The day The World Was Going To End That day was the day the world was supposed to end. All around the world people were nervously waiting. Most people just laughed the threat off but deep down they were still paranoid. People went on with their day, no one wanting to look stupid by taking the day off. I remember the day well; I was still young and didn’t think much about the threat of the world. I went to school, sat through a horrible class, braided my friends at recess and then went home. My parents were easygoing people who decided to take advantage of the threat and hold a party. I remember waiting upstairs always sneaking around the corner to look at the people when they arrived. My younger brother trying to catch up to me in his awkward toddler stride. I remember listing to the adults talking and laughing while I sat upstairs and watched SpongeBob, my little brother sitting next to me on the floor sucking on his finger and laughing. When there was only about 20 minutes left before midnight I remember waking up from falling asleep and gently removing my brother from my lap and laying him on the floor. Before going downstairs I smoothed down his curly black hair and kissed him on the head. That was the last time I remember touching him so gently. I quietly sneaked down the stairs, walking slowly, expecting someone to see me and shout for me to go back up. The party was still lively and there was a digital clock on the T.V. counting down the minutes and seconds until midnight. I spot my mom over in the kitchen; she had a wine glass in her hand and was talking and laughing with two other ladies. I walked over to her and quietly stood there until she saw me. She smiled lightly and crouched down to my height. I told her that I wanted to see her and that my brother was asleep. She tells me good and that I can stay down and count down until its midnight with everyone else. I remember sitting in the living room, watching the clock and the people. I remember thinking my mom looked beautiful with her long curly black hair and her red cocktail dress. My father looked handsome with his gray slacks and tucked in purple shirt, his short brown hair gelled back. I remember sitting there my eyes glued to the T.V. as the clock said we had only ten second until midnight. Excited, this would be my first time staying up so late. I laugh now thinking back about how excited I was, innocent and unknowing of all the pain that the ten seconds would be counting down for. Everyone was smiling as they loudly counted down with the clock. Some looked a little nervous but where still smiling. Loud cheers as we finishing counting, everything is perfect, everyone is happy. That’s when my world turned upside down. The T.V. screen goes black then shows the government crest as the screen makes a loud obnoxious beeping sound. Everyone turns and looks at the screen, their smiles falling from their face. Everything goes quiet as we stand there listing to the beeping. Suddenly the president’s face light up the screen. His face is pale and he looks nervous, he is sweating and his eyes aren’t steady. He coughs, dabs his face with a cloth and starts to speak. “This is your president speaking.” He starts officially. “I would like to inform the country on a pressing matter. As you all know today it was predicted that the world would end. As we all know by now that isn’t exactly the case.” He laughs softly, trying to lighten the mood. “But something has come up. I know that you all may not believe me when I say this but today, for the first known time, aliens have come to Earth.” He stops for a few seconds letting this sink in, he then coughs again and proceeds. “This is no joke and we are certain that they are genuine aliens, not fakes. I know that not all of you like me or believe in my views but for at least a night we need to all come together. I will now pass the camera to the visitors and let them talk.” The camera swerves and settles on a figure that is clearly not human. I hear gasps from the party members and some people expressing their doubts. The camera zooms in to the figure and all doubts vanish from people’s minds. The figure is about as tall as a human but its body appears to be made out of fire. It had a cloak on and even though its body is made out of fire, the cloth doesn’t burn. He has all the limbs of a human but no face. Even though it looks real, now a days this can be easily edited into a video. That’s not what makes us all believe in it though, it’s the feeling we got from it. Even though it’s in the T.V. we all still got a since of danger and immense power from it. Everything goes silent as the figure begins talking. “I would like to start by introducing myself.” The figure starts. Its voice doesn’t sound either male or female. It speaks perfect English but doesn’t have an accent from any country in Earth. His voice has no emotion but doesn’t sound boring either. We all watch it, mesmerized. “You may call me Elo, though that is not my full name. I will not tell you it for it is unimportant. I know what you are all thinking right now. You are all worried that we are evil invaders come to take over