Promised to the Alien King

5

“Watson! We’re landing, wake up!” I heard the captain say as I was shaken away from my sleep. I was sore all over, since I passed out in awkward position. I opened my eyes to see that we were slowly descending onto a huge, empty field. There was a wall stretching for what seemed to be kilometres, and I guessed that inside was the so called ‘green facility’. I saw several long buildings in the compound, but the place seemed empty. There were a few guards on the landing site, probably there to make sure we land safely.

“Watson, look up.” the captain said. Why the heck would I look up? But I unbuckled myself, only to realize that the gun was in my lap. And the memories of the events that took place just before my arrival surged through my head.

I had to kill them. But… I actually didn’t. I could have just shot their tires…

At that realization, my thought became darker. I was a murderer, I didn’t even give them a chance to live.

I dismissed the thoughts, putting the gun aside. I stood up and walked to the opening, peeking out.

“Holy…” I said in shock, seeing what the captain was talking about. High above me, ten huge spaceships were flying. Those were the ones that are supposed to take the 100 000 of us to space- there would be 10 000 of us in each ship, and they were huge!

“That’s the ships. If you do good, you’ll be on them in ten days. Since we arrived hours before the rest, I might as well explain to you how things work around here.” he said as he lowered the helicopter. “Let’s get inside first, we can talk during lunch.” he said as the helicopter was safely on the ground.

“Understood, captain Michell.” I replied, back to my usual formal habits. I put the gun in my backpack, since the captain didn’t show any signs of wanting it back. I swung it over my shoulder and jumped down from the helicopter. The captain was saying something to the guards, and they nodded. He turned towards me.

“Follow me.” he said, and I didn’t have a chance to reply because he was already walking away at a fast pace. Oh man. I hated running, and I had to jog in order to catch up to him. Luckily, he wasn’t that far, so I didn’t get completely exhausted by the time I reached him. I mustn’t let him know of my weakness.

  He approached the building, swiping his bracelet on a scanner at the door, making it open. I went in after him before the door closed again.

We were in a hallway that stretched for a few hundred meters.

“This is the common building. Here is the cafeteria- well, 3 of them, classrooms and gyms. Also, your instructors’ offices.” he explained quickly. I looked at the side to see doors- I assumed those led to offices. I saw a stairway leading down somewhere not far, and read that it leads to the gyms. We passed the stairs and continued going forward. When we were almost at the end, he stopped.

“In front of us is the main cafeteria. It can fit everybody. Right is the instructor cafeteria- it’s made of your instructors and all other personnel. It is a lot smaller and it’s there for them to escape the noise. And to the left is the student cafeteria. I don’t know why we have it, but sure. We will we going right, since it’s not lunch time or dinnertime, all the others are closed- but the instructor one works at all times.” he said, turning right.

He swiped his bracelet and the door opened. If I tried swiping mine, it wouldn’t work, so I hurried inside before the door closed.

The cafeteria looked completely normal. I let the captain grab a tray first, and followed after him. The woman that was serving seemed to expect us.

“Good day, captain Michell.” she said, putting something on his plate, after he muttered ‘the usual’.

“I’ll take the same, thank you.” I said, not really in the mood for food. The woman nodded and put some meat and vegetables on my plate, along with a plastic glass of what appeared to be apple juice.

The captain waited for me to pick up my tray, and then he sat at a nearest table. I sat across from him, waiting for him to explain everything to me.

“So, Watson, you now know the common building. There are two more buildings that look similar to this one. One is the storage building- we store everything there, but only the instructors and high ranking officials are allowed entrance. And the other one is the dormitory room. There are exactly two thousand of you here, so you must imagine how much bigger the other, more crowed facilities are. Since we were the first to arrive, you’ve been assigned to dorm 1. Each dormitory hosts 100 students, and there are 20 dormitories.

“You must be wondering how the number of passers will come to 100 000. The answer is quite simple. Until day five, you will all be training. You will have three classes- combat class, physical education- with running and such, and the modern technology and secret language in one class. You will wake up at 7 am every day, and the lights will go out at 10 pm. The first class starts at 8am, and each class is an hour long. Then you have a five-minute break, and at 9:05 am is the next class, until 10:05 am. Then you get a 20-minute break to grab a snack or take a nap, and the lass class is over at 11:25. Afterwards, you are free to do whatever, but I strongly recommend you to exercise in areas you lack. Because on day five, you will be tested. Most of the passers will get disqualified. The challenge at day five will make you show just how intelligent, skilled and athletic you are. I was informed that you are bad at physical education. You should get that fixed if you want to pass this challenge.

