The Run

Hive

Sapphire laughed and pulled out a bottle of gel from what seemed like thin air. She lathered it onto my head then styled my hair so it slightly spiked up. I had to say, it looked cool! Tasha looked like Katniss with her long plait, the bell rang and we trooped out of my room to join the others at the food court. As I stepped inside the hall wafts of delicious smells entered my nostrils, me and Tasha sprinted straight towards the buffet leaving Sapphire to get us a table. The buffet had almost everything you could eat for breakfast, countless brands of different cereals were placed on the wall next to milk and glass bowls. Bread of all shapes and sizes were in baskets next to a toaster which toasted about five breads each time, bacon, eggs, pancakes, waffles you name it. It was all there. Tasha and me grabbed anything that looked good and just lathered it onto our plates, when we got back to the table Sapphire had gotten for us, we saw her talking to a waiter who scooted off.

"You guys could have just asked one of the waiters to do it for you" she laughed

"I wouldn't have been able to wait" Tasha said, sitting down next to her "couldn't you have gotten a better table?"

I turned to where she was indicating and saw Lavender sitting at a table just next to ours. There were two boys and one other girl sitting with her. I recognised them as Jacob and Steve. Steve had curly brown hair which half covered his eyes, Jacob was bald and had cold grey eyes, they were both staring at Lavender in admiration while she boasted about how easy this tournament was going to be. I always hated girls like that, who thought of themselves better than anyone and would think they could attract every boy in the world. There was a girl like that in my town, she was always getting into trouble with some guy or the other, then she made the mistake of cheating on a rich visitors son. She was never seen again but her family insist the visitor, an advisor for General Straff tortured her.

The girl who was on the table had her back to me so I couldn't see her face, her hair was a dyed different gradients from brown to blonde, Lavender looked up and saw me, her eyes narrowed and she started whispering to her friends, they all turned to look at me and I saw the girl and immediately knew why Lavender had chosen her as a buddy. With those too-perfect, plastic looking features, big lips and thick eyeliner, it was obvious she was from a rich country where children at the age of ten got surgery. I instantly recognised her as Lina. Lina and Lavender, a perfect match I thought.

Everyone was eating and chatting with their new friends, I wondered how soon it would be before most of the seats were empty. Alice was sitting all alone nibbling on some bread, I felt sorry for her but I had a feeling she didn't want any company.

As we finished our breakfast, the Sargent called us all toward the exit and led us to a training room.

"Cliff face" the Sargent yelled indicating to a life size model of a cliff with ropes and lines hanging off it, "this is the model which you will use to train, in case you come across a cliff like this in The Run"

He pointed out many different machines which we would use to train then took us to a room which had the sign Weapons Room on it." This is where you'll get your weapons, you can only choose three"

Everyone started to look around, it was a massive room like a storage house with boxes which had labels of different types of weapons stored in them. The 'unlimited pistol' caught my eye and I wrenched open the box to reveal about six of these slim black pistols each with a blue energy reading mark on them. I picked one up and attached it to my belt, one weapon found two more to go. Tasha had already chosen her weapons, a sniper, a dagger and a set of grenades. She was chatting with a tall girl with braided hair whom I recognised as Susan. I decided to go with a knife and a set of bow and arrows but just as my hand clasped on a fine looking bow Lavender slapped my hand away and took it for herself.

"Hey, give it back I had it first" I protested angrily

"Or what?" sneered Lavender "you'll try and punch me?"

"Don't doubt it" I warned her yanking the bow out of her clasp and walking off towards Tasha. Looking behind I saw Lavender whispering something to Lina and they both grinned. Who cares? I thought and pushed it out of my mind and went off to find Sapphire. Sapphire was going for the high tech stuff even though the Sargent was constantly telling her about how knifes and daggers would help her a lot during The Run.

"What if you're falling off a cliff and don't have anything to hold on to?"

"Well how is a knife gonna help?"

"If you stick it in the ground it would stable you?"

"Yeah right"

They argued back and forth as I stood there awkwardly, finally Sapphire got her weapons, a sniper, a electric sword and a packet of bombs.

The Sargent yelled at us, "okay kids it's time to train"