My chest felt like it would explode. Both my arms and legs ached, and they became sluggish. Heavy.

  I started sweating and breathing hard. My body hurt all over.

  And the worst was happening inside my mind. I couldn’t think. My very own thoughts were like daggers getting through me.

  I felt violated. Like my whole core was being attacked.

  Somehow, I knew it. I understand what was happening.

  Kill or die. You have fifteen minutes.

  I knew where I had to go.

  I knew who I had to kill.

  I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t.

  But the pressure was getting worse every time I moved to a different direction.

  And I didn’t want to die.

  I followed the direction of the feeling, until I found myself in a dark alley.

  There was a man, standing there.

  He was crying.

  “Please” he said. “Please, I just want to go home. Make it stop, please”.

  I walked to his direction, slowly. My whole body hurt and my mind still felt like it was being compressed somehow. God, I’ve never felt so bad my entire life.

  I walked to his direction, until I saw that, on his hand, there was a knife.

  “I’m no murderer! This is for protection” He explained, and I believed him. It was for the same reason that I’ve been walking with a steel bar lately.

  But I knew, looking at him now, that somehow that pain would stop if I killed him.

  And in his face, I could see that he knew the same.

  He screamed and urged at me, and I ran.

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  I couldn’t fucking do it.

  But I felt the pain getting increasingly stronger as I went further away. The pressure almost took me out off my feet.

  It was impossible to run away. The man was coming and I could see that he would kill me.

  How was that fair? I didn’t ask for this.

  Why did I have to die?

  I picked the steel bar from my jeans and turned into his direction.

  That frightened him, but he didn’t stop coming.

  He stabbed at me frenetically, but somehow I managed to dodge it. He didn’t really know what he was doing. He just wanted to finish it before he lost his courage to do it.

  When he tried again, I struck him first. I hit him on his forearm and he screeched in pain.

  He didn’t stop coming, though.

  It was crazy. He was actually trying to kill me. If I didn’t move fast enough, it would be over.

  Why? Why was that happening?

  I managed to hit him again when he attacked and on the fourth time I slammed the bar on his hand and he dropped his knife. Then I hit him again on his knee so hard that I could hear a “crack” when his bone broke. He fell on the floor, screaming. I kicked his chin, twice, and was going to keep kicking him, but I stopped.

  He was crying, holding his leg and there was a lot of blood on his face.

  He wouldn’t get up.

  I almost fell right there, on top of him. I had survived. I had done it. I had fought and I won.

  I could finally go home.

  I started leaving the alley, feeling completely worn out.

  Before I turned the corner I knew it wasn’t over.

  The feeling of death started taking over me. The nightmare was back again.

  And a voice talked inside my mind.

  There’s one minute left. Kill or die.

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry.

  But I couldn’t even do it. The pain was so intense, the agony was so dreadful, and it didn’t let me do anything.

  Why do I need to suffer it?

  I didn’t want to die.

  I started going back and found the man still on the floor, holding his broken leg.

  When he saw I had returned, his face went pale.

  “No, no please, I don’t want to die, please no”

  My vision was blurry, it felt like my head was exploding.

  I wanted to throw up. Go back to my father, Melissa and Danny and stay with them.

  Somehow, in my mind, I knew how many seconds I had left. I stayed looking at this man while he begged me. His face was a mess of tears and blood, and it frightened me how desperate he looked.

  “You don’t have to do it. Please, you don’t have to do it”

  And I didn’t. Not really.

  But I didn’t want to die.

  I hit him on his head with the bar and he got quiet, his body went limp.

  But the pain didn’t go away. I still felt the countdown happening.

  So I kept hitting him.

  After the third hit, I knew it was over. But I didn’t stop until the tenth. For some reason, I couldn’t stop. I was too afraid to stop and see what I had done.

  It was barely possible to recognize that the mass of meat and blood in front of me was once a head.

  The pain was gone, but so was the strength from my legs, and I fell next to the body. Finally, I couldn’t deal with the nausea on my stomach anymore and started throwing up. I shacked all over.

  I had killed. A man begged me for his life and I killed him anyway.

  What did that make me?

  Before I could complete this thought, another message appeared in my head.

  You earned your first kill. You’ve been chosen by D’on’kar. Welcome to the System.