The Cruelty Challenge (Accepting)

As we walk through the cold halls the electric rope tied between us, my face is hidden, tucked beneath my arm as I stare at my feet, Kalef... I keep on my mind picturing the girls with the guns to their heads, Kalef and Rachel and Kalef convulsing in spasms.

I stare at my feet, ignoring Daniels gaze

My mind is still processing everything that just happened. We watched a really disturbing video, Kalef is probably dead; it's a lot to handle in a period of a few minutes. We are walked to our room followed by a lot more guards than usual. We are all given a small box of food, I think Calaf called it cereal, the girls have some to. It's good. Calaf warns us again tonight about the juice and pours it down the drain. He is locked in here with us. None of us go directly to sleep, we sit and make sure Calaf is okay, after all he's done for us in the last day, he deserves to be comforted. After a while of just sitting in silence, watching Calaf, we eat some food he had in his pack, and go to sleep. My sleep is troubled, filled with disturbing dreams, twisting around what happened in the videos, and the simulation, but instead of one-on-one, being controlled, or other people being involved, it's me, Daniel, Kyler, Tabbitha, Mary, and Auburn, in the real world, attacking real people, and sometimes even each other, no one controlling us except our own mind. I wake up soaked in sweat, it's still night. A disturbing thought hits me, what if all of that actually is going to happen? It could, most ikely it will, it's what Blade wants and he always gets what he wants, also escape now seems impossible. For now all plans of my escape are on hold. I most obey, do as Blade and the guards say, do as they wish, no matter how horrible or inhumane. I silently cry myself back to sleep, but make sure no one else is awake, and not to wake them.

Daniel

When Calaf takes us back to the bedroom, there are a dozen guards posted outside. I slip the fork under the mattress, and sit down heavily with a loud sigh. I glare at my hands. Things cannot get worse from here. A box of cereal lands in my lap, and I wolf it down. I hadn't part of my lunch, and my stomach grumbled all afternoon. I sit there, quietly freaking out, until someone turns the lights off.

I crawl into bed. All the events of the day play through my mind, over and over until morning. Not again, I vowed to myself. When the simulation says fight or run, I'm going to run. When I see a gap in the guards or an open door, I'm going to run. I'm going to run until I'm out of the camp. I'm going to run until I'm either free or dead. I've got the build for it, tall and lithe with long legs. I'm going to run, and I'm going to convince Auburn to run with me. I'm going to run... I'm going to run... I'm going to run... The mantra plays reapeatedly in my head until I fall fast asleep.

Tabbitha- Bedroom

Just as I am about to drift off to sleep, my eyes snap open. I get an idea. Maybe it's not hopeless after all. As quietly as possible, I get up and look for our empty cereal bowls. Sure enough, they are on the table, and I quietly walk back to my bed, but I have hit a soe spot in the wood floor. With a creaking groan both from the floor and Auburn, I know I am caught out. Luckily, Mary is still asleep. I still don't trust her yet.

Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Auburn asks, "What are you doing?" She looks at me like I've gone insane. Maybe I have. Nevertheless, I'm going to try this anyway. Couldn't hurt, could it? Duh, of course it could. But that doesn't stop me from trying.

Without explaining further, I ask her to help me move the bedside table. At this point, Mary is also awake, and my distrust is, for the moment, displaced as she helps us shift the bedside table. When both of thier pesterings have reached their height, I break down and tell them bluntly, my eyes shining, "I think I know a way out." I hold up the spoon.

"What?" They say together. At the same time, Auburn says "How are you going to break out of here with a friggin' spoon?" and Mary whisper-shouts, "Are you insane?"

Then, without further explaination, I set to work on the wall. It is a slow and audurous work, and I was barely able to get the paint off the wall before exhaustion wore out. But it was something. At this point, both Auburn and Mary have caught onto what I'm doing. We push the table back, covering the small patch of bare wall that we have made. Then we all collapse onto our beds, falling asleep immedeately. Before we do, however, we promise to take spoons from lunch tomorrow, and that we will work on it all night tomorrow. At last, good news. But good news doesn't last long here.

