Z 2134

career. Some of those citizens had entered The Games, and a few even made it out alive and into City 7. Jonah had lost track of the winners over the years, mostly because he didn’t want to know.
    Now he had to.
    He would be a marked man.
    He figured The Darwin Games were aired in City 7, and word of his exploits, and past, had undoubtedly made their way to prior City 6 winners.
    They saw him battle.
    The saw him nearly surrender.
    They saw him finally triumph.
    Some of the men in City 7 would love Jonah. Most would hate him. Some would want him dead. Perhaps City 6 winners would be so pleased with their new lives, far better than their old lives, that they’d be thankful for his part in their destiny.
    He could hope, anyway.
    He would need to make friends, though. Because he had big plans. Plans to expose City corruption, and perhaps bring City 7’s freedom to all the Cities.
    The van finally stopped and Jonah smiled, now just scant seconds away from laying eyes on a new life he never thought he’d see. The door opened, and Jonah stepped from the van, spinning in a circle, confused.
    He expected to see the rising spires of City 7, like he’d seen at the beginning and end of every Darwin Games broadcast since he was a boy. Yet there were no rising spires or wide asphalt streets dipping like gleaming black knolls from the near horizon to the ocean vista.
    Instead, they were in the middle of nothing but woods, just as they’d been since leaving The Wall of City 6. A small shack, maybe an outhouse, lay about a hundred feet away — the only thing in sight not made by nature.
    “Where are we?” Jonah turned to the first driver.
    Before the first driver could answer, the second pulled the trigger on his dart gun. Jonah dropped to the dirt, his eyes already woozy.
    “Welcome to City 7,” the second driver said.

    Jonah woke with a start, lying on the cold floor of an empty-feeling room, draped in darkness. His heart pounded as he braced for impact of anything or anyone, living or undead.
    He rose from the floor, woozy and head spinning, then realized from his movement’s echo and his foot brushing the base of a wall in front of him as his hand hit the side wall, he was in a narrow, confined space. Jonah’s mind was surfacing from its bog surprisingly fast, considering he’d been shot with a coma dart, as the drugged darts regularly used by both Watchers and Darwin Games producers were not-so-affectionately called. He flashed back to the last thing he’d seen as he was passing out — the small wooden building.
    He wondered why he’d been brought out to the middle of nowhere instead of City 7. One of the men had said, “Welcome to City 7.” Jonah wondered if that was the driver’s way of saying that City 7 was all a lie. The hopeful part of him, the part that had been clinging to the beautiful paradise on TV since the second he was sent outside The Wall, refused to even consider that City 7 was anything but reality, though.
    It has to be real.
    This has to be some other part of the show or something.
    Or maybe they just couldn’t let ME into City 7. Maybe they knew what I was planning for when I got there.
    But that didn’t make sense. If they knew his plans, they would have simply killed him. They’d shot him with a coma dart instead, then put him in a relatively safe place out of the elements. Why take the time? Why make the effort? They could’ve simply shot him dead or just left him on the ground where zombies would’ve eventually found him and finished him for good.
    If they didn’t kill him, then they didn’t want him dead. Yet, they didn’t bring him to City 7.
    Why?
    Because it’s a lie, you idiot. You, and everyone else, have been duped.
    He thought back on all the countless hours of City 7 footage he’d seen throughout the years. The shots of Kirkman standing in front of the sprawling beaches, the montages of people having fun, splashing in the water, relaxing on the beach, or strolling along the city’s clean streets in its shopping district with their seemingly endless credits.
    They couldn’t have faked it all, could they?
    Jonah was certain that he had seen them show past winners arriving at City 7. Not often, but at least a few times. The show had always explained that there was an adjustment period before new denizens were allowed to mingle in the city, which ensured the peace. Jonah wondered if this was some part of his “adjustment period.”
    His head swam as he silently