Protocol

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

TODAY IS THE LAST before the Protocol. The day before everything changes. My last day of normal until I am either forced into a simulation or forced to watch people die in one. Every 20 years the government, or more like Queen Gem, has a choosing system to pick a total of 20 sixteen-year-olds who are put under an invasive simulation. The simulation is designed differently every year and there is no way to predict where you will be in simulation or what you will face.

She goes by the rule only the strongest, smartest, and ruthless survive. Queen Gem is deadly and every single person alive knows it. Once you are under the simulation, there is nothing in your head the government can't see. Your fate is decided on your final ranking in the simulation. Level 5 is the highest level and you crowned to be heirs to the throne, most are killed by Queen Gem. Level 4 is known as grand, which means you get to live life as a Richy and live in the government safety, which isn't that safe. Oh, by the way, Richy is what we call rich people who end up ditching us and at some point dying. Level 3 is the safest because you just go back to normal life as long as you didn't have anything in your mind that opposed the government. Level 2 means life as slave for the government. And lastly, Level 1, killed by the government.

When you get into the simulation, you don't really remember your in it. You remember everything except the fact that its fake. You feel pain as if it were real. If all of that weren't bad enough, everyone is forced to watch it. There are officials that come to each and every one of our houses and makes sure we watch our people being tortured and killed. There are glowing numbers on your wrist that show what rank you are and when you level up, your rank turns a different color.

Most people are terrified of Queen Gem but not because of the reason you're thinking of. She's a genius. I admit it. She is one of the smartest people alive and with that she knows how to manipulate the strong and that makes her ruthless. She cares about no one and nothing, not even her youngest daughter, at the age of ten.

Gem has made some wild inventions. Ones we would have never in a million years thought of. People know a lot about her but there is mostly the unknown. She's a mystery. A very dangerous mystery. Most people think of me as dangerous, too. Not because I like killing people in my free time but because my father is Defense Chief. There is one in every settlement. Settlements that are used to test, build, and sell, chemicals and technology.
We are here to give more power to Gem even if that wasn't our intention. Our problem: We'll die before she does. Gem has created the world's first ever potion that does both: kill and preserve. She has built up her immunity to it for decades now and hasn't aged at all. She's brilliant and she's in power, which isn't a great combo. Everything comes at a cost; she can't have a perfect IQ without having a royally screwed up mind otherwise.

You have to trade one for one. You can never have one. Because out of everything, the one thing she can't make is perfection because she sure is far from it.

No one talks about the government. You never know who could be a secret Gem Agent. They are called Cobras. No one is who you think they are. My sister and I have never spoken about government and neither has my father and I. It's just something you don't do in Everland.

In history class, we learn about what our land was once called. It's weird to think that this place used to be named after freedom. We learn a lot about the United States of America. It sounds really foreign but they actually used to live here.

My name is Jayden 435668. There are no longer last names, but numbers in their place. I have been trained for this my entire life and I am craving to fight. I want to know what it's like to have my sanity pressured and I want the government to fear me. I want them to put me under and see the ideas that flood my mind with the way I could just tear this tyranny down. Just as long as my sister is safe.