RUCKER clapped his hands together and everyone broke apart. The boys went off to Khan's room to order stuff for the party and we went off to Yaz's room for bikini shopping.

To get to her room, we had to loop around the hallway and go down several more hallways. When we were about halfway there that familiar strawberry scent hit me, and I heard a whisper.

Betinia.

Stopping my movements with a soft squeak, I spun around in the hallway, looking behind me. Nothing but flickering scones, wood paneling and emptiness stared back at me.

Did someone say my name? Or did I imagine it?

Yaz stopped in front of me a few paces. "What's wrong?"

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Someone say my name?"

Yaz wrinkled her forehead. "Nooo?"

I shrugged my shoulder. "Must've imagined it."

"Probably one of those creepy-ass guards or something," Yaz said, rolling her eyes. "Or the creators fucking with you. I wouldn't put it past those sadistic fucks."

Or Layla's ghost was haunting me, angry that I didn't unmask her murderer. Or I could just be overthinking things, right?

It took us a few more minutes to get to her room. It had a thick black door like mine, but instead of a peach, a syringe symbol mounted the middle.

A syringe? What did that mean? Drugs?

"My room's kind of a mess," Yaz said, putting her key in the lock and turning. The door swung open in one swoop. Instantly, the strong scent of gritty oil and burnt metal licked my nostrils.

It didn't take me long to figure out what was making that odor. Hood up, a beat-up 1969 Dodge Charger lounged in the corner with dirty spare parts and tools surrounding it.

The only reason I recognized the car was because Tim constantly ranted about the red one he had back in the day. He kept a tattered picture of it in his wallet and always found a way to bring it up in a conversation so he could show it off. It was so embarrassing when he did it with strangers.

I used to roll my eyes and say, "Tim, no one cares." I smiled, thinking of him, wishing he could tell me one of his old car stories now. Damn, I missed him so much.

It was weird how the little things that used to annoy you about a person disappear when you don't know if you'll ever see them again. Guess that was life, right?

"Uh, why do you have a car in here?" I asked, looking it up and down. Goopy black grease marks ruined the light carpeting around the car as oil leaked from underneath.

Yaz shrugged, waltzing into her room and dropping her keys on the black nightstand near her tall king-size bed. "Working on cars helps me relax. Plus, it's my dream car."

"I'm surprised they'd let you request it," I said, following her into the room, avoiding all the crumbled-up clothes and tools on the floor.

"Not like I can drive off in it," she said, jumping on her bed. A silk violet comforter covered her mattress while fluffy matching pillows cuddled the intricate headboard. "I only requested it to see if I could really request anything." She snorted. "I really didn't think it would work, but I was shocked as hell when I saw six deliverymen carrying it down the hall."

Besides the bed, the car, the tools, and clothes on the floor, there wasn't much personal stuff in her room. Just a bunch of designer packaging boxes and bags. There was also an iMac computer with a webcam in the corner on a glass desk.

Yaz pulled her hair into a messy bun. "Ready for bikini shopping?"

"How do we do that?"

Jumping off her bed, Yaz went over to her desk and clicked on her iMac. "We're going to request some."

My eyes enlarged a bit when she tapped on the Battle of the Killers app in the corner of her computer screen and then hit the live chat button. Within two seconds, hundreds of comments flooded the screen.

She ignored them, clicking on the blinking "P" symbol in the right-hand corner. Then, a loading bar popped up on her screen. "If you click on this, it loads your own personal live chat."

"Personal live chat?"

"Only your fans can chat with you here," she said, tapping the mouse. "People have to pay to be your fan."

"Of course," I murmured. This whole game was about money.

It took about thirty seconds for the screen to finish loading. The words, "Yaz is online" blinked on the screen in red as a live feed of Yaz materialized in a big box below it.

A blinking green dot pinged in the right corner of the camera feed as the other side of the computer screen consisted of a list of moving usernames. Every time someone entered her chat, their username would show up and the list would move.

I looked at the top left-hand corner and it said, "1.2 million fans" and "120k fans online now."

"Holy shit, you have 1.2 million fans?" I asked, looking at her.

Yaz laughed and shrugged. "People find me funny." She waved to the camera. "Yo guys."

Comments started to materialize at the bottom of the screen, along with a bar for Yaz to answer back.

"YAzzzzie!" Tigerdick34 said.

"You guys gonna fuck?" FriedChickenboner69 said.

"I want to see!" Prettygirlhoe45 said.

"Insult me Yaz! Call me a pussy! Please? Pretty please?" Yazsbitch1234 said.

"You're so pretty," Yourmomsahoe said.

"Show me dem tittes and I'll buy you a new dress," Pandass said.

Comment after comment rolled in, popping on the screen like moving techno lights. Just watching it made me dizzy and overwhelmed. She had at least fifty new comments every minute or so.

"How do you do this?" I asked, shaking my head. Not only was it overwhelming, but I couldn't imagine talking to these people. They were betting on my life, what was there to talk about? The weather? I couldn't experience that anymore so no. Maybe we could talk about how I didn't want to be here anymore?

