In the 6 years since their sudden disappearance, I’d probably spent as much time in the infirmary as I had the rest of the Institute combined. Brutal beatings by my fellow cadets were weekly, if not daily events. The physical punishment perfectly calculated to cause me as much pain as possible without crippling me permanently. Even the nurses and the doctor in the infirmary gave me the bare minimum required to keep me alive. In short, I was hated by everyone, from the commandant on down. I’d been attending the institute since I was five years old, selected from among thousands of candidates. The process was ostensibly based on physical ability and mental acuity, and I’m not ashamed to say that the time I was well within the 90th percentile of my age group. My parents however, being the brilliant engineers originally behind the design of the FIVRTS certainly did not hurt my prospects. My father was a hardware and software genius, my mother a renown geneticist, together their initial progress on the FIVRTS was the genesis of the entire platform.I’d been treated like any other cadet, no better, no worse, during the early years. I’d made a few friends, but otherwise mostly kept to myself, being more interested in reading whatever I could get my hands on from the library than ‘hanging out’. The older we got, the more structured our time became. Most of our time was spent with fellow members of our company, in my case Echo Company. Early mornings were spent doing calisthenics, then 6 hours of class work before lunch. Afternoons and evenings were spent doing drills either with our squad or platoon. After evening meal we would then have three hours to perform any additional duties like cleaning the barracks, personal grooming, laundry, and the mandatory meditation cycle. Lights were out at exactly 10pm, and we were up at 4:30am, there were no weekends at the institute. Everything changed towards the end of my fourth year there. I had recently turned 9 and was still excelling at school despite the fact that I had dropped substantially in the physical rankings. I was lean and agile, but I lacked the strength shown by many of my peers. This by itself wouldn’t have been much of a problem, strength while useful, was only one of the many facets of the assessment testing. Real problems began when my parents showed up for the yearly visitation.Yearly Visitation Day was the only day each year that cadets were allowed off campus. I lined up at the gate with the rest of my squad as we each waited for our individual families to arrive and whisk us off to whatever celebration they had planned. It wasn’t uncommon to find many cadets and their families at one of the several high end restaurants in the city. Other families might end up at the 24hr cinemas catching up on a years worth of missed entertainment. My family? We invariably ended up at the PizzaCade, sharing pizza and playing games. It might sound silly, but it was our way of relaxing, and we loved it.I’d been waiting ten or so minutes when my parents finally arrived in a rented autopod. I hopped in as soon as the door opened and hugged my parents before sitting down opposite them. My father waited for the door to close before rattling off an unfamiliar address. I started to say something but the look he gave said I needed to remain quiet and wait. My mother looked nervous and uncomfortable, which only made my fidgeting worse. I didn’t understand what could cause my parents to behave like this, they were normally very outgoing. All three of us remained sitting silently as the autopod navigated out past the edges of the city. Some thirty minutes later, our autopod finally stopped and the door opened, allowing in the bright light of the sun along with a chill wind. Looking out I saw a decrepit sign half fallen off the hinges, with the words ‘South Mountain Cemetary’. I started to question what we were doing there when again my father shook his head, raised his finger to his lips, and then pointed past the sign and made little walking motions with his fingers. The three of us exited the pod with my father pushing the button to put it into standby mode before walking a good distance past the sign into this long forgotten burial ground.“WHAT THE HELL DAD!?” I shouted.“Sit down son” said my father as both he and my mother sat down on the ground in front of me. Following suit, I sat down and watched as my father fidgeted with a gadget he’d produced from his pocket before planting it in front of him. I heard a brief high pitched whine before it turned into a barely audible hum.“We can’t be heard or seen right now, and we’ve only got a limited amount of time, so lets skip the theatrics. Your mother and I have to leave, and I’m afraid things are going to become very rough for you at the institute. You must endure, I know it won’t be easy, but as inhospitable as it may become, it will still be safer for you there than outside it’s walls.”“I don’t understand dad, what’s going on? Why are we all the way out here, what do you mean you have to leave? None of this makes sense!”“Your father and I stumbled onto something that we shouldn’t have Jackson, and the only way to protect you is to keep you at the institute.” I could see the tears forming in my mother’s eyes, or maybe it was my eyes, I couldn’t tell, all I knew is that I suddenly felt very alone and very frightened. Something beeped from inside my father’s coat pocket, causing he and my mother to jump to their feet. Both looked around before pulling me to my feet and into a hug.“I’m sorry about this son,” said my father, “I wish things were different, and maybe some day they will be, but for now your life is about to become very difficult, and we won’t be there to help. Endure whatever you must, no matter how miserable you are, know that you are safe and we love you and only want what’s best for you.”As they released me from the hug, my mother grabbed my arm and put some kind of device up against my wrist. I felt a pinch as I tried to pull my arm back, then the world went black.When I woke up, I found my wrists cuffed, my legs shackled, and a control collar around my neck.“Don’t bother pretending boy, the light on your collar went green as soon as you woke up.” I couldn’t see the speaker, but the voice told me he was a he.“I don’t understand” I mumbled.“Save it for the agents kid, we got called to pick you and your parents up and drop you off, after that we don’t want anything more to do with it.” “My parents? Where are they!?” I was starting to panic now that I was slightly more coherent.