My name is Gwen and I live in one of the three underground societies in America. I have never seen the light of day. For the past three-hundred years my people have been living underground. They believe the world on top of the ground is much more dangerous than living in the bedrock and soil. “The world is not a place to mess around with. You mustn’t get distracted or the dangers of the world will consume you” those are the wise words of my school teacher, Mr. Fite. For three-hundred years no one has come in and no one has gone out, until now.
Our leaders have deemed it time to invade the outer-world. They believe we have accumulated enough knowledge, manpower, and weapons to revolt. There will be a contest in two days to pick young warriors to scout out our targets and come back to lead the army. The society has grown to, easily, 4.5 million people and out of them only three will abandon their home, emerge into the fresh air, and see the dangers the outer world has to offer.
I am one of three contestants; I have always wanted to make a change for the better and this is my chance. The first round of choosing are just your age group, luckily my birthday is not until December nineteenth so I have not yet turned seventeen. The age groups are eleven through thirteen, four¬teen through sixteen, and seventeen through nineteen. There will be three winners from each group that will go on to compete for a spot in the final group.

I have been preparing for this day for three years. My mom says I am over obsessed, I call it determined. When morning arrives, I get up at 3:07 a.m. on the dot and by 3:21 a.m. I am already benching two-hundred and seventy-five pounds at a sweat stained gym. Then I scarf down a nutritious and totally disgusting breakfast on the way to the old rundown racetrack, with too many potholes to count. I pretend each pothole is a bomb and I must use my thirty-six inch vertical to save me from landing on it. Of course every time I come here that, that, that disgusting pig has to be here too. I try to mind my own business but he, like every other time I see him, comes up to me and speaks, “Hey Hen! I heard you’re going to go play around with the professionals trying to get out of this rotting soil you call home!” I absolutely hate talking to him but I can’t let him think of me as weak, so I answer without losing my amazing running pace. “First of all Rupert my name is Gwen not Hen, second of all, this place is not rotting and you are one of us too. Third of all I’ve been training for this for three years, if anything you will be the one who is playing around!” After I finish talking and he can’t think of a comeback, he just gives me a glare like I just hit him in the gut with a wrecking ball. “I am not one of you! I will never be one of you and I will certainly be the one who leads the army to the outer-world!” I’m glad he stormed out after he said that because I did not know what to say to that.

Now that my training for the morning is over, I’m going to the mall with my best friend Lisa. I am so lucky that she turned seventeen two weeks ago because she is a massive two-hundred-ten pound, five foot ten, solid as rock girl. If she was still sixteen right now neither girl nor boy in the fourteen to sixteen category would stand a chance.
We are buying outfits for the competition and, well, I need to look as intimidating as possible! My soft gray eyes and long curly hair do not work to my advantage when trying to intimidate people. Lisa, on the other hand, has piercing green eyes and pin straight hair that frames her chiseled face. I would be deathly afraid of her if I didn’t know she was actually just a big teddy bear!
Competition Day
The competition is in three hours and I am in the health food line, trying to get a small bagel to tide me over till lunch. I keep getting weird stares from everyone who looks my way. Is it because I look intimidating? No way, I am just wearing a black sleeveless muscle shirt and gray leggings. My black hair is straight and Lisa has highlighted my eyes with a heavy smoky eye look. I don’t understand.
Every day I must go to work to support my mom and my two baby brothers. My dad was a great man, when I was nine and my brothers were two we got a call explaining he went missing. There was a search for him throughout the entire society. He was never found. There are suspicions to what actually happened but none fit the puzzle perfectly. Ever since then I’ve been working to support my family. I got a job at a fast food restaurant. The place is sickening; they make fake fruits and vegetables with artificial things. The only things we have to eat are fruit, veggies, and grains. Why would you make them unhealthy? I never complained about work though, if I did I’d surely be fired. Then my family would go broke and we’d be forced to live on the streets again.
Every time I walk down the street people look at me, but not like they do now. I usually get a look like; you look familiar, then they comment, “You look just like your father, I’m so sorry.” But today is different, people look with fear in their eyes, like they’re dreading something from the past. Suddenly a deep, massive voice tears me from my thoughts, “Age group fourteen to sixteen, it’s time to see what you can bring to the table!” I can’t feel my legs working but I move with the large crowd of teenagers. We move into a giant, square room with no windows and only one way out. Quickly my excitement is replaced by millions of questions. “What’s going to happen? What will they do to us? Do they know who I am?” the questions swirl around in my head too quickly to sort. My head is pounding but it is silent in the room.
A loud voice, the same voice that summoned us in here, is speaking. I was too busy trying to clear my head that I didn’t realize we stopped walking. It is too late to stop myself before I smash into the guy in front of me, “I am so sorry I didn’t see…” “Hey watch where you’re going dork!” Oh great, of all people that could be in front of me, it’s Rupert, “Oh Hen, look at you, trying to be cool by coming here, aren’t you?” Oh, how I hate his guts. “I am not trying to be cool, I’m going to be the one who gets out of here and you’ll be stuck down…” just then the voice interrupts me, “Quiet down! Quiet down! We all know why we’re here so let’s get down to business. You know the champs of this age group will further compete to see the unseen to us.” His words “unseen to us” strike me like a bullet, has no one really seen what’s out there? “Ya’ll will be in for a crazy time today, you will hurt, you will scream, and you will be crying for your momma, but that is what makes a warrior!”
