1 | The Awakening |

Only two things were engraved in my head: My name is Chase, and the only way I will live through the next series of dangerous events is by surviving The Phases. Then my mind swam happily back to the open arms of black nothingness.

XXX Chase

The sun beamed on my face, awakening me from my sleep. I slowly opened my eyes. Where am I? The last thing I remembered was. Wait. I don't remember anything! I start panicking! How could I not remember anything? The only thing that kept repeating in my head was: My name is Chase, and I have to survive The Phases. I remembered the world and how there are cities, families, media, disease. I remembered the world and everything in it, minus me! Ahhhh! How could I not remember me! I looked around me. I sat in the middle of the park. Was this Central Park? It couldn't be! I recognized that it was Central Park, but I didn't know-how. The trees were stripped away and held no leaves, and the grass was mostly dirt and mud. The park was littered with trash and debris. It looked like a ghost town, abandoned, left to waste.

All around me, kids were starting to stand up. They all looked just as confused as me, which was definitely comforting. The park was a mess; it looked like a tornado had passed through, or maybe a tsunami, which would explain the debris? Who was I kidding? I was just joking. I had no idea what had happened here.

Many of the kids started to walk towards a teenage boy standing on a bench yelling,

"Come on people! We need to establish things before everything gets messy!" He motioned us to come forward, so we surrounded him. By the looks of him, he was probably a power-hungry type. He had blonde hair and was quite tan. He was wearing baggy jeans with a long T-shirt. All the guys looked the same. We all had baggy jeans and T-shirts on with no logos. The girls had T-shirts with shorts on. I looked doubtfully at the boy. This is the only guy who wants to be the leader? Nothing like having a power-hungry teen around and him being the leader? Oo, that's just another terrible idea to put on the list.

XXX Axel

I woke up like the rest, with a massive headache and confusion written all over my face. What the heck was going on? All I knew was that my name was Axel, and I had to survive. Yeah, no duh, Sherlock! Like, why wouldn't I want to survive? I guess we were dumped in an abandoned park. This place looked like crap. Someone said it was once Central Park. I almost laughed. How could a park in the grand city look like such a dump? The city itself was probably worse.

I smirked and walked toward the wacko yelling about how we had to establish rules. Obviously, we were not establishing anything---he was. Ha. Like I was going to follow his rules. I walked over to the kid with dark black hair. The kid turned toward me with deep, piercing, violet eyes. His stare was intense, and probably any other kid would be intimidated, but on the contrary, I'm not like other kids. Time to get some answers.