“Takeyour marks, ready, get set, BANG!” The referee announced. The athletes took off at full speed. Kyle was left behind by the professional runners, but quickly caught up to the back of the group. He was on the outer rim of the track, so it was obvious that he was much slower than the rest of the runners. Charlie watched nervously as Kyle tried to run to the middle of the group. The first mile was a bad start for Kyle. After lots of struggling, he finally approached the middle section of the group. When he was about to reach 2 miles, he successfully gained 4th place. It was obvious that he was running out of energy, but he tried his best to keep his pace and run as fast as he could. Vivian frowned on the side. Her brother was not a great runner before, but he looked strangely confident and ran like a professional athlete now.
Kyle was doing great so far, but he had made a fatal mistake. He ran too fast in the beginning to catch up, causing him to lack energy in the last two miles. He was panting hard, and it was clear he wouldn’t hang on much longer. It was the last mile and Kyle was in 3rd place. He started to sprint as fast as he could, relying on whatever he had left. He passed one person and reached second place. Now it was 50 meters away from the finishing line. The crowd roared louder, but Kyle’s senses seemed to be muted. All he could see was the blazing sunlight and the red finishing line. “I have to win.” He thought determinedly in his mind,“I have to win.” He used all his energy to sprint past the man in first place. Finally, the finishing line was just in reach. He ran as fast as he could towards the line, successfully avoiding the arm reaching towards him from the man who’s now in second place.
He won. The crowd roared, as Kyle’s vision blurred. He wobbled, then fell to the ground. He heard his sister’s and Charlie’s voices far away shouting, before he passed out. Vivian was genuinely scared when her brother passed out. She knew her brother’s body was weak but did not know that it would be this severe. She ran to her brother, shouting his name. Charlie on the other hand noticed the arm that reached out to grab Kyle. The man was named Leon, she recalled from the list, and he was known for being proud and competitive. After she made sure Kyle was alright and Vivian was taking care of him, she approached the angry man sitting on the ground, panting, and glaring at Kyle. “Hey,” Charlie said and knelt down to face the man, “you were trying to grab that guy over there weren’t you?” She questioned with a stone-cold face.
“Yeah, so what? He still won, didn’t he?” Leon said with a spiteful voice. Charlie narrowed her eyes and punched the man in the face without any hesitation.
“You are an athlete. Athletes respect and act with sportsmanship. What you did right there, was not sportsmanship. He might have gotten seriously injured with your pull. If you ever do something like that to him, or anyone and I will know about it, you would not be in a good position, do you understand?” Charlie said without any emotions in her voice, as she stared at the man still shocked after the punch in his face. She then walked back to the siblings and helped Vivian carry Kyle back to the lounge, failing to see the vicious glare Leon gave to her back.
After placing Kyle in the lounge, Charlie headed to the separated rooms again. She tried to twist the handle on Kyle’s dressing room, but like she expected, it’s locked.
There’s no hint for the keys to open the door and Kyle knows nothing about it either. With no hints to solve this mystery, Charlie headed back to the lounge to check on Kyle. He was already awake, not looking great, but seemingly okay. The award ceremony will be hosted in a few minutes, so it’s a good time to take a break and discuss what they are going to do next.
Charlie asked Kyle to see the phone again, wondering if there were any more hints written or hidden inside the phone. As the girls were trying to findmore hints, Kyle decided to take a walk to the dressing rooms and see what more hints he would discover. Also, to lure out the killer.
Kyle had thought about many aspectsof the “killer”. Who would he be? and why would he try to kill somebody? After he felt the reaching arm behind him as he was running, he figured out who the killer might be. He looked through the list carefully before he raced and noticed that Leon was a competitive and arrogant man. The thing is, that he had never lost any race in his entire career, which was quite suspicious. Losing a race to a skinny, 17-year-old boy would be unacceptable for Leon. This way, Leon being the killer would make sense. If first place disappears or gives up his place, second place would become first. That’s why Leon would take chances to eliminate the man who took his place.
As Kyle was walking down the hall, he started to think about his race. He had felt strange when he was running, but he decided not to care about it that much. Now thinking back to it, he felt as if he didnot need to control his body while running. Suddenly, he heard quiet footsteps behind him, trying t o mix with his own steps. He acted like he noticed nothing but lowered his head a bit so he could glance at the man behind him. He saw a glint of silver flashing before it disappeared behind the man’s torso. A knife, Kyle instantly recognized. This would be a lot easier to deal with than a gun. Just as They approached a corner where the surveillance cameras wouldn’t see, a swishing sound came from behind.
Kyle instantly turned and held on to the man’s wrist with one hand, hitting the lower arm with the other, causing the knife to drop onto the ground. Just as he expected, it was Leon. Leon screamed as Kyle twisted his arm. Kyle looked down at the man kneeling on the floor holding his arm in pain. Kyle and Vivian had both learnt fighting skills when they were very young and was amazing at it.
“Assassination failed.” He said in a clam voice and picked up the knife. He ignored the crying man and headed to the rooms. He checked everywhere like Charlie did and found nothing. Just as he was about to head back, he saw Charlie and Vivian come running this way.
“We know what the key is,” Charlie said, “What’s going on with the man screaming over there?” She gestured towards Leon.
“Oh, um, he tried to kill me, and I made sure that did not happen.” Kyle said, looking away, “Anyways, you guys found the key?”
“Yeah, apparently, it’s the gold medal that they were going to award you, or something related to it. We discovered that under the second line, there was a line written with extremely small letters: The pride of the champion. The pride would probably mean the place he won, so a gold medal would be a good representation of that.” Vivian answered.
Kyle shrugged and headed to the awarding ceremony, leaving the small knife inside Charlie’s backpack. Charlie waited next to the dressing room and Vivian helped Leon fix his arm by snapping it back in place. Leon wailed and headed to the awarding ceremony to get his first silver medal ever.
After a few minutes, Kyle came back with the golden medal and a golden key strung to the ribbon.
“Let’s go girls,” he said as he used the key to open the door. Inside the dressing room was almost empty, except for a door marked “3” on the top with a circular indent on the surface built on the back of the room.
Kyle thought about it for a few moments, asked the girls if they brought everything, then placed the golden medal onto the indent. Lights blazed as the door opened. “Thank you.” Someone said in a faraway voice as Kyle stepped into the door. He was confused and tried to ask the girls if they heard it, but his voice was swallowed by the light. The next thing he knew, he was back on the train and the hooded man appeared from the corner.