When I finally look up at the owner of the booming voice, I notice how intimidating he is. He is at least six foot seven and probably three-hundred pounds. His muscles have muscles that have muscles and his bicep must be as big as my skull. He has too many tattoos to count and if you did count, it would take you hours to figure out what each one is. There is a tree, a ball of light, words, and many, many other things I don’t understand. Behind all the ink on his skin there is skin as dark as the mud I sleep on and as shiny as the lights burning my eyes at the moment.
When he turns to point us to the most difficult obstacle course you will ever face, as he calls it, I notice a tattoo behind his ear. Its looks like a blue rope like thing. It has a face, but not one like a human’s; it has red eyes and a long tongue that is forked at the end. The tattoo seems to crawl with no hands or feet, like it slides across his bald head with ease, I think it’s a living thing of a fantasy, because humans are the only thing that has life.
For the competition we must complete the obstacle course in less than five minutes to move on. We get in our starting positions based on weight and height, my group is last. When it finally gets to my group we line up on the starting line, “GO!” The first obstacle is monkey bars but the twist is the rungs are spinning and covered in chunky green slime. If you fall you are out, luckily I have had practice with wet monkey bars. When I was a child, Lisa and I would see who could get across soaking wet monkey bars quickest. This, though, is way more intense. They are constantly yelling out commands through large speakers and announcing who is out. I make it past the monkey bars in fifteen seconds. The next section is spinning barrels, with sharp spikes, that constantly change speed and direction. I start sprinting, I figure going slow will give me more time to mess up or get thrown off by jerking barrels. I jump. Landing on the first barrel, my feet slip and fly onto the next one.
Most people wiped the slime off their hands but I did not and it served me to my advantage. The barrels are slippery but when my hands are grasping for something to latch onto, they find a sturdy barrel. When my hands hit the barrel they stick and I pull myself back up nearly falling ten feet into ice water.
I make it past the barrels in thirty seconds. I can’t see the next phase so I follow the crowd going right. Soon enough after hearing a girl crying and a voice saying, “Again, anyone who has been eliminated please jog your way to the right,” I realize I went the wrong way. I sprint in the opposite direction. My clock is now at one minute. There it is the last obstacle for this round. I think I’m making great time right now. I start up the rock climbing wall, this is easy enough. The out of the blue I hear a scream, then another, then another and then I scream. Something pierced my leg and it starts to go numb and I fall. My numb foot gets caught on a ledge and I dangle there watching people fall to the concrete while I scream. Then I latch my other foot to the ledge and lift myself up. They must be shooting poisonous darts at us. I get hit again, this time in the bicep. I try to power through it. The clock reads four minutes and fifteen seconds, I accelerate. Climb, scream, go, and repeat, that is how I make my way up the wall, climb, scream, go, and repeat.
Finally making it to the top, my body pierced in at least twenty places, I make my way to the buzzer. Just as I hit the button my whole body goes numb. When the feeling comes back to me, I lift myself up. My time was four minutes and fifty seven seconds. The leader board states everyone who has hit the buzzers and their score. I search the board for Rupert’s name, hoping he got more than five minutes. To my displeasure, his time was four minutes and thirty seconds. I will have to make up some serious ground in the next round. There are only one hundred of us left. This round will determine the final three, going to the last round with every age group.
This round is a memory challenge. The three that get every combination right will advance. “We will start out easy, remember this number combination; 1,5,15,23,2,4,32,7,5,5,103.” When I was little and bored I would always do things to advance my abilities, especially memory. I write down my answer. “Please show your answers.” The large man instructs us, “Wow, you guys are a disgrace, ninety three of you got it wrong, down to seven all ready. Everyone who got it wrong receives an electric shock, I didn’t. When I look around I sadly spot Rupert not being shocked either.
This time it’s a color combination. “Blue, pink, pink, green, yellow, black, white, white, maroon,” The large man raises one of his bushy eyebrows, “Already got our winners.” The suspense is building; I am not sure about this one. “And our finalists are, Jeffera,” Jeffera is a tall and muscular girl, she is very athletic and I’ve never seen her lose anything she enters. Once the clapping stops he continues, “Rupert,” Oh great, just the people I wanted to compete against, if I win that is. “Our final one is Gwen.” The rest of the time before the final completion is a blur. My competition isn’t that fierce, the three youngest are too scared and two of them dropped out. That brought my competitors to six. Jeffera, Lisa, and Rupert are the only ones I know but the youngest and other two in Lisa’s groups are total twigs, they don’t worry me.
So apparently Martin is the large man’s name and he is directing this too. They are running out of time and need three winners scouting out the outer-world as soon as possible. “Since our time is limited, this challenge will just be a memory round.” Before I know it he is spitting out numbers and colors, “1, blue, 5, 6, pink, 2…” Then my hands start to write and I hold up my answer. “Amazing,” he says, “We have our winners, Jeremy, Lisa, and Gwen!” I’m going crazy, but before I get the chance to celebrate they usher us out, yelling commands. After we walk what seems like miles, I see light, a hole of some sort.
say goodbye to family?” now I’m freaking out. Martine pushes us through the hole and slams it shut. The light out here, over the ground, is so bright I can’t see my own fingers in front of my face. Once my eyes adjust I see a large figure. He looks familiar, like a figment of an old dream. “Gwen, are you ready to start a revolution?” “Dad?”
And then I woke, sweating profusely, what a wild dream.