Nothing too out of the ordinary happened that night. We continued our usual activities and nobody dared mention what had happened earlier. Later that night, as expected, Duncan had left. Though this time Victoria was well asleep and I was on my way there too.

I found it hard to sleep last night because of all the things that were on my mind. Eventually, sleep had indeed won me over and I thought I would be relieved, I wasn't. No, I hadn't had the nightmare, but a vision of my mom standing. She seemed to want to warn me, and an anxious fear had eaten me from the inside out. I tried to ask her what was wrong but she didn't answer. Victoria had come to wake me and she told me there wasn't a letter today, however it was a verbal note. One that they couldn't read, but  were willing to retell for to me.

"Okay," I replied after she recited what they'd said. I only half heard her but it was something to do with the game. It was another where we had to keep the whole team alive. I was getting tired of those games, really, I was. I rubbed my eyes awake as she left the room to give me my space. I took out the orange suit and knew that the games had to have been close to over. I longed for the day when I could finally sleep in and not have to worry about competing in games, potentially being the reason we failed. Being first place had been a lot of pressure, but at least we had a lead.

I left the room once I was dressed, not feeling the need to formally brush my hair since it was so short. We had too little time to get to the lobby so I styled it with my hands as we walked there. It was, again, unusually quiet and I wondered if I had missed anything else. When I mentioned it nobody spoke up, and I just assumed it was the lack of people that had created the eerie silence.

"Why is everyone so quiet?" I whispered to Duncan. He seemed to take a moment too long to process my question before formulating a response.

"I don't know about everyone else, but all morning our team has been worried," he explained in a breath. His hair was styled much nicer than mine, I couldn't help but notice. I suddenly regretted my decision and wished somebody had told me to get ready properly. I was suddenly very aware of the cameras watching, that everyone at home would see my nasty bedhead.

"What have they been worried about?" I asked, suddenly stopping myself from being too ridiculous. I'd never worried about my appearance. When I say never, I mean it.

"All sorts of things. Family, consequences, we're all mentally drained," he explained, crossing his arms. He seemed to take a deep relaxing breath and said something I expected the normal Duncan to say, "I guess when you're worried about physical pain it can drain you." His joke came out dry but I smiled anyway.

Nothing more had happened before the people in charge started to speak. It was nothing of importance to me, just the same thing Victoria had recited to me this morning. I watched the regular routine happen knowing there was nothing special about this competition. The only things that were great about this game were the stakes. That was why everyone was so quiet. Some people had no chance of winning. Some people, like D3 were so close to winning. Then there was us, we had everything to lose.

When we entered the game this time we were in a replenished city. It reminded me so much of the abandoned one that I knew this was the same scene. Everything here looked so alive though, and it made me wonder what had happened to ruin it. I soon realized the answer. Theoretically, the people in the city had ruined it. No human other than us, the players, were there. Eventually in this timeline, the people would arrive and slowly deplete the city of its life.

I reminded myself that this was just a game, and that the creators thought it'd be fun to recreate a lively version of the rundown, ruined map we played before.

Without words we all walked in one direction. I wondered where the other team had been spawned in and guessed they were just outside the laboratory. "I'm not hallucinating, right? This is the place where we fought the zombies?" I asked, breaking the silence.

"I think so," agreed Duncan. He seemed to be the most talkative today because the next comment hadn't taken place until a few minutes later.

"If it is, the people in charge are real clever," said Parker. It had seemed like my questions had just registered in his mind and I thought it was a start to have more people participate in the "conversation" I was trying to hold up.

"Then do you think they spawned near the lab?" I asked, keeping my weapon raised as we had walked. I didn't want anymore surprise attacks.

"It's likely," said Victoria. "The teams have always seemed to spawn in opposite sides of the map. We're only going against one other team." She seemed tense, it was a common theme among my team right now.

"Did you catch who we're going against?" Amberline asked. Her finger rested on the trigger and I was afraid an animal would jump out at her and she'd shoot at us accidently. The look on her face made me ease, she was focused. She wouldn't fall for a stupid squirrel coming at us.

