Chapter 2

Everyone set their glasses and utensils down before turning to face the screen.

My mother pressed a few buttons on her tablet, and the display flickered to life.

The title, The Best Of: In the Past 72 Hours, appeared in bold, red Arial font.

Then the video opened with a shot of me kneeling beside a broken section of pipe, desperately licking the water droplets leaking from the crack.

The water was brown with rust. It stank. Yet I drank it as though it were the purest spring water because I was that desperate to survive.

The crowd let out a collective gasp of admiration.

"Such a powerful survival instinct. Beautiful," a man said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "He abandoned every trace of human dignity and reverted to a state of pure animality!"

My mother stood beside the screen with a laser pointer, carrying herself like a museum curator.

The tiny red dot settled on my face. "I would like to draw everyone's attention to this gaze."

She circled my eyes with the laser. "His pupils are dilated. There is nothing in them except his pure desire for water. It's as pure and animalistic as it can get. The rest of us have lived in the comfort of civilization for so long that we've forgotten what it looks like to wear an expression like this."

Animalistic? Me trying to survive on rusty water while thinking maybe it would let me save a little more clean water for my parents... that was their idea of "animalistic?"

The next scene showed me burning with a fever. I writhed beneath a tattered blanket, my cheeks flushed bright red.

I mumbled in delirium, occasionally crying out, "Help me, Dad!"

The crowd gasped and sighed.

A billionaire in a floral-print T-shirt frowned as he held a cookie. "God, this looks rough. Are you sure this won't kill him?"

My father swirled the wine in his glass with perfect composure.

"Don't worry. I pay close attention to the limits of our study," he said nonchalantly, as though he were discussing the pruning of a tiny tree.

"He's had a fever before. I watched his immune system rebuild itself to contain the illness. After all, the body can only surpass its limits by enduring and adapting to life-threatening conditions.

Children in modern society have it far too easy. They're given medicine and vaccines for every little thing. They can't even survive a fever. How could they possibly survive the collapse of civilization?"

The way my father casually described my suffering suffocated me. It felt as though a boulder had settled on my chest.

I had believed they were out searching for medicine when they left me alone with that fever, constantly under the threat of zombies.

I bit down on the corner of my blanket and fought with everything I had to stay quiet so I wouldn't worry them.

Instead, they had been watching me hover between life and death on a screen the entire time.

Then they recorded it all and turned it into a highlight reel so they could boast about what an extraordinary child they had raised.

A woman with a bob haircut gave my mother a thumbs-up. "You're a genius at parenting, Professor Devos. None of us could ever match your resolve and determination to educate a child this way."

My mother smiled and displayed a graph. A red dotted line was labeled: Resource Availability Index.

She pointed to a data point on the chart, pride coloring her voice. "This wasn't actually the last can of food. Neither was this can of meat. I told him they were the last supplies left in the entire world. That without them, we would all starve.

"It was a test. I called it the Desperation Test. I wanted to see whether he would consume his parents' resources or sacrifice himself instead."

The guests nodded in understanding, their excitement growing.

Someone leaped to their feet and started clapping. Others quickly joined in. A chaotic round of applause swept across the lawn.

The bob-haired woman raised her glass in a toast. "This is cutting-edge science! This is an experiment that challenges the very depths of humanity!"

Everyone raised their glasses and clinked them together.

The bright, cheerful sound cut straight through me.

They built their joy on my suffering. Their happiness came from dancing on my corpse.

My father took a sip of wine and frowned. "The data we've gathered over the past few days seems to have plateaued. He keeps huddling in that corner without moving.

"Maybe he's grown accustomed to extreme hunger. His body has entered some sort of energy-conservation mode. The subject's capacity for adaptation is almost too remarkable. It can be quite troublesome."

He sounded genuinely disappointed, as though my ability to adapt had made his research less interesting.

My mother set her glass down and adjusted her collar.

Excitement gleamed in her eyes. "Well, if that's the case, we shouldn't wait any longer. Let's begin our Zombie Siege Simulation! Once that's complete, our experiment will reach its conclusion much sooner!"

She rubbed her hands together eagerly before walking over to a large control panel.

"The greatest show is about to begin, my guests!" Her finger hovered over a large red button. "Please, keep your eyes on the screen!"

"Don't! Stop this! I'm already dead! Stop doing this to me!"

I rushed forward to stop her, but I passed straight through her body. No one could hear me or see my tears.

My mother pressed the button.