Purge 

The Second Generation arrived very differently from how we did. They all came in as one big group, with no prior test, confused, scared, without knowing that over half of them were breathing their last breaths. They were waiting for them. There was a mad sense of bloodlust in the air, amongst those who had already survived here for a year, accompanied by the whispering. 

"I've already made it half a year… I'm not going to get eliminated now." 

Most of them had blood on their minds, and death in their eyes, and razors in their fingers. Meanwhile, our Pod was seated in the safety of our dormitory, safe from the madness that was about to erupt outside. I wouldn’t be surprised if the 200 or so people outside, including Airo, were wiped out by the Second Generation's overwhelming numbers.  

"So what do we do?" Ronin asked, finally breaking the silence. 

"…surely we can’t kill people, right?" Nyx mumbled, shuddering. 

I couldn’t blame her. I'd lived in hell on Earth without a peep of the sun for a year, watching hundreds of people I once saw every day drop dead with glassy eyes and bloody faces, but still I was afraid. I was still afraid of being the one responsible for ending their lives. And that was about when my life turned on its head. 

It was Elemental who brought as back down from our mini little heaven, with a loud fist on the bedside table, which collapsed under his strength. We all shut up. Partly because there wasn't a clearer signal on Erisen to shut up, but also because Elemental never got too involved in meetings. 

"Listen," he says quietly, but we can all feel his authority descend on our shoulders. "All of you need to get your sh*t together, right this moment. I don’t know why I'm needed to say this, but in this Facility The Administrator's orders are absolute. You heard him. If we disobey, we die. If we fail, we die. Never forget that. You came this far in this sh*thole, and you’re giving up simply because you can’t understand that this is a kill or be killed world." 

He pauses of breath, and lets his words set in.  

"Get ready," he continues, his voice on the rise, for once. "All fourteen of us are going to survive. In this year, we've been battle-hardened, trained to the death, beaten, tortured, and we shed enough blood for you to run a f*cking spaceship on if spaceships used blood as fuel. And for what? You think this bullsh*t is gonna be the end of it all? You think if you cower in this tiny a*s Pod, waiting out your days like a f*cking pig waiting to get chopped into sausages? He clearly said that seventy-five out of the almost two thousand people here will walk out of here alive, and once th- we do, we're destined to become his dogs, his soldiers, his slaves, his hands and feet. How the hell can you face the f*cking storm when you stop at rain? Well, I for one, need to get out of this place no matter what. I... I... I still have a family waiting for me." 

At this, his voice cracks and he pauses again, breathing hard after his rant. We're all sitting in the Pod, looking at him, processing this new fact. And then, outside, a din erupts, made up of cries of murder and screams of fear and death and confusion as Airo's bloodfest begins. The Purge has started.  

"Remember," Elemental says, getting to his feet after a short drink of water. "We didn’t make it through this year by waiting around, tilling the f*cking soil and planting horse sh*t, we survived by fighting. The fact that you survived means that you have what it takes to survive this too. Every day was a battle, and every training session we fought like demons, we fought and bled like you probably never did before. We are warriors." 

Elemental leaves the Pod, after wrapping some leather straps embedded with pebbles around his knuckles, like makeshift knuckledusters, after his sermon.  

"Get out here if you want to live," he told us. "And kill three people."  

We stayed in silence for a few seconds, but then Artee said that we should fight, and we gave each other thuds on the back and words of encouragement before scrounging around for weapons. Luc, on the other hand, had been given a pair of the same knuckledusters Elemental had, since he was the second ranked in hand to hand combat behind me. Which lead to the question why he hadn't given them to me, but I'd ask him later. Neo pulled me to the side before we left, and we exchanged words of good luck, and he made me promise that once this was over we would still be best friends.  

When I walked out that door, I became a murderer. All fourteen of us killed people that day. I saw Elemental with his hand around a guy's neck, beating his head over and over with his fist brutally, his hands dyed red and blood all over his expressionless face. I saw Nyx stab someone else in the neck with a razor, and Airo tear another's jaw off their face with his bare hands. I ran past Chris impale his third victim with a metal beam, Luc snap someone neck like a twig, and I saw Dobo smash another's head to pieces on a rock. I still don't know whether that was the right decision or not. Maybe it'd have been better if I stayed behind and died along with those who couldn’t kill three people before the announcement went off that the threshold for massacre was over. It sounded in every person's head then, the terrified victims and the crazed, bloodthirsty killers, and the festival of blood was over.  

I'm terrified of myself. My first victim was a young man, younger than me, and I remember the terrified, wild look in his gentle, brown eyes, as he begged me to spare him. I must have looked like a monster to him. I'm looking at his body now, lying on a rock, with blood still streaming out of his neck. Why am I terrified? Because of the feeling I got from killing him. I don't even know what I was doing. It was a frighteningly exhilarated feeling, pumping in my heart and in my veins, and I felt like I lost myself. I tore apart the other two of my victims like a hungry wolf attacking a hare it had just caught between its jaws. Afterwards, I stumbled through the sea of cowering, terrified members form the Second Generation, and past the blood-spattered slaughterers wandering throughout them, some of them with a faraway look in their eyes, others with an insane, crazed glint, and then more who regretted what they had just been forced to do but gritted their teeth and moved on. 

After that, we all returned to the Pod one by one, Nyx first and then Elemental last. We all changed out of our bloodied grey combat pants and black t-shirts now more red than black, and burnt them at a campfire. No words were spoken, and the flickering orange flames played on the silent, emotionless faces of fourteen murderers.