The Arena (Book 1)

Training

I walk into my room. It's empty except for a bed and a small, broken dresser. I can't seem to stop looking down at my hands. The way lines run across them wear the metal panels end and a new one starts. Thinking about all the tiny wires and circuits running through my fingers, to my heart...if I even have a heart. I close the door to my room, then walk over to my dresser. A few of clothes lay inside the top drawer. I change out of the ones I'm wearing now for a black and neon blue one. Suddenly David runs into the room. He looks nervous and he's sweating.

"Why are you sweating, it's not even far to get to my room," I say, looking as he rocks up and down on his heels.

"This is cold sweat, 004." He says, wiping his hands on his jeans, "I may have made a terrible mistake..."

"What did you do?" I ask, squinting my eyes.

"Well, you see, all the other robots that are being entered into this competition...they've been built specifically to kill. All of their senses have been sharpened so they are, what I'd like to call, the perfect assassins...whereas you, I made you much more, human-like. And less-"

"Powerful." I finish for him, "You seriously didn't think of this when you were creating me." I say, looking him dead in the eyes.

"It may have slipped my mind." He squeaks quietly.

"Well, I'll tell you what, I'm not about to die in round one on live television." I say, a bit pissed he forgot, "Does this building have a training room?"

"Yeah, follow me." He says, leading me downstairs to the basement. In there is an entire room filled with guns and gadgets, some look homemade while others look flat out broken. I see some of the walls are lined with hologram machines. I walk over to a table with a few guns laid out on it. I pick up one with a blue tip on it and aim at one of the walls, "What are you doing?!" He yells. I drop the gun but quickly put it back on the table, "Never! Never touch that gun! Or anything else on that table, those are all very dangerous prototypes! I'm 75% sure that one of them will self-distrust if touched!" He says as I step away from the table. He points towards a table across the room, "That is your safe-gun table."

"But can a gun really ever be safe?" I say aloud accidentally.

He squints his eyes at me, "You know what I mean."

I pick up a gun that's been painted red. It's the least broken-looking out of all of these, "Is this one safe?"

"Yes, that one is safe." He nods, "So what you're going to do, it shoots at one of the walls with the hologram machines covering it." He points at the far wall. I spread my legs a bit and crouch a little to make my form firmer and more stable. Then, I aim and pull the trigger towards one of the walls. I barely even lose my balance as the bullet flies out of the gun. It hits the hologram dummy dead in the chest, making it a fatal wound if they had been real.

"Hey, at least you made me good at shooting," I say positively, impressed with my shot.

"No, uh...I actually didn't, but hey, I'm not complaining." He shrugs. I roll my eye and return to shooting. This time, the target is moving back and forth. I focus, kneel down, and slowly place my finger on the trigger. Closing my eyes, I release to fire. Another fatal shot. Maybe, just maybe, I have a better chance than I thought.