BOOK OF MIA: 2081

Chapter 4: Sentry

I run without looking back to see if the Mountain is giving chase. In fact, I don't want to see how many people are aiming their weapons at me. I just want to get to the corner door where the voice instructed me to go — that's what I'm calling her for now, the voice — the one next to the stage I hadn't noticed until now. Few bodies slump over the edge of the stage like Dali's Melting Clock painting, their blood streaking strokes, Monet- style. I shake my head, trying to get my mind out of art lessons for a moment and concentrate on jumping over bodies and pools of slick blood to avoid tripping and slipping. I do this because, to be honest, I don't want to hurt them more. To think I wanted to be an artist. I technically didn't even need this stupid Camp, yet here I am. Forced to come here — to get murdered — by my clueless, academic, nerdy parents.

Something inside me still hasn't gotten to grip with the surrounding sight, or why it's even happening. Why are they killing us? Better yet, why are we killing each other?

"Hey, you!" I hear a scream behind me and, out of habit, I turn to see who called me. Stupid because, next thing I know, I'm sliding down to the ground in a pool of blood that I don't even see the person who called out. I struggle to get back up again, but it's like slapping on blades on a newbie and throwing them into an ice rink. I flail. My legs are as unsteady as a newborn foal. When I get up, with care, an arrow clips my right ear.

Warm blood dribbles down my neck and licks the top of my black t-shirt. The door where someone waits for me is meters away. I am this close to being rescued. I do not want to die here. As I turn to the door, a boy jumps up like a ninja, blocking my way. The kid had hid behind an unfortunate body, and I guess he sees me as a threat, probably.

The manic look on his face confirms this. To him, I'm another psychopath in that canteen, turned murder field, trying to kill him.

He screams, a feral war cry as another arrow misses me. The boy clutches a butcher's knife high as the space between us shrinks. I can't move and I can't run the other way. Yet, I can't even hurt the boy. He looks terrified, and I know deep down, he is only trying to protect himself, unlike the Mountain behind me. In that instant, I see his knife about to plunge into me, and I see my potential saviour — I assume he is my saviour — poke his head through a 'sealed' door behind him.

Sentry 176. I know it's him because of that grandpa balaclava, and I want to scream: You're too late. Sentry 176's eyes lock on mine as he reaches for his gun.

The knife heads for me. The room goes silent, except for my heartbeats. Lub dub. Lub dub. I see my arms shield my face as if they could ever save me.

"Mia, duck!" an echo reaches me, muffled, underwater. I hear a gasp in front of me. A gunshot reverberates somewhere, and the thump of a body falling.

But it's not me.

I dare take a peek through the gap between my forearms. My terrified attacker is no longer in front of me wielding a knife. Instead, he slumps at my feet, gasping for breath as his life drains from him through a hole in his chest. I recognise him; we went to primary school together. I barely spoke to him since, but he was a good guy.

I look up at the barrel of a biometric, military-grade semi-auto pointed my way, steady as a rock in its owner's hand. Nate.

"Nate?" I whisper. The name barely makes it out of my lips. Is he about to shoot me?

He takes a step towards me, then another. His eyes fixed on a target behind me. Phew.

"Nate," I manage again as he comes closer and shields me behind his body.

"Head for the door, Mia. Go!" He keeps his eyes fixed on a small band of team 'Black', the common house colour of our rival school. One of them has an arrow trained our way and a smirk on her face.

I move tentatively towards the door, towards the dark shadow hiding within a darker shadow. Even his eyes are painted black between the gap of his balaclava, I realise, but Sentry 176 is still there. If I concentrate hard enough, I can see his darker outline. He aims his gun at Team Black behind us.

"Hurry!" Nate demands. Then, as we get closer to the door and into a clearing on the floor, Sentry 176 opens the door to a pitch black night outside. His dark gloved hand on the push-bar. "Why did you have to wake up now?" He mutters, throwing me a sideways glance.

"What?" I ask, confused. Was I not meant to wake up now, or ever?

Nate grabs my hand, and we turn our backs to the room, rushing towards the door, towards salvation. The boulder on the stick shatters a nice crater on the wall next to me. I jump in fright and thank the Gods the Mountain has a shitty aim like me. That I even hit him was a fluke.

"Now." Nate thrusts me towards the door just as the hall plunges into darkness. Someone's cut power to the compound. Even the 'Exit' signs above the doors go out.

