Hi. My name is Moura Johnson. If you’re reading this, then you already know about the apocalypse. You already know about the hundreds, thousands, maybe millions, of diseased zombies wandering the streets. Some call them Worms. Some say Stitchers. Some people call them by their scientific name, Movere Relatorium. Me, I call them Weavers.

It could be anyone. That’s all you need to know if you want to survive.

And most of you know all this. But what you don’t know is this story. The story of the Cutters.

Hi everyone! I’ve been working on a story centered around Moura and the apocalypse for a while now. I’ve just published the last chapter on Wattpad, so if you like what you just read above, check it out on my profile, WhiteWolfe3. I’ve published several works, some finished, some not. But if you want to read Weavers, I’ve posted a link to the first chapter here:

https://www.wattpad.com/847789909

Thanks for reading! Everyone have a great day!

I had joined the military. Every man and woman showed scars from their lies. But the major had one from his ear to his hip. So deep that it hugged around his spine. In the heat of battle, I was shot in the chest. Crying out, I fell. I reached up clinging to life, then I saw the Major at my side. As I lay dying, he whispered, “It’s going to be alright.”

While passing by a river I saw a flash of white amongst the reeds. I stopped, frozen, my eyes darting about and latching onto a flicker of movement. I wanted to walk closer, to brush aside the reeds and find the source of the color and the rustling in the tall grass. I knew that heeding these impulses could only bode ill. So, step by step I dragged my unwilling feet away from the shore line and to safety. For no person in possession of their senses would go down to the river in the week of the Rusalka.

The first game is arguably the hardest.

It’s the entry level stuff. Only certain people get to apply, and of those who do, one wins. The rest are slaughtered and deemed Unfit. Kind of Hunger/Games-esque.

I won.

The second game was easy. A puzzle game. Designed to test intelligence. Really, it was a game. All the others were introduced as higher forms of entertainment. To call it game would be to downplay it. But that is what they became. The Nine Games.

The Nine Games are entered by all people age 16. That is, the ones who try out and get in. That in of itself is hard. After sixteen, you’re no longer eligible. There are the people who don’t even care, who try not to get in. There are the people who devote their whole lives to get in only to fail. There are those who do so and succeed. Then there are those who don’t try and get in anyway.

Guess which I’m in. The latter. I never actively tried to get in. I did do my research, however. Practice tests are all over the internet and the VR world.

Not that they can prepare you for the real shit, but it helps.

There are no rules. Not officially. But there is one that you either follow or die—

Trust No One.

We (the gamers, officially called The Eligible. I’ve grown to hate that word. Eligibile. Yuck.) have that unofficial code. You either follow it, or lose. And I have followed that rule ever since I was three and my uncle killed my mom and dad, then proceeded to rape every one of my siblings, myself included. I have eighteen. Now I have twenty, as two of them got pregnant and gave birth. Shitty luck for them. But at least they don’t have to enter the games. People will do stupid stuff to get out of the games. You can’t enter if you’re crippled, so people will cripple themselves. People commit suicide. People have sex to get pregnant at eleven just so they don’t have to go through with it.

I was never one of those people. So I followed the rule. I never looked back. I killed without mercy. If you crossed me, you died. If you disagreed, you died. If you shared with me, you died. Etcetera. Basically, I see you, you die. The end.

This is the story of when I broke that rule.

Pariah stood on the ledge, staring down at her hands. They were clean. Shoving someone off a Cliff was such a clean way to murder someone. No blood. Just death. It meant she didn’t have to waste precious water washing the red liquid from her hands.

The Nine Games. She’d been dreaming of this since she turned two. And now she was in. And it was everything she dreamed of.

Yet despite this perfect happiness, scars laced her body. Words. The names of her family, carved on her left arm. On the right, just swirly designs. It wasn’t pain so much that made her do it as much as just plain boredom. When she was bored, she dragged a knife along her skin and drew pictures with it. Wrote words. Short poems contained in a word.

