I didn't sleep all that night.

    I had placed the manila folder back underneath all of my clothes in the chest, and I kept thinking about the stamp at the top of my page. I laid awake staring at the ceiling, listening to the rain pound onto the tent, thunder clapping in the distance. Tara and I both had wooden crates beside our beds to act as bedside tables, which is where my weapons sat. Occasionally throughout the night I would reach my hand over, just to make sure everything of mine was there. 
    I did fall asleep at some point, because I woke up to the morning alarm screaming throughout the camp. I jumped from my bed, forgetting where I was. When I sat up and looked around, I saw Tara was in a similar state. We caught eyes and everything that happened the day before flashed back all at once. We were in a camp full of people that had been stalking us for months. My family was with a group of supposedly dangerous rebels. I was in training to be a soldier for the Stars, the people who killed my friends' family. And three days ago I had been on my farm having a normal day. Oh, how things changed.
    Tara and I laced up our boots and pulled on our jackets. It was still raining, the sound of the rain dropping onto the tent still surrounding me. It was springtime, rain season. I pulled on my leather jacket over top of my thin training jacket. I brushed out my hair and slicked it back into a high pony tail, my hair going from straight to wavy. We then moved out, following the crowd of people to the cafeteria for breakfast. 
    Tara and I sat on the edge of a table again, away from everybody else. We were discussing the file and its contents, when a plate got dropped beside me on the table. I looked up to find Caden, dressed in an outfit similar to mine and Tara's, but he had stripes on the arms of his jacket and a label on his jacket that said "Officer Thorne". He nodded at Tara and sat down, looking at me.
    "How'd you guys sleep last night?" He asked pleasantly, shooting us a smile. I furrowed my eyebrows and looked at him in disbelief.
    "That's what you want to talk about?" I asked incredulously. He glared at me and jerked his head to the left, to the table behind us. There was a group of older looking men, all with patches on their arms. They worked for the Commander. 
    "We slept fine. Beds are a little tough," Tara said, breaking the silence. Caden nodded.
    "That's what most people say when they first come. You get used to it, though. After a while."
    "Hopefully soon," I joked, forcing a laugh. My heart was racing. What if the officers behind us heard what Tara and I were talking about?
    We continued to chat, and Caden reached into his jacket. He brought out a notebook, a small leather bound book that looked old and worn. He continued to talk as normal, talking about how training was going to go, rules around the camp, mundane topics that officers would normally talk to newcomers about. 
    He opened up the book as he talked, flipping to a certain page. He also hauled out a pencil from his jacket, putting it in the crease of the book to keep the pages open. 
    "Just so you know how to get around the camp, here's a map that I drew," He said with a smile. I looked down on the page and found that it wasn't at all a map, but a note that he wrote. I grabbed the book and read it. 

    I NEED TO GET YOU TWO OUT OF THIS CAMP

    "That's not very detailed. Aren't there more tents over here?" I asked, picking up the pencil and writing. 
    Why do you need to get us out?
     I showed Tara and then handed the book back to Caden. He looked at it and nodded, grabbing the pencil. 
    "You're right. Actually, I just realized I don't even have anything labelled," He said, continuing to write. 
    "Looks like you didn't take much time to draw it," Tara teased, her and I eyeing each other uneasily. He finished what he was writing and laid the book out on the table.

   YOU GUYS ARE IN DANGER HERE

   My stomach twisted and I bit my lip uneasily. I pretended to point at something on the page. 
    "How...?" I asked, pretending to be confused. He took it back and began scribbling. He laid the book back out. 

    THEY WANT TO TAKE YOU OUT OF THE CAMP AND TAKE YOU TO THE LEADERS. THEY'LL PERFORM TESTS ON YOU AND CHANGE YOU TO FULFILL THEIR IDEA OF THE IDEAL HUMAN RACE

