Promised to the Alien King

2

I looked at him again, and we both had looks of confidence this time.

“Show them the power of the Watson family!” he said with a smile, and I smiled back. I turned around and walked without looking back.

I entered the school which was already getting crowded. We got instructions to which classrooms to go. Each class was assigned to one classroom. From there, we’d go to different parts of the school to finish different tests. There was word of there being three different tests, but nobody knew what they were.

I walked to the classroom 7, which was luckily on ground floor, so I didn’t have to walk far. It entered and saw most of my classmates already there. My best (and only) friend, Jackie, was already there, reserving a place for me.

“Sane, girl, come here!” she said. She was quite the opposite of me- talkative, loud and good at sports. But she was also a really good student.

“Hey Jackie.” I said and sat down next to her. I looked at the digital clock floating at the wall- 6:56 am. I wasn’t as early as I thought.

Suddenly, the door opened and a bunch of our classmates poured in. They were the ‘cool kids’. Their daily activity enjoyed drinking virgin blood and killing people. But really, they were known for being bullies. But people liked them somehow. Except the quiet ones, or the loud ones that hung out with the quiet ones. 

“Hey, there’s the witch girl!” Dereck, a big guy in their group pointed towards me and laughed. They call me witch girl because of my untameable hair that always manages to stick out, even if I put gel on it. And it looks ugly with gel anyways, because it’s supposed to be free- but not that free.

I ignored his remark, which made all of them stop caring about me as they went to sit down. My pride was touched, but I stopped caring long ago about what they said about me.

I had extreme problems with my pride. If someone offends me, I have a need to reply. I don’t get offended- I just feel the need to prove that person wrong. Which is usually not a good idea, because whenever I try to stand up to teachers, I get punished. So, I stopped.

I got beaten up by these bullies a few times, so I learned to keep my mouth shut and they will go away.

Finally, the teacher walked in. She was exactly on time.

“Hello, my dear potential space travellers! As you know, most of you will be going home today, sadly. I wish that we had more ships, but we simply can’t carry any more than 10 000 of you. I am sorry.” she said. She was pretty straightforward and brutally honest.

“Now, children. The first part of your tests is a written exam. It tests general knowledge and intelligence. You will have 60 minutes to complete as much as you can, but you will probably not be able to complete all of it, so don’t worry. Get your pens out, and start when I say so. If you start earlier, you will immediately be sent back home.” she said, opening her bag to reveal booklets. The class sighed in shock. It was a really thick booklet. It seemed to have about 30 pages, and the letters were written in small sizes so there were about 30 questions on each page, as far as I could see.

“You are getting another piece of paper where you will colour the square of the correct answer. If you think that the answer ‘b’ is correct to, let’s say, question 7, you will colour the square under the letter ‘b’. But you will do that in the end- you’ll get 5 minutes to colour them.” she said as she started giving us the test papers. We weren’t allowed to open the booklets until she said so.

“Alright, you can start… now!” she said, and the scraping of pencils began.

The test was fairly easy, but there was a lot to fill in. The first section was a regular test of intelligence, that I managed to finish quickly. The other sections were general knowledge, such as math, and they added some stuff from other subjects, but it was all pretty logical. I finished the test a few minutes earlier, and saw that everyone was still writing frantically. I was suddenly afraid that I did everything wrong, or that I missed a page so I went through the test carefully. I made no changes, since the answers I provided seemed to be the correct ones. I really hoped that my judgement was right.

We had no way to know what to prepare for, so this was a true test of memory and logic. Soon after, the teacher signalled for us to stop writing.

“Anyone found still writing answers will be sent home. Now, I will give you answer sheets where you will fill in the squares like I explained before. You have five minutes.” she said, and everyone began filling them as quickly as possible.

Luckily, we all managed to finish before the five-minute mark.

“Good.” she said as she collected the answer sheets and test papers. “Now, I’ll read your name and the classroom you need to go to next. There is three more challenges waiting for you. Good luck.” she said as she began reading our names. As soon as they got a classroom, my classmates left. Jackie was among the first to leave, her last name being Amoner. I waited patiently for my name to be called.