Carnage was her favorite. She had that one carved at least eight times, three on each thigh, one on her arm, and one in sloppy lettering on her neck.

She knew she wouldn’t die from this. It wasn’t deep enough. She looked like one of those crazies who covered their body in tattoos, except she was covered in scars. Some were fresh, pink and red and bright florescent colors. Some were black and scanned over. Some pulsed yellow and purple with infection. All of them seemed fatal. But Pariah had learned long ago something that she could never tell any of the Overseers, or other players. She was immortal. Not in the traditional, live forever sense. She could not die of anything other than old age. Which meant she’d live until her organs gave out. Her scars, since she knew they couldn’t kill her, were really just a form of entertainment. Her left pinkie was completely missing. Early on in the game, when she had no steady source of food, she cut it off and ate it. Now she had found a private pond where she holed up. There were, quite literally, plenty of fish in the sea. Except it was t a sea. And the fish were small, the size of her thumb, and some were diseased and bloated. But that made no difference to her.

Until today she returned to the pond to find it no longer empty.

Man, I can’t believe I haven’t found this place sooner! Water, food, moderate shelter. Hell yeah! Behind me, a twig breaks. I pretend not to notice. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Then seize the moment they take to take out a weapon and shoot them. I have a gun. It’s always loaded. Ten people get to be in the rounds. I killed four this round. What number? Has it really been twenty? Wow, I only need to make it to round twenty five. This is game nine, after all. Five more rounds. If no one kills anyone else, not counting this round, that means only 45 more people to kill. Counting this round, then at most, 51. Not too many.

Nothing compared to the 128 others. I suddenly feel sick.

“Hi,” I say, spinning and pointing the gun at the stranger in less than a second. It’s a girl. She has dark skin covered with a lot of strange marks. Her hair is a myriad of color. She must have dyed it. She’s studying me like a book. She looks stunned. “Who are you?” I continue, my finger on the trigger.

“Damn it,” she mutters, thinking I won’t hear- or maybe not even realizing that she spoke.

“Who are you?” I repeat.

“Pariah,” she says. “And you? Can I know your name before you kill me?”

“Such optimism,” I say, clicking my teeth the way my mom used to. “I’m Air.”

“Nice name,” she says with a nod. “So shoot me.”

“How many have you killed?” I ask.

“Four,” she says. I remain stoic. “You?”

“Two,” I lie. No use in her thinking we are the last two. She’ll get more competitive, which means she might fight her way to me and kill me and win.

“Are you going to shoot me?” She asks.

“No,” I say. “Sorry about your luck. We should team. Kill the others. Then I’ll kill you.”

“Maybe I’ll kill you first.”

“Meh,” I say. “I don’t care. I’m not in this to win.” She looks at me with something resembling awe.

“That’s admirable.”

“Not really. Those who want to win never do.”

“You think?” She says with a spark in her eye.

“I know.” She obviously wants to win. She looks like one of those crazies, the ones who spend their whole lives learning to hunt and kill and survive in hostile environments. I don’t really care. She’ll either kill me, or break the rules, trust me, and I’ll kill her.

This is the last game. Winner takes all. Am I really going to let her have a chance at winning?

Hell, why not? Might as well. I lower my gun. She makes no move for a weapon.

“You’re serious,” she says, impassive. “Weird.”

“This your hangout?” I ask, taking a look around. She nods hesitantly. I shrug.

“You got a pretty good setup here. Mind sharing?”

“Yes, but since you kindly elected not to kill me, I will share anyway.” Good choice, I think with a wry grin.

“What’s so funny?”

“Everything,” I say. “We have total freedom in here. Total anarchy. It’s fun, if you ask me.” She rolls her eyes.

“Yeah. Fun.”

She takes me to her “house”, a giant hollowed out tree. She’s dug down to make a kind of bunker.

I should have killed her. I should have killed her. I should have fucking killed her.

But I didn’t. And now I’m going to lose and die. I’m sure of it.