Spoiler

Got the idea for this post from Stephen King's Shawshank Redemption

When we are waoken up by the many guards and Blade, who surround us, it doesn't look good. Blade snickers, "Let's try to make today more productive than yesterday hmmmmm?" He throws each of us a pair of comfortable dark blue pants, and gray shirts with our information on them. Mine reads:

Spencer Mitchell
Bravery "Cruelty" Challenge
#5
Obeys
We are dressed and I see each of us is "labeled" by these shirts, listing our name, bravery "cruelty" challenge, each of us has a different number between 1 and 6, and whether we obey or are defiant.

Then we are herded back into the "office" room. We are all forced onto the sofas once more, and Blade takes his place across from us. Judging by the sly smirk on Blade's face, today is going to be awful, worse than what we've been up to the last few days. Then he slowly begins.

Tabbitha- Bedroom and Lobby

The other girls ad I are rudely awakened from a restless sleep by the silent gaurd, who practically shakes us awake. We are each given a comfy pair of identical pants and a t-shirt with are names on them. But that's not all that's on them. On each, there are three other things emblazened on them in white: the bravery/cruelty challenge, a number (mine being 6), and a status (mine being rebel of course). The mute gaurd leaves, and we all change knowing that this can't be good. We all have even numbers, so we will most likely will be pitted against th guys. Fun.

After getting dressed, the silent gaurd steps in again, and loops our hands through the electric rope. I can see the door, slightly ajar, and before he can put my arm in the rope, I bolt for the door. He doesn't seem to be chasing me, which can't be good. Sure enough, when I reach the door, I get zapped by electricity, just like the rope that one time. And then the 20+ gaurds come. They tackle me to the floor, pinning my arms behind me. One of them closes the door, and four others escort me back to the silent gaurd and the rope.
Humiliated, I obey, defeated, if only forthe moment. But, hey, I live up to my status.

We walk dwn the hallways that we know so well, util we rech the failiar lobby, and Blade. The boys are aready here, and it looks like Blade had been speaking to them, until he saw us, and stopped, clearly annoyed. Blade being annoyed could mean a death sentence for us. And he hasn't even heard about my escape attempt yet. Well, the one the gaurds know about, anyway.

As we sit he continues the outline of what we will be doing on this fine, horrific day.

Blade runs through today's plans with us. They do not sound good. Whoever has numbers 1-2 are together, 3-4, and 5-6. That means that Tabbitha and I will be partnered up today. Great. I really don't want to hurt her, I know I was saying I would have to obey, but maybe I can find a way out of this one. Probably not.

Blade tells us that it won't be a simulation today, that we will actually be wieldong weapons. Tabbitha and I are sent into a room to put on protective gear. After Blade exits I whisper, "I don't want to hurt you. I have a deal to make with you actually. If you're interested." "What?" she asks. "Every night, since we started this training, our guard has brought us food, and warned us not to drink what we are given, it has sleep meds in it." "So you guys had food when we didn't!?" she whisper screamss. "I asked Calaf if he gave you guys food, he said he didn't, so I had to think of a plan. Anyway, I'm going to have him give you guys half, that is, if Daniel and Kyler will share; if not, you girls can just divide mine up between you. I'll have Calaf say he was ordered to go check on you or something so he can bring it to you." Then Blade walks in. "You two, on your section of the field! Now!" he screams. Tabbitha looks at me and nods, accepting my offer.

We are shoved onto a large field that has been divided into three sections, we are sent to the end section. There is a large pile of weapons. Blade forces us each to grab something. Tabbitha now bears a dagger, and I have a set of throwing knives. Once everyone is equipt with different kinds of blades, Blade blows a whistle and hollers for us to begin, with a smirk on his face, and an evil look in his eye. He starts snickering. The fighting must begin, for all of us, or we're dead.