    I pushed my plate of breakfast away, stomach to sick to eat. My mind was racing and I had a headache. I continued to chew on the inside of my lip, unsure of what to think or how to react. 
    "Why would you give this to us?" Tara asked, her face smiling but her eyes reading confusion. "We're just two new girls."
    "Guess you could say I'm different than the other officers," He said in a flirty tone while writing something down on the paper. I looked down and found that it was the Latin that was on the side of the rebel's Caiman. He's a rebel, I thought to myself.
    "I have to go check on my horses before training," I said, eyes wide and mind whirring. "Are you guys coming?" The two nodded, and we all left the cafeteria. 
    We were silent as we walked to the horse pens, knowing we couldn't talk with other people around. It gave me time to think as we trucked through the mud, the rain falling on us. The clothes we were issued weren't waterproof, and my white white t-shirt turned translucent from the rain, revealing my black bra. Tara kept her jacket zipped up, and I decided to follow her lead, self conscious in front of all the other soldiers. 
    We made it to the pens, all of the horses hiding under the cover of their stalls. We started filling their buckets with grain, hanging one bucket per stall. We made sure it was clear before we decided to continue talking. 
    "How are you going to get us out?" I asked Caden in a hushed tone. He stabbed a pitchfork into a bale of hay and took it into the pen, putting it in one of the hay nets in the stall. 
    "I'm part of a movement within the camp, undercover rebels," He answered. "We've been planning on escaping for a while, but I'm not leaving without you guys."
    Tara and I looked at each other and then back at him. He hoisted more hay into a basket. "Why not? It would be easier," Tara replied. He paused for a moment and his eyes flashed to darkness as he remembered something. 
    "Because I know what the Leaders do," He answered, snapping out of his thoughts. He put more hay into the third hay net. Only one left. 
    "Who are the Leaders?" I asked. He filled the last net, stuck the pitchfork into the ground, and leaned on the handle. 
    "The Leaders are the heads of command. All of these camps, all the Commanders work under them. The base is inside of a mountain on government property. Nobody else knows about it besides the government and the people who work there," He said. 
     "That doesn't explain who they are," I replied. He sighed again and ran a hand through his soaked hair that was hanging in his eyes. 
    "They're the ones who dropped the bombs across the world."
    I thought my heart stopped. All of the suffering, all of the pain I had went through in the last year and a half had been because of these Leaders. Caden explained that they were an underground organization, originally called Bryer & Bennett Corporation,  filled with scientists and mathematicians. They agreed with the world leaders that the Earth was too over populated. They told the world leaders they had a way to decrease the Earth's population, but left out the part that it involved dropping bombs all over the world and taking out the world leaders to gain total domination. 
    As I gained all the new information, I felt like I couldn't stand. My knees felt weak and my stomach felt like a ship on a rough ocean. It was a lot to learn all at once. 
    Caden continue to explain that with the Leaders' new found power, they wanted to create the ideal human race. That involved choosing people with certain traits, skills, and characteristics, as well as special abilities. They wanted a perfect world, one where the perfect human existed. They had scientists that performed DNA engineering, and they were manipulating people's DNA to make them the ideal human. They hadn't had much success with the tests that they were performing, but it didn't stop them from continuing to try. Any person who didn't make it through the engineering process and passed away was simply disposed of. 
    I thought about Natalie, who was taken away by the Collector. I wondered if that's where she was going, to be tested on and changed and engineered to be turned into somebody that wasn't Natalie. I thought about the kind woman who took care of me like a mother when my mother wouldn't, who mothered everybody at the farm and acted as a calm voice of reason in every situation. If they Leaders had her, she wouldn't be that way anymore. 
    I also thought about how the Collector almost had me. Had Tara not shot it out of the sky, I would have been taken to the mountain base to be poked and prodded and engineered because of my "desirable" traits. I thought about failing the engineering and being killed because my body wasn't strong enough and it wasn't able to adapt to the changes quick enough. I pictured myself being simply thrown away, tossed away like a rag doll. 
   The sound of three beeps echoing through the camp shook me out of my thoughts. Caden looked up, yanking the pitch fork out of the ground. 
    "Guess it's training time," He said with a sigh.

