Chapter Two

I maneuvered my mini-me all around a replica of The Town. The Town in the game matched exactly to the one I lived in, it was amazing. After aimlessly moving around for a little bit, a word- filled banner popped up at the top of my screen. The banner told me to go to the wall.

I was rather sure by 'the wall' the game meant The Town Walls. I had never been there because it was unsafe. As children, we were all told to never go near the walls. It even became a kind of a joke between us. Parents would scold their children by saying they would let the monsters on the other side of the walls get them if they weren't good. Not to mention you would get a punishment for trying to cross them.

Regardless of the uneasy feeling, I got in the pit of my stomach, I made my character walk in the direction of the wall. Almost immediately I was stopped by a woman resembling my mother.

"Evelyn Rose Harley, where in the world do you think you are going?" My mother's avatar harshly spoke.

In sync with the question from my mother a box for me to type my response popped up on my screen. Was this part of the test? It seemed like an odd thing to test me on. As a keypad manifested on the arm of the chair I was sitting on I thought of my response. My instinct was to tell the truth.

"I am going to The Town Walls," I simply stated to my mother.

My voice was unwavering as I spoke in the game. I found out quickly that my character mirrored my current emotions. It was pretty cool.

My mother glared at me before saying, "You are certainly not doing that. You are going to come home and face your punishment for talking back immediately."

This time, instead of the word box coming up, a series of choices did. None of them were very appealing.

There were three choices. The first choice was to disobey my mother and go to the wall anyway when she was asleep. This choice seemed like it would be a bad idea, I would have to wait forever to complete the test. The second choice was to go home and face my punishment. This seemed like it was the right thing to do, but it also seemed boring. I had to follow the rules all day. Why would I follow them in a game? The last choice was by far the worst. It was to harm my mother and anybody else that got in my way to get to the wall. This was the obvious morally wrong choice, but it also seemed like the only one that would work.

I sighed in frustration. These options were awful and none of them were what I wanted to do. I pushed every other button on the remote and tried everything on the keyboard, nothing worked.

"Damn it!" I exclaimed standing up and covering my mouth, as swearing was against the rules.

My character on the screen mimicked me and covered her mouth too. I took a step to the right and she did too. I didn't have to make any choice at all. I wasn't supposed to. Any choice I would have made would have been wrong and I would have lost. I took a few steps forward and my character followed. I walked right past my mother and nothing happened.

"Nice try," I whispered with a smile on my face.

I walked and moved around the room until my avatar made it to The Town Walls. Far to the right of where I was standing there was a black brick in the middle of the wall. I walked over as curiosity flowed through me. I had never seen anything like this on the walls before. Trying to get closer to the brick I tripped over something I had seen in a book one time. I had never seen it in real life as it was against Town Rules to have weapons. I think I remember it being called a pledgehammar? No, that's not what it was. Sledgehammer! It was a sledgehammer, but what was it doing here?

I took a minute to think and I knew almost immediately this had something to do with the game. Just as I realized this another banner popped up on my screen. It read 'well done', followed by a bunch of numbers. I sighed. What were the numbers; 19-13-1-19-8-9-20 supposed to mean? Numbers had never been something I excelled at.

"Maybe a code," I mumbled to myself. "But to what?"

There's nothing around here that I would need a code for. I made my character turn around and immediately saw an exclamation point above one of the other characters.

"What? Maybe I need to talk to him?"

As my avatar made its way over to the man he began to look kind of surprised. When I finally made it over to him, he began to speak frantically.

"Evelyn! The letters and the numbers connect and you need to hurry! Something bad, awful is going to happen if you don't. You have five minutes starting now," he smirked, "You better get going."

At the end of his speech, a timer appeared on my screen. It was set for five minutes and it was counting down. Fast.

"That's not good," I muttered.

What did he say? Something about the numbers and letters being connected? There were no stupid letters! Uh, oh four minutes and thirty seconds on the clock.

"Come on! Think, you idiot!" I scolded myself.

Numbers and Letters. How do they have anything to do with each other? If this is why I needed algebra I wish I had paid more attention to how x equals six.

