All Against All E-Book

Nathan Allen

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

One rule. One winner. One hundred million dollars. A group of random strangers are invited to take part in a mysterious lottery with an intriguing premise. Twenty-seven accept the offer.   But what begins as an unusual social experiment quickly descends into something much more sinister. The contestants receive more than they bargained for, and the dark side of human nature reveals itself.     As the lottery spirals into a life-and-death struggle for survival, Alice Kato is left searching for answers. How far are ordinary people willing to go to win this extraordinary amount of money? Is there anyone she can trust? Is there any way out?     And just who exactly is pulling all the strings?     Everyone has their price. Most just don't know what it is yet.

Leseprobe

All Against All

By Nathan Allen

Copyright 2016 Nathan Allen

Smashwords Edition

[email protected]

@NathanAWrites

Cover image by Aleksandra Bilic

https://ie.linkedin.com/in/aleksandrabilic

Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. Thank you for your support.

Also by Nathan Allen

Hollywood Hack Job

Horrorshow

Pretenders

The War On Horror: Tales From A Post-Zombie Society

The War On Horror II: Return Of The Undead Menace

“The state of men without civil society (which state we may properly call the state of nature) is nothing else but a mere war of all against all.”

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

“You don't have to join a freak show just because the opportunity came along.”

Marge Simpson, “Homerpalooza” (1996)

Chapter 1

A few facts about the animal kingdom:

The majority of conflicts that occur in the wild are not between an animal and its predator. They are more often between two members of the same species.

A low-status chimpanzee has more to fear from a domineering alpha male than a leopard.

Most of the scars and bite marks an animal suffers throughout the course of its life will be caused by an attack from one of its own, rather than a hungry predator.

The apex creature of a species is rewarded with food, mates, status, and the opportunity to pass along its genes.

The weaker of the pack are left to squabble among themselves for their share of the leftovers.

Might is right, and the weakest eat last.

The Soldiers Memorial Hall was a nondescript community center situated on a quiet street in an anonymous pocket of suburbia. The sign out the front announced that tomorrow night was bingo night. The night following, they were host to an over-forties singles dance.

Alice Kato made her way up the front steps, three minutes before the designated starting time.

She pushed the front door open and stepped into the foyer. She was met by a solitary middle-aged woman seated behind a booth. They made eye contact, but the woman’s face remained a mask. She offered no welcoming smile, or any other invitation for Alice to approach.

“Um, hi,” Alice said, sounding slightly unsure of herself. “I’m here because I was –”

“Invitation.”

The woman spoke in a flat monotone.

Alice scrambled to retrieve the invitation from her jacket pocket. She handed it over, and the woman verified its authenticity underneath a fluorescent scanner.

“Turn to your left and face the camera,” the woman ordered.

Alice turned and squinted. “I don’t see any –”

She was temporarily blinded by an unexpected flash of white light. She blinked a few times in rapid succession. Blobs of color hung in the air in front of her.

Alice never really liked the way she appeared in photographs, but she was certain this would be one of her most cringeworthy.

The booth woman pressed a button, and a door opened behind her. Alice took this as her cue to enter.

The room was a medium-sized auditorium, the type often used for motivational speakers and corporate events. The smell of stale cologne lingered, a hangover from the real estate seminar held there earlier in the day.

About a hundred people were already inside, seated on flimsy plastic chairs arranged in a seashell formation. At first glance Alice could detect no common thread between those in attendance. They were drawn from a range of ages, ethnicities and sociological backgrounds. A low murmur hovered as they chatted quietly among themselves.

A few glanced up at Alice when the door opened, then returned to their invitations resting on their laps once they saw that she was just another of the invited attendees.

Alice self-consciously tiptoed around to the back of the room and settled into an empty seat.

On the stroke of eight p.m., a rear door opened, and the Messenger entered.

He was a fortyish man of dark features, dressed in a stylish designer suit that Alice guessed was worth more than her car. He was also unusually tall, at least six foot eight, and had to stoop slightly to avoid hitting his head on the doorframe.

The chatter came to an immediate halt.

One hundred pairs of eyes followed the Messenger as he strode to the front of the room. This scrutiny was not reciprocated; the individual members of the crowd remained invisible to the Messenger.

He took his place behind the lectern. The vacuum of silence was so severe that Alice could hear her own beating heart.

