Wakey Wakey Eggs and Bakey

[Applesintime]

There were, at the last count, roughly 15k schools in the United States of America. Even subtracting the seven schools that the Arthro Taskforce had already hit, the chance of one individual school getting hit was infinitely small. Alex had stepped onto the bus figuring that he was fine. Everything was OK.

But, he had been wrong.

((S002 — Alex Avanesian: Game Start))

As soon as Alex Avanesian's eyes snapped open, he jumped up, looking around him. Tenderly reaching up to his neck, Alex felt the collar, his breath becoming just a little more shaky at that. This was real. Wasn't a bad dream. He was here. He was in Survival of the Fittest.

Well, silver lining, it certainly wasn't faked. At least he knew that now.

"Fuck," Alex gasped. He didn't normally swear, but, like, if there was a time to swear it was now, when he'd been abducted and sent into the worst series of terror attacks the US had seen in years. Closing his eyes, sticking his hands in his pockets for warmth, Alex took deep breaths.

Calm.

Slow.

Steady.

Alex wasn't dead just yet. But he might soon be. He had seen this play out before seven times. He had seen how the people who swore they would never kill on day one dispatched their friends easily the next night. Pretending nobody would play was naive.

And from the second his eyes had snapped open to watch his teachers die to the gun and the collar, he knew he wasn't going to just sit on his ass and twiddle his thumbs waiting for someone to come pick them up.

"I, uh, I know you guys are-are gonna start, uh, seeing this soon. I might be dead, I dunno." Alex rambled as he looked around. Empty snow. They'd never done a snowy island before. It was kinda cold, so he should probably get a move on. There wasn't a weapon in the bag - no gun, which would make shit harder - but there was a spear lying on the ground next to him. Picking it up with his left hand, he examined it. Faintly in the back of his head, some rant from Brant about how the spear had stood reign as the weapon of choice for thousands of years played.

"It's Anesian here, for you guys at ithacaconspiracies.com. Citizen, Joe, you all were right, and I was an idiot. I could be fucking..." With his free hand, Alex sorta shook it around, trying to figure out what he wanted to say. "With you guys. Shitposting about this, probably buying a fucking lottery ticket or something because I fucking escaped Tracen." The idea that he was here still sent dread through his heart. There had been maybe a hundred people on this trip. Kitty, Evie, a bunch of his anti-SOTF club friends, Medea. They were all going to die. That was just how Survival of the Fittest was.

"But I''m gonna see you guys soon. And, uh, Lexik." Alex looked around for the nearest camera, but in the middle of a snowy field near a mountain, he couldn't see one. Maybe something was buried in the snow, but if someone stood on it and they blew them up for it that probably wasn't fair.

"This is real. No, uhm, no fakes. I'm real. And I know you're gonna call me a deepfake, so fuck you in advance."

((Alex Avanesian continued in Transmitter Failure))