I Am Alive (33 page)

I climb back up fast, as Carnivore roars behind me.

Looking from up here, I can see it now, marked with my blood.

“Now I can see you, you ugly—” I say from above.

Of course, the audience repeats the words after me.

I take one last breath with both syringes in my hands, and focus on Carnivore.

“Every girl dies,” I remind myself. And before I finish the phrase, the audience amazingly, and for the first time, finishes for me. “But not every girl really lives.”

I jump.

Yes. I jump from this high onto Carnivore’s back. It’s the only way to do it. If you want to fight a giant, claw onto his back, and never let it go. If you’re an ant, and you want to outlive an elephant, climb up onto its head, and tickle it in the ear.

I have jumped many times before in the game. I don’t worry about jumping anymore. Let the audience go crazy.

The first thing that hits my face is its back. I am lucky it didn’t slash at me. I wrap myself around it, holding to its coat so tightly that the veins in my hands pop to the surface of my skin. Carnivore goes crazy, surprised by me being on its back, still looking for me. Before it shakes me off its back by running as fast as it can, I hit it with one syringe as hard as I can and push the red button, while clawing onto its coat with my hands and legs. I don’t let go of the red button like Leo taught me.

“Buzz to death, Carnivore.” I keep my thumb on the button. Carnivore starts to slow down. At least, it doesn’t try to shake me off its back anymore. Since one syringe doesn’t seem enough, I pull the other syringe from my mouth, and buzz it again.

I keep my thumb locked on the button. Carnivore stops and falls to its knees, rearing vertically with its paws up to the sky, like a mad horse in pain. I guess it’s an unexpected reflex response to the electrocution. I swing straight with it, digging my feet into its coat and wrapping my arms around its neck, not taking my thumbs off the button until Carnivore gives up, and drops dead on its stomach.

I didn’t want to do this to an animal. I love animals. A rabbit saved my life, remember? I remind myself it is not an animal. It is just some kind of a man/animal/machine like Xitler.

Almost fainting, I lay on Carnivore’s back, resting my cheek on its coat. Not the worst of beds, I tell myself. I brush my hand gently over it, and pat it. “It’s all right, Carni,” I whisper to it, as it moans its last breath. “We’ve taken the pain away. You’re better off away from this mad world.”

The audience sings, dances, and talks. Some are shocked, some are astonished, and some are whatever.

As my eyelids throb from exhaustion, I shake myself awake, and buzz Carnivore one more time. “Don’t take this personally,” I whisper in its dead ears. “It’s like making sure the door is locked before you go to sleep.” I stand up.

Looking at the cut in my hand with the blood gushing out, I wonder why it doesn’t hurt as bad now. I use the gushing blood, and smear a big number ten on Carnivore’s back.

As I do, I smell something like a burning wire. I take it that Carnivore was some kind of machine and now that it’s dead, something is frying inside. I don’t investigate it though.

The audience goes wild after this.

A voice sneaks through, and talks to me in my ears. “So the Breakfast Club was right about you,” says Leo. He sounds tired.

My heart flutters. I can almost imagine myself with wings. “About what exactly?” I ask, wondering why I feel like kissing him right now. “About being a Ten?”

“About being the Monster I am in love with,” he teases.

I laugh. “So you’re over the God thing now?” I ask, watching the crowd celebrating like crazy up there in the Zeppelins.

“What?” Leo asks.

“Nah.” I wave my hand, panting, unable to comprehend the crowd’s enthusiasm. “Forget about it. You won’t remember,” I say, as I’m showered with flowers from the sky all over again.

“In the name of the Burning Man, the nation of Faya announces…” Xitler declares in the main microphone. “For the first time in history, boys and girls — we have a Ten!”

Tears are about to spurt out of my eyes, as the audience hails me. I am a Ten? By whose standards? What about all the other kids who died? As overwhelming and euphoric as the feeling is, there’s something not right here.

But what should I do? If society declares me a Ten, which might seem close to being a god walking among them, what other options do I have?

