The Damaged

The First Challenge

I spent the night in the room in the Upper building with the rest of the Picked from my Lodge.  I didn't sleep at all, and neither did anyone else.  How could we sleep with the probability of us dying tomorrow.  They lined us up and gave us all new clothes, wet suit like outfits with out Legionnaire Symbol on the stomach.  We were led out to a large pit filled with water.  It was not the kind of water you like to swim in.  There was a long thick wire running across it with a platform suspended below it.  They were filing people onto it, and I thought I saw hinges.

I was taken up, and I somehow ended up close to the middle.  Everyone started to hold on, so I did as well.  There was a beep, then another, and one more then I heard a gunshot and the floor fell down.  A few people who hadn't held on fell right away, and the drop was far enough to kill.  Only one of the seven I saw fall broke the surface, but then they were pulled under that nasty pool with a strong current mixed with a whirlpool.

I got the message that I didn't want to fall.  Some people were dropping around me.  Of the hundred that walked up here, maybe ninety were left.  Another guy fell, about eight years old.  He shouldn't have to die so young.  Someone on the end from the Army Sector, a fifteen year old boy I recognized as Frenton, had started bounding up and down on the wire.  It was shaking me slowly loose, and others weren't so lucky to hold on that long.

My hands were getting sweaty, so I let go for a second to wipe my hand on my suit, then I did the same with the other.  There were only about eighty five people left, and I needed to survive until seventy five.  So close.

More people had started to do what Frenton was, so I could hardly stay on.  I was being shaken around so hard I thought my arms were being yanked off.  I had an amazing idea and wrapped my legs around the wire and locked my hands together on top of my crossed feet.  I ducked my head in between my legs and kept it there until the horn blew and the platform went back up.  My legs were wobbling and my arms were shaking, but I still had to walk across the thin platform without falling off.  I manged to make it, barely, off the platform.  I collapsed on the floor as soon as I got to the end.


[Sorry for the short chapter!]