But I still didn’t kill her.

“Your name is Air.”

“Correct. You are Pariah.”

“Also correct.”

“Is your gun the only weapon you have?”

“Yes,” I lie. In reality I have thirty throwing knives hidden in various pockets of my military jacket and cargo pants. Plus a small pistol. And a set of catanas strapped to my back under the jacket.

“That’s a stupid thing to say,” she says.

“Meh,” I say. “I’ve said worse.”

“I have no doubt.”

“Your weapons?” She unsheaths a dagger.

“Never used. I don’t kill people with it.”

“Then what does it do?” She looks at me and laughs before casually digging the blade into her thumb.

“What else?” I look at the needle sharp point and think how glad I am that I won’t be on the receiving end.

At least, hopefully not. Probably will end up dead, though.

Who is this girl? How’d she find my hidey-hole? And why didn’t she kill me?

The lies I can explain. She doesn’t want me to know that we are the last two. Understandable. She doesn’t want me to know about her other weapons scattered across her being. Also understandable. But why didn’t she kill me? Why? That one has no logical explanation.

But the real question is why haven’t I killed her?

Also no logical explanation. I could win this round. Bam. The end. Perfection. I have the ability to win. But... I won’t. Why? Why is my heart thumping against my chest, threatening to burn us both alive?

“So, we’re a team now, right?”

“Right?”

“What happens when we’re the last two?”

“I dunno. I guess you’ll kill me. Or I’ll kill you. Somehow I feel like it will be the first one.”

“What makes you think that?” I ask, knowing she’s right.

“Your scars. They’re infected. That would kill a normal person. You’re one of the Immortals. Unofficially, my guess. You are in this to win. And if you’re immortal, then I can’t kill you. Unless I survive here for eighty years. Unlikely.”

HOW DID SHE FIGURE ME OUT SO FAST?!?! This has been my secret for sixteen years, and she just... bam. Figured it out. The end. How weird?

Who is this girl?

Ha. Bet she didn’t think I’d figure that one out. I can tell from the red flushing across her face like fire. I didn’t survive this long on strength. I survived on wit. I can read people. Even her. I can tell when people are too squeamish to kill. You’d think that people wouldn’t be that way, given the rigid selection schedule.

The first eight games can have one winner, and multiple survivors. This one, since it’s the last, has one winner, no survivors. There are ten rounds. Each has nine Extras, and one Champion. I was the champion this round. But Pariah definitely wasn’t just an extra. Maybe there were multiple Games? In different places? I thought that was impossible. I thought our city was the last one?

I should be asking important questions. Like; what is this feeling? Why am I trusting her?

And why is she trusting me?

This girl now knows my deepest secret. My fatal weakness. Maybe she couldn’t kill me, but she could disqualify me.

I have to get her on my good side. If I don’t I’m screwed. And I get the feeling that I wouldn’t kill her. I can’t. When I think about it, my body joins a revolution and overthrows my brain as government. What is this weird warmth creeping through my body like worms into dirt?

Love isn’t real.

Another thing my uncle taught me.

But what other name is there to point fingers of blame at?

None. That’s what this is.

Love.

Curse the world. Curse my uncle. Curse the games. Curse this genius girl who figured me out in the short period of time it takes to fall in love.

Sir. It’s working.

If they fall in love then they will end up living out their whole lives. And there will be no winner. Which means no more games.

For sure. And the serum is working. They are falling in love.

Perfect. Keep administering it into the air. If we skip a dose it could ruin everything.

I know that.

Good. To the real end of the games.

To the end.

“So how does it work? Your immortality?”

“I’m not really immortal. Not the traditional definition, anyway. I will live to eighty, and then die. No illness or human-made weapon can kill me.”

“Human made?” Pariah flushes and looks down.

“There’s a legend amongst immortals, kind of like the bogeyman with you guys, right?”

“Okay.”

“It’s a way to scare kids into being good. But there are some adults who believe this tale.”

“Tell me! I’m rotting with excitement!”