"Wait," I said to nobody, "What if the numbers stood for letters? Oh yeah, nobody is going to answer me"

I laughed, "well, I guess I'll answer myself."

I studied the numbers and began to write the corresponding letters on a piece of paper I found in the room. I was using some sort of weird pen I had found too. Soon I had the entire list written out. I looked at the timer, two minutes.

"Okay, so the numbers were nineteen, thirteen, one, nineteen, eight, nine, and twenty. So that means It says smas-hit? That doesn't sound right."

I looked up at the timer again. One minute and six seconds. Oh no. it has to mean something! Maybe if I say it fast?

"Smashit," I said quickly.

That didn't help at all. fifty -five seconds. Maybe slow would work?

"Smash it," I said slowly with realization, "smash it!"

Forty-four seconds. Crap. I quickly made my character grab the sledgehammer and swing at the brick. I wasn't sure if my avatar was going to be strong, but apparently, she was. Parts of it crumbled away. I swung again and even more crumbled away. One more hit should do it. Twenty seconds. I used the button combination for the last time and the brick fell apart bringing the rest of the wall with it. Then the screen went blank. Did I win? It didn't seem like it.

I sat there for a few minutes before the women that lead me here came back into the room. She had no expression on her face as she began to tidy up the room. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do or even if I completed the game. The fact that she wasn't saying anything didn't make it better.

"Um, Ma'm?" I asked meekly.

She hummed in response and kept tidying the room.

"Did I do well?" I asked nervously awaiting her answer.

I honestly wasn't sure whether I did well or not. I was rather sure I did what I was supposed to, but did I? Was I supposed to make a choice when I was talking to my mother? What if I wasn't supposed to break the brick?

My thoughts were cut off as the woman said, "I cannot provide you with that information, but I can say that we didn't quite expect your actions. Now, let me bring you to the waiting room along with the others that have finished."

What was that supposed to mean? They didn't expect what I did? That sounded bad. I must have failed! No, I must have done worse! The women couldn't even look at me, what did I do? She didn't seem angry though, so maybe I didn't fail. I guess I'd just have to wait to find out.

When I made it to the room with the others it seemed like almost everybody was already there. It must have taken me a long time to finish my exam. I looked around for Alistair and found him seated near the back. I knew that we weren't allowed to talk about our exams, but it still would be nice to get my mind off of what just happened.

I slid into the seat next to Alistair while saying, "That was awful."

"No kidding," he replied. "I didn't think it was going to be that weird."

Seeing a proctor walk by I decided to change the subject. Talking about test results was forbidden. I knew Alistair noticed too so I didn't think I needed to explain why I was about to suddenly change the topic.

"Do you have any siblings?" I asked in an attempt to try and get to know him better.

I saw his face drop and I instantly wished I didn't ask. I was trying to make the mood better, not worse. Too late now.

"Uh yeah," he started clearing his throat. "I had a sister. She died in a war against the outside world."

I was incredibly confused by what he meant by that. Did he just mean what was outside the walls? Because I was pretty sure there was nobody to have a war with the outside. I mean The Town was the only place capable of life. That's what everybody had told me. I had never been one to believe everything The Town forced down our throats though.

"Um, Alistair, I think you mean she died in a war with people disobeying the rules. There isn't anybody outside of the walls. That's kind of impossible." I said awaiting his response.

I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting him to say, but whatever it was, it wasn't what he said.

"Eve, you really must have been living under a rock. I guess most people living here don't know the truth though. The outside world isn't what everybody has told us it is. The Town and The Society have been lying to us. Out there people can live, but they aren't like us. They are evil and crazy. They are monsters. They have no morals and no rules and they killed my sister," he looked around and lowered his voice a bit, "I know, I must sound insane right now and I know you just met me, but I'm telling the truth. This is what The Choosing is for, to choose people to fight against the people from the outside. My sister is dead because of the people from the outside world. That's why people need to be chosen."

I slowly let his words sink in. He seemed passionate about this. What he said seemed to make sense, how could we be the only life forms in this world? But Alistair could be lying.