After consulting his notes for one brief moment, the Messenger looked up at the audience. With nothing in the way of introduction or formalities, he launched straight into his spiel.

“If you are here tonight,” he began, “that means you have been selected to take part in a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

His voice was loud, and he spoke with confidence. He could project to the back of the room without the need for amplification.

“Rest assured, my client is not here to sell you anything, nor are they interested in taking your money. What my client is about to offer is one hundred percent genuine, so pay close attention because I will not repeat myself.”

Alice sat up in her seat. Like everyone else in the room, she had no idea what this was all about. But her curiosity had certainly been piqued.

The Messenger continued.

“On the back of your invitation you will find two contact numbers.”

The ruffling sound of one hundred pieces of paper being turned over swept through the room.

Alice studied the back of her invitation. There were indeed two embossed numbers in the bottom left- and right-hand corners. She hadn’t noticed them before – or if she had, she didn’t think anything of them. Both were five digits long, so she probably assumed they were serial numbers or something similar.

“If you call the number on the left, you will receive two thousand dollars in cash within twenty-four hours.”

Alice shifted her gaze upwards, studying the body language of those seated in front of her. She tried to gauge their reactions. Like them, she expected the Messenger to qualify his statement with terms and conditions. But none were forthcoming.

“If you call the number on the right,” the Messenger said, “your name will be entered into a type of lottery. A sum of money has been placed in a trust, and the total value of that trust, along with any accumulated interest, will be paid out to the lottery’s last surviving member.”

A slight whisper rippled through the crowd. A few nervous laughs escaped. Whatever these people were expecting when they came here tonight, it was safe to assume it wasn’t anything like this.

The Messenger pressed on. “The total value of this trust is one hundred million dollars.”

The next thing Alice heard was the sound of one hundred people devoid of breath.

The Messenger’s words seemed to echo around the room, bouncing off the walls like a ping pong ball.

One.

Hundred.

Million.

Dollars.

She couldn’t see the reaction of any of the other attendees, but she assumed their faces all had the same bewildered expression that she currently wore.

“Now, I understand if you believe this to be some sort of hoax. But let me assure you, this is a genuine offer. There is no catch. There are no conditions. The sum of one hundred million dollars plus interest will be deposited into the bank account of the last living participant in the lottery, and to that person only. Otherwise, you may accept your two thousand dollar consolation prize. You have until midnight tomorrow to make your decision, at which point the offer expires and you will receive nothing.”

The Messenger turned and headed for the same door in which he entered.

The crowd were so bamboozled by everything they had just seen and heard that a few minutes had passed before anyone noticed he had slipped out of the room without answering any of their questions.

Chapter 2

Three days earlier, Alice awoke to find a plain brown envelope had been slipped under her front door.

The specific details of the invitation were hazy, and the message rather cryptic. It provided a time and a place: eight p.m. Thursday at the Soldiers Memorial Hall on Kent Road. It promised an immediate payment of two thousand dollars just for attending. It stated, unequivocally, that this offer extended only to the person whose name was on the invitation, and the offer would be rescinded if anyone else tried to enter with it.

What the invitation did not do was supply any information as to what the meeting was about, or who was behind it.

It was this sort of vagueness and ambiguity that stimulated Alice’s curiosity. Ordinarily she would have tossed the letter straight in the trash. But something in the back of her mind told her this was worth looking into. Part of this was due to the invitation itself. It wasn’t a cheap mass-produced piece of junk mail promising some sort of bogus get-rich-quick scheme. It was printed on expensive ivory-colored matte paper, with gold leaf inscription and striking calligraphy. The envelope had been stamped with a hot wax seal. It looked like something one might receive when summoned to dine with royalty. This, and the fact that it had been hand delivered, contributed to the enigma surrounding the document. It had intrigued her enough not to immediately throw it out.

Alice read and reread the invitation several times, searching for the asterisk that pointed to the fine print that revealed the catch behind the offer. But there was none. She put her research skills to use to see if she could dig up any further information, or find out if anything else like this had ever happened before, but her search came up with nothing.

She asked her neighbors if they had also received invitations. None of them had.

Her best guess was that she was being specifically targeted as part of some elaborate viral marketing stunt. If so, the brains behind the campaign or product launch had done their job. Alice’s attention, as well as her imagination, had well and truly been captured.

