Hour 16

As Alex was snatched from behind by an unseen force, he nearly did something he'd never be able to take back, but the sight of his tearful sister holding his face in a gentle yet assertive embrace snapped him back to reality. Her weeping spontaneously siphoned every last drop of madness from his rage, leaving only a state of heightened emotional release. All at once, he felt the tacky drag of blood between his fingers, the imprint of the knife in his hand from gripping it so hard, and the excruciating roar of his damaged ankle resounding through his body. He reflexively leaned away from Emi and vomited everything he could but it was mostly a wretched sequence of dry heaves. She wanted so desperately to rub his back tenderly, tell him everything was going to be ok, but the ongoing threat of the game forced her to put logic over her feelings. She picked him up to his feet by his limp shoulders as she said, "You saved me, Alex. We can't stop right now, though. We have to keep moving." Alex couldn't produce any words; all he could do was feebly nod his head, indicating he understood.

The crowd continued to bellow joyously as more gunshots sliced through the open field and screams echoed in the distance like the calls of the dead. As Emi grabbed her bag, she realized that somehow the man that Alex had been ravaging was still alive. His remaining eye looked like a dull marble, and his neck didn't look like a real wound; it resembled some over-the-top, gory Halloween attraction. His chest, though, still heaved in and out in a dying motion that was clearly not going to last much longer. Emi promptly walked up to him and brought her foot down into his neck with a grisly force that audibly cracked something vital. The man didn't finish the breath he had started, he choked halfway through it and never breathed again. Emi ran, grabbed Alex's hand, and said, "You didn't kill anyone today, you hear me? You saved me, Ok?" Alex was silent and she asked, "Ok!?" She was scared by the look in his eyes, scared that he might never come back to her. He answered, "Yeah, ok, Emi." Emi heard her phone ding and she checked it to find she had a glowing "Y" now, indicating she gained a letter from the man. Her attention was forced back to the field as another gunshot blasted through the air dangerously closer than the last. This time, she located its source, an overweight man who still somehow managed to look muscular with a fading blond mustache and a black cowboy hat. She took Alex and began retreating to the man's blind spot, gauging him as the greatest active threat as everyone else on the outskirts of the field continued brawling. A man with curly brown hair and a baseball bat dented with previous victims tried to jump them, but Emi had noticed him coming; she refused to be taken off guard and put Alex in such a position again. She trained the shotgun on his chest and while she wanted to save her last slug, she would use it if she had to. The man took a step back, obviously not expecting such a reactive response from someone he had deemed weak. Before the altercation could progress any further, someone with an axe, of all things, lodged it brutally in the back of his undefended skull. As his eyes rolled back and his lips twitched, Emi was already leading Alex away from the danger. As they raced down the midfield, she observed the garish final poses of at least 7 or 8 bodies that were no longer alive and thought, "damn it, we're losing clues fast." It was then she noticed a woman with long brown hair blasting behind her as she sprinted to the endzone, having slipped behind the madness boiling over the midfield. Before she could reach it though, she was dismantled into a red confetti of flesh that no longer resembled anything human. As a fresh plume of smoke rose out of the charred zig-zag scorch marks on the grass, Emi thought in disbelief, "The lasers from phase two are guarding each endzone!?" She felt her jaw click in anger as new thoughts rattled her brain, "how are we supposed to figure out some stupid word in all this mess, then defend ourselves while avoiding literal laser beams?" A few others had witnessed the outcome as well, one person dropped to their knees in utter defeat, and the other two ran from the endzone they had been fighting each other for.

The man in the cowboy hat surveyed the commotion and discerned Emi trying to remain out of his vision, something only a professional gaze could pick out of a crowd. As he registered that, he also observed Alex trying to keep up with her on his painful ankle, and like a predator sensing a weakness, he locked onto him with his Beretta M9A4 and fired. The round was supposed to vacate his chest cavity but a single trip from his hurt ankle caused the bullet to obliterate his lower ribs instead, avoiding an instant death. As his body succumbed to the impact before he mentally even knew what happened, Emi glanced back in horror at the blood that had ejected from the entry point alone. As her head rocketed to see who had shot him the man was already finished steadying his aim for the next shot. He was at least 100 feet away, too far for Emi to dream of clearing before a trigger pull or trying to aim the shotgun at such short notice, so all she could do was fall to her knees and throw her arms out to shield Alex from any more harm. The man whistled as he used the short muzzle of the gun to tip his hat, his grin relaxing from lethal to impressed. Clayton was an ex-police officer who loved putting his marksmanship to the test; he lived to outperform anyone. It hadn't been about hurting others; it was just the only thing he had ever excelled at in his life, and he wanted to be the best. His morals had been the only thing to keep his untapped violent nature in check, but after the start of this entire morbid game, it freed him from any reservations. He was now fighting to survive, and it unlocked something primal in him. He was finally free to prove himself, finally free to express himself, finally free to be free. Normally, nothing could make him second guess his aim, slow his fire, or challenge his smile, but Emi's utter selflessness in protecting her brother struck him. Everyone around him was a target for him to shoot, running only to avoid his aim and protect themselves. He had mistook Emi for one of these ordinary targets at first with how she cowardly ran from his scanning gaze but now, she projected herself clear as day to shield that boy. His eyes were commanding hers; she knew she was looking at death, yet she wasn't afraid; only anger reflected off her delicate face. It was the first time since this glorious life-or-death game had begun that he had not pulled the trigger on a target. He had killed over 30 targets relentlessly, but Emi wasn't like the rest. He wanted to kill her, but it seemed too easy to do right now, she was the first target he wanted to give a chance to fight back, to prove he could beat her at her best. That look on her face, pure hostility, seduced him to prove he was better than her fury. He planned it perfectly in his head, he wanted to challenge her to a draw. He had already forgotten about the fact he had a handgun while she had what appeared to be a semi-automatic shotgun and had tuned out all the lesser targets that were running around his periphery; they were just gnats. Emi was the prize, the one he wanted. As he approached her, gun relaxed, Emi couldn't know any of this. He was enamored with her, but Emi only saw him as her target. She drew her shotgun in fear and, before she could even fix her aim, released its final round a tad early, blowing his kneecaps out in an explosion of connective tissue and bone. A normal person wouldn't have been able to register what had just transpired, but after taking so many lives Clayton knew immediately, "I've been beaten." He collapsed to the grassy field, and as his head rolled out painfully under his body weight, he saw Emi standing above him, framed brilliantly by the stadium lights above her. He should've aimed his Beretta at her and defended himself, but all reasoning had been stolen from his body; all he could do was think, "I'm the best there is, but she cheated." Then it hit him, and he licked his lips in recognition, "She didn't care. She wasn't having fun. She was doing this all wrong." As Emi secured the gun from his hand and aimed it at his head, reality took hold of him again, and in a moment of self-reflection, he thought, "I never got to have fun like this. I was distracted." He smiled, a new smile that had never pulled at his cheeks, as he thought, "I'm the best, but in this moment, in this second, I was beaten." Emi blew his brains out poetically with his own firearm. Emi's expression didn't falter as she delivered the killing blow, she was becoming frighteningly numb to the act in a way she never could've expected. Though she had removed her target, Alex continued to bleed out behind her.