I was walking down the long hall of a prison block in the facility. The girl named Sophia was next to me with her hand on my shoulder leading me to my holding cell.

“What do you think is gonna happen to me?”

“Do you want my honest opinion… or a hopeful lie?”

I glanced over at her stony face. Her cold, dark blue eyes didn’t stray from in front of her. She was a little shorter than me but had a look about her that made me think she could act a lot taller than she was. If not for her stern and frightening look, her lightly tanned skin and long, light brown hair that went all the way to her lower back reminded me of the pretty, popular girls at school on Pluto.

“Honest opinion… please.”

“Well… since you’re not a part of this organization and you know of our existence, you know what we are, my guess is that Maria is going to kill you.”

I gulped unconsciously at the thought of being killed on this strange planet so far away from home. I wondered if my mom was trying to find me… she undoubtedly knew everything that had happened at the cafe by now… knew I was MIA. She was definitely worried sick… and now I would die and she would never know what had happened to me… or why.

“Hey, Earth to Plutoboy… get in the cell,” Sophia was waving her hand in front of my face, snapping me from my thoughts.

“Uh… sorry,” I muttered awkwardly as I stepped into the cell that she was holding open.

Instantly she closed the door and turned to leave the cell block. I stared after her as she disappeared out the door at the end of the hall.

“Why hello there, stranger,” the voice of a teenage boy sounded from the cell next to me, “welcome to this lovely cell block, I was so lonely before, glad to have some company.”

“Um… hi… I guess.”

I stood on the toilet which was connected to the wall that separated my cell from the one where the voice had come from, a small barred window sat in the wall above me, I glanced through the bars and saw a person with wavy black hair that had light green highlights throughout it sitting in the front right corner of the cell, spinning some kind of knife on their pointer finger. When they looked up I was greeted by a very unexpected face. His eyes were two different colors, the left was bright green and the right was light brown, there was a scar that went from between those strange eyes and curved down the left side of his face to the edge of his jawline. When he noticed me in the window a bright and friendly white smile appeared, which contrasted drastically with the brutal looking scar and the different eyes.

“Hiya, cutie,” he said as he winked at me and stood up to approach the window, suddenly his face was mere inches away from mine on the other side of the barred window, “never seen you before, you new in town?”

My eyes widened as I pulled my head away slightly so we weren’t so close. A playful look crossed his face as he noticed me pull away.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to come off so strong,” he said as he shrugged slightly and winked again, “My name’s Xander… and yours is?”

“Ryker,” I pulled a little farther away and looked at him in confusion, “why did you call me cutie?”

“Because I’m an extremely flirty guy,” he responded with a mischievous look in his eyes, followed up with yet another wink.

“You wink a lot, Xander.”

“Yeah I do, thanks for noticing,” another wink followed which caused me to sigh deeply, “so why’re you stuck in there?”

“That Maria lady had someone bring me here because I was brought here from Pluto against my will by one of her people, which is apparently against the rules.”

“Uh huh, well I’m glad I’ve got someone to talk to for the rest of the week. Company is nice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh I messed up a job really badly so Maria threw me in here as punishment.”

“So you’ll be in here for a week? For messing up a job? That’s crazy.”

He shrugged and sat back on the ground but kept his eyes on me through the window, “it hasn’t just been one week, this is just my last few days… I’ve been here for over a week already.”

“Even though all you did was mess up a job?”

He nodded in response and frowned slightly.

“I hope Maria doesn’t get rid of you,” he said with a frown as he glanced out towards the door at the end of the hall, “you seem like a nice guy, definitely don’t deserve to die.”

“Nobody seems to think I stand much of a chance,” I sighed and got back on the floor as well, choosing to sit in the corner between the cell door and the wall separating me and Xander.

“Well… we all know Maria.”

“I’m starting to wish Aidan had left me to die on Pluto.”

“Wait… Aidan… as in Aidan Colt?” The boy in the next cell moved over to the corner right next to me.

What is that in his voice? Respect? Admiration?

“Um… I guess so… I’m not really sure,” I muttered as I shrugged, despite knowing he couldn’t see me, “white, jet black hair, amber eyes, scar under his right eye, tall and lean?”

“That’s him… wow lucky you, he’s amazing.”

“He’s a killer.”

“True, but what’s your point?”

“What do you mean? He’s a killer. Killers are bad.”

