City of the Fallen - unedited

Chapter Two

The entire auditorium stands up from their seats and so do Brooke and I. It's our lunch break, which means that training is almost over for the day, thank goodness.

I watch each unique face beam with excitement as they make their way outside. Everybody seems to have a radiant glow to them.

Everyone in the Afterworld for the most part is equally beautiful and equally aged, meaning that personality is the only thing that divides us, at least the stage ones. There's the quiet ones, the weird ones, and the outgoing ones. Brooke is incredibly outgoing, which makes it somewhat easy for the two of us to make friends. I'm not even close to being as talkative as she is, but since I'm her best friend, we're sort of a package deal.

On the contrary, I have more guts than she does. She can't go on roller coasters without having a panic attack and will always pick truth when we play truth or dare.

That's how it was when we were alive anyway. She might not be as timid now that we're dead, because we have nothing to lose. We've lost everything already.

"Do you want to head to the lounge?" Brooke questions as we follow the crowd of people outside of the auditorium.

I shake my head, watching a few people walk through the second set of doors, which leads outside. We never go outside for lunch, and I want to explore as much as possible before going to stage two, which is in an entirely different place. Stage one is basically isolated from every other stage.

"We should follow them." I say.

That group of about ten people want to go to the forest of clouds outside, where anyone can lie around on them like they're beds.

I have no idea how the physics for that works, but it doesn't exactly matter, everyone here is practically invisible, which makes clouds more dense than us.

Or that's what Brooke told me. Nobody knows the actual answer.

Everyone hops onto a cloud, and most of them float about three feet from the ground. Some are higher than others.

"Why are there even clouds this low?" I question as I lie down onto one of them, my body sinking deeper into it. I'm surprised that Brooke and I never explored this part of stage one, it's basically the only interesting thing here to do.

There's a dorm building and a training center and that's about it. There's a few shops for food but nobody goes there. For the most part, stage ones stay in their rooms with their friends and wait for the day they get to leave.

The clouds are like cotton against my skin, except way softer. They're cold and fluffy, at least the cumulus clouds are. Cumulonimbus clouds look the most comfortable to jump on, but they're dangerous. One strike of lightning could send you down to Earth in an instant, and it's pretty much impossible to come back up. I've never heard of anyone who fell down to earth.