Destiny was empty-handed right now, but that didn't mean she didn't find anything this round. She already found three plastic balls. The reason she didn't have them anymore was because she dropped them off in her safe zone. She knew if she found another plastic ball, she would struggle to carry it. So she went to her safe zone and dropped them off to search more freely and quickly. Remember, their safe zone was on the sixth floor. Frank had told Destiny to check out the eighth floor, and she did. She quickly rummaged through five rooms and got three balls. There were more rooms to search, and her plan was to continue searching, but she saw someone at the end of the corridor. She saw Delilah coming out of a room. Delilah was at the end of the corridor, and her back was turned, so she didn't notice Destiny. After that, Destiny changed plans. She returned to her safe zone and decided to search on the seventh floor instead. If her hands weren't full, she would've confronted Delilah, but she didn't want to take a chance and risk losing one or two of her balls because she got into a little fight with her. She knew she would get a chance later, so she wasn't too fussed about avoiding her. Therefore, she chose to go to the seventh floor. No one had come to this floor except Alexander, who searched one or two rooms in the previous round. It looked like no one else had come to this floor, as most of the doors were shut. Destiny could only go on that assumption.
Class 1-A had no intel on this floor. Their map pieces for the floor might as well be blank. It had one singular dot. The map pieces for 1-A were still a struggle, but they couldn't do anything. The students had accepted that finding the better versions was a miss. They've probably already been snatched up by other classes. The only point of the map pieces was to guide their representatives. But even that was kind of useless because it wasn't like this place was a maze. Their representatives could keep count of what floor they were on by themselves. This challenge for most of the students in the class became a live stream they could watch. Which was disappointing for some as it was promising at the start, but others couldn't care less, as we saw.
Destiny continued down the floor and opened the door to the first room she saw. When she opened the door, she wasn't met with an untouched room. The room had already been searched, and someone was still inside.
"What?"
It was Dillon.
Destiny quickly scanned the room. It looked a mess.
"Have you already searched this room?" she asked, looking at Dillon's hands.
"Yeah. I have", Dillon boldly replied, with a plastic ball in his right hand.
Destiny noticed two things about Dillon. One was,
"Why is there a yellow splatter on your shirt?" Destiny smirked as she quickly caught on. "Did Malakai shoot you?".
"Yeah, he did", Dillon answered, not embarrassed. He had already gotten past it and accepted that it had happened. The only thing he was annoyed about was that his shirt was ruined. It was one of his favourite shirts.
"Pffttt, haha. Why did you let him shoot you?" Destiny giggled, seeing the funny side of it.
"I fucked up", Dillon didn't stutter saying that. He could admit that comfortably. "I don't know why you're laughing. He'd shoot you in a heartbeat", he continued, knowing that Malakai didn't like Destiny.
"Yeah, right. He doesn't have the balls to shoot a woman", Destiny confidently replied with her arms crossed.
The other thing she noticed was,
"Why are you wearing a backpack?"
Dillon was wearing a plain leather black backpack.
"It's an item I found", Dillon was weirdly answering her questions without a fuss. He had no hesitation to reply.
"What's in the bag?" Destiny asked, seeing the bag bulging like it was nearly full.
"What do you think?" Dillon asked back, walking closer to the door.
Destiny figured it out shortly, "That's a pretty good item", she said, sounding a little jealous.
Having a backpack would've been useful to her. She wouldn't have needed to go back to her safe zone if she had one.
"I know", Dillon unenthusiatically said, now standing in front of Destiny. "Are you going to stay there?" he asked, looking down at her.
Destiny looked up at Dillon.
"Nope", she replied, walking backwards out of the doorway with her hands behind her back. "I know I'm not getting that ball off you".
Dillon raised his eyebrows. "I thought you would try. That's a little disappointing", he replied, not sounding disappointed.
Dillon walked out of the room and took a few steps away from Destiny before taking off his backpack.
"Heh. Look at the size of you. Trying would do nothing for me", Destiny said, knowing her limits.
"You never know until you try", Dillon replied, keeping an eye on her while he put his plastic ball in his bag.
"Do you want me to try now?"
"Fuck off", Dillon said, not entertaining the idea and zipping up his bag.
He put his backpack back on and started walking towards another room. He wasn't in a rush, meaning he wasn't desperate. Or he could be tired.
"He must have a lot of balls in that bag. I really want a backpack now", Destiny bitterly said, staring at Dillon with envy.
"Destiny, what are you doing?" Frank asked, seeing her camera angle wasn't moving. "Go search a room".
Destiny sighed and rolled her eyes,
"Okay, okay. I was just taking a lil break".
