5
ALBY
The arrow sails straight past the target and scatters across the hard floor in a hundred tiny lime-coloured pixels.
That was one of the most humiliating moments of my life.
And it’s being aired on live TV.
Pease just bury me in a hole and leave me there to die.
I’m not usually so bad at archery. In fact, it’s what I’m best at.
I can even remember the exact shape of the bow, arrow, and quiver since I took such a strong liking to it and studied the bow and arrow even more than the other available weapons, so the Avri from my armoury sticks has given me a perfect imitation of the image in my head despite my nerves.
But my talent with a bow and arrow isn’t greater than the anxiety pressing in on me at the fact I’m being judged and recorded for the world to see.
So I’m doing absolutely shit at the one thing I’m supposed to be good at.
And even though Tiger and Scotty gave me some great tips to help prepare me, there was hardly enough time to practice those before Evots started being called into this training room for the tests.
With a burning face and clogged throat, I command the Avri back into my armoury sticks and reach over my shoulder to fit the one in my hand back into its home on my right shoulder blade, where it snaps into place with an audible click.
A faint overlapping flickering sort of sound meets my left ear as the quiver on my other shoulder blade morphs back into my second baton, the Avri pixels rearranging and shrinking before disappearing inside the armoury stick.
I have my helmet back now, given to me when I first came in here, and I hope the opaque sides of it hide some of the colour in my cheeks, because the taalk visor definitely won’t be any help when it’s clearer than my eyesight.
Then I turn to face the judges.
I’m met with four blank stares that do nothing do boost my confidence.
“57!” the Neutral on the left calls out, letting me and everyone watching this on screens around the globe know my atrocious Score.
I slump down a bit, a puff of air escaping me.
I can’t tell if I’m relieved or disappointed, the former because I was half sure my Avri cluster’s shade was about to get even lighter, and the latter because I can never seem to get any higher than the last Score I was given a year ago at EvTS 246.
At least it’s better than it was the year before that, but I wish it would budge up just a little—I feel like I’ve made zero progress.
But some of my Avri vehicle and other Avri weapon demonstrations must’ve been somewhat decent to have kept my Score the same after that abysmal archery performance, at least.
“Dismissed!”
Head weighed down by shame, I turn and walk pitifully out the door.
***
When I’m dropped off at the room I’ll be staying in for the next week, I take a moment to absorb the glowing green number on the lustrous black door before me.
29.
That’s me.
That’s all I am now. A number. I’m officially a Player.
Shuddering, I press my thumb to the biometric scanner on the wall to my right, which the Neutral who escorted me here told me would recognise my fingerprint through my glove and allow me access into my new living accommodation.
With a hiss, the door slinks to the side, disappearing into the wall beside me.
Stepping through the now-empty doorway without batting an eye—those kinds of doors aren’t really anything too exciting these days—I hear the taalk shutting me in, and I roam my gaze over the bedroom before me.
No surprise, everything is a gleaming onyx other than the Evot-coloured Avri strips placed about decoratively: the walls, the silky bedding, the bedframe, the floor, the chest of drawers, the wardrobe, the door that .
. . leads to my own private bathroom . . . ?
After another scan of my thumb and the soft swoosh of the taalk moving out of the way, I’m standing inside what is, in fact, a bathroom just for me.
A weight I hadn’t even realised was there lifts from my shoulders.
Back in Evot Training School, I’d had to use communal bathrooms, and I’d had some disturbing incidents caused by Aider and Troy and their little gang while in them.
Thankfully, I had my own bedroom, but that was only because my parents paid to have me moved when I was originally roomed with Aider.
And that definitely didn’t prevent the nightmare that was having to share bathrooms with other guys.
One time, one of Aider’s friends got a picture of me while I was showering.
I was turned away, but that image of my naked back half floated around for a good few hours before it was deleted after instructors caught wind of it.
I didn’t even know about it myself until the whispers reached my ears later in the day about the “naked Twig” photo everyone had been sent on their phones.
And with Aider’s dad being a powerful man in the school, there were no consequences for him and his friends worse than a slap on the wrist.