“If you make it through day five, you will continue exercising until day 10. On day ten, you will be presented with the final challenge. I can’t tell you what either of these challenges is, but I can tell you that you have a fair chance of passing both.” he finished. I had a chance, eh? That was good. But the thought of having to run horrified me. Guess I’ll have to exercise, there’s a lot of free time.

“Thank you for this information, captain Michell.” I said, looking at my food without any appetite.

“It’s 6:14 pm. If you’re not hungry, go running, or practise shooting, or anything. And also, keep the gun. I programmed your bracelet to give you permission to carry firearms. Don’t betray my trust, Watson.” he said, noticing the hatred I was showing the food. I had a really poor appetite, but something was telling me that I was going to start eating once the running takes all my energy.

“Thank you, captain.” I said, lifting my tray. I put it in the disposer and left the cafeteria. The building was painted white, with some goldish yellow design. The door of the cafeteria opened by itself, luckily, so I concluded that anybody and leave it. I made my way towards the stairs leading to the gyms. One was probably for combat training, and one was for physical education. I went down the stairs- there were only a few of them, and was two openings. One was marked as ‘gym 1’, and the other was, shockingly, ‘gym 2’. I decided to enter gym 1, and as I stepped through, my breath was taken away from me.

It was enormous! The ceiling was incredibly high, and it was kilometres long. It made sense, since there were going to be around 600 hundred of us in here, probably with separate instructors. I decided to run for about an hour at most, and then search for my dormitory and shower before the rest of passers arrive.

I put my backpack down on the ground, and I accidentally swiped my bracelet onto something, and a compartment opened. A hologram popped out, and it said ‘Neuran weapons’. I had no idea what that meant- I was tech freak, but the term ‘neuran’ was alien to me. I probably wasn’t supposed to be able to open it, but when the captain gave me access to carrying firearms, some other permissions must have slipped through. I looked around, making sure I heard no footsteps approaching or saw anyone hiding, and decided to peek in. I wasn’t sure if this is what captain meant under ‘betraying his trust’, but I was ready to take the risk- curiosity killed the cat…

but satisfaction brought it back.

I leaned over the compartment, and saw a bunch of strange guns lined messily on top of each other. They looked like normal guns, but somehow different. I saw some really small guns, probably meant to be hidden. I decided to pick one up, just to test how it feels.

I took a really small one and held it in my hand. My finger rested on the trigger comfortably, but the small size looked ridiculous. There was no safety on this gun, and I examined it further until I realized there were no bullets, either. Maybe neuran meant something energy related, or laser related? Maybe this gun didn’t work on bullets. I looked around and saw some targets nearby. Perfect chance to try this out. I ran towards them, so I at least get a chance to ‘exercise’. They were near a wall, and I came fairly close since I was unfamiliar with this gun. I aimed at the target and shot. There was just a soft sound, barely audible, and the target was hit in the centre. I approached it to see what hit it, but there was nothing there- the system just marked it as hit, and the mark disappeared after a while. These ‘bullets’ we as fast at normal guns, but I still had no idea what or how deadly they are. I decided to take a risk and aim at wall. I could easily be found out and disqualified.

But again, I took the risk. The gun was quiet, so I was sure nobody could hear it, but I was afraid of the damage it might cause to the wall. In the end, I can always say that I was practising with my gun and that I missed the target, so I decided to aim right next it to make my story seem believable.

I aimed, and shot. The silent buzz was heard, and nothing more than a tap when it reached the wall, milliseconds later. I approached it curiously, and saw around three-centimetre-deep hole in the wall. It was narrow, about 3 millimetres. This small gun could definitely kill a person. I decided to borrow it. And I wasn’t planning on returning it. I hit it my jeans pocket, and it didn’t stand out.

I made my way back to the compartment, and I looked over at the guns to see that they all seemed to work the same way. There were a few more smaller guns left, so I was convinced that nobody would notice that one was missing.

Suddenly, I remembered my parents. I should at least tell them I arrived. I pulled out my com. device, only to see ‘no signal’ displayed on the screen. Might be because I was slightly underground. I decided to try when I leave the gym, but now it was time to run.

I made sure that the compartment looked untouched before giving myself to the agony of running. I started slowly, and my teacher always told me. She used to tell me to run until I can no longer run, until I am completely exhausted- and then continue walking until I can run again. This proved to be a lot more difficult than it seemed, since whenever I turned to walking, everyone else was still running and I felt embarrassed.