She decided she may as well turn up to see what it was all about. She had nothing to lose, other than another night alone in her drab apartment.

If nothing else, it would provide a temporary reprieve from the crushing monotony that her life had become.

The one hundred people shuffled out of the Soldiers Memorial Hall with a minimum of fuss. None were entirely sure what they had just witnessed. A few attendees murmured quietly among themselves, but for the most part they were silent.

Alice was one of the last to leave. Along with everyone else, she had no idea what to make of it all. It was such a strange encounter, and one that had ended so abruptly, she began to question whether it really did happen. For all she knew, this could be one big collective hallucination.

While the majority of the crowd returned to their vehicles, a small group of smokers milled around the front steps beneath a single strobing fluorescent light. They engaged in polite chit chat while still remaining cautious – they were all strangers to one another, and no one was really sure who they could trust. For all they knew, the person next to them was in on the joke.

“I bet it’s one of them psychological experiments run by the government,” a moustached man said as he flicked his lighter. “Or a university, like that Milgram experiment. Or the one with all them people pretending to be prisoners.”

“I think a recruitment corporation could be behind it,” a younger woman countered. “Headhunters. You know, like they’re trying to identify potential leaders.”

“And how would they do that exactly?” the moustached man said.

“Because the people who choose to take the money upfront only have a short-term mentality, but the ones that go for the millions are the mavericks who can aim high and can see the bigger picture. Instant gratification versus long-term rewards, and all that. Gamblers verses risk-takers.”

“Gambling and risk are the same thing.”

“No, they’re not,” a younger man in a sharp gray suit interjected. “Gambling is betting on random outcomes. Risk is a calculated venture.”

Alice moved in closer. She surreptitiously activated the voice record function on her APhID to tape the conversation. She wasn’t sure what compelled her to do this. It was probably her journalistic ambitions taking over, documenting the moment in case she needed to refer back to it at some point in the near-future.

She casually leaned up against the stair railing, like she was waiting for a friend to come by to pick her up.

“It’s probably just one of those dumb prank shows they have on TV,” a man with a receding hairline and ineffective combover suggested. “Someone out there is playing a big joke at our expense.”

He ground his cigarette butt into the pavement with his foot.

“It’s obviously some kind of marketing ploy,” the gray suit said. “They’re trying to sell us something. You go to claim your two grand, the next thing you know you’re handing over your credit card details and being charged three hundred dollars a month to buy whatever it is they’re selling.”

The discussion came to a halt when the hall door opened and the final attendee exited the building.

A morbidly obese man maneuvered his electric wheelchair through the narrow doorway and down the ramp adjacent to the stairs. A respiratory mask covered his mouth and nose, connected to an oxygen tank mounted to the back of his chair.

As he passed, the group saw that both his legs had been amputated at the knee.

They didn’t intentionally make this man the center of attention, but that was what ended up happening.

A few pitying glances were cast in his direction. Others in the group averted their eyes, doing their best not to stare at this gentleman’s unfortunate predicament.

The silence was interrupted when Mike Lever, a burly guy in a trucker cap, removed the crumpled invitation from his back pocket and smoothed it out on his leg.

“What are you doing?” the combover man asked, rolling another cigarette.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m claiming my two big ones.”

A light breeze swept through the night. Alice felt the warm air on her skin, followed by a face full of smoke from the gray suit’s Camel filters. She held her breath to avoid gagging on the pungent stench.

“You mean you’re not going after the hundred million?” the young woman asked with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“Hey, I have bills to pay,” Mike said. “And with the amount of junk I eat, I’ll be lucky if my heart’s still pumping blood by the end of next week.”

He punched the number into his APhID.

The gray suit let out a dismissive snort. “You don’t seriously expect to get any money out of this, do you?”

“Guess there’s only one way to find out,” Mike said with an easy shrug. “If a wad of cash lands on my front doorstep, at least we know that part of it’s for real.”

He held the APhID to his ear and listened.

There was a soft whirr, and then a click. Next came a brief silence, followed by a dial tone.

“What was it?” the woman said.

“Nothing,” he replied. “It just hung up straight away.”

The combover man smirked and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Not before charging a hundred bucks to your account, I bet.”

