[Z]

Prologue

Shaun’s head felt like it was going to explode. This was not unusual after a night out, but somewhere in his thumping head, he was sure that he hadn’t been out the night before. He couldn’t even open his eyes, and whenever he did, sunshine blazed and he couldn’t keep them open. It slowly dawned on him that he was outside, and he was lying down on the ground and that it was extremely uncomfortable. He could feel, every now and then, a cool breeze dance over him, taunting him. Shaun summoned the strength to lift his arm up and shield his eyes from the harsh glare of the sun, and managed to open his eyes. He sat bolt upright. He was sitting in an extremely derelict, brick building. Where there might once have been windows, were square-ish outposts of sunlight. The roof didn’t exist, apart from in one corner, and he could see a palm tree towering over the small brick building.

He immediately tried to think of what had happened to him the night before, this certainly wasn’t home, but he couldn’t remember what had happened to him. He had no short term memories of what had happened to him recently – he could remember everything about himself, his family, who his friends were, but he had no recollection of events. It was a peculiar and frustrating feeling, and he began to get very angry, resorting to hitting his head against the wall to try and spark some kind of memory. What Shaun didn’t expect, however, was for his head to hit against the wall and spark a fire. Suddenly, before he could take anything in, the entire wall he had been headbutting was alight. Shaun stumbled back dumbfounded, stunned, and marvelling. Had he just caused a fire? No, came the immediate response, as a second Molotov cocktail was thrown at the brick hut; this time cascading through the space where a window would have been, and obliterating across the floor behind Shaun.

Shaun darted out of the flaming hut, his senses on red alert, and he strafed round the side of the hut. He saw a familiar person, throwing Molotov cocktails at the hut, but this was the wrong kind of familiar. It wasn’t a friend, or a relative, but a forum friend. LemonJam.
“James?!” Shaun shouted in disbelief.

LemonJam, James, turned to stare at Shaun in shock. Shaun beamed at him, and ran towards his virtual friend. “James, what the ****?! Am I in Guernsey or something?!”

“Shaun?” James’ voice was paralysed with nerves. “Uh, what are you doing here?”

“How the **** did I end up on this ****ing island? GREGJLSWTF.”

“What’s GREGJLSWTF?” James frowned. “Um, this isn’t anywhere near Great Britain, as far as I’m aware. Uh, Shaun, I can’t talk to you, this is so weird but I’m assuming you don’t know yet, so let’s get out of here.” James grabbed Shaun by the arm, just as a rubber bullet embedded itself in the sand by James’ feet. “Shit!” James shrieked, as he started to sprint away from the flaming hut, pulling Shaun along with him.

“What the ****! What the ****!” Shaun couldn’t stop screaming as they ran. “Somebody just tried to shoot me!”

Meanwhile, amongst the shrubbery and trees, a girl called Caitlin was perched in the branches of a tall tree. On her lap sat a sniper rifle; a belt of rubber bullets across her chest, and a pissed off, mercenary look on her face. She spat out the gum she was chewing, and she muttered under her breath. “Next time...”

Shaun and James continued to run along the beach, the fear of being shot slowly disappearing as they put distance between their selves and the hut. James guided Shaun up into the undergrowth, and off the beach, to cover from any further sniper shots.

“James, seriously, what’s going on?” Shaun asked between breaths.

“Let me catch my breath,” James wheezed back, before eventually regaining his composure. “Just like you, I woke up not knowing what was going on. I woke up in a treehouse, and I thought I must have been really drunk last night or something and lost my house keys, so I poke my head out and find I’m in the middle of a jungle. Scary ****, right? So anyway, I freak out over that for a while, and then I hear somebody walking through the jungle, so I look out the window, and I’m all ready to start shouting for help, when I see Jen!”

“What, as in TiBB Jen?!” Shaun asked, incredulous.

“The very one and same. And I **** you not, she’s wandering around with a huge ****-off knife in her hand. So of course, I’m like wut, but I throw caution to the wind and shout her name. She looks right up at me, looks like she’s away to **** herself out of fear, and then she faints. So I rush down from the treehouse, just as she wakes up again, and she says she’d already seen so many weird things that that was the last straw.”

“Right, but that doesn’t explain why we were getting shot at.”

“Let me finish. At that point, I ask her about the knife, and she asks me didn’t I get one too? So we go up into the tree house, and discover a chest full of Molotov cocktails, just ready to be lit, and Jen says to me ‘oh James, thank you’, and at that point she tries to push me out of the treehouse. Luckily I didn’t, I managed to fight back, and she ends up falling out of the treehouse. I grabbed my trunk full of Molotovs, and climbed down, and then checked on Jen. She was still alive, but she was in a bad way, and she whispers to me ‘I was only following orders, you have to do the same.’”

“So let me get this straight, you’re saying that Jen, your best friend on TiBB, tried to kill you and she was only doing so because she was following orders? Whose orders? What? That doesn’t make sense?” Shaun looked vaguely unimpressed.

“That’s what I thought, but then she feebly grabs the pocket of my shorts, an-”

“Aha! I always knew something would happen between you t-”

“Let me stop you right there. She grabs the pocket of my shorts, and starts pulling out-”

“HA! I knew it!”

“Shaun! Let me finish. She starts pulling out a picture from my pocket, which I never even realised was there, and on it were fifteen faces, all about the size of a passport photo, but they were all faces that I recognised. Three rows of five. And just above these photos, was a title, in big, bold, red letters, and d’you know what it said, Shaun?”

“What?” Shaun asked, suddenly quiet.

“Kill. And unless I’m very much mistaken, you probably have one too.”

Shaun looked fearful for a moment, and then reached into his pocket (seriously guys, it’s not sexual, stop reading into this) and slowly pulled out (Conor, seriously.) a picture. On this picture were the faces of fifteen people that he knew. Fifteen people that he didn’t know, but did know. These were the faces of fifteen TiBB members.

“But why?” Shaun asked. “We don’t have to do this. I know it’s pretty explicit, the subliminal messaging is quite clear and all, but we don’t have to do this. And where are we, sorry?”

“That’s what figures into it. Look on the other side of the picture. It’s a note, Shaun, a note from whoever’s behind this.”

Shaun read the note:

Dear TiBB users,
Welcome to my little game. The sixteen of you are here as a consequence of your own actions, and the reason for your being here is because of the gravity of your actions. You see, you are all what I call the scum of TiBB. You have spammed your way to high post counts, you’ve whiled away so many hours, days, weeks, years of your sad little lives on my domain, and you’ve just been so annoying. So, I’ve had enough. While I swapped the site’s host, I also decided to swap you all. Only one of you can return to TiBB, and so you’re going to kill each other off, until there is merely one of you left. Oh, and just in case you don’t already feel the incentive to start playing the game immediately – just so you know, I’ve opened applications for a moderating spot. I may or may not choose Conzors, unless the last man standing emerges within 48 hours.
Good luck,
Mark the Admin

“Sick bastard!” Shaun hollered at the piece of paper in anger, and then looked up to rant to James about how unjust this whole thing was, but James was nowhere to be seen. He was gone, and Shaun was all alone.

End of prologue