THE LAST GAMES: PROJECT PANDORA

CHAPTER I: T H E P A S T

"Hey guys, we got a new one!" I hear from a distant voice. My eyes slowly do their best to adjust to blurred shapes around me. I feel as if I haven't used them in days. I look around and see about twenty or so people looking at me, their faces indistinct. I think I can make out an expression of curiosity or relief. They all look about fourteen? Fifteen? I guess I can't be sure. One of them, a boy, steps forward. He looks a bit older than the rest. My first instincts tell me to crawl away, but I stop myself. I have a strange feeling that I immediately need information, like my brain hungers for it.
"W, where am I?" I ask in a raspy voice that I don't remember to be my own... But I realise my memory's been erased. I try to remember. Anything. It feels like I've broken my arm: it's there but I can't use it. I begin to panic. I don't know my name or my family. Where do I live? Where am I? What happened? So many scattered thoughts rush through my brain at the same time and I feel as though I'm going to be sick.
Then a voice interrupts the disarray in my brain.
"Where do you think you are?" He asks.
I look up and stare at him. "Um... I don't know. I don't remember anything."
"Don't worry, it's normal," He replies like he's said it all before. "Now, what's your name?" I start to feel a touch of anger flicker.
"I already told you! I don't- um, Ian. But how?" He is thinking about whether to tell me or not, I can see it on his face. I guess I'm good like that, I can sort of tell what people are thinking just by looking at them. Now his made up his mind, no; he won't tell me.
"All good things come to those who wait... Now get some rest." I don't want too, and then something comes to me. I have no idea how I know or where this thought came from.
"But I have been sleeping for days now, haven't I!? Now tell me where I am." I demand. He looks puzzled. Obviously this doesn't happen to often. I look at the landscape around me. I'm in a dark stony street, sitting in the middle of a road. It looks like some abandoned city: vines and growth protruding from shattered windows and climbing up shattered sky-reaching buildings. It looks dark. It must be what? 1:00 am? I look down at where my watch would be, there is none, but there is a sizzling sensation. I turn over my wrist and see a symbol, like an upside-down V in the centre of a larger zero. I stare at it wide-eyed. I don't remember getting any tattoos, but then again; my memory isn't being to reliable today. I touch it and the pain startles me, I quickly pull back my hand. The tips of my fingers sting and start to throb. They are burnt. The symbol sizzles, and then begins to glow a strong shade of cobalt blue.
I notice the boy is peering over my shoulder.
"Let's start again, shall we? I'm Kai Gracia, and welcome to Team Blue."

I wake up, dripping with sweat. Bad dreams. Again. I'm not having much luck lately. I'm starting to not want to sleep, worried I will once again be tortured by my past. But that last one wasn't too bad. I was just in my room, sleeping, like everyone else. It's dark. Obviously it's the middle of the night or something. I go to turn on my bed lamp when I hear a creaking sound, and look to the big wooden door at the far end of the room. Kai slips in. He has Navy Blue jeans and a black leather jacket with a simple grey T-shirt underneath. He closes the door behind him and waits mutely for a moment before beginning to whisper.
"Bad dreams?" He asks, as if he can read my mind and he's sure I have been.
I pause, then slowly talk. "Yeah, they've been getting worse. Why are you up so early?"
"Um, I've been getting some bad dreams too." Hmm... maybe I'm not alone with this. "So, what are your dreams about?" He asks. My expression hardens. Do I want to tell him? I guess it won't hurt...
"When I first got here..." My voice is raspy so I clear my throat. "I still don't get how that works," I continue.
"But I guess it makes you think, that there are still people out there... You know, messing with our heads." He says
"Yeah well... Maybe." We sit there for a minute.
"Ok, well nice talking to you." Kai says slowly. He gets up to leave. Then the door slams open. Luke, a newbie in the Red Team that just came last month, comes running in.
"Wow, a lot of activity considering its FOUR IN THE MORNING!" I yell... It probably woke up everyone in the camp, but in my defence: he burst in and scared the life out of me.
"Sorry, but this is big" he spits out, completely exhausted - probably from running up flights of stairs to get here. "A War Wyvern has gone completely haywire! It's destroying the camp and everyone in it!" He grimaces. "Zac and Aiden are dead." Well this is new.
"Wait, a War Wyvern?" I repeat, just to make sure I heard properly. He nods, obviously too out of breath to talk anymore. "Well, I guess we better get over there." I say.
Kai nods solemnly, then sighs "And to think I might get a good nights sleep" Kai murmurs.