Mike Lever’s home was an ugly old weatherboard junker situated in a lower-working class neighborhood on the city’s fringes, sandwiched between abandoned houses with boarded-up windows and overgrown lawns.

He pulled into the driveway and parked his Mazda station wagon in the garage.

That was a waste of time, he thought to himself as he killed the ignition and made his way to the front door. It was late, well beyond eleven p.m. He’d traded his whole night for some pointless seminar, and he had to be up in less than six hours for work tomorrow morning.

The invitation he’d found in his letterbox the other day promised the easiest two thousand dollars he’d ever make. But instead he got ... whatever the hell that was. A marketing stunt? A performance art piece? He suspected the seminar might be a front for Amway, or a Ponzi scheme. But not that.

It dawned on Mike during his journey home what was really going on here. This was probably the work of some sneaky telemarketing outfit. It was becoming harder and harder for companies to harvest private APhID numbers, so they had to resort to underhanded methods. By making that call to claim his prize, Mike had voluntarily added his number to their database. He could now look forward to invasive and annoying calls interrupting his dinner for the next decade.

He fished around his pocket for his keys as he trudged towards the house, silently cursing his stupidity.

And then he stopped.

Something was waiting for him on his front doorstop.

A solitary package.

He blinked twice to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.

He tiptoed towards it, like it might somehow be dangerous. He knelt down for a closer look.

It was a small gift box.

He looked around to see if anyone was there. He half-expected to find some prankster watching him from the bushes. If so, they remained well hidden. The neighborhood was empty, save for a stray dog roaming the streets, and a couple of young children out riding their bikes far too late for a school night.

Mike lifted the box up. It was light in weight. He removed the lid.

His mouth fell open.

Inside was a thick wad of brand new one hundred dollar bills.

He plucked out a single bill and held it between his thumb and forefinger. It certainly felt genuine – the crisp texture, the ridges, the raised ink.

He held it up to the light. The watermark and embedded thread were both visible. It even had that new money smell.

This money was real.

He did a quick count of the bills. There were twenty in total. Two thousand dollars exactly.

He spluttered out a laugh of astonishment. He couldn’t believe this was actually happening to him. Just when he thought this night couldn’t get any stranger.

Mike’s jovial mood was interrupted when his front door swung open. He quickly stuffed the bills into his back pocket.

Mike’s wife looked at him as he stood there with the empty box in his hand.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, a look of fiery irritation painted across her face.

Mike had to think fast. He blurted out the first believable excuse that drifted into his head.

“Out drinking with the boys,” he said.

It wasn’t the best excuse he’d ever come up with, but his wife seemed to buy it. She shook her head and stormed off, muttering invective under her breath.

A devilish grin broke out on Mike’s face. He’d be in the doghouse with the wife for a day or two, but he could put up with that for two grand.

He crumpled up the box and deposited it into the trash on his way inside.

Chapter 3

Hi, my name is Tatiana. I’m a waitress and part-time model, and for the past two weeks I’ve been dating Brody from Level 1 (the cute one!!!). I have 100’s of photos and videos of us together, plus loads of explicit messages that he sent me. Call me if you’re interested. I’ll tell all for $10,000.

Two nights ago I met Amandla de Knight (swimsuit model/TV host) at a club. Long story short, she came back to my place where she did enough coke, weed and Xylox to euthanize a rhino. Totally wrecked. In my possession are dozens of incriminating photographs. They can be in your possession for the low, low price of $1,000 cash. This one-time only offer expires at 5 today. Peace.

My name is Sophie, you might have seen me as a contestant on Diva Fever (I made it thru to the second round). When I was on the show I was romantically involved with the judge Ely Swain (Ely Swine more like it). Two days after I broke it off with him, I was voted off the show. Willing to sell my story for $15,000-$20,000, depending on how graphic you want me to get with the details (I should warn you – he’s into some pretty kinky stuff).

Alice yawned until her eyes watered. She glanced up at the clock, then immediately regretted doing so. It was only 9:30 a.m. Her day had barely even begun.

Her workspace, one of the many cramped cubicles on the fifth floor of The Daily Ink building, was slightly larger than the wooden crates used to transport exotic animals by ship. With so many people in such close proximity to one another, the place was a sweaty petri dish of bacteria and airborne viruses. The floor resembled a human battery farm from above, packed with Shakespeare’s monkeys hurrying to file their copy before deadline.