I am just a normal girl — abnormal-looking, being bald and blood-spattered now — who just wanted to graduate and go to the Prom. Not that I didn’t have big dreams after that, but I don’t want to be a Ten. I came here to find my friend Woo, and ended up finding who I really am, what I am capable of.

The world has thrown me to the lions, and I have won.

Should I stay here in Dizny Battlefieldz, and never leave? What could I possibly do all alone here?

It’s either the Playa or the world outside. It would be insane if I don’t choose the world outside, with all that it offers me right now.

In my iAm, Mom is driven to tears, Dad too. Faustina is waving at me, and Timmy is astonished, but plays happy with everyone else.

“Leo,” I call him on my iAm.

“Yes?” he says, still aching.

“Where are you?” I ask.

“I am on my way out of the hospital, champ,” he says. “The world is waiting for you outside of the Playa. I’ll meet you there. You want anything?”

“How did you know about the ‘I wish I could see through your eyes’ phrase?”

Leo stops. He doesn’t answer me. “What do you mean?” he asks.

“You know the phrase you said to me when you were falling from the cliff?”

“I said something when I was dying? I don’t remember.”

“It’s all right,” I say. It might not be the right time to argue right now. “Maybe I just imagined it. I’ll meet you outside.”

A Zeppelin picks me up from the Monsterium. The Malikas cover me in a silken robe with golden stripes and a hood. The Malikas want to take care of me and bathe me, but I prefer to go out to the public in my Monster condition. Perhaps if I am a Ten out there, I can help make it a better world.

We land on top of the slope of Dizny Battlefieldz, back where it all started. When I open the door, the world is waiting for me: my fans. Young kids under sixteen, reaching out for my autograph behind the red rail, as if I am some celebrity. Kids are waving at me with plastic light sabers in their hands.

I step out on the red carpet toward them. I accept my fate. I am a Ten. I deserve it, in a world where you have to say your number out loud — and sometimes kill for it. What was the number of the human spirit again? I guess it’s a Ten after all.

A face from inside the crowd. It’s Leo on a cane. I let out a laugh. Leo, bandaged, and on a cane seems like the Tenth Wonder of the World to me. He waves silently at me. “I am your number one fan,” he mouths with his silent lips from a distance.

A couple of steps across the carpet, I remember that I forgot something. Something important. I reach out and pick up one of the toy swords from a kid who instantly calls his friends to brag about Decca, the Ten, borrowing his sword.

The sword is plastic and produces green lights when you shake it. It will do. I raise the sword up in the sky, and shout, “I am alive!”

The world shouts with me, clapping, screaming, and praising.

As I have my sword up in the sky, the white ring on my finger pulses in a blue color. It’s the ring the seven-year-old girl left behind in the forest.

Suddenly, I hear other sounds coming through the iAm. No, they’re not the audience.

“Silence,” I scream at the audience, trying to listen to the sounds. “Silence,” I repeat. Amazingly, the audience stops making noises. “Listen,” I say, looking at my iAm.

“I am alive,” a girl says in my iAm. The iAm says she is unidentified. Is that the girl from the forest?

“I am alive,” another boy says. Also unidentified by the iAm.

Prophet Xitler stands up as his face knots, and the audience is in awe.

“I am alive,” a third voice says. This time the iAm identifies it: Monster number 1733, from the eighth Monster Show.

“I am alive,” a fourth voice announces slowly, as if a little intimidated by confessing she is alive. The iAm identifies her as Monster number 463, from the Monster Show four years ago.

And the hits keep on coming. Tens of teens from previous games, screaming “I am alive” from their iAms. I knew it, there are teens still inhabiting the Dizny Battlefieldz. They have been hiding in previous games, pretending to be dead by not saying “I am alive,” so they can outlive the game. But how did they survive, living inside the Battlefieldz? Does that mean there is no Rabbit Hole?

“How are you alive?” Xitler grunts. “Who are you?”

