Chapter IX: Priorities

  After Drake and the others wake up, they begin to head out towards the next floor. Ziya, Drake and Judy got ready to head out, as they began to head out first ahead of the other six in the group. As Jon, Kyle and Frank got ready to follow behind the rest, Georgie, Will and Jake get ready to move for a while before trying to think about resting. However, their efforts are quickly halted once they finally get outside of their small safe house. Waiting outside of the small building was a group of eight people, each of them with more than twenty Respawns. "Think any of them have any food left, Gerald?" One of them asks.

  The man in the front, Gerald, whose watch showed "42" Respawns simply replies "I wouldn't count on it".

  "With such a large group" another one says, "they're bound to be constantly struggling for food".

  "That's why it's better to kill off the other groups as soon as possible" Gerald says. "We may have a large group, but if there's less people in this arena, then there's less mouths to feed". Gerald then looks down at Drake and says "Nothing personal" as he waves one hand forward. At his command, the other seven people in his group immediately charge forward.

  One of the men try to grab at Ziya's hammer that was held by her jumpsuit. "I'll be taking that!" He says as he tries to pull on it. However, before he could grab the hammer, someone tackled him to the ground from above.

  As Ziya looked down, she could see Jon on top of this man, pinning him to the ground. When they looked up, they could see Kyle and Frank still standing at the second floor, sticking their heads out of the window of this small concrete building they were just in. "Yo!" Kyle says, "I thought I smelled trouble!".

  "Tch- they had more hiding" Gerald says.

  "Hey!" Ziya says as she runs up to Gerald with the hammer in her hand, "you might wanna brace yourself for this one!". Ziya swings the hammer upwards, hitting Gerald in the chin and sending him flying upwards. After he hits the ground, Ziya swings her hammer much like how someone would swing a golf club, breaking Gerald's neck when it hits the side of his head.

  "Move on ahead!" Jake shouts at Ziya. When Ziya turns to look at Jake, he continues to say "we'll hold them back! Secure us a route out of here! We'll be doomed if we get caught by another team!".

  Ziya nods her head and runs forward. Drake follows behind her, and the two find a long pathway that leads in the direction of the exit for this floor. When the two run back, everyone was still fighting, though they looked to be at a stalemate. "Come on!" Ziya shouts at them, "I found a way to get out of here!".

  "A little busy!" Georgie yells back.

  "Forget about them!" Ziya says, "we don't have to finish off every group we come across! They'll take too long to fight, we need to get out of here!".

  "We don't have the time nor the energy to waste here!" Drake yells. "Come on!".

  Soon after, Judy manages to get her distance from her foe. Taking the advantage of the situation, she runs over towards Ziya and Drake, and right past Gerald who didn't seem to even bother trying to stop her. The man she was fighting chased after her, but suddenly, Gerald put his arm in the way and stopped him. "Hold on" he says, "let them go".

  "Boss, what about-" the man begins to ask.

  "We've got other business" Gerald says as he points down the alley in the opposite direction of Ziya. When the man looks, he sees another team of ten people approaching, each wielding a machete. "Prioritize your targets, preserve your energy" Gerald says.

  "But why let them go?" The man asks.

  "Did you see the girl's Respawn counter?" Gerald asks. "After killing me, she now has one-hundred and one Respawns. We'll worry about the first group when we can afford to worry about them".

  The other man nods his head and then shouts "Get the other group first! Let the first group pass!". The rest of this man's group looked back at him and Gerald in confusion, as did Georgie and the rest. Their group eventually charged right past Georgie and the others and began to fight with the new group that showed up.

  "Well?" Ziya asks, "what are you waiting for!?".

  "Come on" Jon says as he begins to walk towards Ziya, lightly hitting Georgie on the shoulder.

  As the rest of the team walks past Gerald, Gerald slowly turns around and stares at them with contempt as they pass him. "Hey, girly" He says to Ziya, "What's your name?".

  "What business is it of yours?" Ziya asks.

  "I would like to know how to address you the next time we meet" Gerald says. "For a proper fight...".

  Ziya smirks and says "The name's Ziya".

  "I'm Gerald" he replies, "and I'll be looking forward to our next meeting".

  "You sure you don't want to fight them?" Kyle asks as they walk away. "That guy seems way too smug".

  "I'm sure" Ziya says. "If we don't absolutely need to fight, then we shouldn't. We need to worry about saving our energy, not wasting it".

  "The focus is survival" Judy adds. "Nothing more, nothing less".

  "It's a Death Game" Georgie says. "Get that through yer head!".

  "It's a survival competition" Ziya says. "Besides, that guy seems perfectly capable of organizing criminal acts. I don't know what he did to get here, but I'm sure he's more than capable of putting up a good fight. That's not something I want to test".

  "If he's that calm" Drake says, "then the guy probably has a plan".

  "Am I seriously alone on the idea of staying and fighting!?" Georgie asks.

  "Yes" Judy says.

  "Well..." Georgie says, then sighs. "Fuck my idea, I guess".

  "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" Jon says.

