"0:00"
The countdown hit zero.
A flat, mechanical tone cut through the chamber—final. Inevitable.
Then came the voice. Cold. Familiar. In control.
Game Master:
"Time's up. Now… you face your destiny."
He stepped from behind the podium, gliding with eerie precision. A black silk veil draped over a tall machine beside him. With a flick, the cloth fell—revealing a brutal device: a steel drum filled with hundreds of numbered spheres.
A modern guillotine, cloaked in chrome.
Game Master:
"To ensure impartiality, twenty-seven of you will now be eliminated… at random."
He flipped a switch.
The machine roared to life—spheres whirling, crashing, clashing in a cyclone of chance. Numbers blurred into silver. Fate became noise.
No one breathed.
The Game Master reached in.
His fingers hovered. Hesitated.
Then closed.
Game Master (softly):
"Our first elimination is… Number 18."
All eyes snapped to Cell 18.
The man inside—young, trembling, already weeping—staggered back. His lips moved, but no words came. He knew.
He had been chosen.
Boots echoed. A masked referee approached, his shadow long, deliberate.
No words. No mercy.
CRACK. A bullet to the head.
CRACK. CRACK. Two to the chest.
Blood burst against the glass.
The body crumpled, limp and silent. The referee stepped in, grabbed the corpse by the arm, and dragged it across the sterile floor.
A red smear followed.
Still, the machine spun. Still hungry.
Game Master:
"Twenty-six left."
> "Death is random. Power is not. In this place, the coin is chaos. But I always call the flip."
Then — pandemonium.
Screams. Fists on glass. Curses. Sobbing.
Some roared in defiance. Most crumbled in terror.
But the Game Master stood unmoved. His expression unreadable. His eyes like polished stone, watching insects drown in a bowl of water.
> The game had long ago carved his heart from his chest, ground it into dust, and replaced it with ritual and silence. He once dreamed. Now, he managed. Now, he ended.
Game Master:
"We must proceed."
His hand moved without pause now. One pull after another.
"Six. Eighty-nine. Eighty-five. Eighty-two."
"Eighty."
"Ninety-nine."
"Twelve. Twenty-four. Twenty-two. Nineteen. Twenty-nine."
"And finally… Thirteen."
Each number a sentence.
Screams turned to sobs. Some dropped to their knees. Others whispered names they never knew.
The chamber reeked of iron, fear, and finality.
The Game Master returned to the podium.
Masked referees dragged the bodies away. Crimson trails bloomed across the floor like broken promises.
Game Master:
"Sixty-seven remain."
A voice cracked through the quiet:
Player 48:
"…We just lost twenty-seven people."
He wasn't wrong.
No one begged. No one fought.
Just silence. And surrender.
Game Master (clapping):
"Congratulations."
"You've been selected… for the real game."
He smiled — thin, almost gentle. A funeral smile.
Game Master:
"But for now… rest. You've earned it."
Player 43 didn't move. His jaw clenched. Eyes burning.
Player 43 (muttering):
"I hate you."
But hate wouldn't save him.
> To survive here, you'd need to lie. And that's what he hated most — not dying. Lying.
Then—click.
Cell 77 opened.
Gasps. Stillness.
Player 77 stepped out. Voice trembling, but proud.
Player 77:
"I do not want to play these games."
"I'm not a liar."
CRACK.
One bullet. Swift. Final.
His body dropped.
Game Master (shrugging):
"Pity. I thought that one had potential."
He turned.
"But the earth swallows the weak. In this world, truth is weak. The lie? The lie is strong."
The lights dimmed.
Death no longer shocked. It settled like dust.
That night, eleven more chose to die.
Some in defiance.
Some in despair.
A few—no one ever knew why.
Fifty-five remained.
Day One was over.
---
Day Two
"Power Begins Here."
Lights snapped on.
The Game Master stood, exactly where they'd left him.
Game Master:
"Now that the weaklings are gone… we begin the real game."
Player 43 leaned against his glass, still awake, staring.