"Trust me, it was hard at first," she said, turning away from the computer. "When I first got here, I was so fucking angry, you know? Kicking walls and screaming and shit. I went on the app originally to curse people out and I did, and they just ate it up and started sending me gifts and offering to buy me shit — shit that I would've never gotten back home." She sighed. "Still I was angry and just kept bitching and cursing everyone out. Mind you, I'm still getting gifts and more followers. But after a while, it just got tiring because nothing was changing. But it really sunk in when Tiran died. I realized wow — this shit's really real and I can fucking die and me just sitting around being angry ain't doing nothin'. I realized that if I wanted to survive, I need to get my shit together." She turned back to the screen. "I figured they created this fan shit for a reason, and I needed to get as many as possible to survive, so I actually started engaging with them. Mostly talking shit, which they liked, and my fans kept going up."

She was right. They wouldn't have created this fan system thing without a purpose. I needed to start interacting with mine, but it was hard to erase the negative feelings that flushed through me when I just thought about talking to them. Honestly, I probably didn't even have any since they probably thought I was stuck up or something.

"What do you talk about with them?"

Yaz scratched her nose. "They mostly just ask questions and I answer, or they say stupid shit and I comment on it. It's really not as hard as you think. They mostly do the talking, and you just respond."

"So, it's like what Rucker said." I looked at her. "We're celebrities."

"Basically," she said, nodding.

I stared at the whirling comments, one coming in after another. We've been on camera for weeks now, and it still felt weird. "And when you want something, you just ask for it and they give it to you?"

Yaz clicked on a blinking pink gift symbol in the top right-hand corner of the computer screen. It caused the username list to disappear and two buttons took its place. The red button said, "Request" and the pink button said, "Gifts."

She clicked the request button and a search bar appeared. "Enter what you want, and thousands of options show up." Typing on her keyboard, she put cinnamon roll into the bar and clicked search.

A thousand plus items showed up, and she filtered them out by clicking the bakery option, which narrowed her options to five hundred.

Ogling the items, my eyes paused on one. "You can get a cinnamon roll from France?"

"Yeah," she said, clicking on it. "And you can choose which bakery you want it from." Clicking on some random bakery, the screen blinked before going back to the chat.

The words "Yaz would like a cinnamon bun from La Frei Zieu" blinked on the screen over top of the chat.

Within a second, her screen blinked again, and it said, "assclown5627 has purchased your cinnamon roll request. It should arrive within twenty-four hours."

I jerked back, looking at her. "That's it?"

"Yeah, it's that simple," Yaz said, clicking on the gift symbol in the corner again, bringing up the two options again. This time she clicked on the "gifts" option. A list of items showed up. "This is a list of things that people bought for me without asking. I don't have to accept it, but if I want it, I just click on it."

I stared at the list. "Someone bought you a sex swing?"

Yaz laughed. "Most of my fans are kinky." She then clicked on the blinking pink heart in the corner of the gift list. "That's your fan mail. People write how much they love or hate you. I got a few hate messages, but it's whatever." She clicked the mouse. "And that's basically it. Nothing more to know."

I leaned my butt against the desk. "I wonder how you get your stuff so fast. Like how can you get a cinnamon roll from France and food from Brazil within a day?" Where were we at in the world for that to be possible?

"Don't know. Don't care. Don't think too much about it," she said with a shrug.

"Can you request fast food on here?" I asked.

Yaz plucked her glasses up her nose, eyes darkening. "No. You have to earn it."

"What?"

Yaz went back to the request page and typed in McDonald's. It showed up, but when she clicked on it, it said, "Need to get to two million fans to request."

"Seriously?"

"Yes," Yaz said, gritting her teeth. "I think the creators did it to be dicks. We can order anything that comes from a supermarket or convenience store, but nothing from franchises or chains until I hit two mil."

"Does anyone have two million fans?"

"I know there's a way to check other people's fan numbers, but I haven't been able to find it," she said, clicking the mouse. "I meant to ask Khan, but I kept forgetting with everything going on."

Yeah, it hasn't been the easiest twenty-four hours.

Yaz turned to the screen with a frown. "Yo fuckers, I need bikinis. Now."

The chat fluttered with comments.

"Uh, can you talk to them like that?" I asked, voice rising a few octaves.

"They like it when I curse them out," she said, and she was right. The more she bad-mouthed them, the more excited and happier they got. Her notifications kept pinging every few seconds with new gift notifications and fan mail.

She even called this one user a limp dick asshole who couldn't even get pussy if he paid for it, and he gifted her a pair of shoes.

In the end, she ended up with a hundred bikinis gifted to her.

"Seriously? A hundred? You filthy bitches couldn't do better than that?" Yaz rolled her eyes. "You guys are so fucking pathetic." More gift notifications beeped on the screen.

We had a total of three hundred bikinis to look through. She dragged the mouse and accepted all of them. The screen said they should be here within the hour.

Yaz flipped them off before clicking off the app. An amusing laugh left her throat when she turned and looked at my face.

"Hey, they like it. I'm just doing what they want," she said.

"I just don't understand why they would keep buying you things after you insulted them."

