| The Champion Chapter One |
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Bloom finally sat down
again. "Well," he said, "we've been at it for six hours now. I guess if that’s your story, we'll have to let the grand jury sort it out." He pulled out an electronic cigarette and put it in his mouth. ‘Who would've though a smokeless cigarette could satisfy?’ the slogan went. Not me, that's for sure. Mr. Reasonable closed his notepad, took off his glasses, and polished them on his shirt. "It's pretty cut and dry anyway," he said. "I mean, five years." He whistled. "You're not getting around that. Knife and life, for sure." That much I knew. I was beginning to miss the boys already. "Just for fun," said Mr. Reasonable, setting a recording device in front of me, "Why don't you tell us your story one more time..." I looked at him, then down at the recorder. I cleared my throat and began. "Well, when I'm camping I like to get an early start..." Suddenly the lights went out. This was not an unusual occurrence, as they often had to cut the power for one reason or another; ecological disasters—or possible disasters—demanded it. It was quite possible that my little disaster was causing this very outage, even a week later. "Don't move, Roberts." I heard Bloom say in the dark. They were shuffling around in their seats, but the only light in the room was the red glow of the recording device, so they stayed put. I picked up the recorder and whispered into it. "It was an accident." I set it down softly and pulled a pair of paper-thin night-vision glasses out of my shoe, and put them on. I had known that the power would go out eventually, so it was all a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Finally, some good luck. "Be still, Roberts," said Mr. Reasonable. "You can't make it out of here alive." He tried to fool me, but his voice betrayed him. We both knew there weren't any locked doors between me and the outside world. Didn't need to be, there were usually five guards with me at all times. I pulled out a capsule from my beltline. I took a deep breath, and snapped the capsule out over the table. "It smells like almonds..." said Atwood, falling to the floor. "Roberts!" said Bloom, trying to get up, but collapsing on himself in a crumple next to Atwood. Mr. Reasonable was simply slumped in his chair, poised as ever. "Is everything all right in there?" There was a knock on the door. "Bloom?" More knocking. I exhaled and pulled another capsule out of my shoe, tip-toeing over to the door. "Bloom?" I crouched down and held the capsule under the door and took another deep breath. I snapped the capsule and waited for five thumps. |
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