An explosion of light forced me to open my eyes.

I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, and my chest felt like it was about two seconds from collapsing in on itself.

“Don’t panic,” a garbled robotic voice ordered through the pitch dark that had been left after the light, “do you require a memory kicker?”

“Finn Dexter.” I muttered to myself after remembering my name, raising more questions than I answered.

“Do you require a memory kicker?” the robot repeated.

There was a part of me that wanted to say yes, but then I recalled what that entailed and shook my head, “No, no I’ll be fine.” I said as some white text popped up in the bottom right-hand corner of my vision.

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Pod initializing…

Preparing for drop…

A tablet-sized screen lit up in front of my face, illuminating the coffin-like pod I was strapped into, and gave me an exterior view of the top of the pod.

“Okay, KillStreak, I’m in KillStreak.” I said as all but my most recent RL memories came back to me, which wasn’t concerning to me whatsoever due to the fact that I’d dropped in about a million times before.

I watched the screen patiently as the circular doors below my pod dilated in their alien way, and listened as a variety of hisses and clunking sounds echoed around the exterior of my pod.

Three…

Two…

One…

Good luck.

A sound like a massive shotgun cocking made me wince, followed by what felt like my stomach doing somersaults as I was fired out of the craft I was in.

“My name is Finn Dexter…” I worked past a bubble of vomit that had made its way up my throat as I hurtled toward the planet below, “I’m in KillStreak… I’ve been kidnapped.”