It still hadn't fully sunk in it was happening. Three weeks had passed since I had sent in my application. Going home on the train, I would sometimes see billboards with my face on them, a picture taken in a small office building off the main concourse of Florline. If Ness had seen them, she never said anything to me. In some ways, it all felt like a dream, like I had never really applied and my life was continuing as normal, but one thing was missing. Vance.
A selfish part of me had hoped he would call after he heard I had applied. That he would beg me not to go, and I would say I would only quit if he did, and we could pretend none of this had ever happened. But no such call came. I didn't know where he was or what he was doing. I spent sleepless nights tossing and turning, thinking of what I would say to him when we met again at the games. But what was there to say? He had made his choice, and so had I.
The morning I left for the Gladiome felt in some ways like any other. My alarm chirped. I got up, got dressed, had breakfast and coffee. I took the same train I took on my way to work, but this time, I let my usual stop rush past me, and continued on for another hour until I reached the outer districts. The buildings here were magnificent, not in height like the rest of the city, but in size: glittering arenas, some dome-capped, some open-air, blazing with flashing signs and bright metallic colors. This was where the magic happened.
The building I was headed toward was the Gladiome, a structure recently built by Industrial Arms to accommodate fights between their colossal Grav-Force machines. Not too long from now I would be climbing inside one of those machines myself.
The Gladiome made the arenas that surrounded it look dwarfed in size. The walls of opaque dark glass shone dazzlingly under the sun, and the entrance was hung with enormous textile banners of brilliant red and eye-catching blue.
"Name?" The attendant at the gate asked as I approached. I was surprised how empty it was— I had expected a long line of the dozens of other contestants I knew had applied, had naively hoped that Vance would be among them. I wondered if they staggered our appointment times.
"Micah Lu."
"Identification, please."
I slid over the card that had been issued to me after my application was processed. The attendant scanned it and handed it back. "Right this way, Micah."
The gate clicked open. I sucked in a breath and followed her inside.
"I'm Veronique," the attendant told me as she led me down a wide, tiled corridor lit only by the sunlight filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I could see now the dark sheets of glass were made up of thousands of glittering colors. "I'll give you a brief tour of the facility."
She led me to a small room where I was instructed to give my comms to another attendant, who would lock them away. We weren't allowed any outside communication during the competition. All of this had been on the fine print of my application, but even someone like me who refused to watched the shows knew that much.
As she led me back out to the main corridor, we passed someone who I assumed was another contestant being led along by her own attendant. She was shorter than me with a spiky shock of bleached white hair poking out of a holographic jacket, and her eyebrows were painted into a scowl. She gave me an intimidating once-over.
"This facility was constructed just last year," Veronique was saying. "This corridor stretches all the way around the dome, and the residence halls are in the east wing. The Gladiome is the largest colosseum of its kind to be built."
"Where are all of the other contestants?" I asked.
"You're one of the last arrivals. Most of them are in the training hall already." Approaching a wall, she punched a button and a set of doors slid open. "And here's where you'll be staying..."
The residence hall was nicer than any apartment I had ever lived in. The floors and walls were squeaky-clean and glistening, the bathrooms shiny and new, and there was a 24-hour dining facility. I would be sharing a room with five other people— some of the bunks already had a few items on the beds, and as Veronique showed me around the tidy room I desperately searched for a sign that Vance had been there— but I didn't care about that, as long as it was clean.
Veronique gave me the Industrial Arms-approved spiel about the groundbreaking architecture and design of everything we saw, and most of it went in one ear and out the other. It felt like eons passed before we finally looped back to the main corridor and she told me the tour was over.
"The training facility is just through that door, if you want to meet the other contestants," she told me, and turned on her heel back down the hall, presumably to meet the next incoming contestant.
None of this felt real yet— everything was clean and dazzling like a set prop, which I supposed all of this was. Filming didn't begin until tomorrow, but throughout the tour I had noticed the round black lenses of cameras embedded in nearly every wall, ready to capture our worst moments. Soon enough, Vance and I would be on display for all of the world to see, a part of these twisted games we had promised we would never be stupid enough to participate in.
Vance. My stomach twisted in anticipation. He was here. He had to be. Aside from the girl, I hadn't come across any other contestants on the rest of the tour, and his smiling face had been one of many on the screen behind the check-in desk, just a few frames away from mine. I had no idea what I was going to say to him when I saw him. I hadn't let myself think about yet. The most pertinent question in my mind was still why?
YOU ARE READING
THE COLOR WARS
Science Fiction**COMPLETE WORK: WEEKLY UPDATES** Every year, thousands of citizens apply to be contestants on deadly reality shows in hopes of taking home the life-changing prize money. Micah never thought he would be one of them. But when unexpected circumstance...