    The training ring was a circle in the bottom of the pit, and on the top of the outer ring stood different stations. There was one for shooting, knife throwing, combat skills, survival skills, gun maintenance, and basic med skills. But in the middle is where they held the matches, where they determined what rank the soldiers would be put into. 
    Caden left us to go talk to the other instructors, which was a group he was conveniently part of. He was part of the combat station, where he taught soldiers in training hand to hand combat skills. The head instructor, a tall woman with broad shoulders and angled cheekbones with tough eyes called all of the trainees into the match circle. Tara and I glanced at each other nervously, but made our way down the steps with everybody else. 
   "Welcome, Trainees," She announced. Her voice was deep and loud, slightly raspy. I assumed it was from yelling. "My name is Clark Haynes, but you will all refer to me as Instructor Haynes. All of you have been given the honor to fight to be a soldier here at Camp Star. This is the best camp out of all of the stations under the Leaders, with the highest trained fighters. You're all expected to live up to that level," She stated bluntly. I gulped. "Anybody who does not live up to the rankings will be moved to another camp that fits your skill level."
    I realized that I couldn't get moved to a different camp. If I got moved, I wouldn't be able to escape the Stars and I would get taken to the Leaders and be killed. 
    "Training is pretty straightforward. You will be trained in each station above this ring, and given an evaluation out of 30, with a maximum of 5 points able to be earned in one station. You need to have at least a score of 25 to be accepted as a soldier in this camp. Anything less, and you will be moved down," Instructor Haynes explained. I gulped. 25.
   She introduced the other instructors. The first was instructor Haynes' identical twin sister, Erin. She was head of shooting. The next was a short but buff man with Asian features, Instructor Chung. He was the head of knife throwing. The next, of course, was Caden, head of combat skills. Head of survival skills was a short woman with brown hair whose face was cool as steel, her hazel eyes offering no sign of emotion, Instructor Ashburn. Gun maintenance was Instructor Wallace, an older man with silver hair and fair skin, wrinkles lining his forehead, brow in a permanent furrow. His name was Instructor Wright. And finally was Instructor York, a tall but thin woman with golden grey hair with gentle eyes, head of med skills.
   Instructor Haynes explained that we could attend any station as much as we wanted to. It was up to ourselves to determine which areas we needed the most help in. She advised that despite what we may want, that we pay attention to the areas we really needed assistance in, opposed to the areas where we were already skilled. 
    She released us to go to our stations, and I watched as the young people, some looking as young as teenagers, ran off excitedly to their stations. Tara and I looked at each other. 
    "What station are you going to first?" She asked me. I shrugged, chewing on the inside of my  lip. 
    "I kind of want to go to shooting. Just to get myself warmed up," I answered. She nodded.
    We walked up to the station where kids and adults were lined up, guns in hand, waiting for their turn to go to a target. Erin passed Tara and I each a gun, and I flipped it around to observe. Semiautomatic assault rifle, nice, would've been expensive in the real world. 
    I watched the other kids line up and start shooting. They were being taken five at a time, each they each had ten bullets to use. The lines moved quickly, each kid enthusiastically using up their clips, all of them trigger happy. 
   It finally ended up being Tara's and I's turn. We stepped up to the plates, planting our feet. We were aiming at thin wooden posts, with a small target hole where we were supposed to shoot. I held my gun in my hand a released a slow breath, looking down the gun to my target. Erin motioned for us to shoot, and I watched as Tara shot the center hole perfectly each time. People looked at her, impressed. I smirked at her, looking her up and down. 
    "Watch this," I said. I shot each target post, not only my own, each time landing it directly in the middle. When my clip was up I passed it to Tara and took my handgun from my holster, quickly aiming and shooting all the same holes once more. When my clip was empty, I slowly lowered my gun as people stared at me. Tara smirked at me and punched me in the arm. 
    "Show off," She joshed. I smiled and punched her back, holstering my gun. As we began to walk away from the station, I noticed Instructor Haynes eyeing me with a dangerous look. Chills went up my spine from her cold eyes, a startling blue color which contrasted deeply against her fair skin and platinum hair. 
    We decided to go to gun maintenance next, where few people attended. Most people were trying out the fighting skills, like shooting, knife throwing, and combat, everyone showing off. It left the smaller skills like gun maintenance and med skills with few attendees. 
    There were three other trainees at the station. Beside me, stood a boy who was tall and freckled across his nose, dark curls spiraling from his head. His skin was fair and his eyes were a beautiful emerald green color. His gaze never broke from Instructor Wallace who was talking about the importance of gun care on the field, as he leaned down to whisper to me.
    "You seem to know what you're doing with a gun, why are you here?" He asked in a curious tone. I shrugged and crossed my arms. 
    "Knowledge is power," I whispered back. He paused for a moment and then nodded with a face of approval as he stood back up straight. 
    Wallace sat us all down at tables so we couldn't face each other. We each received a stopwatch to clock us on how fast we could take a part one of the standard issue rifles at the camp. I looked down at it and eyed it over, and realized it was very similar to one of the ones I had at home. Wallace gave us to cue, and we all began. 
     I moved quickly, my fingers sliding over each part with precision. I took the gun apart piece by piece, laying each piece out in order on the table in front of me. I focused on moving fast and moving efficiently, and before I knew it, I was finished. I slammed my palm down on my stopwatch, and looked at the time. 20.32 seconds. 
    Wallace came over and looked over my gun while I stared straight ahead, back straight as a board, chin held high. 
    "You're the girl the guard found, correct?" He asked. I nodded. "Where did you learn to do that?"
    "My father, sir," I answered. I felt a pang in my heart at the memory of him. 
    "Was he one of the ones taken by the rebels?" He questioned. I shook my head.
    "No sir. He was murdered after the bombs were dropped."
    He put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a firm nod. "He should be proud of you, soldier."
    Another pang in my heart and I felt tears well up in my eyes. "Thank you, sir."
    "Now let's see how fast you can put that thing back together."
    He reset my stopwatch, and on his cue, I started putting the pieces back together. I'd done it a million times on the farm. Dad used to hold races between Bailey and I to see who could put them together the fastest. I always won, and Bailey always used the excuse that it was because I had more experience. She was a good shot, but she wasn't as into hunting as dad and I were. She was more into going to work with mom and learning about nursing and med. 
    When I was done putting my gun together, I put it down on the table and Wallace stopped the clock. 19.67 seconds. He shook his head, a smirk of approval on his face. 
    "What do you know, you set a record," He said. I felt a smile tug at my lips and said a silent prayer to my father saying thank you.