your world and enslave you all. I am here to inform you all that this is not the case. At the same time we did not come to Earth to just sight see.” I can feel the tension in the air around me. Everyone is worried about what is going to happen. Even though I’m young I still understand enough to know that when adults are afraid that something really bad is going to happen. I feel fear grip at my chest as I continue to listen to Elo. “We came here to gather specimens for our experiment. We will be taking back to our home plant a select few humans. We will not tell you what the experiment is but we will tell you that we will not harm you and that the selected humans will live a #life of luxury. Sadly though, do not expect to ever see them again.” Elo stalls for a few seconds, maybe thinking about what to say next. No one at the party is talking but I see people giving each other anxious glances and shifting nervously. “I will now proceed to call out the names of the selected humans.” Elo says and reached into his cloak and pulls out and object. It looks like a scroll but what would normally be paper is water. Without hesitation Elo proceeds to call out names. I don’t remember many of the names as I carefully listen for any people that I know. Elo calls out names by state. He calls the name of the person, first and last, then their address so as not to be confused with anyone else. I hear some of my friend’s names but they are just people with the same name. When Elo finally get to our state everyone tenses, holding their breath. I listing carefully worried for my friends and family. Elo calls one of my friends name and I feel my body go cold. I think this is the worst thing to happen, that is until I hear another name that is familiar. For a few seconds I don’t realize who the name belongs to but when I do I go numb. I don’t remember much after that, just that my parents flew at me and hugged me, their bodies shaking with fear. I numbly watched the faces of the party guests. Some were crying, other look relieved, most look at me with pity. I remember hearing Elo’s voice penetrating through my numbness saying that he has people stationed at every major city in each state and that we should go to the nearest one to drop off the people called. Elo tells us that if even one person were to refuse that he would destroy that state and all the people in it. The next thing I remember is being in the family car, my little brother asleep in his car chair, his head wobbling around. My parents quietly whispering to each other and occasionally glancing back at me. I remember arriving at the city just as the sun rose. My mother started to cry quietly and my father gently put his hand on her back. We arrived at a park. There was a big metal cylinder in the middle of the park. Waiting in front of it was one of Elo’s people. It looked almost exactly like Elo but is made of sand instead of fire. My parents’ parked and we all got out. They both held my hands as we walked over to the sand creature. My dad carried my brother in his arms, my brother was still asleep. I didn’t feel scared or sad, just numb. My mom was crying and my dad looked like he was trying desperately not to. They were both shaking. When we arrived my parents stopped and let go on my hands. I continued walking by myself, not worried at all. I could hear my mom whimpering behind me and my dad cough trying to hide the fact that he was about to cry. I didn’t look back. When I arrived at the cylinder I turned and faced the sand creature. He turned and grabbed my arm, his skin was rough. I didn’t try to squirm or jump in surprise when he grabbed me, but my eyes did widen with surprise when he raised an object in his hand. Before I had time to react he harshly stabbed the object onto my neck. I screamed as my neck started burned liked it was covered in flames. I reached up and put my hand that the sand creature wasn’t holding over my neck where he branded me. My skin felt hot and raw. No longer numb I turned around and faced my parents. My mother had her hands covering he face and her frail shoulders were shaking. My dad had his face in my brother shoulder. I screamed their names tears streaming down my face. Fear washing over me. My parents both looked up at me and my mom screams my name, gives me a pained look and went and put her face into my dad’s chest. He started to cry as he put his arm around my mom. I tried to yank my arm out of the sand creatures grip but he was surprisingly strong. I squirmed in his grip but he never lightened up. I was aware that a door was opening in the giant cylinder and I started to scream and pull away harder. When the door was fully open the sand creature tossed me in as if I weighed nothing. Before my screams were cut off by the door that last thing I saw of my family were my mom and dad both crying in each other’s arms. My brother must have woken up by my screams because the last time I saw my innocent beloved brother was him calmly looking at me as I scream and cry. Then everything goes black as the door slams shut. I remember sitting in the darkness, whimpering, aware that I wasn’t alone. I was surrounded