Seven

Chapter 21- The New Reform

"Six! Wake up!"

Mario opened his eyes, closing them shut immediately because of the brightness. It took him a few seconds to come to his senses, but when he did, he jerked himself up and looked around in confusion.

"Slow those breaths down before you have a panic attack," Carmen said, sitting next to him on the ground.

"Where are we?" he asked her.

"I have no idea. Apparently, some small island off the coast of Maine," she shrugs, looking around.

"How did we get here?" he asked.

"We swam," she shrugged. "Well, I swam. You just floated along while I dragged you."

"How long have I been out?" he asked, touching his head and wincing at the throbbing pain in his temples.

"Like a couple of hours or so, maybe more. Sorry, I don't have a way to keep track of time," she said, standing to her feet. "The ship is gone. I guess it's at the bottom of the ocean by now."

Mario tried standing to his feet, but he was very unsteady, almost as if he were drunk, or had taken a pain killer. "Do you feel okay?" he asked Carmen, wondering if she felt the same.

"Yeah, all things considered. There wasn't a whole lot of oxygen in the tank. Or maybe there never was any," she said, motioning to the tank lying a few feet away, the wet suit crumpled up in a pile next to it.

"They will probably come looking for us. They seem to always know what we're up to, even when we escape," he said.

Carmen nodded in agreement. "You're right. In this case, it might not be such a bad idea for them to find us. I mean, it's either that or stay here until we starve to death. I don't know about you, but that sounds like a horrible way to die."

"The other players....what do you think they did to them?" Mario asked, still not able to get the grizzly, disturbing image out of his mind.

It looked exactly like them, only their skin was pale, almost a green-ish color. Their eyes were bloodshot and crazy. They didn't seem to have any control over themselves.

"I have no idea. We thought they were eating them, but I guess turning them into zombies isn't quite as bad, Carmen shrugged.

"No one came here thinking something like this would happen to them. If they had known..."

"That's probably why Dr. Vincent didn't bother to bring it up. The invitation made it sound as if we were invited to a party with games, not fight to the death. If we had known, none of us would've showed up," Carmen answered.

Mario looked at Carmen, his eyes stilled glossed over in a daze of fear and confusion. "I didn't choose to come here. I was forced to. I can't...I can't explain it, but...I had no control over myself."

"I know, same," she said. "I'm not one to get into cars with strangers, so when I originally said no to the invitation, Agatha touched my arm and suddenly, everything went black."

"They are using some kind of mind control on us. Even if we get away, they can always bring us back. Even if we don't want to kill each other, they'll find a way to make us. I don't understand this. Why are we here? Why us? There's millions of bad people in the world. Why were just the seven of us chosen?" he asked, even though he knew Carmen didn't have the answers.

"This is all some sick way Dr. Vincent entertains himself, I guess. I have no idea why anyone else was here, but I...I feel like I deserved this."

Mario looked at her in surprise. "I don't care what you've done. No one deserves to be treated this way."

"I do," she replied, looking away from him. "You know I do."

Mario just stared at her for a few seconds, not sure what to say. He knew Carmen killed her step-mother, the very woman Mario was accused of murdering and spent six years of his life in jail for. Dr. Vincent had tried his best to convince Mario that Carmen was his enemy, but Mario just couldn't see it that way. He went to jail because of an eye witness who actually saw nothing at all, just wanted to be deemed a hero. She just wanted attention, but at what cost?

"It's my fault you went to jail," Carmen choked out, breaking down into tears and buring her face in her hands. "I killed her! I deserve to die!"

At first, Mario didn't quite know how to respond. On one hand, Carmen was the real killer in a case that Mario was deemed guilty in from the start. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and someone just happened to see him in the area. They didn't see him doing anything wrong though, and of that, he was sure. He was only trying to buy a few lottery tickets on the way home from work. He was still in his uniform, with his name tag in full view.

Thinking back to that night caused Mario to slip off into somewhat of a trance. He tried not to think of it too often these days, but more often than not, he found himself dwelling on what he could've done differently. But he always came up with the same thing every time...

He was born in the wrong skin.

Racial tension, though not as obvious as it was in his mother's day, was still running high, especially in a place like Atlanta. Even though he considered himself a good person, his skin color alone made others treat him as if he was no better than the prisoners he served time with who actually deserved it- killers, drug dealers, thieves, r****t- people Mario would never associate with were all considered his people, his community.

Mario snapped himself out of his thoughts. If he was ever going to make a difference in the world, now was his chance. He may not live long enough to do anything else, but he could still do this.

"I forgive you," he said, causing Carmen to look up at him in surprise.

He looked out over the ocean and breathed in deep. "For a long time, I was angry for being accused of something I didn't do. I swore to myself, if I ever found the person responsible, I'd make them pay. So six years after I received a life sentence for murder, my sentence was overturned and I was released. The day I got out, I went to find the girl who pointed me out in the lineup. The girl who said she saw me with that lady. I found her...and...let's juts say, I'm no better than you. I deserved what I got. The good Lord always has a way of serving up justice, even when we think we don't deserve it."

"You still believe in God after everything we've seen here? After everything we've been through?" she asked him.