“You tell us kid, or better yet, tell the agents, we don’t want to be involved.”My eyes finally adjusted enough to the dim light that I was able to take in my surroundings, which amounted to two armed and armored soldiers. Between us were steel bars attached to the floor and the roof of what appeared to be an armored transport. By this point I was scared, crying, and beyond panicked.I remotely heard one of my guards yelling at me to shut the hell up, but I was too far gone at that point. Next thing I knew was pain, a full body electrical shock that resulted in my passing out again, guess they really wanted me quiet.The next time I came around, I was in a room the size of a slightly oversized closet. There was a cot that folded up against the wall, a small metal toilet, and a sink. The windowless door was locked from the outside. My entire body was sore, I was thirsty, and more importantly, I was scared out of my mind. What the hell was a 9 year old me going to tell these people, whoever they were, about anything? They must have been watching, or listening as I heard my door being unlocked within minutes of my having come to. Scared as I was, I ran to the farthest corner and curled up trying to hide. I’m not sure what I expected, it wasn’t as if they couldn’t see me as soon as they walked in the door. There were two of them, both female, that’s where the commonality stopped. The first one looked like she was in her late 60s or 70s, what do I know, it’s not as if I’d seen a lot of old people before. She was tall and lean, with her grey hair swept up into a matronly bun. She had a stern demeanor and a no nonsense look about her, I suspected she was in charge. The other lady was probably in her late 20s at most, plump but not fat, shorter than her companion. Her short black hair was cropped close, that and the smile that didn’t go to her eyes made her look even more frightening than the first lady.“Wha… what do you want!? I want my parents!” I shouted“So do we young man, so do we.” Said the older of the two women.“Why am I here?” I continued to shout, despite there being no need to, other than I suppose, my entire body shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.“Do you know where you parents are?” asked the second lady.“No” I replied, “The last thing I remember before those men took me was them giving me a hug and saying goodbye, then I felt a pinch on my wrist.”“So you say, but I don’t believe you” said the younger woman, by now I think my brain had already started calling her ‘the mean one’ of course, I had no idea if the older woman could be even worse.“What do you want me to tell you? The picked me up, took me out to the middle of some cemetery, told me they had to leave, then all of this happened.” I was on the verge of tears at this point.The younger woman started to say something but was cut off by the older one, “Jackson, you must tell us the truth, it won’t be good for you if you don’t.”“I. AM. TELLING. YOU. THE. TRUTH” I shouted at her, why wouldn’t they listen!“I believe you Jackson, but not everyone does, we can’t let you go if you don’t tell us everything.” I finally broke down at that point and started bawling and trying to curl up even tighter. These people were never going to let me go, they’d never believe anything I said.The older woman motioned to her left outside of the door while she and the younger one walked the opposite way down the hall. The younger of the two threw me one last menacing glare before she was out of sight. This time it was a male who came into my room, he looked like a teenager but I couldn’t be certain. He dropped off a blanket and a pillow on my bed, then a bottle of water and what looked like an energy bar on the floor in front of me before locking my door again and leaving. After a few minutes of getting myself together, I ate the energy bar and drank the entire bottle of water, which made me feel a bit better. I yanked the blanket and pillow off the edge of the cot and stayed curled up in my corner, pillow between me and the wall, blanket covering me. I sat there trembling for at least an hour before everything caught up to me. I woke up in my dormitory at the Institute, confused, and sore. It was almost 4:30am, which would mean I’d be getting woken up soon anyway. The whole ordeal from the day previous had left me stunned, and I certainly didn’t understand why I was back in my room. I was happy to not be in that cell anymore, but nothing made sense. My parents had claimed they had to leave and then knocked me out? Then the whole thing with the ladies, what the hell was that about?I started getting ready for the day since I was already awake, washing up, getting dressed, the usual. When I opened my door, that’s when everything went to shit. I heard the word ‘TRAITOR!’ being shouted right before my face was introduced to a high velocity fist. The next minute was an excruciating lesson in how to be beaten up by what felt like every single cadet. It was all I could do to drag myself to the infirmary.Unfortunately, the staff were less than enthusiastic about providing me with any assistance beyond giving me a single pain killer, a glass of water, and a lot of hard stares. Apparently whatever had started this had made it through the entire Institute before I’d even woken up, whoever had been at my door had been waiting for me to open it. I was ready to give up right then and there as I tried to stumble my way back to my room. Halfway there I was caught by one of the security team and told in no uncertain terms that I had best make my way to the calesthenics class pronto. Apparently getting beaten half to death the day after having spent an unknown period of time detained by ‘someone’ wasn’t an enough of an excuse.I’d give you an idea of what my next 6 years were like, giving up was simply never an option, not because I didn’t want to, but because there was no way I could. The only time I felt remotely safe was when I was behind my room’s locked door with a chair wedged under the handle. For the first time that I could remember, I was happy that my room had no windows, that way nobody could get to me from that direction. The chair wouldn’t stop someone determined, but it would at least give me warning that something was about to happen. Boots wrapped up in blankets don’t leave marks like some other methods might. Not that anyone would have cared whether I had bruises on my body or not, but not having proof of the beatings just made it worse somehow.

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