Hi all, just wanted to say this is my first time I've ever posted a story on FictionPress so I'd appreciate any feedback! Also feel free to message me if you have any comments or questions; I'd be happy to answer anything, I really don't bite I promise!

Prologue

“Jon, Jon, wake up, wake up,” I heard a distant voice pulling me, that’s when it hit me: my body was throbbing in pain. How did all this happen? Oh, yeah now I remember.

I’m Jon, a 16-year-old combater better known as J.2K41O of planet Syre. I’ve been at the Combat School of Syre for almost nine years. And to top it off everyone around me is brainwashed. To think, all of this happened because I’m a glitch.

Chapter 1

It was getting late, and the physical training exercise my fellow combaters and I had been participating in was running into our scheduled dinner time.

Carkon, my best friend and bunkmate was getting edgy, “I’m hungry!” he cried, “I bet that bot holding us here’s got a sprocket loose. Maybe this’ll fix ’em!” as he said this he picked up a large hunk of gravel from the ground and hurled it into the hovering watch bot. With a loud smack the piece of gravel slammed into the bot causing it collapse. “Uh-oh,”

“Run!” I shouted sprinting from the scene of the crime, Carkon right on my heels.

After running into the nearest building and taking some sharp turns down several unfamiliar halls, Carkon and I tried to hide in a vacant classroom with no avail; the door was locked! Panicking, Carkon and I sprinted down another hallway only to find it was a dead end. With no escape in sight Carkon and I decided to wait for the guard bots to find us. A second later 5 guard bots buzzed up, took us into their custody, and led us to an open classroom.

The classroom was occupied by four boys about my age and a large watch bot hovering at the front of the classroom.

The watch bot simply beeped out, “Tests here PING take one. Work until PING released by SENIOR COMBATOR.” Then it fed out two long piece of paper one for each of us. Then it slightly motioned for us to sit far in the back. Carkon and I took our assignments, sat down in the back near the four other boys and began bubbling in answers. As hard as I tried to focus on the monotonously annoying questions I was being forced to answer I was unable to concentrate due to the stares of the four boys who had been in the room upon our entrance.

“Hey check out the greens,” said one of the boys who had been in the room when we arrived, “what are you two in for?”

“We well, uh I threw a rock at a watch bot and um, it isn’t working as far as I know.” Carkon mumbled his eyes on the floor the entire time he spoke.

“That’s it?” another boy laughed, “You’re right Anto they are Greens!”

“We are not!” I said defensively to the four boys, “we’ve done loads of stuff to get in trouble for!”

“Jon, don’t start this you won’t win and you know it,” Carkon whispered to me.

“Oh really like what?”

“We uh we,” I said looking all around the room, searching for an answer, when I noticed my Hollow Watch was beeping about something.

“You’ve done nothin’ fess up,” said Anto.

Carkon and I simply hung our heads in shame, he was right; we’d done nothing in our 8 years at this school. Absolutely nothing.

It seemed like hours passed after our conversation with Anto and his group as we were answering meaningless questions about being stationed and how to pack for a survival mission. We learned all of these lessons in year 3; we were in year 8. I looked down at my Hallow Watch it had been 2 hours of written work. Dinner had to have been over.

I looked at Carkon and he motioned to his mouth making a hungry face, I nodded in agreement. Then he came in; it was my idol, my hero, and my personal savior, Zandri, star Senior Combater in the flesh! He was a tall and brawny 19 year old Senior Sergeant with a reputation for breaking school records. He had broken over 17 records for speed, accuracy, and strength in the 11 years he had been at Combat School F-0C118. The leading record for breaking so many records was 12. Chalk another up for Zandri! I couldn’t believe that my hero was about to talk to me as he swiftly and calmly entered the room. Not a trace of anger or fury.

“Come on you guys, sorry it took so long, oh right I’m Z.9Q374, but you can just call me Zandri.” As he said this I blacked out, no not out of hunger but because of something else. The only thing I could think of as I fell into the darkness of my mind was what my Hollow Watch had read earlier, ‘Happy 16th Birthday Jon!’ What an awful birthday.