THE DELIVERER'S DESTINY

Chapter 1, Part 3 - Stephanie

Zusia, Desmond, 10416 P.C.

The room beneath Zusia Stadium was rectangular, lit with fluorescent lights and the length of the walls lined with hard, wooden benches. There were four rows of benches, room for nearly two hundred persons to fill them; today, only about a quarter of them were occupied with stiff-backed fifteen-year-old Trainees.

The fluorescent lights flickered, and Stephanie closed her eyes against them. They always gave her a headache. She took a deep breath as her stomach fluttered with nerves.

This was it. It had finally come. The day she had been working toward her whole life had finally arrived. The reality of it was like a weight in her chest making it hard to breathe properly. She clasped her cold, clammy hands together and glanced around the room at those with her. There weren't that many of them left, only forty-seven — already over half of their number had disappeared through the ominous door on the far side of the room. Stephanie herself was only one away from being called. Only Taise came between her and the Test.

The loud-speaker in the corner of the roof crackled. Stephanie felt Taise flinch as the voice coming through the speaker hissed, "Trainee Seven-Oh-Three-Four, enter for assessment."

"Good luck," Stephanie whispered as the girl rose to her feet with a face quite near as white as the walls that surrounded them. Taise barely gave Stephanie a glance as she walked to the door, as stiff as a board, and pushed it open. The last thing Stephanie saw before the door shut were the bold numbers 'seven-zero-three-four' emblazoned in white on the back of the girl's red uniform.

Uneasy silence returned to the room, and Stephanie let out a trembling breath. She was next. She kept her hands together, tightening her grip until her knuckles turned white. The boy next to her, Kallum, was bouncing his leg, and the girl on his other side constantly shifted. She knew they were all just as nervous as she was. The Test was arguably the most important event in their lives, the event that determined where they would be in Society. Having been taken away from their parents at birth and trained in self-defence and martial arts since the age of five, they were all capable fighters — the Army, however, only recruited the very best. The rest of them would be scattered into the other classes of society. Stephanie, who hadn't really had an interest in the Army, didn't know why she was so nervous.

Maybe it was because kids had died in the Test before. Or maybe it was because one of them would be chosen to participate in the Arena Purge: a fight to the death with nine prisoners, rebels of the crown. It had become an annual event after the infamous Trainee Rebellion, which had taken place now seven years before. King Motch wanted a yearly reminder that he was in control and that no Trainee — rebellious or not — was exempt from his judgment. The winner was granted another chance at life. Some ended up back in the arena the next year, and no one had ever won twice.

It could be me, Stephanie thought with a knot in her chest. I could be chosen. The picking was totally random, they were told, and with the number of kids in her year — just over a hundred — things didn't look good. It could be any one of them. It could be her.

"Steph!" a little voice hissed from her right. She leaned forward, looking down the row of Trainees to meet the gaze of her best friend, Marcie. The two were like sisters. They had been best friends for as long as Stephanie could remember. Marcie, who was several months younger than Stephanie, had long black hair which she had pulled up into a topknot earlier that day in preparation. She had done Stephanie's hair too, braiding her long brown-black hair into one long braid woven back from her forehead. It reached the middle of her back even still, just like Marcie's — they had agreed several years ago to grow out their hair to see how long they could get it. A warm feeling filled Stephanie's chest when she thought of it, distracting her from her worries for but a moment.