Tabbitha- Combat field

After my coversation with Spencer, everyone obeys when Blade tells us to pair up in the field, even-odd, boy-girl. I stand across from Spencer, both of us loking at each other with the same expression, a mixure of nevousness, fear, and pride, not to mention determination. We silently communicate that we refuse to hurt one another. Not even a minor cut.

I know, I know, I've tried that before. But hopefully this will be different. Now that Blade is distracted by the other two fighting pairs, I hopethat he won't notice we're faking. But then again, this is Blade. I want to warn Spencer, but I can't. Nt only is there a no-communication policy, as soon as I realize what will happen, Blade blows the whistle, and the fighting begins. Ad I'm not backing out of our agreement.

So, by the time fifteen minutes has passed, niether Spencer nor I have any injuries whatsoever. And Blade notices. Before I know it he is here, and Spencer and I am knocked to the ground, our heads pounding. Eventually, my vision gets fuzzy and I black out. The last thing I here is Blade saying, "Naughty, naughty." He laughs scornfully, and then I am dead to the world.



The next thing I know, I am in a sort of cell, but one a lot nicer than the one I first had. But still a cell. After my vision clears and the pain subsides (although I still have a pretty nasty heaache) I take my time to study the room. As my head turns, I can hear a jingling that means only one thing: chains. Great. First I look to the right and left of me, realizing that Spencer is here too. But he is still in the blissful thing called sleep. Well, he's going to have a rude awakening soon.

After looking at the rest of the room, which has four dull gray walls, stained with splashes of what looks like blood and a single lightbulb. There is a door, but it is unreachable an looks like it is two-foot thick steel. There are also two chairs in the room, facing each other. One is comfortable, the other hard plastic with restraints. Not a good sign. That turns me to the depressing, fearful question that has no answer. "What's going to happen to us?"

Time seems to be meaningless in this holding/torture cell, so I don't know how much later it is when Spencer wakes. After he gets his bearings, we both say at the same time, "I'm sorry." Sorry that we are in this situation, sorry that we are most likely going to die here. We fall silent for a long time- or maybe ashort time, I'm not really sure- trapped in our wn depressing thoughts.

After a while, I decide to voice my question, saying, "What do you think he's oing to do to us?" It's arely a wisper, my voice crackly and dry. "I don't know." He says,but I am not convinced. We both have a hunch about what is going to happen. That's when the door opens and Blade steps in, grinning from ear to ear.

Daniel | The Field

As they bring us to the field, I make sure to size up everything. The field is divided in three sections by waist-high chainlink fences. It would be no problem to jump those if I needed. Outside the field is a dark forest, probably full of wild animals, but I don't care. I'm going to run. Anything is better than this place. However, between the field and the forest is a ten-foot-high fence topped with barbed wire. A buzz suggests that a strong electirc current runs through it. I make sure I grabbed a hunting knife from the pile of weapons. It will help me if I can get to the forest.

I'm paired with Mary. I search the fence from where I stand, looking for any gaps, flaws, a control box of some kind, anything I can use to break it. One of the guards is drinking from a water bottle. Behind him, wires from the fence run into a black cube. That's my ticked out of here. If I could short out the electricity, I could scramble over the fence. The barbed wire was sure to tear at my skin, but I will heal once I'm out.

Blade blows his whistle and yells for us to begin. Mary lunges at me with her hookswords. I jump to the side and poke her with my knife. Not hard, but enough for her to know I'm there. We fight for about fifteen minutes, until Blade gets distracted with Tabbitha and Spencer. I catch Auburn's eyes and walk over to the fence seperating the two parts of the field. Auburn and Kyler break apart from their fight and the fourof them gather around. "Listen," I say. "I have a plan. When I knock out the fence, you guys have to run. Get over the fence, get as far away as you can. Don't worry. I'll catch up."

Blade has Calaf and one other guard haul Tabbitha and Spencer's unconcious - I hope - bodies, and goes with them, leaving just the guard with the water bottle to watch us. Perfect. I lunge at him, knocking his water all over the black box. It fizzles and sparks. The guard leaps at me and pins me down. "Run!" I yell to the others. "Run!"

