Falling in Love in the Shooting Zone

Chapter 1

Feet thump from behind me. I dodge back and forth through the trees. My heart is racing and head is throbbing. I can feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins. I haven't felt this scared in a long time.

I skid to a halt behind a large tree and lean up against it, trying to blend in with it as people run past. I can see their guns, ready to shoot me on sight.

I try to control my breathing, but nothing that I do seems to help.

Finally, all of the men after me have disappeared farther into the forest, so I push myself up off the trunk of the tree.

"Ella!" I hear my assailant shout behind me.

I whip my head around just as I hear the bang of the gun.

I jolt awake panting and I notice that my hand rests on my stomach where I had been shot. I hear my alarm going off. I silence it and get up.

I change out of my pajamas and into one of the training outfits. I was assigned a couple when I first came to Ashvale. It consists of a grey sports bra and flexible grey capri leggings. I pull on black ankle socks and tie on my black tennis shoes. I tie my straight brown hair up into a ponytail. I look at my reflection in the mirror, and my brown eyes stare back at me.

I look around my room, which consists of while panels on the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, and dim light is provided through them. My bed is tucked into a corner with army regulation blankets on it, messed up from my nightmare last night. There's a nightstand next to my bed, and on the opposite side of the small room is a dresser with clothes that the outfit coordinator Fran picked out for me when training and for regular wearing.

Fran is twenty-five years old and she gets all the outfits for the undercover missions picked out, along with all of the clothes for everyone to have when they first come to Ashvale. She does everyone's hair and makeup for missions. We are allowed to do our own hair for when we're simply training. We also get a say in what hairdo we have for each mission.

Undercover missions are all types of events, and you always have a certain alias for every mission. They all require special outfits, and everyone at Ashvale is sent to Fran to acquire their outfit.

Fran and all the recruits at Ashvale are acquainted since she is the one who introduces Ashvale and shows everyone around individually when they first arrive. She's the only one who knows everyone's background. The only thing that everyone here has in common, is that we were all in the system before we ended up here. No one ever gets a relationship big enough with any of the other kids in Ashvale to tell them about their past. No one wants to relive what they've gone through. Ashvale was a second chance for all of us, and what was the point of it if we couldn't get away from our pasts?

Today is the graduation testing day. You take all of the tests, and you need to pass two of the three in order to graduate. If you don't pass, you're no use to Ashvale. Since they erase any past that you had, you don't exist and you don't have a life to go back to; so they kill you.

You have no foresight into what challenges you will face. They simply give you a time and place to be in order to start the first test. There's only one test that the whole class is in the room for. This is all I know.

I open the door to my room and leave, making sure to lock it behind me. I walk through the corridors to the training room, which is where we were all informed to go for the first test. I have to walk through a lot of grey cement hallways with doors to get to the training room. I get there after five minutes and I see all of the other students are already there.

"Thank you for finally joining us, Ella," Evelyn, the woman who runs Ashvale says to me.

I notice two guys next to her, both who are staring at me. The first one is a previous student, Adam, who has already graduated and became our trainer in fighting.