Another hand grabs me and leads me out the door I cannot see. The Sentry.

To say I want to scream 'What the hell is going on?' isn't even going to cut it. I want to grab Nate by the collar and scream at him. 'What you mean, why did I wake up? What the hell, Nate?' but I can't. My voice catches in my throat as the cold hits my face and seeps through my pyjamas. I'm not remotely prepared for this.

"Come on, we don't have long before the generator kicks in and the place glows like the bloody carnival," Sentry 176 says in a hush, leading me and Nate towards what I assume is the woods.

I wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark like they normally do, but my nanites don't respond to my needs. They don't switch to night vision and I have to contend with my normal vision. Why won't my nanites respond?

"You fried out my system with your stupid taser," I mumble, tempted to confront Sentry 176. "I can't see shit!"

"Sorry, that was probably me," Nate says behind me as we hear a distant thud of the door closing. We continue moving towards the treeline in a rush. "I had to hit you hard enough to shut your system down temporarily, so that when they scanned you, you would scan dead, and they wouldn't waste a bullet on you."

The memory of Nate leaning down to my ear, his warm breath falling on the nape of my neck, hits me, renewing the goosebumps they had initially ignited. His whispered words now echo in my mind. "I'm sorry, M. This will hurt." After that, nothing. No memory. I don't even remember being knocked out.

"That was you?" I spin on my feet, accidentally catching a toe on one root within the treeline we are entering. Though I can't see him yet, I imagine a guilty smile forming on his annoyingly good-looking face. I feel my cheeks heat as he grabs my waist and steadies me. Obviously, his night vision works perfectly. Typical.

What the hell is going on with me? My responses to Nate's touches are not my normal. Or are they? — now that my system is offline. Is this the real me, without my bionic self interfering?

I clear my throat and push him off me. "So where are we going?"

The two men push me down to the forest floor as the lights come back on at the camp a couple of hundred meters behind us.

"Shit! It came on faster than I thought it would. They must have updated the booster system." Sentry 176 swears harshly beside me and I can't help but wonder what he looks like beneath the camouflage. He meets Nate's intense gaze. "They'll know I'm gone now."

"Then you come with us!" Nate's eyes intensify, and his skin ripples until it's coated in a dark camouflage.

"We're going with nightshade?" I shake my head. Lucky for me, I like black and it is the singular colour in my wardrobe. "Good thing I came prepared then."

"Come!" Sentry 176 stands before us. "They will track us, or me, soon. I'll get you to the river, from there, you'll be on your own."

I hear a loud buzzer sound in the distance and fear takes over Sentry 176's eyes. "The ceremony is over."

"What happens now?" I ask, even though I don't really want to know. But a part of me does, otherwise, I wouldn't have asked.

We hear a chorus of screams and rapid-fire of machine guns. Then silence. My breath catches in my chest and my heart jumps to my throat. "Did they just?"

Sentry 176 nods. "They call it sweeping the house." He eyes the building flooded in light.

I still don't understand and turn to Nate. Maybe he doesn't understand either, but Nate just takes a deep breath, like he knows exactly what went on inside the hall of murder. "They get rid of the ones they can't save." He turns to me, tears glistening in his eyes. "An act of mercy."

A faint memory of a kid I knew one — maybe — floods my mind. A kid who looked like Nate, only he was older. 'Sid,' the name echo's in my head.

"Sid?!" I whisper, not really able to control myself. Who is Sid?

Nate nods and turns to Sentry 176. "Which way, Gems?"

Sentry 176, or Gems, peels his gaze away from the horror too and starts leading us through the deep vegetation at a jog. "They won't be far behind us. Not with my tracker still on."

"Why can't you short out your tracker?" I ask, rather ignorant.

Gems throws me a look. "Cause someone stole my taser."

Oh. Fudge.

"Best we run!" Gems gives me a reassuring nod, eyeing my drenched clothing and the shiver settling in my bones. "Will keep you warm until your system comes back online."

I follow, as best I can, stumbling through the forest, one hand in Nate's. Some silly little nerves fluttering in my belly. I chalk it down to the fear of death. After all, I know we're not out of the woods yet. Figuratively and literally. The river Sentry 176 mentioned, I mean Gems mentioned, Blackwater, is ten whole clicks away from the camp. It's a long way away for a girl without her flip-flops, or her jumper and covered in blood. I just hope I can make it. But I don't tell the boys this. It can wait.