“They’ve been hiding,” a girl says. Oh my God. It’s Pepper. “They refused to say ‘I am alive,’ fooling you into thinking they were dead, game after game, barely surviving in the hidden forest in the Playa. I did the same thing in the Mirage. I preferred to stay alive by not saying ‘I am alive,’” Pepper explains. “Now that one of us survived, we’re not scared anymore. We are alive.”

I stare at Leo across the distance. His face dims. He shakes his head slightly, as if telling me no, you’re a Ten. Don’t do this.

I turn around and look back down the slope into the battlefields, then turn back to the audience waiting for me. What should I do? Which direction should I go? Who am I? Am I a Ten? Or am I a Monster?

Then I hear another voice.

“Tender?” it says.

A single tear forms in my eye, like thick clay, wanting to burst out and splash against a rock.

“Woo?” I ask.

“What kind of a fool are you, Tender?” he says. “Coming here for me? I devoted my life to saving you from the Playa.”

“Woo. I couldn’t live without you. I had to find you, but then I gave up.”

“I am glad you made it,” the voice says on my iAm. “I wish you just won the games without stirring the hearts of the kids surviving in here. We didn’t want anyone to find us. We have gone through a lot, hiding in the last place anyone would think we are at.”

“Woo?” I say again. I know it’s him. He knows I know it’s him, but he has just become so practical. How is this possible? I can’t believe it myself. “So Wolf, the leader of the Breakfast Club, is actually you Woo? Is that your real name your mother never uttered?”

“The kids in the Breakfast Club saw what you did, and they decided to oppose me and declare that they are alive,” Woo says without acknowledging my words.

“How are you ali—” I ask.

“I sent Leo to save you,” he explains, and I look back at Leo, who tries to avert his eyes away from me. That’s why he didn’t want the Breakfast Club to know about us? The Breakfast Club actually lives in the Playa? Why didn’t they help us? “My plan was to save you and get you out alive. I want you to have a great life, not here in the Playa, preparing for a revolution. The Breakfast Club here believes you have exceptional powers because of some prophecy. Why did you go to fight in the Mirage, Decca? Why? I just wanted you to survive, and then after the games, we would find a way to make you escape.”

“Woo,” I say. “I am so confused. I can’t comprehend what you are saying now. You’re alive. How did that happen? Why didn’t you tell me? You sent Leo to save me?” I look back at Leo. My God. I can’t think anymore. Do I still love Leo? Was it true on his side, or just part of the act? Why is Woo so blunt with me?

“I understand you and Leo—” Woo starts to say. The audience moans now. Leo or Woo. I know they want to see more of this. But I am done with the games. I am done with the TV, and entertaining them. “Anyway. This is not the issue. The road is still long, Decca. You have to make a decision now. Go back to the world and celebrate being a Ten and part of the system, and make them win, or—”

“Or what, Woo?”

“Or come back here with the Breakfast Club, be part of us, and probably lead the revolution. We have built amazing things here. We are stronger. We can oppose the Summit. There are places inside the battlefields they could never enter. This is why I didn’t want to expose myself and sent Leo to save you, so they don’t know about us. Xitler knew you’re my weak spot, and that I would show up to save you. I refused to take the bait.”

“But why didn’t you tell me?” I fall down to my knees. “Why?”

“It’s time, Decca,” he says. “This is just the beginning—” He shrugs. “Or the end. It’s up to you, Decca.”

“Up to me to do what?”

“To decide.”

“To decide what?”

“Who you are. It’s a choice. Are you a Ten or are you one of us, a Monster?”

Did I tell you about when I was seven years old, and my mom wanted to kill me because she thought I was a Monster? Yes. I remember I did. I am sixteen now, and it’s up to me to decide whether she was right or wrong. I have to decide now. One choice that will affect who I really am, who I really love, and who really loves me.

As I decide, I wonder; what’s the number of the human spirit?

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Love all the monsters,

Cameron Jace

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