THE 100

Let's be real.

When you wake up, on a bed you've never seen before in a room that looks more like a prison cell than a college dorm, you think the obvious.

That you've somehow landed yourself a nice lay with questionable taste.

Or you've had a few too many drinks and this is all a dream.

Except, while all those possibilities were explainable, it didn't explain the fact that it was the first of August, in one of the hottest cities in America, and it was freezing cold.

My head throbbed, drumming to the beat of the overhead vent as a gush of air passed rhythmically through the small room. A stale and sour odour filled the atmosphere and the machine whirred dramatically, insistently ticking against the bland metal wall.

A gust of artificial air blows past my shoulders, peeling back the damp pieces of hair that clung to my forehead.

The coldness that travelled through my muscles and the aching of my bones was like a cold shiver had run through my spine. 

The drowsiness of sleep had faded, and my eyes focused on the bleak texture above my head.

The ceiling that greeted my eyes was a smooth unblemished metal screwed together by rusting bolts. 

The mattress beneath my back was as thick as paper, lumpy and made of a material that made my skin itch the longer I laid on it. 

For seconds, I became used to the soft hum of air that drifted through the vents. The tune becoming almost undetectable as my eyes surveyed the rest of the room.

Six walls. Patched together by a combination of miscellaneous screws and haphazard welding. With my blurring vision, I could make out a chair and a desk to my right. Just ahead of my outstretched feet was a large mechanized door.

"What the hell?!" I mumbled, my throat practically screaming for a gulp of water. 

'What time was it?' I thought, my head spinning wildly.

The rancid smell hung ominously in the room, burning my nostrils as I tried to breath through my mouth. If my drumming headache didn't kill me, I was sure the smell would suffocate me to death.

My back flipped against the thin mattress, easily clashing with the sharp metal underneath. I winced as I sat up, my palms digging into the thin polyester sheets as I threw the foreign covers away. For a second I stared at my feet. Then my legs. And down to the cloth covering my sleeves.

My mind raced, memories vaguely appearing as a stream of muddled visions. However, if there was one thing I remembered it was that I never got home last night. For all I knew, I should've been in some dingy alley, stuck between a dumpster and an abandoned shopping cart. Instead, I was here. In clothes I couldn't remember id ever owned.

My only decent pair of jeans was replaced with a rough textured cargo that was undeniably two sizes larger. My arms were covered in an itchy puke green shirt. And as for my feet, a pair of familiar hiking boots were attached firmly onto my toes. 

These definitely weren't my shoes, at least not the grimy mud stricken ones I had stuffed in the back of my garage.

Abandoning the familiar boots I got on my feet, slowly wincing at the intensity and pain that radiated across my back. The bed creaked loudly as I lifted myself off the disintegrating mattress, echoing in the small room.

Where the hell was I?

The thought had never left my mind. Everything about this place, from the metallic taste in the air to the suffocating confines of the small room was beyond anything I could remember. In fact, what little memory I could manage from last night fogged, barely registering as pieces of reality.

The room was cold, excruciatingly so, especially in the thin cotton shirt I had on. The table beside my bad was a solid rectangular shape with no drawers of mantle pieces. Only a blemished jagged table with scratches that had worn its use iver the years.

However the most notable object in the room was perhaps my only way out.

It was a large slate of metal, taller than me by only a few inches with no door knob or handle leading outside. Instead, the edge of the door was adorned by a small four by four keypad. A small slip of translucent material flashed a bright red every few seconds above the dash of numbers.

The hydraulic door was as firm and square as the rest of the room. As if the entire purpose of the place was to keep someone in. 

"BEEEEEEEWWWEEERRRRP" A loud and almost defeating screech ran through the vicinity of the room, halting my movements in a flash. I flinched instinctively nearly crawling out of my own skin.

The once quiet hum that had filled the air was overshadowed by the stamped of footsteps as they crashed from the adjacent wall.

The thick metal walls only shielded a fragment of the heavy movement and the sudden bubbles of chatter and yelps sounded from outside the industrial sized door.

In seconds, a same beep sounded from the inside of the cell, synonymously screeching along with the hush of the hydraulic door. A gust of sanitized air blew my hair back, and I placed my hands in front of my face, shielding my fragile eye sockets from the blinding white light.