by others like me, chosen ones. I don’t remember how long we were in the giant cylinder, hours, days, weeks, time stood still in the darkness. It was horrible, the smell of humans when we don’t have daily luxuries. When we finally landed and they opened the door we all scrambled back into the darkest corner of the cylinder, afraid of the light, just like bugs. If we didn’t get out willingly the sand creature would grab us roughly and throw us out into the light. We were in an empty white room, nothing in it besides the giant cylinder and us. We all stood there shaking in fear all huddled up together. Even in fear I had enough sense to notice that most of the people in my cylinder were younger people, only one middle aged person. The sand creature came out and told us all to take off our clothes. Without questioning we all stripped. When we were all naked our clothes on the floor burst into flames. This scared a few people and some of the younger kids started to cry. We all had our hands on our bodies, trying to cover up as much as possible. The red brands on our necks standing out against our pale afraid skin. The ceiling above us started to spray us with water. We all just continued to stand and shiver, our heads lowered as we were drenched in water. The water stopped suddenly and hot air replaced it, drying us. When we were dried the sand creature came back into the white room carrying a box. He set it down on the floor and then started to talk to us. “This box contains the outfits that you will be wearing during your training.” He told us. His voice sounding the same as Elo’s. “Each outfit fits everyone, and the outfit grows with you. It is made of a special material only found on our planet. Your will only need one of these outfits to last you the rest of your #life. When the material is cut it will automatically fix itself. You will not even need to wash this outfit. You will wear this outfit at all times unless we tell you differently. Now line up and you will receive your outfit.” We all lined up and shuffled up to get our outfit. It looked like a black skin-tight jumpsuit. When we first pulled it out of the box it looked like it would fit a baby. When I first put my foot in, the material easily stretched. It fit perfectly over my body without being too tight or too loose. The outfit was very comfortable. Some of the younger kids needed help putting theirs on, so I went over and helped a little boy that reminded me of my brother. When we were all dressed we stood and stared at the sand creature. The little boy reached over and grabbed my hand. The sand creature started to talk again. “Good, I see that you all put the outfits on correctly. Now if you would, can you look down at your chest and tell me the number you have when I call your name. This will become your new name; you will no longer have any use for you Earth name. You are merely specimen at the stage.” He told us. I looked down at my chest as saw that I had a white number. I was number 666. I kneeled down to the little boy and asked him if he knew his number. When he shook his head no I told him his number was 247 and asked him if he could remember that. After abandoning our names the sand creature finally gave us some information. “You will now call each other by these numbers, even if you know each other by your earth names. If you succeed later on you will be assigned a real new name. I will give you some more information as to what you all will be doing and why you were selected. As you may have noticed, most of you are younger, the oldest among you 34 and the youngest two. Everyone else is between those ages. You all will be treated the same by us but you may help each other. You will all become each other’s family; you will live with each other, shower with each other, eat with each other and train with each other. During free time though you will be able to mingle with people from other groups. Your group name is SEC 2, when we call this name you will all reply to it. This room that we are currently in is SEC 2’s living area, this is where you will always come back to at the end of training. This room can mold to whatever you need it to be. Now as to why you were chosen. We have been studying humans for a while now and have ran some experiments to best decide who would be best to use in this experiment. You see, humans have hidden talents that they aren’t even aware of. We have brought you here to help you in discovering your talent. Each person is different in what their talent will be, we suspect that their talent will reflect what the persons personality is like. You are probably wondering why we would do this, by helping you discover your talent we are making you stronger and more of a threat to us. Our planet’s people are just naturally curious and will risk everything to find out the answer to a question. But just because we are making you powerful do not think that you will get away easily. We have set many obstacles to prevent you from over throwing us.” The sand creature stops and waits a few seconds before continuing giving us some time to process what he has told us. “Now about training, you