at our school, he plays football. He’s the “white” Hispanic. He sits next to Leo. The last to join us are Zoey followed by Bradden. Both of them are soccer players, and the ones I know more personally. Zoey is short, like Kaite, brunette, and is only a freshman that made the girls’ varsity soccer team. Likewise, Bradden is on the guys’ varsity soccer team with me. He is also a freshman while I am a senior. Though he just joined the soccer team, I have known him all of my life since we live next door from one another.

I notice that as they started to show up with Joe, the last couple of them are not as panicked as Keagan and Kaite were. After putting up with all of Leo’s cussing, Heather walked in quietly and not panicking. Under the strange situation, she keeps calm, probably better than me, and walked over to Kaite, who is still somewhat traumatized and begins talking to her. Following her, Eddie simply comes over, sits down, and starts talking quietly to Leo. Eddie chose his drink carefully as Leo and Liam try to guess which one was his. He ends up with the orange drink. Zoey rushes over to her chair next to Heather and hides her face in her plate. She does not make eye contact with me or anyone else for that matter. Instead, she lightens up to see Bradden show up and sit down next to her. She begins chatting him up while Bradden only awkwardly stares at me. The two of them are the last to select the drinks, and Bradden ends up with the creamy white, and Zoey had the yellow.

Kaite continues talking to Heather and Keagan eats his food silently. I would get stuck sitting by two people who do not want to speak to me. Great! This isn’t awkward at all. I stab at the piece of chocolate cake still on my plate. After a while, Bradden walks over to me and stands in between Kaite’s chair and me.

“Hey, you know what’s going on,” he asks.

“No,” I answer. “That Joe guy said he would tell us when we were all here.”

“Alright,” I hear Joe’s voice behind me. “Everyone sit down.”

He walks over and sits down in the chair across from mine where he sat down each and every time he brought one of us into the room. He waits for Bradden to sit down before he speaks.

“Well, my name is Joseph Phoenix,” begins Joe.

I pay close attention as he looks at each of us when he talks. He scans us with his eyes and continues to look at each of us in a clockwise rotation.

“You all have been selected to be the first to participate in, well, let’s call it a video game,” he says. “You are all here to play the GetOut Game.”

I listen carefully to make some sense of what is going on, but I end up more confused than when I started out. Joe explains the concept of the game. Basically, the GetOut Game is designed to test the competitors’ overall physical and mental abilities. The game is divided into ten stages. Before, the actual game starts, though, each of the competitors will go through training to prepare them for the game. We will all enter the game together as a team with the only objective being, getting through to the end of the game. The game is its first of its kind. It gives gamers the ability to be physically inside the game.

“For this game, anything goes,” continues Joe. “That means, in one stage of the game you could be in a city and in the next stage in a jungle.”

The purpose of the training is to prepare the players’ agility, survival, combat, and to ultimately figure out the strengths and weaknesses of each of the players. We will train under different environments to test our survival, forced to run through obstacles to test our agility, and train how to use melee weapons and hand-to-hand combat.

“To reach the next stage, you must get through the entire stage you are in,” says Joe. “That means, complete everything you are required to do in the stage you are in. These will tell you what you need to do and will also allow me to communicate with you directly if I need to when you are in the game.”

Joe pulls out several devices. Like cell phones, the devices have a touch screen. However, the devices do not have any functions. The devices have no buttons or any way for us to do anything with them. Their only purpose it to tell us what we need to do and what Joe has to say to us. Other than that, they are a rectangular, worthless piece of technology. Joe passes out the devices to everyone but me. He gives each person a device that matches the color of their liquid drink. However, he does not tell my why he doesn’t give me one but instead continues his explanation.

“Now,” says Joe. “One more thing. You will not be the only ones competing. For the release of the game, your competition will be aired worldwide. And, you will be competing alongside nineteen other countries.”

Joe emphasizes that we are not competing against the other nineteen countries. We are all competing together. However, we will not all be in the exact same game. There will be a total of five GetOut games being played simultaneously with four countries competing in each of the games. When we meet the players from the three other nations in our particular game, we will then decide if we would choose to stick together as a whole or if it’ll be every country for itself.

After explaining everything, Joe takes a drink from his clear liquid and looks at us.

“This sound like bullshit,” says Leo.

“Yeah, I don’t believe this,” agrees Kaite. “So, we’re in a video game now?”

“Okay,” says Joe. “Well if none of you have any real questions, follow me.”

Joe gets up and walks over to where the front door should be. We all follow him with some distance between Joe and us. When he reaches the empty wall, he turns around, smiles, and drinks some more.

“Well?” says Kaite.

“Tell me,” begins Joe. “What does your Tasker say?”

Kaite looks at her device but does not see anything on the screen.

“Tap the screen twice,” says Joe.

She does so, and the screen lights up.

“Go down the elevator,” she reads out loud.

She then looks back up at Joe.

“You mean this elevator?” asks Joe.

Now, where the empty wall used to be is a pair of elevator doors with the elevator buttons on the right side.

“No way,” says Kaite.

“Guess you are in a video game,” says Joe. “Now go.”

Kaite walks over to the elevator and pushes the button. The elevator dings and the doors slide open. The others follow her inside, but before I am able to get inside with them, Joe grabs me and pulls me back.

“Not you,” he says as he waits for the elevator to close.

