Survival/Apocalypse12 min read
The Exam, the Game, and the Punishment
ButterPicks13 views
"One minute left," the invigilator said.
"One minute!" someone behind me whispered.
I bent over my answer sheet and tried to finish the last sentence.
"Don't write that!" a voice snarled beside me. "Stop! Run!"
A hand ripped my paper from under my pen.
"Who—" I started.
"Don't write!" the boy gasped. "Whoever finishes first dies!"
The words were ludicrous until a wet, sudden sound filled the desk in front of me.
"Boom," someone said, as if it were an ordinary sound.
The student's head in front of me exploded like a rotten melon.
"Run!" the boy who had grabbed my paper screamed.
I froze. Blood and brains sprayed in slow beads. The classroom turned into a bad movie.
"Who would do this?" I whispered.
"No idea," he said. "But if you had finished—"
"If?" I swallowed. "If my sheet hadn't been torn—"
"Then you would be dead," he finished.
The bell rang.
The masked invigilator walked down from the podium like he'd practiced his steps. He wore white gloves and carried a gigantic garbage bag. He didn't look at us. He didn't care. He bent and stuffed the exploded head into the bag like he was collecting trash.
"First round over," the school PA announced. "Qualified students, proceed immediately to second-round site. Good luck. Come home alive."
The speaker went on, and the countdown started. "Nine hundred ninety-nine... nine hundred ninety-eight..." the voice ticked.
"Orion," the boy hissed, "get up. Move."
He grabbed my arm and pulled. He was light but fierce.
"Who are you?" I asked as we ran.
"Does it matter? If you want to live, follow me."
He pulled me into the corridor. Students screamed. Parents outside clamored and cheered with banners. They cheered like it was still the exam day—like mad.
"Dad! Mom!" I cried, because there they were: my parents, smiling with "Good luck" ribbons, waving my name. They didn't see the chaos. They only saw the countdown.
"Don't stop," the boy said. "To the second site. Now."
We pushed through the crowd. The main gate was blocked by men in black uniforms—security, or something wearing uniforms. The men stood like statues. When the countdown numbers reached a multiple of ten, gunshots fired. People dropped.
I clung to the boy. He didn't tell me his name at first. He just led, and I followed.
At the library entrance we became one of the smallest groups to escape. Inside, the gym, the library—every place turned into a selection chamber.
"Listen," he said finally as we collapsed into a corner of the gym. "You were the only one who hadn't finished. I saved you because I had to."
"You saved me," I repeated.
"Brody Hayes," he said. "Pay me back by surviving. Trust me."
"Why me?"
"You were alone. I can read patterns. My parents helped plan part of this game once. I know some rules."
"Some rules?" I echoed. "What game?"
"You've heard of the Catfish Effect," he said and smiled. "No. The 'catfish' keeps the shoal moving. This is the same idea. Live or die, it's all designed."
He pushed his half-truths into the space between us and the sirens.
"Are you telling me this is a game?" I said.
"Everything here is a game," he said. "The rules are rigid. If you learn them, you survive."
We were herded into a hall with fog, lights, and the countdown timers that thudded against everyone's ribs. The second round began.
"Role-play," the speaker announced. "Two-person matchups. Student and parent. You must perform as your role. Fail and you're eliminated."
"Student and parent?" I asked.
"Exactly that," Brody said. "Play to win."
I materialized in a perfect replica of my bedroom. A paper on my desk read the rules. The "parent" who came in was young, too young to be my mother: a girl with a fake smile, carrying a plate of apples.
"Eat," she said softly. "For your health."
"I don't want to," I said.
She forced the apple toward me, an actor playing a script. OOC warnings flashed: "Violence prohibited" blared when she tried to shove it in. I learned to treat every word as cue and every movement as possible trap.
She left to watch at the door.
I did the work, hiding my phone (the puzzle app) taped to the back of the desk. I had to finish six homework files and beat a five-level puzzle without getting caught. If I was caught playing, I would die.
She lurked. She came in whispers. She set a wooden wedge every time. She guarded the door like a hawk.
"Mom?" she called one time when she returned with soup. "Drink."
"Not hungry," I lied.
"You're lying," she said, the smile a blade. "Children must obey."
The OOC warned: "Parents must obey role. Failure voids test."