will all go to training every day. Like I said earlier we will treat each of you the same, but as each of you move up each stage you will be rewarded differently. We also will not hesitate to use force on you, no matter what age. You will all be on a strict schedule each day and we expect you to stick to it. If you ever disobey us you will be punished. Since today is the first day of your arrival we will leave you until tomorrow and give you time to adjust to your environment. Also, I am the leader of SEC 2, Wen; you will come to me if you have any questions.” With that Wen the sand creature turned to leave. Over its shoulder as it walked away it said “the experiment has begun.” After Wen the sand creature left we all sat down and let what we were told sink in. After a while some of us got up and wandered around. We build SEC 2’s insides that first day. We sectioned off parts of the white room and built up walls for privacy. We don’t know how we can control the white room, when we want something we just think of it and the room does it. We build the white room like a hotel. Rooms on either side of a carpeted hallway. Each door is different, and each room is unique to the person. We put whatever we want in our rooms. Most of us make our room like the one at home, so as not to feel so homesick. I don’t, I know that #life is over and don’t wish to focus on something unimportant to the current moment. I make my room big and fancy, with a huge bathroom. We can make the white room as big or small as we want. The little boy that I helped gets the room next to mine and we build a door between our rooms. There are a few things that we can’t make, like weapons or other clothes but we can make food and drinks. We also can’t change other people’s rooms. Together we build a common room and a kitchen. After we finished this we all went back to our rooms and did whatever we wanted. I went to sleep. The next day we were woken up by a siren at 5 in the morning, Earth time. We all rolled out of bed and went to the kitchen to get breakfast. On the wall in the kitchen there was an image of Wen the sand creature. It only showed the top half of it. It told us that we had an hour to eat, use the restroom and get ready for day one’s training. Wen was then replaced with a digital clock counting down the time. The clock reminded me of home and my last day. Number 247 and I ate eggs and toast together. We didn’t talk to each other, no one did. We were all nervous for what laid ahead. When number 247 and I finished eating we left the plates where we were sitting and went back to our rooms. I helped him use the restroom and cleaned his face. He then waited in my room as I got ready. I tried to put my hair into a ponytail but failed having never learned how to because my mom usually did my hair. I ripped the hair band out of my hair and combed my hair down. I had dark black hair like my mom but it was straight instead of curly. Because I was still young I didn’t really care about looks so instead of spending the remaining time left looking in the mirror I went out into my main room and sat with number 247. We talked a little; I learned that he was a year older than my brother. We didn’t tell each other our Earth name, that was taboo, but we did talk about our past lives. We both had basic lives, a happy family, siblings, school and friends. Number 247 had semi-long light brown curly hair and bright brown eyes. When time was up the siren came again and we all filed into the common room, nervous but ready. Training was harsh. The first day Wen took us all to a training room and tested our physical abilities. Saw how long and far we could run, how much weight we could lift, how high we could climb and other basic physical tests. He gave us a five minute break after that and we all drank water. Number 247 was at my side the whole time, pushing himself to his limits to keep up with me. I made him drink water and rest. After five minutes Wen made us line up and weighed and measured us, he also asked us our age. We were all then separated and taken to what we called the thinking rooms. The thinking rooms were closet sized rooms. The only things in the pure white rooms were a chair and a hole in the wall. We were asked to sit in the chair. When we sat whatever was behind the hole in the wall started to talk to us. The voice sounded like Wen and Elo, so it was probably another native to this planet. The voice asked us basic information about ourselves, when where we born, what was our favorite color, animal and anything else. They also took a blood sample from our fingers by making use stick our finger in the hole. Once that was done we were taken to what we call the pain chambers. We each had our own room like with the thinking rooms. Normally what happened in the pain chambers were different for each person but today they were all the same. We were all electrocuted until we passed out; this was the pain tolerance test. You could hear the screams of people all around you. When I had woken up I was back in my room. I got up and took a bath, still not old enough to take a shower. I then went next door the number 247’s