  "Anyways" Ziya says as she points over a wall, "I can see the stairs from here. Just a little ways to go before we make it to the next floor".

  "Just one problem though" Frank says, "there's a wall up ahead. The path is blocked".

  "Let me worry about that" Ziya says as she raises her hammer, and grips it tightly with both hands. Walking up to the wall, she winds up one big strike, and slams her hammer as hard as she can into the wall. Some large chunks of concrete chipped out of the wall as a small hole began to open. Again and again, Ziya kept striking the wall with the sledgehammer until the wall finally broke down with a large enough hole for them to fit through. They each slipped through, one at a time, until all nine of them were on the other side of the wall. As they turned around and faced the stairs, Ziya takes a sigh of relief and says "one floor down, nine to go until we're out of these ghost towns".

  After reaching Floor 29, Georgie and the others decided to rest, leaving Drake, Ziya and Judy the only ones awake. As they sat in silence, inside the first building they could enter, Judy stares down at the hammer that was once again being held by Ziya's jumpsuit. "It's rather convenient to find such a tool" Judy says. "It just might be the key we need to getting out of here".

  "I didn't think they'd give us sledgehammers in this game" Drake says.

  "I didn't either" Ziya says. "Maybe its just rare to find them, but I didn't see anything like a sledgehammer in the last game".

  "Whatever the case may be" Drake says, "we can definitely use this".

  "If we ever get caught in a maze of these walls again" Judy says, "then you could probably just break us a way through these towns".

  "True" Ziya says, "but using such a heavy weapon takes a lot of out you. We still need to prioritize survival, and preserve energy as we go".

  "Does this game really get that much worse?" Judy asks.

  "It only gets worse" Ziya replies.

  There was a short pause, then Judy asks "Hey, Ziya?".

  "Hm?" Ziya replies.

  "When you were starving" Judy asks, "did you ever think about... eating anyone?".

  Ziya thinks for a moment, then says "Maybe the others, because I don't like them... but how many of you would stick around anyone in the group who resorted to cannibalism?". Both Judy and Drake were silent for a few seconds, then Ziya says "and that's why I didn't do it. I rather need Judy's help, and I'm not leaving Drake to fend for himself".

  "So, instead, you chose to endure it?" Drake asks.

  "Well... yeah" Ziya says.

  "That's actually pretty remarkable" Drake says. "I couldn't imagine just trying to push onward while being that hungry".

  As the team continues moving onward, many of the other team members kept encouraging Ziya to use her hammer to break them a way through this maze of concrete buildings, every time they walked into a dead end. "No, I'm not just going to waste my own stamina for something so trivial" Ziya says. "I'll do it if we really need to get out of a sticky situation, but that's it".

  "At least give it to someone who's willing to use it" Frank complains.

  "Hell no" Ziya says. "It's my hammer!".

  "Can we keep it down?" Drake asks. "We still need to worry about getting through here without stirring up trouble!".

  The team creeps between the buildings, silently. About midway trough this town, they found a small group of people sitting down to catch their breath. The other group didn't notice them, so they retreated behind the wall. "There's four of them" Judy whispers. "What do you want to do from here?".

  "I say we kill 'em" Georgie whispers.

  "No" Ziya says, "we can wait for them to leave so we can pass through".

  "Oh for the love of- why are you making this harder than it needs to be?" Georgie harshly whispers.

  "You're the only one making things harder here" Ziya says.

  "Look, if ya want them ta move faster" Georgie says as he grabs the rebar Ziya still had stored on her jumpsuit. He pulls it out, waves it in front of her like a flag, then tosses it far over the wall behind them. It flew over and made a loud clanking sound. The enemy group immediately stood up and stared off in the direction of the noise like a pack of wolves. The one at the front looks back at the other three and nudges his head towards the noise, then all four of them begin walking towards where the rebar landed. After the pathway cleared up, Georgie says "See? Much better!".

  "Not too bad" Ziya says, almost impressed. "I guess you do have a brain".

  "Yeah, and maybe if ya used yers" Georgie says, "then we coulda already gotten past like... Floor 20!".

  "Can we save the bickering for later?" Will asks. "Come on! Move it!".

  The team continues slowly sneaking between the many buildings that comprise these towns. Eventually, before needing to take another break, they reached the stairs to the next floor. They immediately find the first place to rest on Floor 28. This time, it was Drake, Ziya and Judy's turn to rest. When they would wake up, they would continue their journey through the floors, while trying to avoid conflict as much as possible. They were finally almost halfway through the floors that comprise Pyramid, however, Ziya was aware that their efforts were far from half over. As they progressed, the towns became increasingly complex. They had managed to find a little bit of rations on Floor 28, but it was only enough to keep them going, not enough to satiate their hunger. Eventually, they made it to Floor 25. The group was feeling triumphant as they reached the top of the stairs that brought them to this floor. However, every victory in this game seemed to short lived. They didn't even have the chance to enter the first building before hearing a loud bang, as a gun was fired. Immediately as Ziya looks over, Drake was on the ground with a bullet wound in his head.