Fridays always dragged the longest, but today seemed particularly tedious.

Alice struggled to summon a single ounce of enthusiasm for her work as she sifted through each of the one hundred and twelve messages left for her by readers of The Daily Ink. Each message was a variation of the same theme – a celebrity (often going by the loosest definition of the term) had allegedly engaged in illicit or immoral conduct, and it now fell on The Daily Ink to expose them as the twisted deviants that they were.

Alice’s job was to select the stories she believed would appeal most to readers, send them off to the legal department for approval, then churn out fifteen hundred of the most over the top, sensationalized words she could manufacture.

For the most part, those supplying the stories had experienced a fleeting brush with a pseudo-celebrity and were looking for a way of extending that moment for as long as possible. They were also looking for a way of profiting from this fleeting brush.

The Daily Ink may have billed themselves as a news service, but very little of what they published could actually be classified as news. Bawdy gossip was their stock-in-trade, and the main reason why anyone bothered to read it. Their mantra was “trash equals cash”, and since advertising revenue was directly linked to story views, no one was about to take any risks in overestimating the audience’s intelligence.

They had amassed a loyal readership who enjoyed nothing more than being outraged and titillated in equal measure by the actions of people they didn’t know, and in some cases had never heard of, engaging in activities that didn’t affect them.

Alice had worked at The Daily Ink for four years now, and every day devoured another small portion of her soul. She started off in an entry-level position in the hope that it would lead to something a little more substantial down the line. She naïvely believed that if she put in the hard yards and paid her dues, she would slowly but surely rise up the ranks within a couple of years, and she would be given the opportunity to tackle more serious subjects. It hadn’t quite panned out that way, mostly due to the fact that gossip and fluff made up about two thirds of The Daily Ink’s content these days.

She was like a rodent on a hamster wheel, forever expelling a lot of energy without ever really getting anywhere.

Alice opened the next message in the queue, just as a hand landed on her shoulder.

It was a hand that belonged to her boss, Dinah Gold. She knew without looking that it was Dinah standing behind her. She could tell by the firmness of the grip.

Dinah’s hand had been lost in a boating accident some years earlier, and she had been fitted with a robotic replacement. It worked just like a normal hand, but every now and then it would need recalibration. Alice felt a tune-up was long overdue; the hand was squeezing her shoulder hard and pinching down on a nerve. Numbness was rapidly setting in, shooting down the length of her right arm, all the way to the tips of her fingers.

She gritted her teeth and tried not to show any outward signs of discomfort.

“Anything worthwhile in the queue today?” Dinah said.

“Just the usual,” Alice replied. “Another Diva Fever contestant accusing Ely Swain of sexual impropriety.”

“Oh dear.” Dinah let out a small laugh. “We ought to send that man some flowers. He really is the gift that keeps on giving.”

She took her hand away, and Alice allowed herself to relax.

“By the way, how did the meeting go last night?”

“Oh ... that.”

Alice remembered that she had briefly mentioned her mysterious invitation to her coworkers a couple of days ago. Dinah was in close proximity at the time and must have overheard her.

She stopped short of divulging too much information. Pins and needles were crippling her right arm, and she didn’t want to extend Dinah’s drop-by visit any longer than necessary. Besides, there was the possibility that a story – a proper story – existed somewhere in amongst all of this. Dinah had a habit of instantly rejecting Alice’s pitches if she didn’t find them salacious enough. Alice knew she would have to be a little bit sneaky if this piece was to ever see the light of day.

“It was just something organized by this religious group,” Alice said. “They were trying to entice new members into joining their congregation.”

“I knew there had to be some sort of catch,” Dinah said, shaking her head. “You know how it goes – welcome to our flock, join us in celebrating god’s love, here’s your two thousand dollars. Now sign here to say you’ll donate twenty percent of your weekly income to our church.”

Alice nodded. “Something like that.”

“There are always strings attached, Alice,” Dinah said before she departed. “No such thing as a free lunch.”

Thursday night’s meeting lingered in Alice’s mind for the remainder of the day, and at seventeen minutes to midnight she found herself sitting on her couch with one eye on the clock, weighing up the pros and cons of each option.