“Fine, okay. The story goes that a long time ago a mortal fell in love with an immortal. This happens all the time these days, but back then it was unheard of.

Anyway, the mortal fell in love and began to obsess over the immortal. Like, stalker level. Stealing clothes, following and taking pictures, that kind of creepy shit. Until one day, the immortal began going out with another immortal. This mortal basically went insane. He knew he couldn’t kill an immortal in his mortal form. So he sold his Soul.”

“His Soul? But that’s what makes you who you are! He wouldn’t even love her anymore!”

“I know. Crazy, right? So he did that. Then, obviously, he forgot why he did it and just became an immortal hunter.”

“That’s actually pretty cool. So what happened to the guy?”

“Not sure. One version says he had kids to continue his legacy, another says he was killed.”

“I thought you couldn’t kill a Soulless?”

“Yeah. That’s why I think he had kids to continue his legacy.”

“Weird.”

“I know, right?”

“That’s cool.”

The trunk is not big enough for the both of us. It’s small and cramped. Our bodies are pressed together. Pariah is warm and comfortable, although I’d never admit that. She’s breathing softly. The air leaving her mouth tickles the loose strands of her hair, making them dance.

Suddenly I can’t think straight. The only thought I can summon is kiss her! So I do.

Her soft lips press into mine and then I am staring at her. She’s so close.

I’m blushing super hard. I thought she’d be stunned, but I actually think she’s blushing more than me.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

It worked.

Told you it would.

Now we only have to wait seventy four years.

No we don’t.

What do you mean? Immortals can’t be killed.

Not by mortals. But by me.

You rigged the game! You’re going to kill her!

No. I’m going to kill them both.

Why?! This wasn’t part of our agreement!

I said they both have to die before the games can be over. You should have known that! Or listened!

But they are just kids!

Murderers. And you know full and well that a mortal and an immortal can’t be in love.

Dude, stop living in the past. It happens all the time.

Not this immortal. She’s mine.

You’re forty!

So?

... wait. You’re that guy! The one from the legend.

Ah. You’ve found out my secret.

What?’No!! Don’t!!

Goodbye. Thanks for your help.

OHGODPLEASENOAHHHHHHHHH——

The air is saturated with mist and fog. I can’t see the hand in front of my face. It’s a terrifying experience, especially given what happened last night.

Did I really kiss her?

Did I really like it?

What do I do?

I look over at Pariah. She twitches as if having a nightmare. When she wakes up she is sweating. The side of my body that is pressed against her is soaking and cold. She looks at me while panting frantically. What could have scared her so bad?

The mist has the same effect as putting a bag over my head. Suffocating. I feel like I can’t breathe. Being completely blind is completely distorienting. Ack.

The flashbacks are the worst. Every night I think back to that day when everything in my life descended to shit.

His large, meaty paws on my body. They move across me as if they are covered in a thick web of grease.

My eyes open, misted over with tears. Oh wait. That’s not tears. It’s fog.

My body is burning.

“Air...” I whisper. I hear her moan.

“What’s happening?”

“They released acid mist.”

“Ah... what?”

“Acid Mist. It burns.”

“Um... Pariah, I’m not burning— HOLY SHIT! What’s happening to you?” I look down. My skin is bubbling like a hot spring spa. What the Hell? I’m supposed to be immune to this stuff. What is the cause of this pain?

“Oh God, help me...” My body feels like it is being slow roasted over a hot fire. Maybe this is what it feels like to be swallowed whole by a dragon. Burning all the way down. Dissolving in a pit of acid at the end. The Games were the dragon. They were eating me.

Oh God, the pain.

“Pariah!” I see her bony white arm stretch towards me and wrap around my arm. Her skin instantly blackens where it comes in contact.

“Oww!”

For some stupid reason, she does not let go, even as I scream and cry for her to get away from me. I watch her body roast in front of me, while agonizing pain rips through me.

This is what Hell is. Not my uncle. Not the games. This is Hell.