"I think a lot of my fans find me funny and some get off on it," she said, turning toward me. "I think the reason I got fans so fast was because there's no other contestant like me."

"What do you mean?"

"I was talking to Khan about it earlier," Yaz said, putting a strand of hair behind her ear. "He thinks that the creators and producers of the show basically picked us to be the final twelve because we all possess specific personality traits that they can easily market to viewers so that every viewer has someone they can connect with or root for. They made sure every single one of was very different from each other."

"But I thought the fans voted for us?" I bit my lip. My mind went back to the beginning of the game when there were over twenty of us left. Jookie said they wheedled down the number because of viewer voting. "But they probably lied, right?"

Yaz leaned against the wall. "They had to because how else could they form a cast of contestants that were so different from each other?" She looked up at the ceiling. "All reality television is scripted and fake in some way and the creators picked us and tricked the viewers into thinking they voted for us."

"It's a very good idea," I said before biting my cheek. "Makes the viewers think that they have some control over the game and makes it more interactive."

"Which brings in more money," Yaz said before pausing. "About two months before we got here, I left a party late — maybe around three am? And some weird guy in a hoodie was following me, recording me. When I think on it now, he was probably sent by someone in the game. They were probably stalking everyone who got sponsored so they could figure out which of us they wanted to keep for the game."

Damn. "So everything was rigged. At least in the beginning."

"I wish this shit was rigged and scripted now," Yaz mumbled.

"So, how is everyone marketed?"

"They don't outright say it or anything," Yaz said. "At least not for us to see, but from watching everyone's personal live feeds, everyone was so different. Too different, you know? I brought it up to Khan on how weird that was, and he brought up his personality marketing theory." She yawned. "Chi's the super girly one and she this sexy spoiled daddy's girl thing going on. I think a lot of her fans are into that DDLG play. Demo plays up her accent a lot and pretends she doesn't know English."

"What's Gmie?"

Yaz rolled her eyes. "The innocent virgin one. She wears white and talks to them all sweetly — basically being a fake bitch but they believe her." She yawned. "I honestly think that everyone just exaggerates for their personal live feed because when we're all together Gmie ain't sweet and Demo speaks English, and Chi's not that ditzy. I don't blame them either. Everyone's trying to get fans any way they can."

Except me, apparently.  "What about the boys?"

"Rucker plays up his bad boy persona. Khan has that hacker intelligent mysterious thing going on. Aries is already a celebrity and has this geeky vibe going on. He literally spends time talking about his alien religion stuff and his fans eat it up." Yaz rolled her eyes. "Fee's just fee. He doesn't chat much, if at all. When he does, he mostly talks about the wilderness and hunting and animals."

"What about Sebastian?"

"You know he's the glamorous boy next door type. He's blonde and he's sweet and nice," Yaz said. "You know Sebastian. I swear it's all an act sometimes."

"Really?"

"He's here because he killed someone, right?" Yaz said. "Can't be that sweet."

I didn't kill anyone. When that thought filtered through my mind, Jookie's smirk and his tantalizing purple eyes filled my vision.

"You did too murder someone," he said in my head, and I cursed it away. I didn't. I didn't murder anyone. I refused to believe it. He was just fucking with me yet again.

"True," I said, shaking away the negative thoughts and getting back on topic. "I wonder what I'm marketed as."

"Can't be the smart type because that's Khan, and Gmie has that innocent virginal thing down even though I've learned that you're far from that."

I laughed. "Why you say that?"

"Two words — cannibalism challenge," she said, spreading her hands out in front of her on each word.

"Yeah," I said, knowing I couldn't deny it. Tini was so out of control then. My teeth sank into my lip, remembering the feel of the knife in my hand as I cut into Tiran's delicious—

"You alright?" Yaz said, interrupting my thoughts. "Your eyes did some weird shit."

I coughed, shaking my head before putting on that familiar fake smile. "I'm good," I said, voice coming out extra squeaky while trying to hide my sweaty palms. "Just got lost in thought for a second."

Yaz went to speak but a knock at the door interrupted her. "Violet X1," a voice said through the door. "Violet X1."

"Who's that?"

"It's the delivery people," Yaz said, walking over and opening the door. "Violet X1 is my password for the delivery men so that I know it's them and not someone trying to kill me. You get a new one every couple of days in your messages."

Over twenty men dressed in bright red uniforms with "BOTK" stitched on the front towered in the hall around her door, carrying boxes and bags of stuff. Every one of them had a stern look on their face, contrasting with the bright colored bags in their hands.

It was a really funny sight actually.

"Where?" a guy in front asked.

"On and around the bed," Yaz said, pointing.

The delivery men stomped in and left the boxes and bags around the bed. Her room wasn't too big, so all the new stuff basically took up all the space.

I stared at the designer boxes and bags, seeing items I would've never been able to afford before. Tim wasn't exactly rich, but he wasn't poor either. We were comfortable, and I never wanted for anything, but I didn't have the balls to ask him for a four-hundred-dollar bikini.

Yaz grinned, pulling a bikini out of a Fendi bag. "You ready, girl?"

♟♙♟

Who's your favorite character? Top three?