Player 43:
"What does he mean, 'real game'?"
The Game Master raised a hand.
Game Master:
"There are ten columns. Each group of ten forms a row. Today, you will form alliances — and name a captain."
A screen blinked to life.
Row Formations:
Row 1: 1–10 + 91–100
Row 2: 11–20 + 80–90
Row 3: 21–30 + 70–79
Row 4: 31–40 + 60–69
Row 5: 41–50 + 51–59
Game Master:
"Each row must choose one captain. Five captains total."
"The next phase will test their leadership… and your loyalty."
Captain Selection — "Leadership in a World of Liars"
For the first time, the cells hissed open.
Not freedom — exposure.
They stepped into the chamber. No walls. No distance. Only eyes, suspicion, and breath.
Each row huddled, instinctively forming into groups.
The choosing began.
Row 5: Blood and Balance
Now that the players had been let out their cubicles, they could finally see the others close up, 43 took this time to finally get a good look at 42, he had jet black semi messy hair, tall well built handsome, you'd wonder why someone like him would be here, 43 took time to look at the rest in his group they all looked desperate and tired, broken even.
42 stood quietly among the others in Row 5, observant, not making any move. His face was unreadable, but his eyes moved constantly — observing, listening, measuring. The others began murmuring, unsure how to begin. No one wanted to be first.
Player 47, young, sharp-eyed, finally broke the silence.
"We need someone who knows how to play people, not just win games. Someone who can lead, and survive."
Player 45, more paranoid, shook his head.
"No. We need someone who can make deals. We don't even know what they'll ask captains to do — could be gambling, strategy, even betrayal."
Player 53, older, with a rigid posture, crossed his arms.
"We pick wrong, we all die. Pick someone who's seen pressure — and can still think, but the problem is we don't know each other, not yet."
42 looked at each speaker. He hadn't said a word yet.
Then he stepped forward.
His voice wasn't loud. But it carried. Controlled. Clean.
"I don't want this role. Not for power. Not for pride."
He let that sit.
"But if none of you want to die in the dark, you need someone who doesn't panic when the rules change. Someone who knows what fear smells like — and knows how to keep others calm when it hits."
He paused, watching their reactions.
"I've been lied to. I've been forced to lie. I won't lie to you unless I have no other choice. And if I ever do — I'll carry the cost."
53 looked at 52, inspecting him, he was suspicious, something to him at least, was off about this man.
Player 55 raised his hand without hesitation.
"My vote's for 42."
Player 47 followed, quietly.
"Same here."
One by one, heads nodded. Hands lifted.
By the end of it, only one dissenter remained — Player 49, who muttered something about "playing his own game" — but no one cared to listen.
Row 5 had their captain. 42.
Row 3: The Wolves
If Row 5 was a quiet election, Row 3 was a battlefield.
Player 30 — lean, intense, charismatic in the worst way — spoke first.
"I've read body language since I was sixteen. I've made a living breaking systems. I don't lose."
He turned to the group, all but daring them to argue.
But Player 70 did.
Broad. Stone-faced.
"You sound like a liar who got lucky. Let's see how you lead when bullets start flying, I saw your face during the death lottery. You crawled into your bed like a little girl."
The group split almost instantly. Arguments erupted. Voices clashed.
Player 21 tried to mediate.
"We need unity. Not ego, our lives are all at stake, Think!"
No one listened. For nearly fifteen minutes, 30 and 70 went at it — comparing credentials, challenging one another's resolve. Every word felt like a spark in a gas leak.
Then Player 75, silent until now, finally spoke.
"Look at them. The two people who most want power are the two who'll burn it, and even if they didn't want power, they're still too childish."
But by then, the damage was done. Most were too intimidated by 30's presence to resist. His voice was honey-laced poison. He made violence sound reasonable.
He was elected. Not unanimously. But undeniably.
Row 3's captain was 30. And that row would either rise in power or burn in conflict.
Row 1: The Smile That Chose Itself
Row 1 was strange, very strange.