Tabbitha and I hold true to our agreement, but after about fifteen minutes Blade notices that we are faking. I see him staring at us, making his way over to us. He plays with his watch and we fall over with pain. "Naughty, naughty." he says with a smirk. My senses are fading, as we are lifted by guards. Then I black out.

I wake up, and immediately notice that we are in a holding cell, chained to the wall. Tabbitha is already awake. "I'm sorry." we both say. "What do you think he's going to do to us?" she asks. "I don't know." I say a bit terrified, because, really I don't. We sit in silence for a while, I don't know what's going through Tabbitha's mind, but it's probably the same thing that's going through mine. We're probably going to die here, slow and painful deaths, and Blade will enjoy every minute of it. Then the heavy steel door opens, and Blade walks in. I don't know what he has planned, but judging by the enormous grin on his face, it can't be good.

Tabbitha- The Holding Cell

As Blade steps into the room, I am holding back tears, pain prickling behind my eyes. Spencer too is on the verge of tears. Despite the meager existance and harsh abuse we have been subjected too, we aren't prepared for this. We aren't ready to die, not now, not like this. As Blade reaches ever closer, he says, with his shark-toothed grin, "Boy, oh, boy, aren't we going to have some fun?" I assure you this will not be fun. I want to get as far away as I possibly can, but I stay strong, holding my ground, as is Spencer. I try to look defiant, unfazed, determined, but I only suceed in looking utterly terrified.

"Now, I was going to have you be an example for what will happen if you rebel, but it seems that the others have already tried as well." This is news to me. "So they will be facing the same conesquences. But I assure you, I respect your decision better than theirs, I assure you. But nevertheless, you still need to be punished. While your stubbornness may come in handy later on, today you are playing for the wong team. Until you join me, this behavior is to be punished severely." He says, still grinning.

Blade finally reaches us, and when he does he bends down, looking at us straight in the eye. Flashing his shark-toothed grin straight at me, he says, voice low and threatening, "Now, how many times have you dissented so far?"

"Two." I eek out, too afaid to make any snarky remarks. Too afraid to be sarcastic, but I still hold his gaze.

He turns to Spencer, and says simply, "And you?"

Voice shaking with barely supressed anger and rage, as well as fear, he grits his teeth, saying, "Once." We can both see where he's going with this.

Sure enough, the next thing out of his mouth is, "Well, let's take the worst offender first. Don't want to risk exhausting myself with the least."

With that, he unchains all of my chains rom the wall, five in all, one for each wrist and ankle and one around my neck, but only to the wall. They clink together as I am pulled savagely to my feet, my arm almost popping out of its socket. I stumble and fall, but pick myself up with Spencer's help. Blade begins to drag me along by my neck-chain, but I stride forward, to try and keep some of my diginty.

As I am about to be strapped into the chair, Spencer shouts, "No!" Which is recieved by Blade with a glance and one raised eyebrow. "I volenteer to go first."

"No." Blade starts, "You see, now I know that you feel responsible for her, so it will pain you more to watch her suffer and know that you can't do anything about it. Plus, rules are rules. Fair is fair." With that, he straps me in with a metal head restraint, with matching wrist and ankle restraints, just above where the chains are. I say to Spencer, trying to calm him, "It's okay. I'm going to be al-" I am cut off by an intense pain, worse than I have ever recieved, and an agonizing scream rips through my throat, echoing around the whole complex.

