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"It's not a game... maybe that's news
'Cause, no one will win here, and no one can lose..."
Jane cocked her head, stumbling towards Ocean with all the grace of a porcelain doll blessed with only semi-moveable joints. What did she mean, "It's not a game"? This was a game, she was sure of it, Karnak had said so. Ocean O'Connel Rosenburg had selected Game Mode almost an hour ago. Of course, she had not formally arrived in the warehouse at that point, she'd been waiting just outside in the hallway between life and death with her dolly clutched in her arms. The flashing lights and near deafening voice loudly proclaiming the selection had been audible, though.
"There's no one to measure our foolish pride,
And no one keeps score of how hard we tried."
Ocean's voice was starting to crack, Jane was sure she was crying by now. She opened her arms for a warm embrace, but no one approached her. Why couldn't they be as kind to her now as they had been during her new birthday?
"This ride it has heartbreak, this ride it has pain."
Constance was now approaching Ocean, standing just to her right, not facing Jane if the muffle of her voice was anything to go by.
"All kinds of blue skies, no shortage of rain
And you feel the world is spinning with no ending or beginning..."
Noel, Mischa, and Ricky all stood by Constance and Ocean. Ricky too? Oh, she understood what this was supposed to be, she was supposed to go join them and sing along! The words felt natural to her, Karnak had already admitted to choreographing some of their movements in advance, but she guessed that the songs were prepared too. She felt stupid for not picking up on that one sooner.
She took a step closer to them, but it felt so tiresome to approach them like her shoes were weighing her down. All she really wanted to do was move backward, her mind said. But that wasn't true, she wanted to be with her friends. She wanted to sing with them, to be part of the choir. To be Savannah, with the greenest eyes.
But the billowing warmth behind her, hot like a bonfire but comforting like a pillow, just felt so natural to walk towards. So when moving forward failed, Jane resigned herself to staggering towards it with all the grace she'd ever had since dying.
"You just take a look around...
Take a look around...
Take a look around...
And round, and round, and round..."
This part she knew. It was higher up in her register, but that wasn't a problem for her. Since dying and forgetting everything she'd had before she had more of a knack for opera. She stepped towards the warmth and finally, for the first time since the doll head had become hers, she saw. She glanced back at her friends but they were already gone, although their voices still filled her ears.
The whirring of machines filled the air, overlapping with screams, and the view around her grew bright before everything went dark.
"She's a lucky girl," the doctor said, "The accident almost completely decapitated her. Luckily, she's a resilient one. The surgery went well, she should be perfectly fine. Might need some physical therapy and definitely crutches for the broken bones, but she's gonna be okay."
Her eyes were just fluttering open. The room was too bright, her head hurt and she couldn't feel much of anything. The people around her were chatting like nothing had happened, although she heard one of the nurses say "By any reasoning, she should be paralyzed."
She tried to sit up, but a searing pain shot through her side and she cried out. The doctors rushed to her side, one of them smiling just too widely, "Hey... Hey... You're okay. You're in the Uranium County Hospital, do you know who you are?"
She glanced around the room, her hazel eyes a little sore from the bright lights, her bone aching and her side still splitting. But she was alive. That meant something. She looked around for a familiar face, Ocean, Ricky, Constance, anyone. But no... Karnak had said he only had the power to bring one back. So that had been Ocean's vote? She had expected it to be a story about how much people sucked, but... no. Ocean had been selfless and brought her back before herself, that was truly admirable.
The doctors were total strangers, save for maybe one or two she had seen when her parents had been arrested and she'd been taken from the compound for an examination. Just to make sure she herself wasn't high. At her bedside were her little brother Ezra and their social worker. A small gasp escaped her lips. Sure, it wasn't what she had expected, but she had a family. Unconventional as it was, it was certainly a far cry from the memoryless, doll-headed, husk that Jane Doe had been.
"I'm... I'm Penny Lamb..." She mumbled, her throat scratchy and shaky, likely from the laceration it had received, "Where are the others? The choir? Are they okay?"
The doctors looked at each other. She already knew, they didn't have to say. She started to cry.
After a couple of hours of resting, getting used to the bandages and the new scar that wrapped around her neck like a snake, she asked to see someone. Mr. and Mrs. Potts. Ricky's parents. They were both distraught over the death of their son, but Penny noticed that they weren't as overcome with grief as she had expected. Maybe because they had been expecting Ricky to die for years. It had been a miracle he had made it to 17.
"Hi... Mr. and Mrs. Potts... Uh... I'm Penny, I was one of Ricky's friends." Their eyes lit up, happy to know that Ricky had friends, "He was really cool... And creative... He totally would have produced a SciFi show if he were still here."
His father chuckled, "Yep... That was Ricky. SciFi lover to the extreme... Comics and SciFi."
His mother was beginning to cry. Penny smiled, sadly, "He was really nice. When we were..." How would she explain the warehouse? The contest? His fantasies of being a swinging space-age bachelor man?
"He told me these stories... about the planets and galaxies he saved. Have you ever heard of Zolaria?"