“So, do you know why you’re here?” the thug asked interrogatively as he readied for is next punch.
“Yea, I had taken some food from you idiots.”
The thug had punched me and I blacked out.
Then I woke up the next morning on my bed. I had no idea how I got back here. Usually when someone beats me up they just leave me out to dry.
Maybe he was a nice bully. Ha! Like that ever happens, I thought.
My head was throbbing, like when you have to take your first injection of anti-virus. Everyone does this to me. I’m different from everyone else anyways, besides me having blue eyes I don’t agree with The Flow program and I am the only student who doesn’t have a combat readiness score over ten in my quadrant. I don’t blame them, though, if there was someone who was a sitting duck I probably had beat them up two.
My dad wants me to be like him though, a captain in the GSS, top of the top soldiers. He does the operations that other branches of The Force can’t even dare to do.
My dad paces into my room standing at about 5’ 9” ½ and has brown-green eyes. For being a soldier, though, he has a kind heart. Always standing up for the little person. He always has that look, concerned, on edge, but relaxed at the same time.
“Bullied again Jason?” he rhetorically asked.
My father has a sense of humor like nothing else.
“Nah, I just thought it was a good idea to punch myself,” I respond as always.
Since I get beat up all of the time he doesn’t really need to ask, but he does for fun.
“Okay, kiddo I’ll get some pain reliever. Training starts in an hour, so hurry up,” my dad remarks making his way downstairs.
I stood up the pain magnifies. Pain always feels worse in this -65? cold weather. Ever since humans had left Earth to go to this planet hundreds of years ago, the temperature had been getting colder, not just dropping in decimals, but 1? each year.
After I took a shower I got dressed in my training uniform and headed downstairs. The scent of eggs and bacon filled up the lower rooms. We had to replicate our own food because the ground isn’t nutrient rich. We’ve tried to grow crops inside but the air is too dry.
“I can smell you’ve replicated eggs and bacon,” I guessed.
“Wrong, I actually made you pancakes with butter and sausage,” he said trying to hurry up the replicating process.
I took a painkiller and grabbed my training supplies for the day. It looked like the lesson today is surviving in outdoors.
Great. Something that I can complete with ease, I thought.
Everyday had a different lesson. Yesterday was responding to surprise attacks, and my first lesson was escaping a prison. That is how I got my nickname Sneak. I had squeezed through my cell ventilation system and fell right into the warren’s office, while they were having a meeting, so I failed that lesson.
After I had eaten, I picked up my pack, put on my coat, and unlocked the security beam to open the door.
Each task started right when you walk out your door. Since all of the trainees’ houses are bordering a giant dome called “The Arena”. The dome can make any scenario you program into it.
The harsh wind was unpredictable and the dust stung my eyes. I decided that I can use this to my advantage, making it a bit harder for survival.  The full objective is to be the last one “surviving”, and of course most of the other people will be trying to eliminate others.
As I ran through the dry, cracked, dirt I find a 4’x4’ sheet of metal. This could be a shelter of sorts, but the wind is blowing too unpredictably. I pick up a rock and bash the metal to make a crude blade with a bit of metal leftover.
I see a figure in the distance, running towards me, but the wind is blowing so rapidly you can’t sustain a run. The. Suddenly I trip on a metal object.
A metal handle. In the middle of a training exercise. Usually, The Arena works up, forward, backward, and left, and right. Not down.
Ignoring my reasoning I open the hatch and climb inside. I am hit with cold damp air allows a conclusion, that no one has been down here in a long time, to form. The metallic corridor in front of me has an unworldly glow to it. The smell of rust lingers in the air as I creep down the hallway, the clanging of my feet on the ground doesn’t help. At the other end of the hallway there is a padlock, that looks like it was built centuries ago. I bash the padlock in with the rock I still have and the door swings open.
“Well if locks keep the honest people honest, then you are dishonest,” says a familiar voice, “It was about time someone discovered that hatch.”
When I turned the corner the Leader of the Global Union was looming there.
“Of course you would be the only one who would’ve gone down the hatch anyway,” he applied.
The monitors behind the Leader gave him a maniacal look. When I looked what was actually on the monitors  amazed me. This was still planet Earth.
“I see that you’ve found out that this is earth,” the Leader said observing, “but it’s too late anyway.”
He then pulls out a plasma phaser, which dissolves a man in seconds. When he was just about to fire there was a whirring noise. A monitor behind him lit up with the view of an inhumanoid figure.
“The next matter extraction of earth and the sun will take place in one minute, infantile, you may live another ten years,” the figure said as the screen dimmed down.
“Your even trading the matter of our own planet and sun for immortality!” I said enraged.
“Yes and in one minute you will be dead,” he remarked aiming the phaser at my head,
“but I’ll be gone when the extraction is done. The earth will freeze up when everything is done, and I will be on the ship.”
As I look up the phaser was pointed right at me. When he was just about to fire, the ground violently shook, and the ground cracked open. The leader and I fell the into the deep chasm.