“I guess I’m just used to it… everyone here is a killer… that’s what we’re made into,” he responded quietly, almost to himself, “assassination, sabotage, kidnapping, spying, we get trained and drilled until we have no issues with doing anything like that.”

I sat there in silence, shocked by what I’d just been told. How can an organization that turns kids into murderers be allowed to exist? It’s against at least a dozen Solar Republic laws.

“You really are new here. Although I’m not surprised that you didn’t know about all this… 99.9% of the Solar Republic doesn’t know about Chronos, let alone everything it does.”

“How many of you are there?” I asked, still stunned by what I was learning, “how many people here are assassins?”

“Not certain, at this facility there’s several hundred, but there are many facilities, and not just on Earth. And that’s just the kids, we’re called Phantoms. There’s also highly trained mercenaries and such that act as Chronos’s military, Phantoms like me and Aidan are just a small part of the organization.”

Before I could respond, someone I had not yet seen entered the prison wing. He was a massive, muscular, and very scary looking man. He had dark brown skin, eyes that were almost black, and no hair. He was easily six and a half feet tall, possibly taller.

“Hey, Colonel Joseph, nice of you to visit us.”

“I’m still not here to visit, Carric,” the man responded as he pulled a small cart behind him, stopping in front of my cell, “I’m just bringing you two dinner.”

I shakily stood up and went to the small slot in the middle of the cell door. The colonel set a small cup of water and what looked like a granola bar on his side of the slot then opened the hatch, I reached through and grabbed the two items and brought them into my cell. I looked at the granola bar and realized that it was something called a nutrient block.

“Since you’re new here I’ll warn you, that thing tastes godawful, but it’ll give you everything you need to survive until your execution. You get one bar and one cup of water each day at dinner, just enough to keep you alive.”

I was about to respond when he turned away from me and went over to Xander’s cell, giving him the same items and then turning back the way he had come and leaving, dragging the small cart behind him. The door slammed shut and I heard several locks click into place.

The idea that it seemed like Xander was going to be executed as well hit me as I opened the plastic covering of the nutrient bar.

“Wait… you’re being executed too?”

“Oh yeah, failing a job is a big no no… it’s not tolerated and the punishment is a week surviving off of disgusting nutrient bars and water in here and then a public execution.”

“Then… how are there so many of you?”

“Very few of us ever fail and return, on top of that they bring in new recruits frequently.”

Silence fell upon us as I stared at what passed for food in the prison block and decided that I didn’t have an appetite anymore. I sipped the water until the paper cup was empty and then dropped it and the uneaten nutrient bar in the back left corner of the cell. I got back on the toilet to look into Xander’s cell and saw him staring at the water and food without eating or drinking. He glanced up at me and I saw nothing but defeat in his eyes. He dumped the water into his toilet and started stabbing the nutrient bar with the knife he had been spinning on his finger earlier.

“No point in eating or drinking anymore, at least if I die of starvation or dehydration before the end of the week I can’t be used as an example to strike fear into everyone else.”

“That’s… that’s horrible… no one is perfect, you messed up one job and now you have to choose to either let yourself die in prison or be executed to strike fear into everyone else,” my hands clenched into fists as I looked down at the defeated boy below, “there’s gotta be something we can do.”

“Yes, it is horrible… but it is what it is, and you’re wrong about nobody being perfect… Aidan is perfect… he’s never failed a job,” he looked up at me defeatedly, “if there was anything we could do I would’ve done it already.”

“He may not have failed a job before, but he brought me back here, which is apparently against every rule you people have,” Xander frowned as he glanced away from me again, “he saved my life, I take it that’s not generally something a ruthless assassin is supposed to do. Whether he saved me because it was what he felt was right or because he wanted to stick it to Maria we may never really know, but it doesn’t matter… either way he isn’t perfect, and I don’t see him here with us.”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter… Maria thinks he’s perfect, and I’m not because I failed a job, so I’m supposed to be an example, and in two days I will be. There is nothing that either of us or anyone else can do to change things. We’re both going to die, Ryker, better to acknowledge it now and accept it than to hope it won’t happen,” he got up and went to a blanket in the corner and laid down, “I’m gonna get some sleep.”

With that he turned his back to me and stared at the opposite wall. I sighed and climbed down from the toilet then found my own blanket and laid down as well. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t fall asleep, thoughts of my mom and everything Xander had said plagued my mind, keeping me awake.