I bite down on my lip hard enough to taste a metallic tang and take a deep breath, shaking off the memory. I have Tiger and Scotty now, even if that fact is as nerve-wracking as it is exciting.
And my own bathroom.
Gaping at the sparkling shower and the many wide heads attached to the ceiling, my muscles loosen at the thought of finally getting to wash myself in peace.
At least I’ll have that before I’m buried six feet under.
***
“Uh, what the fuck is that?”
I look down at the thick seaweed-coloured drink in my hand, then back up at Tiger, brows bunching together. “A . . . smoothie . . . ?”
He gapes at me.
“And . . . where’s the rest?”
“The rest of what?”
“Your breakfast?!” he all but shrieks.
Scotty watches the exchange without comment, seemingly just as interested in my answer as his brother. Dinner was delivered to our rooms yesterday evening, so this is the first time either of them are seeing one of the embarrassing items from my meal plan.
We had the tour of the complex this morning—or a fraction of it, I should say, because it wasn’t really as enlightening as the Neutral woman suggested it would be on my arrival; the only places we were shown were the dining hall and the infirmary that we hadn’t already seen.
Then again, the only rooms we have a need for as new, unbonded Players are ones to eat, sleep, and train in, so I guess that makes sense.
During that short tour, Scotty and Tiger had asked me to have breakfast with them, planning to head to the Training Centre afterwards.
Of course, though nervous, I eagerly agreed, never having eaten with anyone other than myself since first school but for a rare few times when I got enough credits to visit my parents. So now, here we are.
With my fitted helmet on—which I learned Tiger likes to call an “alien head”, because according to him, the headgear we all wear resembles what he thinks otherworldly beings’ heads look like—and the visor flipped up for me to be able to sip from my straw, I stand before the Gold brothers where they sit at one of the two extensive tables in the dining hall.
I noticed earlier that the Avri on their suits has darkened, with the older brother’s still a shade deeper than the younger’s, telling me their Scores have increased after their own tests yesterday.
I also didn’t miss the fact that Tiger’s suit has changed in other ways; if we wanted to, we were able to redesign them by request yesterday through a tablet that’d been left out in the Training Centre, and they were altered by TBG workers in the evening and overnight to be ready for today.
And while I didn’t change mine much—preferring to keep it simple with two green Avri stripes running parallel down both my outer arms and legs, ‘EVOT’ written across my lower back horizontally, two small square outlines by each collarbone, and the only difference being the necessary ‘29’ now smack in the middle of my back like I’d requested—Tiger has gone all out, with so much Avri all over him he looks more like an emerald light bulb than anything:
His back is covered in the number ‘35’ over and over again, which I didn’t even know we were allowed to do, and his front follows the same design with ‘EVOT’ covering every inch.
Then he has the necessary square outline .
. . times a hundred. All down his legs and arms, they repeat everywhere my gaze shifts to.
It’s a complete assault on the eyes, and yet somehow, he makes it work. It suits him.
Scotty’s, on the other hand, is a little more understated:
His social classification is written vertically down both his upper arms, the ‘T’ positioned just above each elbow.
From there, three dark green square outlines travel down his outer forearms and come to a stop at his wrists, where his black sleeves blend almost seamlessly into his gloves.
Then, in a similar position to my own Player number, ‘38’ sits proudly on his broad back, but unlike me, he’s chosen a square outline to box the numerals in.
And lastly, his outer legs have one simple luminous Avri stripe running down each, slinking into fitted black boots about an inch above his ankles.
“This is all of it,” I answer Tiger.
Now Scotty’s face contorts with shock, too.
“No wonder you’re so— OW!” Tiger rubs a hand over the back of his head where his brother just whacked him. “What was that for?!”
A beleaguered sigh. “Your carelessness.” Then Scotty’s gaze finds mine. “What he means to say is, they like us to have a . . .” He pauses to search for the right words. “A bit more muscle, is all.”
My heart drops to my stomach.
At the look on my face, his eyes widen in alarm.
“No— Shit. I didn’t mean anything by that other than that authorities think every Evot should look a certain way.
There’s nothing wrong with you—I wasn’t insulting you.
I just don’t understand how . . .” He trails off, looking unusually uncertain for what I’ve seen of him so far.