room. He was still asleep. I sat on the edge of his bed and stroked his hair, this calmed me. From the pain chamber to dinner time we had free time and could mingle with the other groups. This was the only time that our white room’s door was opened freely. We could go and stand out in the hall and talk or we could go into the training room and play. We couldn’t go into each other’s white rooms though. We were warned that if we were not in our white rooms by the time our free time was over, we would be punished. We learned early on that punished usually meant being stuck in the pain chamber and being whipped. Yes, they whipped us. They found this was the best way to deal with specimens, because it leaves scars that remind us not to disobey them again. Lots of us are scarred ugly versions of the people we use to be thanks to the harsh treatment we received. After dinner we went to our rooms and had lights out at what would be Earth’s 9 at night. That night number 247 slept with me. Later the next day before training he was dragged out of my room by Wen. When he showed up for training he was shaking and pale, his eyes red from crying. When I looked at his back he had been whipped five times. That day at training we played a version of dodge ball, where we had to dodge fire balls shooting out of the wall at us. It was harsh and many of us were badly burned. I took some solid hits trying to protect number 247. After a five minute break when we rested and got to rub medicine on our burns we moved on to the thinking rooms. This time in the thinking rooms we were asked what we dislike. After talking for a while we were then dragged to the pain chambers. Many people were crying before they even entered the room. This time in the pain chamber they changed the room’s temperature suddenly from scorching hot to below freezing. Our bodies not being use to this started to shut down on us. After a while of that we were taken back to the white room and given free time. Then dinner. Then bed time. Number 247 didn’t sleep with me that night; I could hear him whimpering through the wall. #life continues like this for a while, harsh training, talking, pain, break, dinner then sleep. Every day was a struggle to just get by. Some didn’t make it. When we lost the first person everyone was quiet, the real danger we were constantly in finally sinking in. We were never safe. Wen and the others didn’t purposely try and kill us; if they did they wouldn’t have anyone to answer the questions they wanted answered. At the same time we were just specimens, not actual living being to them, nothing more than a lab rat. Four weeks after being taking away from our home we had the first breakthrough of what Wen and the others wanted. During training instead of playing a deadly game or pushing our limits we all sat down and played with objects. They ranged from mechanical parts to fire. The day before we were told by our “counselor” in the thinking room that when this happened not to just sit and play. They told us to take the object that we felt the strongest attraction to and try to follow our instincts. Some girl that I knew vaguely was over playing with a lighter when she accidently set her hand on fire. For a few seconds she sat screaming until she noticed that she wasn’t in pain. We all crowded around her as she sat and stared at her hand mesmerized. She couldn’t do anything other than make the fire smaller and bigger and by the time the fire went out her hand was slightly red and she had passed out from exhaustion. This sparked all of our interests and we went back to fiddle with our objects trying to make something happen. The next day a few people switched their objects trying to produce a quicker outcome. The fire girl again set her hand on fire but this time let her arm become consumed in flames before she passed out. That day more people figure out their talent but still not me or 247. On the fourth day of playing with objects 247 figured out his talent. He was playing with a pencil and paper, drawing a flower for me. When he held the picture up for me to see I smiled and said that I wish that I could see something that pretty once again. The picture started to glow and he quickly put it down on the floor. The paper continued to glow and we excitedly huddled up to see what would happen. A tiny frail flower sprouted from the paper. After about a minute the flower then turned to ash. 247 had figured out the basic of his talent but I and about three other people hadn’t. I started to worry that I never would, and that if I didn’t they would kill me; no one wants a useless specimen. The next day as I was desperately fiddling with multiple objects I finally made my breakthrough. I sometimes look back at this moment and wonder if it might have been better if I had never found my talent, I might have been killed but it would have spared many lives. Nervous and worried, I was fiddling with a metal gear when it melted in my hand and became a short dagger. Shocked I had dropped the weapon. It made a clanking sound then turned back into its original shape. I looked over at 247 with a big grin on my face and he smiled...