Delilah was walking around with a little metal basket with four plastic balls in it. The basket wasn't an item she found. She saw it in one of the rooms and had the idea to carry the plastic balls using it. Using the idea, she took everything out of the basket and stole the basket. No one told her she couldn't do that, and no one stopped her from doing it, so she did it. It was a great idea but risky. If someone saw her, defending herself and stopping her balls from getting stolen would be hard. Having Malakai next to her would've helped massively because she would have protection and an extra pair of hands to search. She had the idea to tell David to call him over, but she heard from David's communication with Malakai that he was struggling to find anything. He only had two plastic balls. Therefore, Delilah thought it would be better if Malakai kept searching on his own because there was a chance for him to find more by himself. She was still paranoid carrying the basket around, so she kept turning her head every few seconds.
The information Delilah had was that their safe zone was on the ninth floor, so all the rooms had been searched on that floor already. In the second round, Malakai searched the eleventh floor with Nada, so all those rooms had already been searched. That's why she chose to search the eighth floor this round. Searching the eighth floor was a success because she found four plastic balls in fifteen minutes. Once she saw open doors on the eighth floor down the hall, she stopped searching. She could've gone to the seventh floor, but she heard people walking on that floor, so she chose to go up. Now, she was on the tenth floor. She could've dropped off the basket at her safe zone, as it was in the middle of both floors, but hearing David say they had ten minutes left confirmed her decision to keep going. She didn't want to waste time. Time was valuable in this challenge.
On the tenth floor, Delilah saw no one. The corridor was empty and silent. Weirdly, she hadn't seen anyone the whole round. She thought she would've seen at least one person as everyone was out, but no one crossed her path. She wasn't complaining. She just thought it was a little odd. Delilah moved as fast as she could to the closest door. She opened the door and went inside without looking. When she stepped inside, she was confused. This room wasn't like the others. The room was quite small, with a few objects on the side. The middle of the room was bare. The main attraction was the two tables at the end of the room with boxes on each. Delilah could see what was written on the boxes from the doorway. One of the boxes said 'plastic ball', and the other said 'item'. The tables were distanced a few feet away from each other. It was a weird room.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Delilah started walking to the boxes. She was obviously steering towards the box with plastic ball written on it. After a few slower steps, she took a few quick ones, but,
"Boo!"
"AAHH!"
Delilah's body jumped at the sudden voice that broke the silence and the unexpected hand on her shoulder. She still kept hold of her basket, and luckily, none of the balls flew out. She hastily turned around to see who scared her.
"Why would you do that?" Delilah asked, surprised and relieved after seeing who it was.
"To scare you, obviously", Akari happily answered, satisfied with the reaction she scored. She had two plastic balls in her right hand and arm and a plastic ball in her left hand. She instantly noticed Delilah's basket. "A basket! That's really smart. There's so many around, I should've taken one".
"Yeah", Delilah awkwardly replied. She just wanted to get the plastic ball and the item and leave, but having Akari here was a little problematic.
Akari peered to the right of Delilah and saw the two boxes.
"Plastic ball. Item", Akari read out loud. "Oh! Should we play a game to decide who gets what!" she excitedly said, quickly thinking of that idea on the spot
"But... I want both of them", Delilah slowly replied.
"I'm not going to let you take both, am I?" Akari smiled. "I'm here now".
Akari was lucky that it was her that came across Delilah. If it was anyone else, Delilah would've snatched both the item and the plastic ball and tried to escape out of the room. She had a soft spot for Akari. She knew she was delicate, so she didn't want to do anything rash, even if this was a challenge. Delilah didn't like the idea of rushing out of the room with both things. She knew she could do that if she wanted to because Akari wouldn't be able to stop her, but she felt that it was too mean to do that to her. She heard Nada gave a plastic ball to Malakai last round, so it wasn't like everyone forgot they were friends just because it was a challenge. Akari was a close friend. She can't do that to her, even if it is a challenge. Akari said they would be rivals today on the bus journey, but Delilah didn't have the heart to take both the item and the plastic ball and dash.
"Are you really not going to let me leave with both?" Delilah asked, tilting her head and seeing if her friend would do her a favour.
"Nuh-uh", Akari shook her head. "I can't let my class down".
Delilah internally sighed.
"Fine", she forfieted. "Do you want the item or the plastic ball? We can negotiate".
"Let's play a quick game to decide. The winner can pick whatever they want", Akari said, ignoring the question.
"A game would take too long", Delilah replied.
"It won't", Akari reassured her, shaking her head again.
Delilah knew what Akari was doing. She was wasting time. Akari wouldn't say, let's play a game for no reason. She was stalling.
"Okay, what game?" Delilah hurriedly asked, playing along with her idea.