A pair of black combat boots clicked deafeningly as they stepped into the room. A large man entered assertively, a baton swinging dramatically in his hands. He wore a dark blue uniform, an almost hilarious copy to an actual police uniform, except his badge and gun looked historic compared to the futuristic interior of the cell.

A second man shorter and stockier appeared behind him, carrying a silver briefcase. For a second, I wondered how any college student managed to look like that in their 20s.

"Prisoner 091, place your hands beind your back." Was the baritone voice of the taller guard as he swung his baton meancingly into his outstretched  palm.

"What?" I managed to push out in an almost choked tone.

'Prisoner', I thought. 'What the actual fuck was happening?'

My eyes dashed from the small sliver of light behind the two men and the words that had just came out of his mouth. Run, I thought. That small hope that I'd woken up in a hot dates apartment had already vanished.

"Yo, hold on-" I held my palms forward, an awkward expression appearing onto my face.

As quickly as the words had escaped my mouth I found himself spun around, my cheek smashed against the cold metal wall as the metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth. The guards beefy hand stayed positioned against my head as his friend, the fatter one unclasped the silver suitcase in his hands.

With my line of vision obscured, I felt the small tinge of pain run through my wrist, like a small needle had been inserted into my skin. I struggled, my shoulders pushing against the metal wall before the weight on my head was lifted.

The guards dark skin shone of sweat, a mad expression on his face. "You try that again marbles and your done! You hear me?!" The gaurd spit. His hands forming an iron grip on my arm, dragging me a way from the cursed cell and into the blinding light beyond the cell door.

This wasn't the hallway to my dorm, no- the ceiling stretched meters above, and the only thing holding the tittering metal floor beneath my feet was a frail railing that surrounded the circumference of the cells.

It began to dawn on me that whatever sinister joke this may have been had now been replaced by a reality much to vivid for my liking. This was a prison, such an observation was made obvious by the similar seen of prisoners being thrown out of identical air tight doors.The prisoners that dashed from their cells were not the orange jumpsuit clad men I had imagined when i heard the word prisoner.

In fact, as the guard dragged me further away from my cell, I couldn't help but glance back at young faces. The faces of hardened teenagers not criminals. 

"Where am I?" I demanded almost anxiously from the guard next to me. My mind paced, trailing to catch up with my mouth.

The smell of blood still clung to my nostrils, the sound of that whirring incessant air hummed a louder tune in my head. And the white stinging lights only made the headache drum louder and louder.

The gaurd tsked, smirking as he looked to his fatter friend. The potbellied gaurd looked back at me, "oh you'll find out soon enough marbles, you all will." He muzzled out in a nauseating voice that made me want to hit him over the head with his swinging baton.

It was seconds before they reached an open entrance, the width as wide as the entire hallway. What I could make out of it was what I assumed was something akin to an aircraft. 

The only indication was the stark rows of seats fastened to the walls of the place, as well as the obvious barrier between where the hallway ended and where the plane began.

"Move it, you're gonna miss the takeoff!" The fat gaurd yelled, smirking as he watched the rest of the prisoners follow towards his outstretched finger.

No. 

It didn't matter if I had to die trying

"Look man whatever this is, I'm sure it's a mistake!" I pleaded, my hands reaching to grab whatever I could to make it out of this hell. "I've never even committed a crime I'm sure this is just some kinda mista-."

"Ha!" The fat guard laughed, cackling comically as he glanced knowingly to his buddy. "Looks like you've really gone mad huh." He smiled menacingly.

"Ain't got a clue who you think you are, but this ain't earth buddy." He started to nudge the gun deeper into my flesh. "Save your fantasies for the ground kid."

My blood ran cold, like a bucket of ice had just been dumped onto my shoulders. 

What the actual fuck was this knobhead talking about?

"The kids going mad Hugh, just drug the poor thing already." The gaurd mumbled, his stride growing faster as he began to move away from the merging crowd. And before I could manage another string of words the guards swinging baton struck the side of my skull. Branding a mark I was sure I'd feel later.

The world began to spin and my vision littered with dots as my eyes fixated on the same damned ceiling. 

That grey colorless piece of shit.

Then everything went black.