At last Air's body stops moving— is it bad that I am relieved? I can feel my immortality slipping away.

"You're mine now," says a gruff voice.

Then darkness takes over, and I am dead.

it's all just a little game

isn't it?

friendship

do they feel as you do?

see as you hope?

do they care for you

with your scars made from rope

it's often difficult to gauge

their pretty little games

do they want to feel your pain?

tears that flow like rain

til you're run over by a train

at the highest speed

it was they

who were at the wheel

just their little game

PART 1: R34L W0RLD

My name is Aryn Jester. But no one knows that name. The name they know is Aryw (pronounced arrow). In my world, you aren’t limited to the name - or the body - you’ve been given at birth. In this world, you can be anyone. Or anything. My current avatar has dark blue hair, same color eyes, a retro hoodie design from way back in the 2000′s, and whiter than bone skin. The best part about it is the skin. Before they invented X-World the R34L W0RLD, as it was advertised, I was bullied. A lot. Now? I am Class C, class 100, the top ranking for gamers. On the rare occasions that I take off my headset, I get to look around the Dome. The Dome is the housing for all that’s left of humanity. A few million. Not many. The War, which doesn’t have an official name aside from that, lasted eighty years, so long that eventually no one could remember what they were fighting for. The Earth was scarred beyond recognition, and the human population dwindled to approximately what it is today. 609,802,001. The Dome is boring. On one side, you have the cafeteria, where you eat slop. There’s bathrooms and water fountains next to that. On the other side, you have the dorms, where you exist when you aren’t Worlding. Beds and a private bathroom, shower, clothes. Then you come to the largest area, the Zone. It’s full of VR platforms that give you complete immersion into X-World.

The X-World is what makes life not boring. They have something for everyone. They have a kids zone, where you send children under eight. Then there’s a zone for 9 to 12 year olds, then there’s the teen area, and then the adult area. No one ever has to pay anything for any of this. It’s all provided. I’m in the teen zone, arguably the most fun. You never know what stupid crap you might come across in here.

There’s only one rule: Don’t go Outside. Outside the Dome is strictly forbidden, where only Units can go. Units are basically our military force. They guard us from the wild animals and strays that lurk outside. It’s not a hard job. My older brother Traevur, before he had to come back for our parent’s funeral, worked there. He said it was so boring that he sometimes fell asleep on shift. That wasn’t true, of course. I know my brother. He doesn’t do that kind of stuff. He went back out there, after Mom and Dad died, and I haven’t heard from him since. People manage their grief in strange ways, I guess.

Me, I managed by gaming. I rose to the top fast, mostly because I never do anything else. I just kept Worlding.

Until now.

I am staring, a half-consumed ration in one hand, an empty water bottle in the other, at a hole. A hole in my dorm. A hole in the Dome, leading to the forbidden outside. Scorching air hissed into my face. Ever so often, my nose is filled with the scent of smoke from some unseen source.

The real world is wrecked. We’ve been living in a lie. The Units, they aren’t just protecting us from wild animals. They’re protecting us from our own. Our stupid past mistakes.

I start to notice small things. The air tastes stale, like old soup. The smoke smell emenating from returning rangers. It is faint, of course, but now that I’ve caught it’s scent, it won’t go away.

I can’t keep living like this. In ignorance of our planet, of all the other species besides us. But I can’t go outside, either. And even if I did, I couldn’t live out there either.

So what do I do? Die? Join Mom and Dad on the other side? I don’t want to do that either.

The hole in the Dome is bigger, like it’s taunting me, begging me to give in to impulse and teenage rebellion and escape. No. Not escape. I’m not trapped. Right.

Right?

The hole is slowly getting bigger, as if the very air of the ruined earth is dissolving it like acid. As the hole grows, so does my desire to leave. As I see more of the ruined world, I am less and less happy with X-World. One of these days, one of the Units is going to come in here and seal up the hole. I have to make my decision soon.

Then my decision gets made for me.

