CHAPTER 1
When I open my eyes, I am on a bed of silk. How did I get here? I have no clue. When I stand up to look at myself and my surroundings I almost fall, but lucky for me, my best friend Gan is there to catch me.
“What happened?” I ask.
“We won Lari,” says Gan.
We had been in battle for so long, that I had long forgotten about the fact that we need to win. The war was broken into two sides. One side being the Board, and the other side being all of the twenty seven different sections, called the woods. The 27 woods, are made up of all the people in the world. (or what’s left of them.) me and my best friend, Gan, were the head battlers. All that I was thinking about was living. Not even what the Board would do to us if our side lost, but, according to Gan, we won.
We had met at a bomb shelter in woods 13. We were both trying to get food for our families, when the shelter went in lockdown mode, because of a forest fire. We both lost our families to that fire, so we decided to work together to make enough to get by. We hunt together to get our food, and make fire in the woods to cook it.
We have an apartment, on the lower levels of course, that we barely have enough to pay for it with. There is no furniture, not even a bed in the apartment. Just the heating or air conditioning that comes with it that we need for the winter and the summer. After living in the woods in a tent with our families for so long, this arrangement is like nothing has changed besides the heating and air.
Since I am still trying to steady myself and overcome my dizziness, Gan helps me stay standing, and if I fall, I know he will help me get right back up. This is not helping, so I sit right back down on my bed until my dizziness goes away. I realize that the whole room is lined of silk.
When I stand up, I realize what I thought was a bed was really the floor. It was just so soft and fluffy, that I thought it was a bed. When I look down at myself to see what I am wearing, I realize that it is a hospital gown. I look at my skin and finger nails to find that they are so clean, I don’t even recognize them at all.
“Why am I in a hospital gown, and why am I so clean?” I ask, and then I look up at Gan. He is also in a white hospital gown, too clean to be true.
“Once we took over the Board, tons of them didn’t want to die, so we told them to give us the infirmary, or all of the Board members would die. When they wouldn’t give anything to us, we had to kill them. All of them.”
I have no idea of how I missed any of this, because I am so confused. “how in the world did I miss any of this stuff?” I asked.
“they knocked you out, and I carried you here, after making sure it was safe to go here. Then our people took you to the infirmary, and checked you. You had tons of cuts and bruises, two broken ribs, a broken arm, and a broken ankle. They had to do some major reconstruction surgery, along with plastic surgery so that you could look yourself again Lari.”
“Gan, we need to go home now.”
“I am afraid you two cannot do that,” said a mysterious, but familiar voice. We both whip our heads around to see a short little man. He has on a light pink suit, with a lime green tie and a hat that we recognize that he is famous for. The hat is a top hat with a peacock feather hanging out of it. We can only recognize him as our mayor.
“Mayor Tyson” we both say at the same time with a sigh of relief.
“Why can’t we go back now” I ask
“Don’t you remember what they did to woods 13?” said the Mayor.
“what did they do to woods 13 Gan”
This part, Gan had left out. I am so mad at him now. I will never get to return home. Haven’t I already lost enough? My family in a fire, and now my room, and my home town? I shoot a glaring look at Gan, and he has already put on his “ I’m so sorry” look.
”I take it that he hasn’t told you yet, sweetheart. The Board bombed every last thing in woods 13. Nothing is left.”