The moment they formed, they were quiet. Not from fear — from calculation. No one argued. No one gestured.
Player 100, tall, perfectly groomed, looked like a politician before the fall.
He didn't make a pitch.
He simply smiled.
And that smile — calm, cold, elegant — was enough.
Player 4, who hadn't spoken since the first elimination, muttered to the group:
"He's a bit weird. But I trust him more than anyone here, he looks harmless."
Well we have nothing else to go off, might as well go with our gut instinct.
Row 1's captain was 100.
Row 2: The Blade
Player 14 did not ask for attention. He commanded it — by the sheer weight of silence that fell the moment he stepped into the center of the circle. There was no fanfare, no pretense, only the cold gravity of inevitability that surrounded men who had long since buried doubt alongside mercy.
"We do not know what trials await us," he began, his voice ironclad and uncaring. "But I do know this: chaos exalts the brutal, and order is the province of the disciplined."
He spoke not as a man appealing to his fellows, but as one pronouncing sentence from the dais of some ruined tribunal — where justice had collapsed under the weight of spilled blood and survival had become its own virtue.
"I have no interest in your affection," he said. "Only in your endurance. If that offends your sensibilities, I suggest you die quietly."
A ripple of discomfort ran through the group, but none dared interrupt — save Player 12. Restless, lean, a creature too clever for his own safety. His fingers never stopped moving, playing at the seams of his gloves as though even now he might conjure a way out of this place.
"You sound like a politician," 12 said with a humorless grin. "And we all know what happened to them."
14's gaze passed through him like wind through ash. "And what would you prefer? Another fool driven by instinct and panic? Reflexes die. Discipline does not."
Off to the side stood Player 11 — younger, smaller, a quiet monolith in the shifting sea of doubt. The others deferred to him out of habit, perhaps out of pity. He had not spoken once,
since Day One, after the first massacre, until then he had never seen death.
"I don't trust speeches," 11 said, voice like cracked stone. "But I trust 14."
A hush settled. Even Player 18 — once mentioned, now trembling — said nothing. The ghosts of yesterday's slaughter clung to him like smoke.
14 moved through the circle like a blade drawn, deliberate and unyielding.
"You want a captain?" he said, soft now. "Choose the one who doesn't flinch. Doesn't dream. Doesn't mourn."
Someone whispered, "The only thing we have to fear—"
14 did not let them finish.
"—is fear itself," he said.
No vote was needed. Only acknowledgment.
And so the mantle passed.
Captain of Row 2: Player 14 — sharp as judgment, cold as memory, and every inch the weapon this place required.
I will ensure my team wins.
Row 4: The Quiet Core
Row 4 was different.
Less chaos. More doubt.
Player 33 tried to campaign. He Failed, he was too timid, not the man you would want as your leader, certainly.
Player 64 stood silently at the edge, arms crossed, eyes scanning. He didn't try to speak. He simply helped.
He passed water to a player who looked dehydrated. He calmed two arguing players without raising his voice. Every move was subtle.
After an hour of discussion, Player 35 pointed at him.
"He's not trying to win. He's just trying to keep people from falling apart, to keep us human.". That's the guy I want speaking for me."
Row 4's captain was chosen 64.
The End of Choosing
The Game Master returned.
He didn't ask for captains.
He already knew.
Five leaders. Five shadows.
42.
30.
100.
14.
64.
> The game had changed. Now came the masks. The gambits.
And soon — the betrayals.
Liars' Gambit had begun.
In shadows deep, where truths are sold cheap in price,
A whispered word, a lie is told.
The mask of calm, the heart of fear,
The quiet smile that hides the sneer.
With every promise, each sweet vow,
The web is spun, the lies allow.
We trust the voices, soft and kind,
But hidden knots tie hearts and minds.
The world is twisted, bound by threads,
A tale of lies the heart dreads.
Yet in the dark, the truth remains,
A distant spark that calls the pain.
So here we stand, both lost and found,
In webs of lies, we're tightly bound.
The game is played, the cards are dealt,
But none can trust the hand they've felt.