“ATTENTION! DOMERS! WE HAVE A TRIAL SCHEDULED FOR THREE THIRTY THIS AFTERNOON. PLEASE REPORT TO THE GALLOWS THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE THE TIME.” A trial? We haven’t had a trial in years. I wonder what it could be for. Who it could be for.

The Gallows haven’t ever been used, except for once when a guy was caught going outside. It’s used for public executions. Rather brutal, I always figured. I thought it was medieval and cruel. Did someone go outside? What is happening?

Three o’clock takes forever to arrive, and I get to the Gallows thirty minutes early. I watch the “stage” intently, hoping to get some prelude to the events about to take place. Nothing. The stand is sterile, like a hospital room. I’m counting the seconds. Somehow, it makes the time go faster. I am so absorbed in counting the seconds that, ironically, I don’t notice when they lead someone in. The person looks male, with a white hood over his face. He is led up to the stage. All at once, he breaks free of the guards.

“YOU ARE ALL TRAPPED HERE!” he screams. “ESCAPE.” Several people snicker at him. Not me. I stare in shock.

His hood has come off.

It is my brother.

PART 2: CH4S1NG R34L1TY

The scorching wind pressed lava-hot tongs into my skin. Rocks are picked up and flung at me like bullets. People died from shrapnel a lot in the war. I hope this doesn’t kill me. My combat boot clad feet dig into soft sand. These things are military grade and my feet still feel like they are being slow roasted at a barbecue. The sky is white. The ground is a sickening shade of tan. Everything reminds me of the model of the Sahara in X-World. There is no way anything could grow here. There’s no way I can survive here. But I can’t go back. My brother is the patriot to rule all patriots. He’s always been a mega rule follower and a big fat snitch. If you were doing something wrong and he caught you, bam. You’re done for. It annoyed me a ton when I was younger. Now I don’t have too much that he finds out about, since he’s on guard duty all the time. But that’s not the point. The point is that if he thinks something is wrong with the place he used to call Utopia, then you know something is horribly wrong. This place is evil. I don’t know how, or why, or what. But I do know that I trust my brother. And so I’m going to chase down the truth. Whatever that means. I saw the phrase in a TV show.

I am officially breaking the law now. I just passed the telltale sign that says

| TURN BACK NOW |

| ANY WHO CONTINUE |

| WILL BE PERSECUTED |

| PUNISHMENT IS PUBLIC |

| HANGING AT THE GALLOWS |

| USE CAUTION. |

The sign mocks me as I pass, etching it’s all caps font into my forhead, tattooing itself on my brain. The tattoo burns even more when I come to the realization that it isn’t centered. In the digital world, everything is clean and in a state of perfection unnattainable in reality. Perfect circles. Here, straight line twist and circles have more in common with a rotting fruit than an actual circle. I feel as though I am suddenly going to be swarmed by guards, a gun pointed at my head.

This is a suicide mission. A Die-Run. That’s what we call it in X-World when someone purposely fails a mission. A Die-Run. This is a Die-Run except their is no regen button, there is no respawn. This the Die-Run to rule all Die-Runs.

Only once have I seen someone leave X-World for good. Technically, that wasn’t by choice. His name was King Pourshe (POOR-SHAY). He apparently was a hacker, hacked into the little kid zone, and put some unsavory footage on there. Honestly, this guy was smart enough to hack the game, but too stupid to realize that he shouldn’t feature himself in his vids. He was arrested within a few days, sentenced to solitary confinement and zero electronic access. Harsh, but necessary. The guy was a danger to everyone.

I felt like him now. I had just made a stupid decision and now I would never be able to play X-World again. I has plunged myself into this cold, unforgiving world for what? For a small sliver of possibly misplaced sentiment.

I see figures moving like ghosts. It’s guards.

Now the fun begins. I just take off running, as silently as I can, which is not at all. Plumes of sand like peacock feathers spin up behind me in a whirlwind. I run past the first figure and hear him (or her) choke on sand and yell “HEY!!!”

