The Trapping

Chapter One

I was at the front of the line of the other unfortunate teens. They tossed me tight black leggings and a black longsleeve shirt that was made of the same material. "Down the hall, take a right and go change." I step forward and my guard shoves me along. "Come along now, it won't be long before you meet your partner." He says in a low, sad tone. I can tell he doesn't enjoy this system, and that he has no choice but to be a soldier.

I head down the hall and take a right, seeing a long row of changing stalls with curtains as the door. The soldier turns and heads back down the hall, and I hesitantly enter the stall and change quickly. I put my long brunette hair into two braids and toss them back.

I leave the stall and head down the row of stalls and go to the right where it leads outside. I go outside and two guards shove me into a small cage lined up with others. They fill them up with other teens fast, and I bite my lip as it dawns on me that I will possibly die sooner rather than any human dreams of.

The cages start to move forward on a road of small wheels to keep them going. Soon we get dumped off into a camp and they move the cages out of the way, during the time Im clinging onto two bars trying not to get my head bashed open.

They open two cages and than those people were partnered and sent off in a hurry. Than my cage opens up and I get shoved out next to a girl with a long blonde braid. She looks back at me with her deep green eyes and I smile. This is my partner after all, I better make a good impression. She smiles back quickly and we soon follow a worker into a huge dome building where we get locked into a room with two tubes.

"Well, looks like we will be here for a bit." I nod and she inspects the tubes. "Name's Catherine, AKA, Entry #790." I toss one of my braids back. "Autumn, Entry #897." She nods and a screen turns on in the pure white room.

"Please enter the tubes and wait to be sent up. Fail to follow rules and you will be planned for execution at your village courtyard." A robotic female voice says, copying the words up on the glowing blue screen. I step into the tube and Catherine enters the other one.

The glass doors close infront of us and we soon go up slowly. I place my hands on the tube walls and look up, seeing sunlight. I get rocketed up and where I was gets covered with a grass platform, and I soon land with a crunch. "Nice landing." I hear Catherine say as she wipes off her pants and shirt, ridding the dirt.

"Thanks. Hey look." My head faces a screen that has instructions. "Welcome to The Arena. Here you must find the exit in order to live freely on Earth. You may ally with other teams if you happen to run across them, but they are a two days journey distance from you on either side. Press begin to recieve your beginning kit." I press begin and a black backpack falls to the ground with wide straps.

I unzip it immediantly and we find blankets, matches, food, water, and a sharpened knife in a case. "This will last us for about a week. The nearest checkpoint is a five day journey travel from here." I look at her wide eyes, as I zip up the bag. "How do you know that?" She laughs. "It said it in small words at the bottom." I mouth O and I put on the backpack.

We hike along the woods, tall spaced out pine trees and moss as green as Catherine's eyes. "I'm going to call you Cat for short if that's okay?" I say, glancing at her. "If we are going off of animals sounding like our names I will call you Otter. Sounds like Autumn in a way." We both laugh, completely erasing the idea we are thousands of miles from our families and expected to live.

As evening approaches we set to find shelter. "In the handbook in the backpack it says at night there will be cold weather always and predators are known for lurking. In the daylight it is safe unless you enter a boss zone. Boss zones are basically huge beasts you can kill for huge rewards to help you get out. 90 percent of the time you get killed from it though." Cat says as she reads the book, standing ontop of a tree stump as I dig under a rock jutted out of the side of a huge hill, with other rocks jutted beside it. The perfect place to hide.

"We need to roll in mud and cover the backpack up in mud, leaves, and dirt to mask our scents from these predators." I state to her as she reads the night section of it. "Yeah, yeah. Otherwise we're monster kibble." I laugh quietly and soon finish up a hollowed out little den under a the rock. I made a small entrance and placed the rolled the blankets in dirt before laying them on the ground and than threw leaves and rubble over the backpack.

"Now our turn." We hesitantly rub mud on ourselves and than quickly get into the den and I place a huge rock ontop of the small entrance. "No fires during night, it's too risky. We use it for cooking in the day." I say to her before splitting a slice of bread with her. "We whisper from now until dawn. Understood?" She nods and we than settle down, Cat on shift for half of the night.
Suddenly I get shook awake and Cat puts a finger over her lips. I look through a small peekhole and my eyes widen as I resist the urge to scream.

Cliffhanger much right? Well sorry for the chapter being short and rushed but I am not a proffesional writer and barely have time to make stories. Thanks for reading! I will make chapters as soon as possible.