As Blade walks in, I'm fighting the tears from flowing down my face, and it's obvious that Tabbitha is as well. He then begins talking. He looks Tabbitha straight in the eye, "How many times have you dissented so far?" "Two." she says blankly. He turns to me, "And you?" Fighting the rage, fear, and sadness within, I say through gritted teeth, "Just this once." Only the word once being loud enough for him to hear. "Well let's take the worst offender first, don't want to risk exhausting myself with the least." He smirks. He unchains Tabbitha and drags her to the chair, strapping her in. I can't bear to watch this. "No!" I shout, this gets his attention. "I volunteer to go first!" He smirks even wider than before. "No, you see now that I know you feel responsible for her, so it will pain you more to watch her suffer and know you can't do anything about it. Plus, rules are rules, fair is fair." Tabbitha looks at me, "It's okay, I'm going to be al-" The pain begins for her, and she lets out a blood-curtling scream. I can't bear to watch this. I try to look away, but Blade makes sure I watch. "The longer it takes you to watch, the longer she'll be there, the more pain she'll be in." Realizing the meaning behind the comment, that the more I struggle, the more pain for her, I stare right at Tabbitha, fear, sorrow, and regret in my eyes. She's the one being tortured, yet I'm the one who's crying. I can't help but feel responsible, it was my idea. Then Blade makes it stop, but he's laughing. He releases her from the chair, and she falls to the ground shaking.

Blade chains her back up, then approaches me. "So this was your idea?" I look away. "I'll take that as a yes." he says, "I think the initiator should be punished a bit more severely." He snickers. He unchains me and slaps me right across the face. I spit at his feet, and he knees me right in the gut. Then he drags me over to the chair and straps me in. He turns it on, and the pain slowly increases. When I can't hold it back any longer, I let out a scream so loud that it actually hurts my throat. I feel the tears rolling down my face, and continue scrfeaming. I can already tell that my pain level is higher than Tabbitha's was, and it is lasting longer. I look over and find Tabbitha is looking away. After, what seems like forever, it finally stops. I am unstrapped, and I fall to the ground in pain. When I expect him to chain me back up, he actually drags me over to the door. Tabbitha looks curiously, then asks,"What are you doing to him!?" "As I said, the initiator should be more severely punished." We exit the room, and he slams the door behind us.

Tabbitha- Holding cell

Oh God, oh God, what is Blade going to do with him?! This is all my fault... I think, my eyes locked on the door, praying for Spencer to be okay. Hours pass, and still no one enters. I would pace the floor, but I am still chained to the wall. My arms start to cramp and my neck and ankles are rubbed raw, bleeding. After a while, they finally return, Blade grinning, Spencer bloody and bruised, hands tied behind his back. His eyes look vacant, devoid of emotion, and he is slouched forward, defeated.

Slamming the door behind him, Blade throws Spencer across the room, who breaks the mirror that was appearently behind us (it was behind us and I was a little preoccupied when I was in the chair.) and glass falls all around us, clear and some tinted red from Spencer's blood, who slumps down onto the floor, unconsious, a giant gash on his head, bleeding like crazy. I rush over, straining through my chains to reach his wrist, to make sure he's alright, to check his pulse. There it is, faint but there nonetheless. With that Blade leaves, chuckling. he does not return for another three days.

Eventually, Spencer wakes up and asks me almost incoherantly "What happened?" It sounds more like 'wa apen?" I tell him about the miror and everything, and he seems to be putting the pieces together. After a few more hours- or what I presume was hours- I ask the question that has been on the tip of my tongue since he returned, but don't want to know the answer to at the same time, "What happened, when you were back there with Blade?"

Blade leads me through a very confusing series of haallways, then finally through a steel door into a room I'm already afraid of; it's a torture chamber. He tosses me into the room and slams the door behind him as he enters. Then he lifts me by the collar of my shirt and holds me up to face him. "You will learn. And you will never rebel again." He ties my wrists to a post and whips me a couple of times, but it doesn't end there. He beats me repeatedly, then after several hours of this, he grabs me by my throat and holds me up to the wall. "Have you learned your lesson?" he asks with an evil smirk. I am barely able to nod, fear in my eyes. He releases his grip and I crash to the floor. He grabs my hair and leads me through the maze of hallways and back to the holding cell. He tosses me across the room, and that's the last thing I recall before I black out. I wake up in an incredible amount of pain. Tabbitha tells me what happened when Blade brought me back here, and then she asks what he did to me in the torture chamber. I can't look at her, I don't want her to see the fear in my eyes. Looking the other way, I tell her everything, a tear rolling down my face. Then Blade enters, slamming the door behind him.