     By the time Tara was done, the hour for training was up and it was time for lunch. Everyone left the training ring in a group, moving in a solid mass to the cafeteria. For the first time in two days, the rain decided to let up and the sun above us shined. It lit up the camp, and after how well training went and how good of a mood I was in, everything felt great. 
    We got our plates of food and went to sit down at our spot at the table, and discovered that Caden was already there. As I sat my plate down and looked at him, I noticed he seemed twitchy and on edge. 
    "What's up with you?" I asked him. He looked at me, his eyes darting around nervously.
    "What? Nothing, everything's fine," He answered. I eyed him suspiciously, but turned to my plate of veggies, pork, and rice.
    "So when exactly do you think you'll be able to get us out of here exactly?" I asked. The officers weren't sitting behind us that day. Only trainees and instructors ate lunch at the time we did, everyone else ate an hour later. Most of the other  trainees were at tables on the other side of the tent. Caden shook his foot nervously, his eyes darting around the tent. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he looked at me like I had slapped him across the face. "Caden, did you hear what I said?"
    He nodded and  ran a hand through his hair. "Um, yeah. So we've had a delay, I don't know when we'll be able to get you out."
    Tara and I looked at each other, surprised, and then looked back at him. "What do you mean 'delay'? Is there something wrong?" Tara asked. Caden looked down at the table, leg bouncing up and down, and he looked back up at us. 
    "Uh, my friend who worked under the Commander just got taken to the B & B Base, and he was how we were going to get out so I don't know what we're going to do," He answered honestly. I felt like I was going to throw up. 
    "What do you mean he got taken to the Base?" Tara asked. My face had went white and I felt like I couldn't breathe. Are we going to get out of here? Are the Leaders going to get us?
   "Um, he got uh..." Caden paused, his eyes going dark and his face sinking, "He got caught making plans for us to leave. So he's being taken to the Leaders to be questioned." 
    "Will he say anything?" I asked, breathless.
    "Not willingly," He swallowed hard, and his head twitched as though he remembered something, "But the Leaders can be very... persuasive." They're going to torture him. "And if they ask who he was working to get out of the base, it'll get out that it's me, as well as the others, and the Leaders aren't very... approving of rebels. Specifically the ones that have been working under them."
    His eyes were dark with fear. Something told me that the Leaders didn't just let you take five years in prison for treason. Crazy thoughts of torture followed by execution filled my head, and based off of the fear dancing in the caramel of Caden's irises, I wasn't far off. 
    "So what do we do?" Tara asked, her voice quiet, shocked. He looked up, face struck with the same fear that played in his eyes.
    "At the end of the week, we run."