Sis
"You are on the verge of death. You are in a deep, peaceful sleep. Wake up," someone called out to me silently. As the chill on my shoulder slid down between my shoulder blades, the faint light of the sunset remained in my eyes as a final minute. My ears were ringing. I wasn't about to die. My heart was beating hard and fast. I didn't know how many nightmares this made. All I knew were the sounds of footsteps pacing back and forth. I kept spinning the pistol in my hand amidst blurred visions. The deep blue holo-screen light flickered before my eyes, folded like a thin veil, and a voice that was faint at first was heard. Growing louder, that familiar soulless voice said, "Game time." Prey. Hunter. The words collided in my mind like atoms, and a great, bright light radiated around. It illuminated those fragments of soul existing beneath dead skins.
The blonde woman, who constantly followed the former leader, would glance at me occasionally. She looked as if she were about to say something. It seemed as though a word was about to spill from between her dry, wounded-looking lips. It didn't. She was looking at her hands. At the lines there. She was opening and closing her fingers. Bending the joints, touching them. As if touching a few of her fate lines.
Whatever bond existed between me and the pistol, a similar bond existed between her hand and the darkness.
"Prepare for the hunt! Patients, please take your places! Pay attention, the holo-screens are shining for you!"
Apprehensively, I turned my face toward the opposite pillar, which stood there like a petition for death.
"This time, something different is being asked of you! This has never been requested of patients before. This doesn't count as a game. It is, in fact, a performance. But not a magic show. This is a war you will wage entirely against yourselves."
When I swallowed hard, the robotic voice paused as well. People stood where they were, hands on their hips, almost nailed to the floor, trying to hear their fates.
"The System (Düzenek) has been restarted for you. It awaits you to overcome yourselves. But first, you must know who you are."
An ache settled into the nape of my neck.
"Who you are is something easily forgotten!"
The voice entered my eardrum from the speaker as a rasping hiss. As if causing me pain. As if trying to make me forget who I was. Did it even matter anymore? Ever since I came here... I didn't quite remember who I was.
A pang pierced my temples. It was like the tip of a sharp knife.
"Listen to us to present our first performance! We know that ordinary tasks bore you. Walk this much, take this many steps, and consume 500 calories. These are quite foolish tasks. Why shouldn't we have different goals?"
I felt the blonde woman's eyes on me. The notch I saw in her dark eyes reminded me, pixel by pixel, of the final moment the group leader I killed had looked at me. She was looking at me with malice. With the very far end of hatred. I tried to focus on the robotic voice again. My ribcage was tightening.
"Let the person among you who knows themselves best take a step forward!"
This was an order. The dozens of thoughts, possibilities, and uncertainties racing through my mind suddenly fell silent. My shoes were bolted to the floor.
Suddenly, a timer began on the holo-screen: "Note that you have only one minute to do this."
One minute... Everything in my mind was shattering. Those in the group were casting fleeting glances toward me. None of them had the look of someone wanting to move. The blonde woman's brows were furrowed in anger. Darkness was written across her soulless, bony face. Did I trust myself? I suppose not. Damn it! But how could they even measure this?
The timer on the screen was another name for the time passing until a bomb exploded. And what was the bomb that would explode? Denial?
"Your timer is running and your time is decreasing," the robotic voice reminded. The speakers continued to crackle. Even the sounds of breathing became audible. As time ran out, I began to think I was being placed in a coffin with the nails being driven in. What would happen? What would happen if I didn't take a step? What I wondered even more was... were these foolish people wandering around here counting on me? A group leader, a hunter. A hunter is the one who protects their own pack. What if the hunter drowns in their own pit? Wouldn't his prey and himself be the ones to kill him?
"You have 10 seconds! Does anyone have the courage to do this?"
My feet... I wanted to move them a little, but I couldn't manage it. Suddenly, that pain coiled around my neck again. I tried to look ahead by clenching my fists. It was as if a vast fog stretched before my eyes. If I didn't appear certain before them, would they kill me? These inadequate, these helpless people... How could they even do that, I thought. There isn't one more bullet...
The last 5 seconds remained. Involuntarily, I looked toward the blonde woman. My field of vision was blurred. My eyes darkened. Just as I felt like I was going to collapse, the holo-screen shut off. Suddenly, the light went out. The crackling of the speakers ceased. It remained pitch black inside. The walls... The ice-cold walls seemed to shrink. One couldn't see a thing. Involuntarily, I turned my eyes upward, toward the clouds. They were merely tiny dots. The system had shut down. I wasn't even breathing. What was happening?
Had the power been cut? The System... The cameras... Had everything they watched us with stopped?
I looked at the shadows across from me. At the soulless human silhouettes. While one slowly rose from where they sat, another had their hand over their mouth, staring at me with wide, startled eyes. One of the women was biting her arm, the other was scratching her knee. But the common point in all of them was their focus on me. My eye... drifted to Mert, who was looking at me from behind those sitting on the front line. He looked ready to stand up at any moment. But it was as if his autonomous nervous system prevented him from doing so.
My pistol, my useless pistol, was as if trapped between my fingers. The man, with a momentary desire appearing in his eyes, took support from the ground and stood up. The other members watched him with curiosity. Mert took a tottering step. The numbness in his knees did not dissolve. He took another step. A tiny speck of light in the darkness was the only chance.
He was coming toward me. The other members of the group looked certain of nothing. In fact, they were very frightened. But he, Mert, continued to come toward me. When a short distance remained between us, I could finally realize that there were no camera recordings. All laws regarding the punishment of physical violence were being ignored. And what about me? His gaze locked onto me. I looked at the blonde woman one more time in that timeframe. She was somewhere behind Mert. Those on the ground suddenly stood up.
The thing I feared... No. The distance closed. I couldn't cope with them. An inescapable end was approaching me. I wished for an icy barrier to be between us. The dominance I was in the process of establishing over them had been leveled.
The moment I held my breath, the last thing that entered my field of vision was the punch that slammed into the middle of my face. My defense system had stopped in a single move. Then everything went black.