Pandora: The New World

Chapter One: Welcome to your New Home

My home was a living corpse.

I was born on the planet called Earth, it was a beautiful place, right with life, trees, grass, animals, and horizons as far as the eye could see.

But that was a long time ago.

Now, it's nothing more than machines, lights, pollution, concrete, and endless noise.

I hated every second of it, for this world turned me into a cold-blooded killer. Stayed clear of the streets below me that were crowded with endless people, many wore masks to breath, and some had disfigured faces that some just faceless.

But I didn't care how many I killed, I didn't care how much I was getting paid to kill, I just wanted to stop feeling... empty inside.

But I wasn't always like this, I was once happy and whole. My mother told me stories of the distant moon that orbits the Polyphemus planet, which holds the very riches of life.

My father was an ex-black op. Who traded his service to be with my mother. And when they had me, we were whole.

But like fantasy and dreams...

We always wake up.

I lost my mother to a mugger, we were just walking home from a restaurant when he took her from me.

Father found her and learned he was paid to kill her, but the information did not spare the mugger from a husband's wraith.

And that day forward, I was trained to fight and survive, just as he survived his days in black ops. And I was the most dangerous child known to man.

But the last ray of light was ripped away from me when a man in the shadows slit my father's throat.

I never saw his face, but I remember his eyes, cold and twisted. I was lucky to survive.

But since that night, I fought to survive every day, in this hellscape of a world.

It wasn't long until the authorities caught me and planned to sentence me to death.

"You're looking at instant death, Ms. Smith. Now we can offer you leniency. But only if you agree to jail time."

I didn't care, living on the streets or in a cell, I didn't feel anything. No fear, no remorse. I just wanted to close my eyes and never wake up. Living was the true nightmare.

"Perhaps an alternative? Doctor Augustine retrieved her DNA a while back and requires more volunteers for her Avatar Program and according to the DNA, her mother was her sister."

"Are you suggesting we send a serial killer to one of our most delicate programs?"

And that's how I ended up on a rocket, all the way into space, leaving my hellscape of home behind.

But as I lay there, in my stasis pod, I dreamed. I dreamed I was running through the woods, rich with life, the life all me, running alongside me.

I was laughing, I could feel, I was happy, I was free.

But like I said, we always wake up in the end.