The Selection

Chapter 41: The Game

I awoke in the dark. My hands bound to my feet as I lay on a cold concrete floor. The smell was unbearable, as if mildew was choking me. I could taste the duct tape across my mouth, trying to push it away with my tongue to no avail.

The silence droned on gnawing at my sanity as I yearned listen for anything. Footsteps, whispers, any indication of human life around me. I never did. I tried counting the second to minutes to hours but I would eventually fall asleep then wake up starving just to fall asleep several hours later. I'd scream, begging for food and water. Until I came to the realization that this would be the way I'd go. Alone, starving, thirsty and all of my senses cut off. Gabriel would flash through my mind. Dancing at the fair, our first kiss, Heidi telling me he loved me, Gabriel telling me himself, our very intimate night in my bedroom, seeing his face at the end of the aisle, tangled between the sheets with him on Isle Ember. A lump building in my throat as I realized I wouldn't get him that way again. A wonderful life teaser. Giving me a small taste of the love I wanted forever just for it to be ripped out of my hands.

Finally, after a very agonizing long time I heard a door squeak open. I thought my ears were playing a trick on me until I heard heavy footsteps on creaky stairs. The room flooded with light and I squeezed my eyes tight not able to take the brightness after being in the dark for so long. I listened as something hit the concrete in front of me. I squinted and spied a tray with mush on it. I wanted to devour every last, brown spec but my hands still bound wouldn't allow me to move.

"Untie her," I heard Olivianna's voice. I glanced up, squinting through the light. She stood in jeans and a sleeveless shirt. I'd never witnessed her this way in my 18 years of growing up watching her.

A burly man did as he was told, taking a knife to the rope. Burns cutting into my already healed scars. I tore the tape from my mouth and dove in, not giving a thought to the utensils.

"Now that's the cast 5 girl I've been looking for, told you she wasn't like them," Olivianna elbowed a man next to her that wore a mask. I stared around noticing that everyone apart from Olivianna wore a mask.

"What do you want?" I asked, squinting in her direction.

"Control," she answered.

"Well congratulations, you have it. I'm not going anywhe-"

"Not over you," she answered with disgust. "Control over Illeá."

"But why?"

"I'm from the south, Ember. I assume you've guessed that. I've starved, I've lived in poverty and I was ripped apart from my family when the typhoon came through-"

"What typhoon?"

"Yes they don't teach it to you be we don't matter," she spit. "A typhoon ripped across the southern half of Illeá. We were once just like your town. Not the richest but also able to live. The typhoon tore it all apart. We had no food, no working water, hundreds of people died and nothing was done about it. It's like we fell off the face of Illeá, 7's and 8's don't matter anyways except... we weren't 7's and 8's before. I was a 4. Comfortable. My father was a manager of a company that drifted in with the typhoon."

Her eyes glazed over as if she were trying to remember a memory. She shook her head back and forth, then continued, "I haven't seen him, my mother or my brothers since. I was fourteen years old. Alone. I loved that way for a year until we tried to build up ourselves. That's when this began. The leaders took me under their wing and that's when the rebellion was planned. It started with me becoming Queen."

"Is that why they scared my mother off?" I interrupted her.

"They would've allowed your mother to be Queen if she agreed to our terms."