Fireheart | Raven Reyes [O.H.]

1 | one small step for man

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chapter one!
ONE SMALL STEP
FOR MAN
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ARES WOULD REALLY LIKE to know what the fresh hell is going on.

One instant, he's staring at the wall in his cell, waiting for the guards to deliver one of his last lunches at exactly noon — the only way he keeps track of the days, really — and the next, he's buckled into a dropship with a shitload of other teenagers. The thing is dark. The fluorescent lights mounted to the walls do next to nothing to illuminate the spacecraft, devouring the edges of every face in shadows. He's been placed on the third floor. Fitting, he thinks, because the guards probably wanted him around the least amount of people possible. The dropship shrinks the higher up you go, so the top floor only holds about twenty-five kids.

Only. How many other people have been forced onto here?

Ares ticks his left hand against his leg in a nervous habit and immediately winces at the sharp sting. Before yanking him out of his cell, the guards had slapped a metal bracelet on his wrist. It also happened to have needles on the inside. Those same spokes pierce deeper into his pale skin every time he moves his arm, making him grimace before dropping his hand with a satisfying smack against his black denim-clad thigh.

He's seated at the very end of one of the rows, meaning there's nobody on his left side except for two scrawny-looking kids left to stand against the wall. One of them is so pale his skin actually illuminates the darkness around him for a few inches. The younger boy's raven hair is half-obscured by a pair of goggles for some reason. Beside him is an Asian kid timidly standing with his hands clenching the bars of the only thing keeping him secured to the ship.

"Hey," Goggle Boy hisses. Ares ignores him until the sound comes again, this time followed by more words. "Hey, psst! You, kid with the curly hair. Do you know what's going on?"

"I don't know what prompted you to talk to me, but please don't do it again," Ares drawls before looking up at the kid with a closed-lipped smile that does not reach his eyes and that he does not mean. Being surrounded by so many damn people is already nerve-wracking enough. Being friends with them? Even worse.

"Jesus, dude, I was just asking," Goggle Boy mutters.

Luckily, any further conversation is prohibited by a violent shudder of the dropship, followed by the overhead lights flickering. A few people around him give surprised screams. He just sets his jaw and tries not to let the lap bar crush his thighs— the guard had set it too tightly.

They're going to Earth, no doubt, because why else would a bunch of teenage prisoners be thrown onto a ship? But why? Why now, when humans have been surviving in space for nearly a hundred years?