“Sane Watson, gym three.” she said. Gym? I was the first one to be assigned to a gym. My heart started beating faster in terror- will I have to run? I was horrified at the thought- there was no way they’d let me pass if they saw my terrible running abilities. I took a deep breath and left the classroom.

There were a lot of students walking up and down the stairs, each going to their own classroom. I made my way towards the gym and entered as happiness overwhelmed me.

Inside the gym was a shooting range.

There were moving targets along with still targets. It was incredible! If I was going to be tested at shooting, I was going to pass, for sure! There were several spaces, and one was free so I went to that one. There was some kind of a military guy standing there. He was probably part of the Earth Space Society, which was in charge of this whole project.

“Name?” he asked.

“Sane Watson.” I replied. He typed something onto a screen on a wall next to him.

“You will shoot all the targets in this part of the range. The system will calculate your points. I’ll show you how to hold and-“

“I know how to use a gun, thank you.” I said, already holding the gun.

“Alright. Start.”

I held the gun with one hand only, unlike everyone around me. My accuracy was always somehow better when using only one hand. The gun I was holding was similar to mine, and made by the same company, so I knew that it was accurate.

I swept my glance over the targets, and started shooting. I hit the first immobile target in the very centre. Barely moving my hand, I shot the next one less than a second later, and the next one, and so on, until only moving targets were left. All of the immobile ones had a bulled in the bullseye.

I saw the military guy’s impressed face at the corner of my vision, but I didn’t pause for a second. Immediately after the last immobile target was done, I started shooting at the mobile ones. I was well trained, and this was fairly easy for me to do, since the targets very pretty close and they weren’t moving very fast.

Once my bullet hit the last target, I put the gun down and looked at the screen to see if my score was showed.

It said ‘BEYOND PERFECT’, and I had 20/20 bullseye hits in 14 seconds. Not bad, but not my record either.

The military guy was just staring at me. I kept a calm, serious face in order to intimidate him even further. Nobody at the school knew about my talent with guns, but I guess they were going to find out soon.

“You’re supposed to go to the classroom 103 now, for the final test. Good luck, I’ll be expecting you once you’re relocated… you’re definitely going to pass.” he said, now seemingly back to normal.

“Thank you.” I said, unable to think of anything else to say. I moved my already sweaty hair form my face- I was pretty sure that it was all over the place already. It was completely untameable.

I made my way to the first floor and knocked on the number 103 door.

“Come in!” I heard a female voice say, and I entered. Before me was a classroom without anything a classroom should have- no board, no tables, no chairs… Instead, there was a machine at one end of the room, and it took the whole wall. It had some kind of turrets right next to each other, approximately 50 by 40, so they covered the whole surface of the wall.

“Sane Watson. In this challenge, you will get a sword. These turrets will shoot small gum balls that the sword can cut through. Once you hear a ‘start’, they will start shooting. Your mission is to avoid getting hit. After you’re done, you’re free to go to the Announcement hall with the rest of the students. I will be right outside.” the woman that I haven’t noticed till then spoke, handing me a sword. I put my backpack on the ground so it doesn’t bother me. It was one of the modern sword with a weird shape, and I felt awkward while holding it. I was built for a gun, not a sword.

My heartbeat fastened as the woman left and I prepared to slice. I was going to fail miserably.

But then an idea jumped to my mind- why would I bother slicing, when I can just dodge this? I was pretty good at dodging, since I was relatively small and had quick reflexes. Suddenly, I heard a robotic voice say ‘start’. And the first ball was launched from a turret, and it aimed directly at me. It was going at a pretty normal speed, the way a human would throw a ball, and I managed to dodge it. The sword was still awkwardly in my hand, since I didn’t want to just put it down in case I really need it.

Right afterwards, another ball launched. I barely dodged it when two more were launched. I had to throw myself on the ground, since these were faster. I had to roll to dodge the next high-speed ball, and barely got up in time for the next one. Then, 3 of them shot directly at me, and I pulled the sword up, slicing through them.

Well, at least I tried to slice through them, but I failed- I managed to touch one of them with the tip of the sword, but they hit me.

‘Game over’, the robotic voice said. I sighed. I was probably the worst- I didn’t know what to expect. Just a tiny bit of people can pass, and I completely failed one of the challenges, possibly two. I grabbed my backpack opened the door and handed the sword to the woman, who nodded in thanks.