The Season of Opportunity

[Polybius]

((Alexander Cann continued from Eating Out (Cleanly)))

It was the ninth of June, and nothing had happened yet. It was a Saturday morning, and Alexander’s alarm went off at 7 AM. No time to sleep in, not in June. He took a shower, put on a casual outfit, and grabbed himself some of that Icelandic yogurt from the fridge. Ready for the day ahead, Alexander did the same thing he’d done every morning since the start of May: he sat down with his yogurt in front of the television and turned to CNN. He had his laptop at his side open to twitter and his phone on the armrest, ready to use in case he got a news alert or a message from one of his contacts.

When it happened, he wanted to know right away. Maybe it would be like last year or the year before, and the school year would finish without incident. However, Alexander was confident that wouldn’t be the case. The interval had been three years ever since they came back; Alexander wasn’t dumb enough to think he was certain of when the terrorists would strike next, but it was the most likely time.

When Alexander Cann was in high school, there was more of a certainty to it. It happened every year, without pause. When spring began, everyone knew it was coming. Nobody liked to talk about it, the ones that did tried to convince themselves it was fake, but everyone could feel the tension in the air. Every year, Alexander privately laughed at the kids who were afraid that their school would be hit next. There was a better chance of being killed by lightning than by Survival of the Fittest. It was clear that despite the whispers they all knew that themselves, because when their senior trip rolled around, most of them went anyway. Alexander hadn’t; he didn’t fear being kidnapped, but he also couldn’t think of anything less fun than a camping trip with his classmates.

It was funny, in retrospect, that his distaste for the kids at his school ended up saving him.

The lightning struck Bayview Secondary School in May 2008. 276 students were kidnapped and their battle for survival was broadcast for the world to see. Alexander watched with bated breath – everyone did back then, it wasn’t as taboo. He watched as sadistic idiots like Maxwell and Clio decided to start murdering everyone they saw until they were put down themselves. He watched as that mysterious group did what the government couldn’t and rescued many of the students. He watched as Ilario Fiametta turned his gun on himself and left Kimberly Nguyen, of all people, the winner of Survival of the Fittest Version four.

St. Paul was a whirlwind of grief and anger at that point, but Alexander’s life went on. He entered Macalester College in the fall as an English major. He received a great deal of attention whenever anyone learned where he had come from. At first, Alexander didn’t know how to feel about it, but over time he came to realize that one needed to use whatever opportunities were afforded to them, no matter where those opportunities came from. He published his first book at nineteen: Memories of Bayview. A memoir of his time at high school, and stories of how Survival of the Fittest affected the community. He only needed to make a few embellishments: act like he was closer to a few people than he really was, pretend like this or that dead kid wasn’t a complete jackass. Finding a publisher was easy, and critics were impressed, but it didn’t sell very well. When the game itself had thirty survivors, it was hard for someone who wasn’t even there to find publicity on a national stage.

No, Alexander would have to wait a few years to find true success. He was stuck in a demeaning unpaid internship when SOTF returned for a fifth version. He was surprised as anyone, but he saw his chance. By September, his second book Nightmare Resurgent: How McAllister Failed the Nation hit the shelves. The book was a venomous screed about the McAllister administrations failure to confirm the Arthro Taskforce’s destruction and prevent the new abductions. It was a New York Times bestseller, hitting right in the sweet spot of the election season. The right loved seeing a Bayview survivor taking the president to task for SOTF's return. Alexander himself was by no means a Republican, more of a centrist independent, but he saw an eager audience and took advantage of it. That book was what got him to the big leagues- invites on talk shows, guest articles in reputable publications, invites to fancy charity events. He even got a column in the National Review; once again, not really his taste, but it was a good job for a few years.

By the time May 2015 rolled around, he was a freelancer. When the terrorists struck yet again, he was ready for it. The whole month was a blur of pumping out articles and making appearances on shows. There was so much to cover, too: the incident itself, the political ramifications, the destruction of STAR, the revelations about the V3 escapes… hell, publishers were begging him to write another book. He gave what they wanted: The Nightmare Persists: McAllister’s Continued Failures. Not his most inspired piece of work, but it performed well He even got an interview on Jarod Canon’s show for it. Since he knew the McAllister well would be drying up soon, he immediately started on his next work: The Tragedy of the 21st Century: Living with Survival of the Fittest, where he told the stories of family members and survivors from all of the affected schools. It was a real tearjerker, and a number-one seller.

Now it was three years later, and Alexander was prepared to go through it all again. It could hit at any moment, and Alexander would have to go into overdrive. This would be his March Madness, his fucking Walmart holiday season. He’d made sure to finish all of his writing commitments by the end of April so he could watch the news like a hawk in May and June. The last thing he submitted was a solemn retrospective for the ten-year anniversary of the Bayview abductions. It went up on the Star Tribune website on May 27th, getting far more attention than Nguyen’s most recent piece of self-righteous drivel. Since then, his life had just been staring at the news and social media every day, waiting for something to happen.

Alexander sat with his yogurt as he watched Chris Cuomo went on and on about Canon’s latest tweetstorm. He yawned and refreshed the twitter page a few times. That’s when he saw it. A tweet from NBC news about a bus full of students going missing as it went from DC to Tennessee. He refreshed the page again and again. More news sites were posting about it. George Hunter High School. Over 150 students missing. They couldn’t say what it truly was, not yet, but everyone knew. People were rapidly spreading the story around the internet. Soon, Cuomo interrupted his time filler to report on it. Alexander’s phone buzzed; he snatched it from the armrest and brought it to his ear.

“Hi, Scott. Yeah, I heard about it. It looks like it’s happened again.”

Alexander tried his best to sound disappointed.