Page 4 of Rat Race

“Uh-huh,” I said distractedly as I glanced up at the digitized screens by the doors. The first event, Hide N’ Seek, had wrapped up a couple of hours ago as the sun had started to rise, the inarguable winners, wh1te_r4bb1t and k1llerKohl_ waving and smiling in their after-event press coverage.

Christ, they let anything be a hair color nowadays,I thought of the femme’s bright teal locks.

“In and out, no bullshit, no getting distracted beingnice—”Pa started.

“Got it,” I interrupted, winking at his look of exasperation before shutting the door with a loud click.

They’d get their time in front of the cameras when they arrived at the arena. This wasmymoment.

I turned to face the crowd, the smallest of my siblings standing at five foot nine as I raised my hand to wave, smile fixed in place as the barrage of flashes blinded me for several seconds.

The last thing I needed was the embarrassment of being the second sibling to fail out of the maze. Naw, there was no choice. I was gonna go in there and win.

Even if I was the gentlest of the brood—the only one to consistently fail the humanity-based stress tests. Not that I saw how that wasmyfault. How the fuck was I supposed to just shoot a dog that I raised from a pup?

Fucking insanity. But which one of us wasn’t a bit loose in the mind and morals? I was willingly walking to my possible death after all.

Didn’t matter. I was the last of us. It was time to finish things off with a bang.

And, for the record, the dog in question—Mutty Buddy, a hilarious play on works for a ten-year-old—was living out her golden years chasing around chickens on the farm.

I moved to grab a black Sharpie from one of the women waiting in the crowd with a playful wink. Uncapping the marker with my teeth, I used it to sign several notebooks, posters from my pre-show Legacy coverage, Ranch-branded T-shirts and hoodies, and even one exceptionally well-rounded breast.

I added a little heart to the end of that one. C’mon now, I might’ve been representing a Mega Church, but I wasn’t no saint.

If anything, I was a sinner through and through.

They weren’t just my fans. They were fans of my siblings. Of my wholefamily. Of the Ranch, where my parents trained class after class of positively fatal athletes with a legacy of winning every. Single. Time.

Best fuckin’ training facility in the country—and I was its heir.

Well, sixth in line.

Sorry, Billy, miss you every day. Even if you were a goddamn disappointment.

No matter how I felt about the Devil’s Playground, I was gonna get that fuckin’ diamond. And it wouldn’t be because I was rottin’ in a body bag.

Game on.

Aubrey

Save it for the Games.

Being from the city during the Devil’s Playground was a bit like being at ground zero for the Super Bowl, only on steroids. People you’d barely noticed before were suddenly forced down your throat at every turn. A feeling made even more obvious now that it was my classmates and friends being pushed into the spotlight instead of airbrushed strangers or older siblings.

Fucking unbearable.

I leaned back in the salon chair while my stylist worked at curling my hair, her deep, umber skin reflecting back at me in the mirror.

She was beautiful, and under different circumstances I might’ve complimented her long lilac braids or sparkling golden eyeshadow. But not today.

Today, I needed to make sure that everything wasperfect.

Especially me.

My eyes left the mirror to find a familiar face reading from a teleprompter on the small screen of a tablet I’d commandeered. There, my friend, Victoria Miller, spoke her lines like she was being held at knifepoint.

Vic’s eyes moved away from her script, looking straight into the camera as she smiled, her straight white teeth almost glowing under the lights in the studio.

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