"Of course I believe in God. The presence of evil in the world only confirms it. But the presence of good does too. My mother raised me to believe that I'll answer to God someday for the things that I've done, and if I have to answer to him today, well, I would be just as guilty as you."

"But you're not. You've done nothing wrong," she said.

"I have. I've done a lot of things wrong. That's why I need to forgive you. I need to forgive everyone that had a hand in sending me to jail. It's what my mother would've wanted me to do. And...it's the only way I'm ever truly going to feel free. So I forgive you, Carmen Santiago. I don't care what you've done, or if you feel you deserve my forgiveness. Right now, none of that matters. We will never make it back to our real lives, so when I die, I want to be at peace with the life I've lived."

She nodded, but didn't say anything. Mario didn't need her to, of course. In fact, the less they said to each other, the better. They were going to die out here on this tiny, deserted island, probably from dehydration or starvation. It would be a slow, painful and ugly process, but at least they weren't fighting until the death like they were supposed to. At least they took Dr. Vincent's grand finale away from him- their one final act of defiance together.

"So what do we do now?" Carmen asked, looking out over the seemingly unending ocean all around them. "Do we just wait to die?"

"What else would we do?" Mario shrugged. "Swim to shore? Call for help?"

"What if Dr. Vincent finds us?" she asks.

"Dr. Vincent doesn't have to find us. He knows exactly where we're at. The question is, will he come after us again? Or just let us die? That was the point of this game anyway, right? Death."

Mario jumped when he heard a rather sinister laugh coming from behind him. He slowly turned around and looked up in horror at Dr. Vincent.

How did he get there? Unnoticed?

"Mr. Banks, I'm afraid you've got me all wrong. You see, I'm not the bad guy here. I'm simply a doctor, willing to do whatever it takes to rehabilitate even the most despicable human beings."

Mario watched him closely as Dr. Vincent slowly walked around in front of where Mario and Carmen sat near the rocky shore.

"Before you came here, you never would've consider forgiveness, am I wrong?" Dr. Vincent asked.

"Anyone faced with death questions their life choices. You didn't do anything special," Carmen scoffed.

"That's where you're wrong. This whole competition was fabricated for your benefit. In fact, none of it has been real," he smirked evilly.

"You're lying," Carmen spit. "You're only trying to mess with our heads."

"When you came here, you hadn't spoken a word to anyone in months, not since your father confessed to the murder you were guilty of and rightfully should have went to jail for. You've planned to end your own life countless times, yet you're such a young, beautiful, promising girl, Carmen Santiago. Every phase of this game was created and orchestrated just for you two. To bring you to terms with the people you had become so you could become the people you are meant to be."

"We saw people die," Mario said, standing to his feet. "Burned alive, drowned, chopped up, turned into zombies. Was that just all part of the game too?"

Dr. Vincent turned and looked over his shoulder, waving to the boat in the distance. "Come, come! Meet this year's victors- Carmen Santiago and Mario Banks!"

Mario and Carmen were stunned to see Damon, Brandi, Jackson, Nine and Kelly exiting the boat and climbing onto shore, each of them still fully decked out in their zombie makeup.

"This is my award winning group of actors who perform for these games every year," Dr. Vincent smiled proudly. "Their job is to create a seemingly real environment for game play- right down to their very own deaths."

"Hi guys!" Jackson grins. "Remember me? I'm the one that supposedly shared the rules of the game on the first day."

"But Jackson wasn't the rule breaker at all," Dr. Vincent chimes in. "It was Carmen."

Mario looked at Carmen, furrowing his brows, but she only hung her head in shame.

"It didn't seem like we were going to make a breakthrough with you at all, until it seemed your heart had gone soft for Mr. Banks. When it was clear you were willing to sacrifice your life for his, we knew then you'd been reformed," Dr. Vincent explains.

"Reformed?" Mario asked. "So all this...you did it to reform us?"

"How? How did you find us? Why us?" Carmen asked desperately.

"Your information was public knowledge. Anyone can find anyone on the internet these days, but we selected the two of you specifically because of your connection to each other. Mr. Banks, you needed to face the person who was guilty of the crime you served six years of your life for, and Miss Santiago, you needed to face the man who paid your debt for you, since your father is no longer with us. Now that you've done that, you can both move on with your lives."

"Move on? From this?" Mario asked incredulously. "I'm sorry, but this place has been nothing but a nightmare for us since we arrived! How are we supposed to move on from what you put us through?"

"You won't move on from this experience, but that's not the point. The objective of these games is reforming the participants. Not harming them, or anyone else. Sometimes, fear is the only remedy, but it's a sure fire one every time," Dr. Vincent said, walking over to Mario and handing him a large yellow envelope. "This is for you, Mr. Banks. The prize money, as promised."

Mario took the envelope from Dr. Vincent and stared down it with a mixture of shock and confusion.

"And here you are, Miss Santiago, your winnings," he said, handing Carmen the same envelope.

Carmen and Mario shared a look, one in which made them feel they were on the exact same page about this. Was this just some really messed up form of rehab? Or was this just Dr. Vincent's grand finale? Could they trust anything he said after what he had put them through?