Everybody shrugged uneasily, apparently nobody had. "Do you think they're in the laboratory?" Dean asked hesitantly. I knew where the worry had come from. It was practically a maze in there, and somebody could jump out of a corner at any given moment. We were quickly approaching the lab and that fear was becoming more and more real for me. My heart pounded in my chest as we continued walking forward. We answered Dean's question with a bunch of words like 'probably' or 'possibly' and started to strategize.

I agreed, for some reason, to walk in first. Once I cleared that I couldn't see anybody on the other team, the rest of my team would follow. We would try to make our way to the scientist's office towards the back so we'd have sight of the one and only entrance there. This was proven difficult when I realized we'd have to navigate by memory. By we, I meant I. Talking amongst ourselves would only give away our positions and we were all fairly sure the other team hid in these very halls.

We had passed a few more halls, each new corner driving me mad. The other team, however, remained silent. I felt like they knew where we were. Like they were watching us, waiting for the right moment. I walked to a corner and peeked my head through it. Nothing. I started to walk forwards when I heard the raging sound of battle taking place behind me. I'd failed my one and only job.

Spinning around and starting to fight the other team I realized who they were. The one that had been kind to Duncan and I, explaining the details to us when we'd needed help. I faltered for only a moment when I noted that whenever we weren't against D3, we were against them. I soon saw they targeted Victoria almost immediately, she moved around as much as she could in the crowded hall to evade their shots whilst still being offensive.

It was of no use because they had all targeted her, they knew that it only took one person to kill the whole team. My team, sadly, hadn't communicated so we dealt out equal damage while they all focussed on one person, and we faded away and reappeared in our cubicle because they had succeeded in their quest to get Victoria out.

I expected to hear her rage, but hadn't. I waited outside her cubicle to see if she was okay, because the events had obviously taken its toll on her. Shooting games were supposed to be her forte, but she'd just failed. Then again, so did I, but Victoria usually took these things harder.

"I don't want to talk," was all she'd said and it was enough for me to go back out to the lobby. It was a quick round and almost no other teams had finished. I sat in the middle of a bench and saw Parker and Duncan sit on either side of me. We didn't talk, and I really didn't know what they were thinking of, but I was watching Victoria and Amberline talk. Amberline patted Victoria's shoulder encouragingly and they both looked in our direction. They walked over to us and we all straightened up.

"There's something I want to talk about," Victoria stated. Amberline caught a hold of Dean's sleeve as he started walking past us, he was going to see Nikki, no doubt. Amberline made him stand next to us and listen to what Victoria had to say. They all listened to her story, it was very similar to what she had told me, just more prepared and filled with more detail. Her parents were strict and would likely flip after they saw her performance in this round. We all got up and hugged her reassuringly, hoping she'd know that we wouldn't judge her for being a little open about her past. After we finished, Nikki came up to Dean and gave him a warm embrace.

"We won!" she exclaimed. "And Jasper didn't yell at us. Not once." They parted and she smiled to the rest of us, filled with joy. I almost brightened, but that meant they gained points while we lost them. I looked to the leaderboard quickly to see that we were barely in first place. Being somewhat reassured I listened to the rest of what she was saying. "After whatever you said to him, Grace, he's been quiet. I barely had to say anything. He was just so caught up in his own thoughts. He's almost too quiet, like I'm kind of worried. Though I will talk to him about it later, I just want to make these last few games enjoyable."

Before I could mention anything about his enjoyment, we were surprised to hear more announcements. They had always chosen the worst times to say anything. "Gamers," they greeted us all. "We assume you all know the drill by now. As the stakes get higher, the games get tougher. You get one life. Last man standing. You will be against two other teams besides yourself. We will also give you a heads up, after this game there will be two more. After the next one some people will willingly eliminate themselves. Then we will take the lowest scores and performance, there will only be two more teams left. They will battle in the final game, winner takes all." They told us to get to our boxes and so we did.

This was it, we were almost done with this competition and the stakes and tension couldn't have been any higher.

A/N Ah! This story is almost done! Sorry for all the authors notes, but I'm seriously excited. I started this story not knowing I'd be allowed to use Wattpad again, and it's almost finished here. With that, I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but I've officially started posting my second story here on Wattpad. If you want to check it out, it's called The Savior of Souls.