"Um, yeah," I said nervously. This subject was making me uncomfortable, so decided a subject change would be beneficial. "Would you mind walking to the bathroom with me? I'm not sure where it is."

Alistair jumped at the chance to break the tension. For that I am thankful. When I stood next to him I came up to about his shoulders. Walking behind Alistair I could see his brown hair sway back and forth. I was practically in a trance when he stopped outside of the bathroom.

"I'll wait for you out here."

"Uh, yeah. Thanks." I stuttered.

I walked into the bathroom, hearing Alistair chuckle in the distance. I rubbed my hand over my face in embarrassment. I think it was safe to say I wasn't the best at talking to guys. Well, anybody for that matter.

I quickly did my business and walked out of the bathroom with my head down. I almost immediately crashed into something hard. The thing I crashed into grunted and I realized it was a who and not a what.

"What are you doing?" The guy yelled, pushing me away from him.

I looked around for a proctor to help me, but nobody was there. The one time I could use Town rules to my advantage nobody was around to enforce them.

"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to bump into you," I said articulately.

The guy bent down and whispered into my ear, "It doesn't matter. You and your friend think you can do whatever you want and The Town lets you. Well, not me."

He llifted his head and raised his voice, "All you are is a stupid, weak, little girl."

With those words, the blonde-haired guy bent down and spit in my face.

I took a deep breath and whipped his bodily fluids off of my face, "I don't know what you are talking about."

He rolled his disgusting dark blue eyes, "Now I can add lier to the list of reasons why I'm going to kick the shit out of you."

I tried to side-step him, but his fingers wrapped tightly around my arm.

"Let go of me," I demanded in a calm voice.

"Or what? The Town does everything for you, bitch."

His words set me off before I could even consider the rules. I sent a swift elbow to the guy's stomach. Instead of him releasing me like I thought he would he gripped me even tighter.

Now, I had gotten myself in a situation. I turned my neck as far as I could. Where was Alistair? Where were all of the proctors? That's when I realized I hadn't made it very far out of the bathroom and that was probably the reason nobody had come to help me yet.

"Nice shot, but you're gonna have to try harder than that. I guess you rammed into the wrong person this time, huh?"

"What did I even do?" I asked, trying to stall.

"I saw you and Alistair talking. Don't pretend that you don't know why I'm doing this," he said in a dangerous tone. "Maybe a broken bone will make you remember."

When he started to bend my arm it felt as if a part of my brain finally woke up. A part of my brain that hadn't been used before. A part that was violent, scary even.

I quickly elbowed the man in the nose and when he loosened his grip, I slid out and delivered a strong punch to his gut. But I didn't stop when it was clear that I could have gotten away. I didn't even stop when I heard the guy scream in pain and begging me to stop. No, I kept punching and kicking until I was being pulled off of him by none other than Alistair.

"Hey, hey, you're okay. I'm here, you're okay now," he whispered into my ear.

"Where were you?" I snapped.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't hear anything until Bobby started screaming."

I felt my muscles relax as Alistair blocked my view of what was going on. What just happened?

"Did I hurt him?" I asked.

Alistair sighed, "You did Eve. I just hope you had a good reason too."

Alistair was shoved away from me and a guard with handcuffs replaced him. Oh my goodness, I was in so much trouble. I could feel my heart race as Alistair grabbed my arms. I had broken so many rules. I had just beaten somebody up.

The guard was getting so close. Alistair was slowly backing up and telling the guard not to get any closer, but none of it seemed real.

"Give her to us!" A guard shouted.

Alistair pushed me behind him, "She didn't do anything wrong!"

Too bad Alistair didn't account for a guard being behind us. A light blue liquid was injected into my neck and everything started to blur. I could hear Alistair yelling and other people talking. Then I heard a loud crash. I could feel something like sticky water on my head, but I was too sleepy to care.

"She's bleeding!" I heard somebody yell.

I hope that poor girl is okay, I thought. But I couldn't stay awake long enough to find out who that girl was.