The Outsiders

Prologue

Their arrival sent a shock wave through the Earth. No warning. No sign. Nothing.

Lizard like creatures, covered head to toe in green scales, dug their way out of the soil, attacking all that sought to hinder them in their plans. Their forked tongues lashed out, striking those in its path. Their poison entered the blood stream rapidly rendering its victims dead within minutes. Unfortunately, they never stayed that way for long. The bodies, littered with vivid, murky veins, would rise turning on those around them while protecting the very thing that killed them.

Within days over 70% of humans were wiped out leading the governments to implement plan 'Inside' (I know, real creative with the names aren't they). All remaining humans were sealed inside a large metal and concrete structure. All were tested, with the highest scorers being labelled as 'stronger' and enlisted to fight in a makeshift military the society's heroes, while the others, well let's just say they weren't treated as nice. Those guys were labelled 'weak' and got sent to work in concentration camps, with one maybe two meals a day to survive. Their work fairly even with everyone getting roughly the same amount but if you were caught doing any less then expected you'd get well...punished. Now that doesn't sound to bad and it wasn't, until the 'higher ups' discovered people didn't care, that's when shit turned nasty. Guards came up with 'creative' punishments varying from public flogging to sleeping inside a dead animals skin. Yeah, not nice. Of course, everyone worked as hard as possible to avoid such a dreaded fate but the threat that really got people trembling was getting thrown out.

To keep the population accurately separated, children were immediately taken from their parents and enrolled in schools, made to train in all areas, to be the best. At age 15 their professors would rank the students from best to worst, the high scorers becoming the new 'strong' members the rest becoming 'weak'. Of course some students would find ways to persuade the professors into ranking them higher, willing to do anything to avoid the dreaded concentration camps.

I'm sure you're beginning to wonder who I am (if you're not well...whatever).

My name is Lauren and this is a story about how I escaped the system.