The girl staged falls, crawls, and then feigned fear so convincingly my stomach turned. I almost lost the puzzle when a glass shattered and her foot bled.
"Help," she sobbed theatrically.
I should have left the room and let her face the penalty for not leaving. Instead, guilt and the sound of her crying—real tears or crafted ones—I could not tell—made me relent. I pushed my phone into my underwear and carried her out. I did what the role demanded: a son with no backbone.
I clicked submit two seconds before the buzzer. The room filled with white mist. The voice said, "Congratulations. Proceed."
Brody waited for me outside, no applause on his face. We walked back. "You did well," he said. "Not badly at all."
"Not bad at all?" I asked.
He looked at me and said, "You played smart. But don't trust anyone. Especially me."
Then came the third round—groups, multiplication tables, cold rules. People died like rotten fruit when the smallest hesitation happened. I watched Brody—always ahead, always pulling strings. He intervened once, shouted a number at a teammate to throw them into answering wrong on purpose, and the teammate's head exploded.
"Why?" I gasped.
"Because if both your opponents pass and you don't, you get chosen later," he said flatly. "Sacrifices save lives sometimes."
He smiled like it was mathematics, not murder.
The rounds kept spinning, more brutal and clever each time. In the third round he even knocked someone out with a single punch so the team would fail and the runner-up wouldn't be me. He admitted it with a shrug.
At the final round before the end of that first loop, we were on a field. Ten minutes. Weapons. Survive. The stronger men grabbed the heavy steel and hunted.
Everything blurred. I ran, I hit, I broke a steel bar across a man's arm. I wrapped my fingers around a handle and swung with a desperation that erased fear. Breathing ruptured like overstrained bellows.
At the final second, a tall man—Harrison Svensson—found me and toppled me. His club smashed my head. He beat me until my vision melted. Then he walked off with a strange, satisfied look. Brody laughed as he strode toward the gate to media cameras and applause. He left me beaten and dying.
Then I woke up.
Back in the classroom. The bell still reading one minute left.
This time I had knowledge and an adrenaline map of the game.
I tore my sister Morgan Vasquez's paper. I screamed, "Stop writing!"
I stood between my sister and the slaughter again. I pulled her, carried her, and followed the green arrow only I could see. I learned to use the path, to avoid the crowds, to read the arrows on the ground. I navigated the library like a man who had once died and refused to repeat it.
The same rounds came: library translation, role-plays, multiplication, and the final stage on the field.
I changed my moves. I chose to be cruel in a small way so others might live. I stole a way to carry the book that blinked with green light, found Morgan's book quickly, guided her away from Zhao — Alessandro Berg — who played a part and later died perfunctorily.
I learned to see the game's pattern: rules bent around attention, and slight disruptions could break whole teams. I learned to bait the system and to lie about my own limits.
At the final fight on the field, everything was different. I grabbed a steel club before the other man did. I didn't run far. I trained for the ten minutes like a man with kin to protect.
Harrison still ran at me like a beast.
"Stay back," I told Morgan. "Hide."
Morgan screamed and hid in the equipment shed. I did the only thing I could.
I fought like a man out of options. I broke his arm. I swung. I did not spare him, but I did not kill him. The last ten seconds were a crush of wind and metal and a crowd roaring. When the buzzer popped, the PA announced in that same mechanical voice, "Orion Hanson, winner."
I crumpled.
I woke up again—not in the classroom, not in a hospital—but in a black suit, strapped in a game pod, lights strobing. Brody leaned over me with a practiced smile.
"Orion Hanson," he said with a fake lightness. "Good morning."
I staggered upright and the world clarified with a terrible twist: I wasn't a simple contestant anymore.
"We erased your memory with the terminal reset," he said. "But you always find a way back. You always do."
My throat felt like sand. "What is this place?"
"You asked for realism," he said. "You wanted an unforgettable experience. Congratulations. The player who remembers both death and the game becomes interesting."
In the company meeting, I listened as the designers shuffled in. Jett Finch, Vaughn Castaneda, Chet Bullock—names and faces that had a hand in the cruelty—stood like kids before a teacher.
"Explain," I said.
"Our metrics were off," Brody said. "We needed data on stress, survival instincts—"
"You gave them nightmares," I cut in. "You broke people."
