Royale

Prisoner

January, The Sixth Year

The massive C-130 cargo plane bucked suddenly startling me. I hit my head against the bulkhead of the plane jolting me awake from my nap. I lifted a hand to rub my now aching head. The clacking of steel handcuffs securing my hands together in front of me reminded me I was not a free man.

After feeling my head, I turned my head to look around in effort to get my bearings. I was alone with two other prisoners. I didn't know their names. They each sat still in their seats along side the wall of the plane either asleep or trying to get some sort of rest before we landed. A couple guard sat with us awake and alert on the opposite sides of the cargo hold with their weapons in their laps secured by straps.

My focus went to their black tactical uniforms. My eyes fell particularly on the patches they wore on their shoulders. It wasn't the patch from any military or law enforcement organization I was use to. Not the FBI, Homeland Security, the Army, Marines or even the Navy. Instead, they bore a speak eagle insignia with a globe in the background. And the flag they wore above it wasn't American or any sovereign national flag. This flag simple had a globe with a single star a above it amid a blue background.

Armistice Global. The only corporation that bore that America inspired banner. I wondered how it was them, not Homeland Security or someone from an actual law enforcement agency that was overseeing out transport to the Island. I guess even the feds were too broke to even pay for that. Either that or lazy.

My attention turned to the window not even a foot away from where I sat. I leaned over and took a look out through the glass. It was cloudy. The morning sun was just rising over the horizon in the east. Most of the sky was cloudy though. It had to be freezing outside. The air inside the hold was nearly freezing that was for sure. I, including the other prisoners were wearing coats and boots to keep warm in the otherwise near freezing plane. It was a blessing. At leas tw weren't going to freeze once we actually got to the island.

Yet.

I listened to the low but loud hum of the plane's engines doing my best to relax. I fought to sudden urges to panic. My fate was becoming hard to bare. Knowing that exile on the Island was supposedly more merciful than the death penalty, I felt as if I was being led to a slower death on the Island. Death by the elements, death by predators, death by the thousands of other prisoners free to roam on the more than 21,000 square, death by freak infections, etc. There were many hundreds of types of deaths waiting for me on that Island that was for sure.

I heard Nova Scotia was a rather surean place...before the Gulf Stream stopped. I heard that it was once know for it's green forests and rather temperate environment full of Canadian wildlife. I heard many call it a great vacation spot. Yeah not anymore. The Island, just like the rest of Canada and a large portion of the United States were now artic tundras or at least on their way. What remained were semi- abandoned towns an airfield and a military base with more than 50,000 prisoners packed on the island. A modern day penal colony of sorts. Except this colony wasn't about hard labor or punishment exactly. It was just to get all the rejects from the new North American society out of the companies and government's hands. All the prisoners there were allowed to wander free from bondage. There were only two rules, stay away from the heavily guarded military base and stay alive. Everything else went. And I mean everything. One can only imagine what the ever increasing population of convicts on the island spent their time doing. It might as well have been a Battle Royale. Even heard the private overseers of the facility, Armistice Global, threw in weapons ranging from your typical medieval crap to the automatic assault weapons they had surplus of into the arena to help make the situation more interesting. Word had even made its way around that they even broadcasted the action to special customers on the dark web as a sick form of entertainment. And that wasn't the only atrocity I had heard about. Illegal experimentation and testing on the subject could only be assumed.