I felt like a spammer in a chat room. Constantly shoving unwanted things into people’s faces.

My feet were already on the verge of giving out. Naturally, that’s when the shots started. One whizzed past me and hit a dune with an explosion of dust. I now got to taste the pain I inflicted on the guards as sand shoved its gritty hand down my unsuspecting throat. I choked like someone trying to drink water on their back. As I kept screaming as if that would help, up came my breakfast. Also everything from yesterday. Feeling empty and trying to ignore the stench of vomit clinging to my clothes, I ran into a giant drift and burrowed myself inside. Everything became muffled, but I could hear voices as the guards caught up.

“Where did she go?” asks a deep, gruff female voice.

“Dunno,” says a pitchy teenage boy. “But it doesn’t matter. She’ll die within a day.”

“Yes, unless she finds those other runaways. They have evaded us for so long.”

“Exactly. If we can’t find them, what hope does she have? She doesn’t even know what she’s looking for.”

“You’re right.” The woman takes a step back- right into my ankle. I’m sure she can’t feel it, but the pressure of her own military grade boots digging into my sandy, tired ankles feels like an anvil being dropped from a forty foot building onto my leg. OW. It makes me bite my hand to keep from screaming in totalitarian agony. Her leg was the dictator. I was the measley peasant, being ground down into subserviency. OW.

Finally her leg leaves the spot. A rush of giddy relief shreds through the agony. I wait for several eternities (five-ish minutes, give or take) before lifting my head. Sand spills off my curly hair, giving the distorienting illusion of being trapped in an hourglass. I vomit again, this time nothing but a long stream of mucus, acid, and water. It dances along the sand, creating a trail that looks like the cursive letter F. Fitting. Because I just F’ed my entire life. My ankle throbs, threatening to collapse and shatter like a glass bowl. I walk anyway. Guards are sure to return and patrol looking for me. I have to move. I just don’t know where I’m moving to.

My crippled ankle decides for me, stepping right into a patch of dry quicksand. I don’t actually know if that’s a thing, but my leg sinks down into the sand until my leg is caked in grit all the way up to my thigh.Something too hard and flat to be sand lurks underneath my foot. I reach down before something hits the back of my head.

“I knew we’d find her if we stuck around,” says the gruff female. “Let’s deal with her the American way.”

PART 3: TH3 PR3D4T0RY PR3Y

I wake up in a cell. Not a movie cell. Not a prison cell like anything you would imagine from vividly animated movies. A cell disguised as a room. There are no bars. There are no cold, unforgiving white walls. Actually, it resembles the interior of a pediatrician’s office, one of those doctors for children that house horrifying art, cheesy mantras, and tasteless literature like magazines from the 2000s. There is a pink and yellow giraffe dancing on a TV screen. A stack of books thinner than supermodels occupy their corner of shame. I am sitting in a small plastic chair. But that’s not the real travesty. Oh no. The real travesty is the quote on one wall.

“BE-YOU-TIFUL!” in curly pink letters covers the inconspicuous doorway. The door opens, and in walks none other than Traevur. My brother.

“You died,” I say, my voice uncharictaristically calm. My body has settled into a state of complete numb.

“I can explain,” he says. I doubt it.

"You died," I say. "Start there."

"That was a setup to get them off my trail."

"So who was it that died?"

"A completely different criminal who committed murder and happened to look similar. We hired him to say those things. We also did face-alter so that the scan would show him as me."

"Why?"

"To recruit."

'Recruit who?"

"Dissenters. We need more numbers if we want to take on TSU."

"TSU?"

“No one really knows what it stands for. Something with the government. Big secret. All that.”

“Are they evil?”

“That depends on which side they are on.”

(TO BE CONTINUED)

You play me on a puppet’s string

dancing to your melody;

I forget the tune

to my own song

when your strings hold me;

a tight embrace

twisting, turning, slicing my skin

invisible strings

to the heart within

.

.

.

♡