They looked smaller in that fluorescent room. They looked guilty but also calculated.
Then I did the thing they did not expect.
"Bring them here," I told Brody. "Right now. All of you. Public boardroom. Cameras. Media feed. Everything."
He blinked. "Orion—"
"Do what I say."
He obeyed.
The punishment scene—what they had designed for others—they now faced.
It was public. Our boardroom was a clean room of glass and light, and the city's reporters were stacked like dominos outside. A hundred employees crowded the floor. The social-media team had already started a controlled leak.
"Welcome," I said into the mic. "If you made a game that kills, you must understand that people will want justice."
"Orion," Brody said, trying to smile to save himself. "We didn't—"
"We did," I corrected. "You did. You manipulate choices, you engineered fear amplification. Your hands are not clean."
"Orion—" Brody tried again.
I didn't let him finish.
"Brody Hayes," I said. "You prided yourself on control. You told yourself you were saving me and exploiting me at once. You played both roles and lost all decency. Today, you will be exposed."
I had arranged the stage to be worse than any scripted punishment. The media streamed live. Employees crowded, leaned over the railing, whispering. I had the three central designers—Brody, Harrison, and Jett—brought to the glass dais. The cameras rolled.
"Tell them," I said. "Tell them why you left a man to beat another to death. Tell them why you sent children into role plays where guilt becomes the trap. Explain."
Brody's composure failed like glass. At first he tried denial.
"It was simulation," he said. "We tested conditions. We didn't know—"
"Didn't know?" I echoed. "You wrote the triggers. The multiplication timing. You timed the kills."
He swallowed and tried to salvage his tone. "We wanted realism."
"Realism kills," a reporter shouted. "How can you sleep?"
Brody's smile faltered. Sweat broke at his temple. His face drained of color.
"Brody, why did you save me only to murder others?" I asked, calm, cold.
"It was strategy," he said at first. Then his voice betrayed him. "If I didn't—"
"If you didn't what?" I pressed.
"If I didn't push people, the match fails, and more die later," he said. "I—"
He tried to reshape his defense: utilitarian calculus, the ugly math of lives traded. But outside the glass, people gathered like a crowd ready to watch a sentencing. Voices rose: "Monsters. How dare you. You killed for data!"
Brody's denial slid into anger. "You think you're better? You used players too. You are no savior."
"Listen," I said into the mic, louder, so that every feed would catch the details as if branding them into the public mind. "You hand people puzzles to die. You make mothers and children stage grief until someone breaks. You staged the perfect cruelty and then laughed when it worked."
The crowd hissed. Fingers pointed at Brody and at the others. Smartphones lifted like a salute to accusation. Brody's cheeks reddened as the first stage of reaction arrived: shock. He shifted weight from one foot to another. His lips trembled.
"I never—" he tried to say.
"Say it," I told him. "Say what you did and why."
He inhaled. "I thought we were creating art," he said. "We were designing a visceral experience—"
"A visceral experience," I cut him off. "For the cameras?"
People around us murmured now. "Art?" someone scoffed. "This is murder."
Brody's face lost a shade more color. His hands twitched. He attempted rationalization, then resorted to anger, then to pleading.
"Please," he said finally, "don't turn this into—"
"Too late," someone shouted from the crowd. "Make him pay."
The CEO had been alerted. HR had prepped legal. But I did not want legal mildness. I wanted public crushing: the full reversal of their manufactured glory.
I had arranged for the boardroom broadcast to cut instantly to the game logs that recorded choices, the decision trees, the meeting minutes where they approved timers and punishments. The feeds rolled. There were timestamps, e-mailed approvals, and a directory of test subjects.
I played each file.
"Here," I said, pointing to the screen, "is a meeting where Brody laughed about a failed group because it gave 'higher retention.' Here is Jett Finch approving the 'parent trap' sequence. Here is Harrison's note: 'Make the final melee as cinematic as possible.'"
The room gasped. Smartphones hummed with shocked notifications.
"Did you think you could hide this?" I asked.
Brody's eyes widened. He tried to reach for his phone. "Those are out of context," he said, but his voice had gone thin.