A guaranteed two thousand dollars.

Or an outside chance of winning one hundred million.

She held the invitation in front of her face and reviewed it for the fifty-third time, as if reading it once more would force an obvious choice to leap out at her. But this was no help. If anything, it only added to her confusion.

She still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced the offer was legitimate – although she knew the first part of it was. News had filtered back to her that several of the meeting’s attendees had elected to take the first option and had already received their two thousand dollars. Alice wasn’t broke, but she wasn’t rich either. Like most people, she could always do with the extra cash.

So that half of the deal was genuine. Did that mean the other half was, too?

She cast her mind back to the events of the previous night. She was one of the younger people in attendance. Alice was twenty-six; the majority there were in their thirties, forties or fifties. She figured she stood a better than average chance of outliving them all. She was in reasonably good health – she didn’t drink or smoke, she ate well, and she made an effort to look after herself. There was no history of serious illness in her family. Her great-grandmother lived until the age of ninety-nine, and she had a great aunt who made it to one hundred and seven. That had to count for something.

Her mother died when she was forty-eight, but that was in a car accident. Her father, to the best of her knowledge, was still alive somewhere.

Alice once had some trouble with prescription medication when she became addicted to Xylox, but that was all under control now. She’d put that brief part of her life behind her, and was confident no lasting damage had been done.

The more she thought about it, the more reasons she kept coming up with to justify choosing option number two.

She figured that she would have many more opportunities throughout her life to make a quick two thousand dollars, but the chance to make a hundred million wouldn’t come around again.

From what she was hearing, the majority of last night’s attendees were choosing to take the money upfront, putting the odds even greater in her favor.

And, if nothing else, there had to be a good story somewhere in all of this. This bizarre proposition could form the basis of a feature article for her to write. A story so strange that it could only be true. If she’d received an offer like this, there may have been others before her. It could end up becoming an ongoing series of articles. At any rate, it was better than churning out endless celebrity sex scandals and barely-disguised product placement day after day.

And unlike the majority of what she produced, this story would actually be true.

Everything compelled her to go with the second option. But something still prevented her from actually going ahead and dialing the number.

The clock ticked over to 11:51 p.m. The deadline was nine minutes away. If she didn’t make her mind up soon, she’d be left with nothing.

She looked at her APhID and willed it to ring.

Alice had contacted her brother Lachlan earlier in the day in the hope that he could shed some light on this unusual proposal. Lachlan was older than Alice (by two full weeks), and he was much more worldly than she was. He was always the one she looked to when she needed advice. But he was also notoriously difficult to get in touch with, and he would often disappear and reappear in her life at random intervals.

She had left a message asking him to call her back, but messages could sometimes take days to reach him.

Lachlan was a member of an underground activist network called Discordia, an infamous collective known for their anti-government and anti-corporate pranks. The majority of their stunts were fairly benign, aimed at embarrassing a corporation or exposing their unethical practices. But that all changed when one of their stunts attracted a little more attention than they bargained for.

Discordia had issued a phony (but convincing) press release, stating that the restaurant chain Aqua Bar was under investigation following allegations their meals contained traces of gorilla meat. This, the press release stated, was responsible for a recent tapeworm outbreak among its customers.

The company’s share price was sent into free fall for several hours following this announcement, with billions wiped from its share price.

While many dismissed the hoax as a fairly juvenile yet harmless prank, the regulatory body were less than impressed by what they considered illegal stock market manipulation. Aqua Bar were even less amused, and placed pressure on the police force to punish those responsible.

Aqua Bar just happened to be one of the major sponsors of the police force, and so they did as they were told.

They quickly swooped in and arrested Lukas Ormsby, one of Discordia’s founding members. He was thrown into solitary confinement, denied access to visitors and legal representation, and held without charge for months on end.

The situation quickly escalated when Discordia carried out a citizen’s arrest of their own. They staged the audacious kidnapping of Emilia Ulbricht, the twenty year old daughter of billionaire media mogul Ethan Ulbricht, whose AFX Entertainment Group was another of the force’s major sponsors. They announced they would be holding Emilia without charge in a confined space at an undisclosed location, and would allow her no contact with the outside world. In other words, she would be afforded the exact same rights that Lukas Ormsby presently had – deprived of her liberty for no discernible justification, and with no date set for release.

