I woke to the sound of clanging on the bars. I looked up and saw 3 guards outside, one knocking his stunner against the bars. "Landry, let's get a move on. You got lucky this time. The audience voted to spare you from the Thunderdome." The guard motioned for me to come to the bars.

"I wouldn't expect that to occur very often, the audience tends to be pretty bloodthirsty with their votes. You must have made an impression." Ziphal chimed in from his bed. The other two guards both had their stunners trained on him, which garnered no more reaction from him as a fly would have. I walked up to the lead guard and he opened the door. As I was escorted away, Ziphal called out again, "Remember what we talked about Noah, and get that chat upgrade when you can."

"Aw did the big bad shark man make a friend? Shame this one isn't going to make it very long now that he's made an enemy of Xix." One of the guards chuckled at their taunting of Ziphal.

"Explains why there isn't even a scratch on him" The other responded, looking me over. "I was expecting to have to carry him back to his berth, or at least, calling some of the other prisoners to do so."

"Look, let's just get him back. Shift swap-out is happening in a couple of minutes, and that means we can finally go get some of those Latteria gull eggs I've been hearing about in the cafeteria." The third guard said. I looked at the other cells we were passing on the way there. For the most part, they were empty, but a few held aliens of various races. Most notable was one that held a large metal iron maiden. It was violently shaking as we passed, and I wondered why the extra security on this specific prisoner. The guards didn't enlighten me, picking up the pace, practically dragging me along with them. Why were they so nervous? The snakes seemed to relax as we got further away from that cell, making me all the more curious about what was in it. Ziphal would likely know if I could get in contact with him again.

We arrived at the door to the human living area. One of the guards opened the door and shoved me inside, yelling "Get on with you. We don't have time to sit around waiting for you to get your ass moving. It's chow time." I turned as the door quickly slammed shut behind me. Was that it? Was it back to normal then?

I needed to find Lindsay, but first I needed to get some sort of food. I hadn't eaten since I had gotten out of the pod yesterday afternoon, and I couldn't even be sure my sister was around. Xix would have her thrown straight into a game as he did everyone else, which would mean I had some time before I'd be seeing her. I looked down at my wristband, and it displayed 3 days before my next game. Well, at least we would get a day or two to relax before jumping back into the deep end.

My conversation with Ziphal came to mind while eating. We were only in the baby version of the games, and we had a year to either get our contract bought out, or accept that we'd be up against significantly harder challenges. If humanity made it a year without freeing itself, it would be a massacre. Those who were in the main games currently had either prepared for or been in them for years. They would have major advantages in terms of their starting equipment, upgrades, and abilities, and knowledge. This meant once the timer ran out to gain points would be something only the lucky ones were able to do.

Speaking of which, I should check on the results and accept my points from the previous game. I pulled up the page on my UI.

Results of Game:

Traitor Win: 500 points

Never Voted up: 100 points

Innocents Eliminated x10: 500 points

Mistaken Lynches x1: 200 points

Surviving Traitors x3: 300 points

Sum Total: 1600 points

Nice, it looked like I would have quite a few points to mess around with and I had done pretty well in the last game. Then I noticed the second notification that had been on hold until I reviewed the results.

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Points for Game deducted for assault on administrator: -1000 points

Okay, that was just petty. I still had 600 points to play around with plus the 100 saved from last time, and I hadn't lost a life yet, so there was no point in thinking about purchasing a new one. What unlocked with the deduction games and was purchasable?

Store options:

Personality Matrix Analysis: This modern lie detector can be used on a person to ask them a single yes or no question, however, if the target has the personality matrix obscurer, they will be allowed to provide a false answer. Troublesome, I know but hey, you could try not forcing your friends to tell you the truth. 400 points

Personality Matrix Obscurer: This allows the purchaser to lie when targeted with the Personality Matrix Analysis device. 800 points

Sneak Peek (Innocent): This ability allows you to pull a single role, randomly from the list given to the traitors. The role is guaranteed to be in the game, and will not be your role. This can pull traitor roles. 400 points

Focused Sneak Peek (Innocent): This upgrade will allow you to specify whether or not to receive a traitor or innocent role. This is an upgrade to the initial Sneak Peek (Innocent) and requires it to be purchased first: 300 points

Sneak Peek (Traitor): This ability allows you to randomly reveal a single player's role to you. However, this ability is notoriously finicky and can sometimes provide false positives. Further upgrades will make the ability more consistent. At first purchase, the chance to reveal the correct role is 50%, with subsequent purchases increasing the chance by 10% each time. 500 points, with an increasing point cost for each purchase.

I also managed to find the comms upgrade Ziphal had talked about, although I likely wouldn't be obtaining it for at very least 1 more game.

UI upgrade: Communications: This upgrade allows users who have purchased it to send messages to each other. Handy, especially with the lack of any sort of communication devices. 2000 points.

Lastly, I decided to do a quick check to see if it was possible to purchase an out of the Traitor Games for myself and a small group with me. I wasn't sure if they would offer something like that, but lo and behold, they did.

Solo Contract Buyout: Releases a single person from a probationary race membership, entitling them to full citizenship. 500,000 points

Duo Contract Buyout: Releases two people from a probationary race membership, entitling them to full citizenship. 1 million points

Group Contract Buyout: Releases 6 people from a probationary race membership, entitling them to full citizenship. This contract can be contributed to by each member of an established group if they register with the Game's administrator. As this is a less selfish option, 10% of the contributed points will be put towards the total race buyout. 10 million points

It was possible to buy out your contract, although the only one that helped the problem would be the group buyout. I did some quick mental math and figured if everyone purchased this option it would be possible to complete the species option as well. I would have to take that option, it would allow me to save 5 other people, one of which was guaranteed to be Lindsay. The other four probably had to be participants, meaning the only real options were the 4 friends I had made.

Having said that, I decided to save my points towards the communications upgrade. So far the information gained from Ziphal had been worth more than any upgrade I could currently purchase, and without registering a group, there was no point in contributing yet. I closed the store page, getting up and walking to my berth. I might as well see who was around.

I found Allison sitting and reading on the way to my berth. She looked up as I approached, got up, and stamped over to me.

"What were you even thinking fighting the Game admin!? Oh wait, I know, you weren't. Did you even consider how any of us would have felt if you died due to the Thunderdome, especially after me, I mean us just starting to care about you?"

"Look, I'm sorry Allison, I am. I couldn't stop myself when he started talking about putting my sister in here."

"It was still stupid, but I'm glad you were willing to admit it. Plus, you are okay now right?"

"Yeah, I'm just worried about Lindsay, she could be anywhere right now."

"Well then, you are lucky I'm amazing and found her as soon as he announced that she was in here. She's in the berth down that way" Allison indicated a direction opposite from our berths.

"You are so amazing Allison, thank you so much! Oh, and I may have found a plan for the 6 of us. There's a group release option, for 6 people, that we can purchase. It also can be contributed to by all 6 of those people, with 10% of the final amount going to the species option. I think we need to go for that option, relying on random others is too inconsistent, and 10 million should be doable with 6 all contributing to it, it will take a couple of games."

"Can you figure out when we all can meet? There's someone I want us all to meet, but it's going to take me at least one more game to get the upgrade I need. As for right now, I need to talk to my sister. Thanks again."

"Anytime, it's the least I can do after everything you've done for Emma and me."

We agreed to meet up later, with anyone else around at that point, while I went to hopefully retrieve my sister.