Once we arrive, to what is now a deadly war zone, I can't believe what I'm seeing. In fact, I feel like I'm going to be sick. I turn to Luke. I'm not sure what to say. Corpses lay strewn across the ground, while those who are left fire relentlessly at the massive snaking beast I see before me. So this is a "War Wyvern?" The eighty meter long serpent-like metal beast is terrifying. I have never seen a War Wyvern in the two years I've been here, but they are massive! They were built to protect us from anything hostile, so I was told, but it doesn't look like it with their razor teeth and blazing guns built into their bodies. The serpent-beast turns it's soulless gaze my way. I stare into it's jaw of a thousand blades, all spinning around in unison at a speed that can't be seen. The fangs blur together in a silver flash.
I look down at the glowing cobalt symbol I have had since I got here, and reach down. My index finger taps the veins that run down my wrist under the cobalt glow. A sizzling sensation grows around my wrist, but not the feeling of charred flesh like the first time. The symbol shifts, grows and changes until it has transformed into a full size weapon, that looks somewhat like a gun of an old time. I take aim, and fire, and just like all the other people trying to shoot it down, the shots bounce of harmlessly. Then it turns to me. It charges towards me before I have time to duck. Then, in a flash of pain, I see nothing but pitch black darkness... But then I begin to dream.

I'm back standing outside that dark, grey building. Colour seams to have seeped from this place long ago. I still couldn't remember anything then, let alone now. Once again this is a dream from my past, from when I first got here.
I walk into the shaded sky scraper, as I did the first time. I once again feel the fear I did two years ago, when this actually happened. This is just a dream, a memory, I tell myself. Now that I know whats about to happen, it doesn't seem so scary though, but I can still feel the fear. I step inside the building into a faded room. Kai is waiting there, about to tell me what happened to this place... Or at least what he was told.
"Why do you have to tell me here?" I find myself whispering, though I don't know why. "This place gives me the creeps" I say.
"I don't know." He admits "I was told here, and so was everyone else, so I guess its sort of a tradition. And now I will tell you what I have been told."

"First,there was a virus. Nobody knows how it was created, it just appeared. Countries and hole continents where suddenly being infected with this virus and dying. We thought we could contain it. We were wrong. It swept across the planet in months, for all we know we're the last ones left. Some how, we survived. We found out that we were immune to the killer virus.
Then other people like us just started showing up - like you and me - with no memory. The one thing you guys could remember was your name... But only if you were asked. We don't know how this happened, it just did. We were told to split you into teams. Suddenly the symbols all of you had started to glow Red, Green, or Blue. So those are your teams." ... He finished, so I thought I might as well ask questions.
"So you couldn't think of better names than "Team Red", "Team Blue" and "Team Green"?" I ask... Awkward silence.
"Umm.... I guess not" he replies. I considered saying that it sounds a lot like an old movie the guys back at camp had found: THE MAZE RUNNER, but it was a secret, so I decided not to.
"... Anyway, one of us who had survived from the start, a scientist called Dr. Kevin Chase, had designed a space craft capable of a trip to Mars and back. So, with the lack of population , he built the craft. Unfortunately we had lost contact with the Mars colonies that had been set up after the Mars One mission was a failure." I took a moment to take this all in. Then a question came to me.
"How did you lose contact with the Mars colonies?" His face grows darker.
"Well... I don't know. No one knows. After the News lines were all cut of, along with water, electricity, and other essentials for most of the world, nobody knew what was happening in the outside world. The world was thrown into anarchy. The government meant nothing. Loved ones dying with no way of helping them. It was horrible..."
Loved ones... That was a new term to me, but I didn't ask.
"After Dr. Chase left, we never heard from him again." He Finished, but then he winked. The same strange, out-of-place wink that had been confusing me for the passed two years. . . But I had a feeling I would find out what it had meant soon enough. . .