Right Behind You

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Murder To Excellence

"And I'm from the murder capital, where they murder for capital

Heard about at least 3 killings this afternoon
Lookin' at the news like damn I was just with him after school,
No shop class but half the school got a tool,
And I could die any day type attitude
Plus his little brother got shot reppin' his avenue
It's time for us to stop and re-define black power
41 souls murdered in 50 hours

The paper read murder, black on black murder,
The paper read murder, black on black murder again
Murder again..."

-Kanye West and Jay-Z (Murder to Excellence)

Kae:

I was named Cairo. It was the night before our first trial for entrance into The Odyssey when we were blessed with names. We were gearing up to be thrown into a jungle forest somewhere in Sri Lanka, with a goal and it was to survive for specifically seven days. The jungle was rough and harbored deadly species of all sorts; we spent a few weeks in lessons on wilderness survival, injury prevention, medicine administration, building, etc. If we managed to make it out in one-piece we would be granted the opportunity to get through the next trial, and then the final one which was disclosed only after we had passed the second trial.

Apparently, the Odyssey had a weird fetish for giving their members names relating to certain topics such as colors, gems, cartoon characters, we happened to be the lucky ones with location names. Thus, the name, Cairo. I couldn't lie, I liked my name a lot. I've never been to Egypt before but I think I would after this was all over. 81 a.k.a Kilee was renamed to D.C. to represent Washington of course she seemed to not have much a problem with the name, not that she could fight the director on it, she choose our names for us. It made me wonder if she named us those certain places due to our personalities or some other identifying factor about ourselves.

98, the Indonesian beauty who had ultimately become close to me along with D.C. was renamed Dubai in honor of the thriving country. It made sense, she had a very brightening and intriguing personality that always had people wondering more about her, though she remained quite mysterious at times. The fiery and flexible Irish sprite number 12 was renamed Mumbai, funny things is she's actually visited and lived there for a short amount of time; her father was a researcher and was doing work there for some time. 43 the amazing and talented Kenyan-born woman was renamed Beijing a bit ironic due to her recently squashed beef with 02.

02, the half Chinese and Korean woman with an ultimate death stare that remains to be undefeated was renamed Glasgow, I was still trying to figure that one out. 56 and 11 the "Iranian twins" as we liked to call them as they tended to finish each other sentences and do everything together despite never knowing each other was quite amusing to see; they were named Singapore and Paris respectively. 57, the silent but deadly in our group was renamed to Istanbul, not too far from her hometown in Morocco. She didn't seem bothered by the rename, but then again was she ever really bothered about anything?

Finally, the free-spirited, singer of our group 33 was renamed Rome. I wondered if the director named her that due to the attraction she brought when she sang or possibly because she was an attraction in herself by the way she behaved? Either way, we would never know the director refused to tell us why she named us the way we did or if it was just randomly, like out of a hat or something. Either way, not too soon after creating conspiracy theories in the dorms with the girls on our names, here we sat in the middle of the fuck if I even know, Sri Lanka days away from being rescued by our group to take us back to the desert.