Lord Hacker: Prison life

chapter 3: The mangled leg

"What now?" Someone asked.

"I guess we need to pick a leader," I replied.

"Matt, it should be you." Pedro suggested.

"Why me, I don't have any experience with this type of thing." I said.

It was true, I didn't have any experience with it. I had never even been the leader of anything before.

"Sure you do, your always playing tower defense games, and skywars."

"Yeah but, I've never been the leader of anything before." I was still convinced that I would be a bad leader.

"I can help you with that, I'll be your co-leader. If you need help with anything then just come to me." Pedro tried to convince me.

Everyone was telling me that I should do it. But they were calling me Matt, thanks to Pedro.

"Ok, I guess I'm the leader now. So first off, my name isn't Matt." I looked at Pedro, then back at everyone else. "It's Matias Morrow,"

Everyone started to ask me how we were going to train, and what to do now. So I told them that we should start by introducing ourselves. Everyone seemed to like that idea.

Since Zach and Jonas joined the hacker, besides me and Pedro there was only two other guys. Alfie Serrano was the kid who was in the cell room with Iris. He was only twelve, and was the youngest out of all of us. There was also Eric Proctor, something seemed off about him. He had messy brown hair that looked as if it hadn't been brushed in a while, and blue eyes. He was wearing a brown jacket and ripped jeans. One of the reasons why I thought something seemed off about him was because he seemed to have a hard time remembering how old he was.

"I'm Eric Proctor, and I'm, uh... fifteen."

Besides Iris, there were five girls. There was Jade Meza, who was sixteen. Addison Blair, who was fifteen. Autumn Reeves, who was fourteen. Maya Bray, who was eighteen. And June Chen, who was thirteen. I noticed how most of the other kids were older than me, I was fourteen.

After we all introduced ourselves, I told everyone to just take a break and relax for a while. It was about lunchtime now, so I thought that we would have some time to train later.

"Just don't leave the prison," I added as everyone ran out of the room.

Pedro, Iris, and I were the last ones to leave the room.

"I have to tell you guys something," Iris said as we entered the hallway.

"Ok, what's up." I asked.

"Let's go somewhere else," Iris led us across the hall.

"Why do we have to go to the cell room?" Pedro complained.

"It's the only room that no one will be in," Iris answered.

We sat down at a table on the left side of the room. It looked like the kind of table you would find in a park, except it wasn't wooden, rather metal. That made the chairs very uncomfortable.

"So, do you guys remember how Lord Hacker said that all of us were playing prison life before getting trapped in the game?"

Pedro and I nodded.

"Well, I wasn't playing prison life."

"You weren't?" Pedro asked.

"No, I was playing this very unpopular game called A literature club." Iris told us.

"Oh, I've played that game before. It sucks." I commented.

"I know, right. But if I wasn't playing prison life then how did I get trapped in prison life?" She queried.

"Maybe it was a glitch," Pedro suggested.

I was starting to notice how gray the room was. It was almost as if the cops were trying to depress the prisoners.

"Or maybe there wasn't twelve people playing that game, so you just got trapped here instead." I said

"That doesn't make sense, if there wasn't twelve people playing it, then wouldn't no one get trapped in that game?" Iris asked.

"Guys," Autumn Reeves stood in the doorway.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"It's Eric, he hurt his leg."

'Eric,' I thought. 'Which one is Eric?'

I finally remembered who he was. Eric Proctor was the kid who I thought something was off about. The one with the messy brown hair, the brown jacket. The one who seemed to have trouble remembering how old he was.

"Really? How?" Pedro didn't sound very concerned.

"Well, a few kids decided to play soccer with a rock. Then someone kicked the rock onto the top step of the bleachers. And Eric went up to get it, but he fell." Autumn explained.

"Like, he fell all the way to the ground?" Iris questioned.

"Yes,"

So Autumn led us to the prisonyard, where everyone was crowded around the bleachers. We pushed through the crowd until we got to the middle. Eric was lying on the ground, clutching his leg.

"Eric, can you stand?" I asked him.

He tried putting some of his weight on the mangled leg. "No,"

"Ok, Pedro, try to pick him up by the feet or something without hurting him." I ordered.

Pedro lifted Eric's feet. "Does this hurt?"

"A little," Eric muttered.

Pedro tryed lifting Eric by the calves.  "Does that hurt?"

"Not really,"

"Good," I grabbed Eric's arms, and looked up at Pedro. "We lift on three, one...two...three."

To my surprise, Eric was very light.

"Where to now?" Pedro asked.

"The cell room," I replied.

We carried Eric off to the prison, only Iris followed. We took Eric to the cell room, and put him down in the bed of a cell on the bottom floor.

"Will I be able to fight tomorrow?" Eric didn't look worried.

"It depends on how you feel in the morning," Iris told him.

"Ok,"

We asked Eric if he needed anything, but he said that he didn't. So I told him that I would check on him later. After that we went to join the soccer game.