Surviving Raine (Surviving Raine 1)

“If you want to think of it that way.”

“If you refer to me as ‘fluffy’ in any way, I’m going to get pissed.”

She laughed again.

“I’ll try to remember that,” she said.

I took a deep breath and got on with it.

“We went for a ride in Landon’s Mercedes and eventually stopped at one of his apartments. He ordered me dinner, which was the first decen

t meal I had in…well, maybe ever. I don’t know. He told me he wanted me to fight for him, but the fights were different from what I was used to seeing. He told me not everyone comes out of the fights alive and asked me what I thought about that. He was seriously understating everything, but I didn’t know that at the time. He told me I could make a shit-ton of money and have chicks begging me for my cock if I was any good. I knew I was good, so I said I was interested.”

“Landon took me to watch a tournament about a week later. I met a bunch of other people that ran the games then, too. It became pretty clear that I was basically Landon’s new racehorse, and as far as the rest of them were concerned, he owned me. That kind of pissed me off until he told me how much money I’d make if I won the first game. For a kid who had never had anything, it was too tempting. I couldn’t turn that shit down.”

“What was the game, Dan…um…Bastian?”

“We went into a big warehouse,” I continued. “Landon told me this was a small tournament – a kind of beginner’s game. Small area – only the size of the building. Some of the bigger tournaments went on for miles through all kinds of terrain. We went past an area that was all windows, and you could look down into kind of an arena down below. Some people were standing around there, looking through the windows, placing bets and shit, but most people were in the next room. Mostly guys but a lot of women, too, all done up in fucking cocktail dresses and diamonds. There were observation windows like the first one, but there was also a huge wall full of closed circuit television monitors.”

“Each one showed a different area. A bunch showed the big arena area from different angles, but others showed empty corridors, stairwells, and rooms filled with boxes or crates. Then there were six cameras that were moving around. I figured out later that they were attached to helmets on people in the tournament and whenever they turned their heads, you saw what they saw. It made you feel like you were in there.”

I stopped for a minute and took a deep breath. I was hitting that point of no return, and I glanced over to her one more time to see if she really wanted to hear the rest of this. She was staring at me intently with those soft, brown eyes, and I was nearly torn in two with the simultaneous desires to protect her from knowing any of this shit existed and telling her everything.

“Go on,” she said.

“Why do you want to hear this?” I questioned.

“Because I saw what it did to you,” Raine told me. “I want to know.”

I looked back into those eyes but saw nothing to indicate her decision wasn’t complete, so I went on.

“Five guys, one chick, and about fifteen minutes. That’s all it took, and there was one camera still moving on the chick who was left standing. She ran out to the middle of the arena area and waved to everyone watching while the other players were carted off. The guys placing bets were just like the ones on the street, but the amounts – those were a lot different. On the street, I’d maybe make a couple hundred bucks on a good fight. Since the first one I watched was smaller, the stakes weren’t quite as high, but the winner walked out with a quarter million.”

“A quarter million dollars?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Not bad for fifteen minutes of work.”

“How did she get so much?”

“Just like with any gambling, it’s all about who loses the bets. With six people to bet on, a lot of the betters are going to lose. When you bet fifty grand on a game, it adds up fast. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to do it, even after watching the first game. Landon knew I wanted to play and then spent two months training me. He said I was the best he had ever seen, and I started making a ton of money right away.”

“Bastian, I don’t think I understand.” Raine rose up a hand and stopped me from going on. “How did they fight? What happened to the other people in it?”

I had hoped she would get it right away, so I wouldn’t have to be so blunt. I also kind of hoped she wouldn’t get it at all. Obviously, she was going to make me spell all this shit out to her. I drummed my fingers on my knee for a minute, trying to think of a way to explain.

“It’s like a live video game, you know? We’d all be put in an area, and there are cameras everywhere, so the people who are watching and betting on us can see everything from every angle, even as the players see it. In most games you went in with nothing but whatever you were wearing – no weapons or anything. If you looked around, you could find something – pieces of pipe, knives, ropes, wrenches, candlesticks – you know, the whole ‘Clue’ complement. There were special tournaments with firearms and all kinds of shit like that, but those were really exclusive. I was only ever in three of them. You fought the other players, and the last man standing won.”

“What do you mean, exactly – ‘last man standing?’”

I took another deep breath.

“Whoever was still alive.”

“You mean you…just killed…?”

“I won because I killed everyone else there.”

I just blurted the last bit out, and watched a modicum of understanding flare up in her eyes as they went wide and she comprehended exactly what I was saying. For a while she just sat, taking it all in and looking up at me like I was going to tell her I was only joking or something.