1 Chapter One

I remember the streets of Little Rock. The luxury hotels, restaurants with reservations made months in advance, and the previous capital building right in the middle of it all. Yeah, that was where all of the tourists and the wealthy played.

Of course, I didn't make it to that side of town very often. My side of town had all of the drug dealers and the police sitting on every corner. At any given time during the night, you might have heard gun shots and sirens. I would peak out my window sometimes to see strange men detain the shooters and put them into the back of their cars.

Ma used to tell me that those were the police, the good guys. I used to go to school, West Maumelle Elementary, and tell all of my friends about the scary stuff I saw on the streets the night before. Mrs. Bryant used to scold us for it, saying that there were no such thing as police officers and that we ought to talk about something else. I learned the power of my words after that, but not all of my friends did.

West Maumelle Elementary got a new student from the uppity side of town that I mentioned earlier. His name was Devon and he was one of them rich types. Devon used to sit around with us while my friends talked about the scary men that stole people from off the streets. I can't say for sure what happened to the poor guy, but rumors circled around that the bad men broke into his home and took him in his sleep.

After that, Ma found out about my peeking through the window. She decided to switch bedrooms with me after that. My new bedroom didn't have any windows, so I couldn't peak even if I wanted to. I slept soundly after that, but I wondered if Ma ever looked out the window the same way I did.

By the time high school rolled around, I was an experienced veteran at keeping my nose down. Perhaps in another attempt to watch us, the strange men patrolled the schools hallways. They stood outside of bathrooms, at the end of the lunch tables, and by the buses. Never said a word to any of them, but knowing that they were there and that they would always be there.

One of the boys, a football player named Marquis, made the dumb decision to step on the toes of one of the bathroom guards. He said, "What are you? Some kind of pervert? Get out of my school, you freaks! You don't belong in a place like this."

My mind went back to Devon. I saw a lot of him in Marquis in that moment. Both of them were naïve as to the way of things. Devon didn't understand how the world worked and Marquis went against the way the world worked. In their own different ways, both of them were too small stupid to see the bigger picture.

That's why, when Marquis was restrained and escorted away, I wasn't very surprised and neither was any observer. It didn't take a genius to know the dangers of deviating from the norm. Nobody knows what to you once you're taken, but everybody knows that you'll never return.

I considered myself lucky that I was never taken as a kid with my loud mouth and my snooping. I could have easily been a Devon or a Marquis, but I wasn't. I was free from punishment, at least at that moment I was. Turns out that luck wasn't worth a sack of rocks.

Some of my classmates and I went to a convenience store one afternoon after school let out. I wasn't in much need of snacks, but I watched as they raided the shelves, shoving chocolate bars in their pockets and soda in their backpacks. It didn't even occur to me that they were thinking about stealing any of it.

When the clerk went to the back, they made a run for it. I got scared in that moment, thinking to myself that the clerk could easily notice the extremely empty shelves and put all of the pieces together. We might as well already have been in the strange men's custody.

"Dude, that was crazy!"

"I can't believe that old hag didn't notice anything!"

Their words were like static. My mother's voice rang in my head. If she could see me now, she would say, "Son, use that head of yours! Didn't I raise you with a little more common sense? Now look what you've done."

The sounds of tires against the gravel road behind me caught my attention. I began praying for mercy and salvation from the situation that we've found ourselves in. The other kids began hollering and running faster. No, I had some common sense. Running from the strange men was like trying to prevent day from turning to night. I stopped in my tracks and began praying that Ma would forgive me.

I heard a click coming from the car. The door raised up and heels began clicking on the ground. I didn't have the nerve to run or even turn over my shoulder anymore. I was scared but frozen. From my peripheral vision, I saw a young woman. She was attractive, but her soulless gaze practically stripped her of all beauty.

"Good afternoon, Justin." She said, her pleasant voice not quite matching her rough demeanor. "The one percent have been watching you rather closely. It's such a pleasure to finally meet you."

"Watching me closely?"

"Does that bother you?"

"No."

When I looked out the windows into the dead of night, I never considered that someone might have been looking back. The "one percent", as she called them, were already familiar with me. Ma's paranoia all of those years ago started to make sense. I wasn't the observer, I was the observed.

She said, "You have been selected for human trials, Justin. In order to pay for your crime, you will come with me and answer to the appropriate authority. Failure to do so will result in erasure."

"Human trails? What crime? Erasure?"

"Nobody who is escorted to the car ever comes out, right?"

She continued, "Your crime is theft and evaesdropping. The one percent of us pay good money to keep these businesses well supplied. Stealing erases all of the back breaking work done to make sure these stores have what they need."

"I didn't commit any crimes though! There is nothing on me."

"Then you won't mind explaining your crimes to Mayor Coine. Come, Honored Guest. You're about to begin the first stage of your trial."