The two sides were now locked in an ugly stalemate. Discordia announced that the police could end this farce simply by upholding Lukas’s civil rights and releasing him from custody, and they in turn would release Emilia. The police refused, claiming this would amount to “caving in to terrorists”.

At present, the situation showed no sign of resolution. Lachlan, as well as all other members of Discordia, was considered a fugitive of the law. He faced immediate arrest, and had been forced into hiding for the past three months.

Three minutes to midnight came around, and Alice decided that Lachlan was unlikely to be calling her any time soon. A decision about the lottery had to be made, and if she couldn’t do it herself she would have to rely on the fate of the universe to do it for her.

She fished a coin out from her pocket and flipped it into the air.

Chapter 4

HE WHO DIES LAST WINS

By Alice Kato

The location: an innocuous community hall on a quiet suburban street.

The time: eight p.m. on a warm Thursday night.

In attendance: one hundred complete strangers, selected at random.

The reason: unclear.

Three days earlier, gold leaf-embossed invitations were hand-delivered to a range of civilians who, on the surface, appeared to have little in common. The details were vague, the motives unclear and, for the most part, the recipients were confused.

What they did manage to glean was that an unusual offer was being put to them: show up to the given location at the given time and collect a guaranteed two thousand dollars. In cash. Tax-free. No questions asked. No strings attached.

Little did they know that, as peculiar as this offer may have appeared, things were about to get a whole lot weirder.

Alice had only just settled in to work on her article when she heard a knock at the door.

It was late, approaching midnight. The interruption annoyed her more than it alarmed her, as it had disrupted her momentum. She was hoping to get the bulk of her story completed tonight so she could submit it to the editors by the end of the week. She had to make productive use of her time too, since she was only permitted to work on these kinds of stories after hours. The Daily Ink paid her to turn out nothing but D-grade celebrity junk stories for eight hours a day. Dinah considered anything else a waste of time.

Alice rose from her seat and looked through the door’s peep hole. There was no one out there. She opened the door a crack and peered down the hallway. It was empty.

A large brown package sat on the floor in front of the door. “Alice Kato” was scrawled across the top in black marker pen.

She quickly gathered up the package and carried it inside.

She placed it on her dining room table and, after examining it for a minute or two, sliced through the string and brown paper wrapping with a pair of scissors.

Inside was a box. She opened the flaps at the top and found a letter.

It read:

Meet the contestants.

Congratulations! If you are reading this, you are one of the twenty-seven lucky contenders who have chosen to take part in our lottery. The sum of $100 million (plus interest) will be paid to the last surviving contestant only. Participation in this lottery is not transferable or redeemable.

Good luck!

Beneath the letter she found a stack of color photographs, similar to modeling headshots. Alice flipped through them one by one.

The first was of a thirtyish blonde woman. A mini-biography on the back identified her as Mia Gordon. It stated that Mia was a thirty-seven year old divorcée with no children who worked as a legal secretary. Her home address, work address, APhID number and more had also been supplied.

The second photograph was a man by the name of Christopher Gibson. Alice recognized him immediately – he was the heavyset wheelchair-bound gentleman she encountered the night of the meeting. Christopher was forty-one, single and unemployed.

The package contained twenty-seven profiles in total. The last one belonged to Alice.

The photograph was the one taken in the foyer prior to the meeting. Just as she suspected, it was awful. Even worse than the one on her passport, but at least that was the size of a postage stamp, and had only ever been seen by a handful of people. The one she was looking at was an unflattering eight by ten shot showing her squinting into the light. Every bump and blemish on her face had been magnified.

The flip side divulged all her personal details:

Name: Alice Olivia Kato.

Date of birth: 8 August 2040

Citizen identification number: 41-946-162-915

Marital status: Unmarried

Children: 0

Home address: 1204/550 Hickory Crescent, Rivercliff

Occupation: Journalist

Employer: The Daily Ink

Employer address: Level 5, 1 Pharaoh Parade, Amherst

Aurora Phone Interconnect Device (APhID) number: 1010 1802 3095

Alice had no idea where they had sourced all her personal details from. She certainly hadn’t given any of this information out. Now she knew everything about the other participants in the lottery, and they knew everything about her.

But she still didn’t know who was responsible for the lottery, or the motivations behind it.