When the elevator finally closes, he goes over to the couch and sits down.

“Come,” he says. “I need to speak to you in private. And, to give you this.”

He pulls out another Tasker and places it on the coffee table. The Tasker, like the rest of the teams’, is the color of the liquid I was drinking, lime green.

“This is yours,” he says.

I walk over and pick up the Tasker from the table. Mine is different from that of my teammates. For one, my Tasker is a bit bigger than the ones the other guys had. Also, my Tasker has an American flag on the back as the cover that appears every time I tap twice on the screen to turn it on. I tap the screen twice. The Tasker turns off, and the back turns green.

“Why is mine different?” I ask Joe.

“The team captain gets a better Tasker,” he says.

“Team captain?” I ask.

“Yes,” he responds. “You are going to be in charge of this team. Now, it is my job to prepare you, but it’s your job to get your team out of that game, alive.”

“Oh,” I begin, “wait what do you mean alive?”

“I didn’t want to say it to all of them,” he says. “But yes. The game is not entirely what I told your team it was. This game is dangerous. Yes, it will be like a video game. Only, in this game, there are no second chances, no lives, and no game overs. Once you die, you die.”

“Well, that makes me feel a lot better,” I say.

I begin to sweat some at Joe’s first announcement. Not only will I be in charge of the group, but I will be held responsible if anything happens to any of them. Why didn’t they tell us this before? This shit’s not funny. They need to get me out. I want out.

“Jay,” says Joe as he leans closer to me. “There’s another story to the game. A darker one. You have to understand one thing. This game is not new. It’s been used in the past for torture.”

He explains that there is a background story to the developing of the game’s technology. To test the technology, the game creators required human test subjects. Well, like all tests, it had its setbacks. Test subjects were disintegrated, burned to death, had amputations and that was only the beginning. Once the creators were able to get a human body into the game, other error followed. The game developing process has a dirty past, but the biggest problem is the game began developing its own rules and challenges. It became smarter; the more people went into the game, the more intelligent it became. This new technology developed its own way of thinking to where it could learn from the participants that went into the game. His explanation doesn’t help his case. What the hell does that have to do with me? I don’t care what dirty secret these people are hiding. This is some serious shit, and I want no part of it.

“You were not selected to try out this new video game,” says Joe. “You were chosen to take out the game itself for the creators to once again take control of the game.”

“And if we don’t,” I asked.

“The technology of this game is being contained,” he said. “But if it is not stopped, it will spread. Once it spreads, the game technology will be able to take control of all technology.”

“Okay,” I say. “I don’t want any part of this. I’m not a soldier. You need to get us out. This is some crazy ass shit.”

“And,” he says.

“And what?” I ask.

“The game creators fear that it may be able to even pull people into the game through electronic devices,” he answers.

“That’s impossible,” I say to him. “And illogical.”

“So is the idea of the human body being physically inside a video game and here you are,” he says.

“Okay, so wait I’m guessing they’re sending in twenty teams in case one team fails,” I remark.

“Partly,” he answers. “Remember that there will be five games taking place at one time. By splitting the game up, it’s like attacking one enemy from five different sides. Get it?”

“I guess,” I say. “But, I don’t understand why we were chosen to do this.”

“Your school was randomly selected by the government,” he answers. “From there, we selected the most well-rounded students we thought would do the best in the game. Plus, the game is not a complete ass, it goes easier on younger players. It’ll still kill them, but not as badly.”

“Well that’s reassuring,” I answer. “What if we don’t want to do this? Do we have any say?”

“You’re already in the game,” he says. “The only way out now is by playing the game. But, with the right training, your team will do just fine.”

“Great,” I say.

“Okay, well now that you got some answers let’s talk business now,” he states. “First off, I want to specify that what I tell you must not be repeated to any of your teammates. It is crucial that you understand that.”

“Okay, I got it,” I answer.

“Well, if your team is successful in taking out the control the game has, it will require,” he pauses. “Well, a sacrifice.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Well,” he says. “If your entire team is able to make it to the final stage, that stage will be rigged to ensure one of you will die. If a miracle happens and all of you survive, one of you will be forced to stay back in the game.”

“What?” I ask. “Why?”

“We don’t know,” he answers. “It’s not our rule. It’s the rule the game made up.”

“So after the creators gain control of the game,” I begin. “They won’t be able to reverse that?”

“We hope so,” he says. “The message we received from within the game was Nine will go in, but only Eight may come out.”

“How do you know someone else isn’t the one that took control over the game?” I ask. “Because we have actually asked computer experts from around the world to take control, but none have been able to. The problem is within the game.”

“So,” I begin. “The game is in control and will do anything to stop us?”

“Yes,” he answers. “And, we will do everything we can from the outside to protect you.”

“And, if I get my entire team to the end,” I continue. “One of us will have to stay in the game.”

“Unfortunately,” he answers. “However, if it comes down to that the choice will be yours.”

“Great,” I say.

So, now I’m in charge of the entire team. If one of them dies, it’s my fault, and if all of them survive, I have to decide who will not leave the game. This is too much to put on one person. How am I supposed to decide someone’s fate? Why is this my responsibility? Is it because I’m the oldest of the group? These thoughts and all of the information Joe unleashed on me clogs my brain and causes my head to ache. Would I be capable of leaving someone else behind or would I let them get out? Will I make a good leader of the team? Why me?