"Hmm, what's a quick game to play?" Akari rhetorically asked, looking away.
Delilah rolled her eyes, "Let's play rock paper scissors", she said. That was the first game that came to mind.
Akari could see Delilah was desperate to get a move on.
"Okay, that sounds good", she replied.
Delilah put down her basket and held out her right fist, readying herself to play. She wanted to get on with it.
"Quick, let's go".
Akari was surprised by how quick Delilah was moving.
"Someone's in a hurry", Akari commented.
"Akari, I know you're trying to waste time", Delilah replied, showing she knew what was going on. "We're only playing one round of this".
Akari smiled. Her plan kind of worked. She was wasting a bit of Delilah's time, but it wasn't enough. Akari wanted to stall Delilah until the round was nearly over, but that wasn't happening.
"You got me", Akari said, placing two of her plastic balls by her feet. She held out her fist, "Rock paper scissors shoot?"
"Yeah. One round", Delilah replied, raring to go.
"Okay".
"Rock".
"Paper".
"Scissors".
"Shoot".
Delilah held out scissors. Akari held out rock. Akari won.
"Dammit", Delilah mumbled. She thought Akari would go paper.
"Wow", Akari said. She didn't expect to win. She thought Delilah would've gone rock. She wanted to tie the game to waste more time but accidentally won.
"I thoug-".
"Which one do you want?" Delilah asked, cutting Akari off from speaking.
Akari could see that Delilah stressing about the time. She silently giggled to herself and picked up her plastic balls from the floor. She decided to stop with this time-wasting plan. She didn't want to stress her friend that much.
"Which one will I choose?" Akari said, walking closer to the boxes. She directed herself to one box. "I'll choose this box".
"The item?" Delilah said, confused. "Why not the plastic ball? You can have four".
Delilah thought for sure Akari was going to choose the plastic ball.
"Think about it. They've put them side by side, so the item has to be good", Akari replied.
"I mean, yeah, but it might still be worse than a plastic ball. The plastic balls are worth points, you know? Items aren't", Delilah said.
"I know", Akari smugly replied.
She went towards her box and opened it. Inside was a card. She picked it up and quickly read it to herself in her head.
'Tracker (UAV). Using the code on the back, you can use the tablet in your safe zone to track down plastic balls and different players. They will appear as red dots for two seconds, disappear, and reappear a second later'.
Akari giggled, "This is really good".
"What is it?" Delilah curiously asked.
"It's a secret", Akari replied, keeping the card close to her.
Delilah smiled, "It is your item", she said. "I can't be jealous. Even if I won rock paper scissors, I would've chosen the ball".
Delilah went towards the other box and opened it. Lo and behold, there was a plastic ball there. Before she could pick it up,
"Mally, what are you doing!? Forget him. You don't need to go after him!"
Delilah heard David's worried voice in her earpiece.
"Mally! Don't chase him!"
"David, what's happening?" Delilah quickly asked, a little startled by the sudden rise in David's tone.
"Malakai won't listen to me. He's chasing Ryan", David replied.
After hearing Malakai was chasing Ryan, Delilah could already paint a picture of the situation in her head.
"Should I go and stop him?" Delilah asked.
"No, no", David swiftly answered. "You have too many plastic balls, and you wouldn't be able to stop him even if you tried", he continued. "There's only like five minutes left until the round is over. I say go back to the safe zone. We can't have you lose any of your plastic balls".
"Are you sure? I could quickly try and search another room", Delilah said after hearing she still had five minutes left.
"You can try, but I would say to go back to the safe zone to be safe", David replied. "You can take out your earpiece if you want. I'm going to be shouting to get Malakai's attention".
"No, I'm going to keep it in. I need to hear what's going on", Delilah decided.
Delilah briskly took the plastic ball out of the box and put it in her basket. She picked up her basket and was about to start walking out of the room. She looked at Akari to check what she was doing. Delilah didn't even notice, but Akari was engaged in her own conversation.
Delilah and Akari made eye contact.
"Is everything okay?" Delilah asked, seeing Akari's troubled expression.
"Um, my classmate is telling me Ryan is running away. He's being chased by Malakai", Akari replied, a little worried. "I think Malakai's going to shoot him". She remembered that Malakai had a paintball gun.
Hearing Akari say that made it even more obvious to Delilah. Malakai wasn't going to stop until he shot Ryan. If there was one person he could shoot, it would be Ryan, and now he had a chance.
Delilah didn't respond to Akari. She broke eye contact and made her way to the door. All she could do now was go to her safe zone and hear what David was saying. While she speed-walked down the corridor, she shook her head and quietly said,
"Please, Malakai, don't be an idiot".