Harrison's reaction was worse. He had been the one who later beat me close to death. At first he tried stoic silence—then he lapsed. He attempted denial: "I was just following orders." Then he tried blame: "He told us—" Then he collapsed inward and muttered, "We didn't think—"
The crowd's mood turned cruel in a single rhythm. They were not asking for mercy; they were asking for spectacle. Broadcasters trained cameras on their faces as they shifted under the spotlight. Their expressions changed from smug to stark, then to frantic denial, then to a raw, animal begging that the cameras could not ignore.
Brody took one step forward. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean—"
"Say it like a human," someone yelled. "Don't hide behind corporate speak."
Faces on the screen were now processing: "How could this happen? People died. Our kids were in your game." Comments streamed: "Ban them." "Arrest them." "Shut them down."
I watched Brody's shoulders crumple. He began to stammer: "We wanted players to feel stakes. We didn't want them dead. It—"
"Did you?" a reporter demanded. "Or did you want a show so you could sell it?"
He tried to shout back, but the murmurs swallowed his voice. The crowd circled. "Explain!" they called.
The final step of my punishment was crafted to be public, irreversible, but not physically violent—a corporate crucifixion. The feeds posted every name, every approval, every e-mail. The games were taken offline by our legal team the moment the press release hit. Sponsors were looped in. Investors were notified. HR placed them on immediate unpaid suspension and pending criminal inquiry. Social media calls for boycott rose like a storm.
Brody slumped and then finally folded. He began to cry, which was worse than denial. His tears were real, and the cameras caught him sobbing.
"I didn't mean—" he repeated, over and over.
He tried humiliation as a last defense: "You knew, too," he said to me, as if blaming me would deflect. "You were running the final test."
"Yes," I said. "I was with you. I ordered the reset. I wanted realism too. But what makes us different is that I own it. I will fix it. You will be accountable."
The company security gently led him away. Employees recorded him as he walked, his face vacant, his dignity stripped. The press hurled questions. He tried to answer. People booed.
Harrison's face was pale now. He begged, voice cracked, "Please, please, don't ruin my family." He sank to his knees in front of a camera when the feed still rolled. He begged to be let go, to be forgiven.
The crowd reacted with a chorus: "You took that from us. You took our children's sleep."
"Don't beg!" someone yelled. "You made a game to kill."
The three designers were paraded through a transparent corridor to an adjacent hall where the disciplinary panel waited. The feeds continued. HR read charges. Legal set bail.
It was not physical punishment, but it was total humiliation. It was the most public condemnation any of them had ever faced. Each of their faces moved through the stages: smugness, shock, denial, anger, useless bargaining, the strain of the final plea.
The cameras recorded it all. The world watched. The company stock fell. Sponsors pulled. The press demanded arrests.
Brody's final plea was a child's, small and raw: "We were trying to make art. We didn't mean to break anything."
"We broke people," said a parent in the crowd. "That's all you did."
He broke apart. He bowed his head. The crowd's verdict had been passed. The punishment—public, social, financial—was underway. It would be slow and devastating. It would be worse than any single slap. It would take careers, reputations, and money. It would take time.
I watched them crumble.
"Do you feel better?" a reporter asked me when the cameras turned to me.
"No," I said. "I feel empty. But this has to stop."
The live stream cut. The executives were escorted out. The hashtags trended. People shared their stories. The punishment unfolded publicly, as a slow, humiliating unravelling. They had designed a game that traumatized strangers; now strangers watched them suffer the consequences.
Later, in a smaller room away from the glare, Brody pleaded like a man at the bottom of a cliff.
"Please," he said, voice gravelly. "Give me a chance. I—"
He poked for sympathy. He tried to bargain. He apologized—many times. But the cameras had already taken hold of his apology. The world judged. The board required an audit. The law began to ask questions.
When it was over, I sat alone and realized what this meant. The game had forced everyone into roles. Now the public had forced them into truth.
I had used their methods against them: exposure, shame, the dismantling of a manufactured god. I had not killed anyone. I had not resorted to violence. I had chosen a punishment that matched their crime—not blood, but the very thing they valued: reputation, attention, success.
I turned my face to the glass.
"You're done," I said quietly, to no one.
Brody's voice came from the corridor, small and thin: "I didn't think—"
"You won't be able to say that again," I said.
I walked out into a city that would not forget.
The End
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