(Will's PoV)

    I woke up in a daze. It was difficult to tell I even woke up at all since everything around me was completely black. "What's going on," I mumbled, but something hit the back of my head.

    I gasped but little air came in. Where was I? What happened? I remembered Matteo was the last person I saw. I think we were running. I couldn't run right now. I couldn't move at all. Something seemed to be wrapped around me.

    "He's waking up," a male voice spoke.

    "Get him ready," a different voice replied. This one was deep and gruff.

    I felt someone place something stiff around my neck. When I spoke up, I was struck again.

    "Only speak when spoken to," the first voice ordered.

    My throat was growing dry. What was going on? Who were these men?

    "Name," the gruff voice demanded.

    My name was Will Atteleigh. But I couldn't tell them that. I didn't know who they were and nothing about this interaction indicated they were allies.

    "Bradley Carson," I stammered, referring to the name of Daniel's crush's boyfriend.

    There was a slight pause, just enough to give me a glimmer of hope before the gruff voice ordered them to "check his dog tag."

    My heart sank right into my stomach. My name is Will Atteleigh and I'm so stupid.

    A hand reached underneath my shirt and yanked on my dog tag, causing me to choke. "William Atteleigh," the voice read. My head fell toward a hard surface upon the release of the chain.

    "I don't appreciate lying," the gruff voice said.

    The next thing I knew, a volt of electricity surged through my body. I screamed in pain the entire time, however long that was.

    "What do you know about the American Army's strategic plans?"

    "What?" My voice cracked. "Why would I know that?"

    Another surge of electricity hit me.

    "I don't know anything! I don't know anything!"

    The questions continued, voices and difficulty raising with each one. It was as if he wanted me to answer wrong.

    "Where is your base located?"

    "I don't know. How could I? I don't even know where I am right now."

    More electricity.

    After what felt like an eternity of begging and pleading, the gruff voice scoffed, "I'm done with this one."

    I felt someone grab me. I was too scared to even attempt to squirm away. I heard the rustle of keys as I was forcefully led to a different area. After the sound of creaking metal, they threw me to the ground. I whimpered in pain even after I heard footsteps walking away. I flinched at the touch of another hand.

    "It's okay," a softer voice spoke." I'm just going to untie you."

    I could suddenly move my arms again. The owner of the soft voice took off my blindfold, revealing himself to be a young man with long brown hair.

    My peripheral vision robbed me of this temporary visual oasis and I began to see a cramped jail cell, maybe half the size of the main room back at the base, although there were nearly twice the amount of guys here.

    I felt myself shuddering. Too many questions, yet unable to speak.

    "It looks like we've got ourselves a newbie," a dark haired boy observed. He looked even younger than I was.

    "Did they put the ol' shock collar on you?" a tan one asked.

    The one who untied me cut him off. "Of course they did. It's what they do to all the new prisoners. He's probably scared half to death so don't make it worse." He turned to meet my gaze. "What's your name?"

    "Will," I answered weakly.

    "I'm Christian," he responded. He introduced the tan boy as Brady, the dark haired one as Parker, and the tall one next to him as Ryan.

"Where am I?" I could barely muster the words out.

"It's some sort of prison camp," Christian replied. "None of us know exactly where it is since we're knocked out when they take us here."

I couldn't speak in full sentences. "How long?" 

"How long have we been here?" Parker shrugged in response.

"I mean we can tell when it's day and night from that little window up there," Ryan added, pointing to an opening near the ceiling about the size of a brick. "But after a while you lose motivation to count the days."

"You'll get used to it," Brady told me. "Everyday is the same. A loaf of bread and a beating."

Christian put his hands on mine and turned me in the other direction. "Don't pay any attention to them. You're gonna be all right."

I looked down and gasped. "What happened to your fingernails?"

He quickly pulled his hands away. "Oh yeah those," he muttered sheepishly. "A guard ripped them off during interrogation" He must have sensed my fear because a few seconds later he continued. "But hey, look. I'm a sergeant. Honestly a good number of the adults in here are some kind of officer since after they started drafting children, the military started handing out promotions left and right to anyone who was already enlisted. Needless to say, we get interrogated a lot more than any of you basic recruits cuz they think we're actually gonna have information. They rarely waste time on guys like you, other than the initial one of course."

"Are they gonna kill us here?" I wondered out loud.

Christian put his arm around me. "Oh no, no, no," he tried to assure me. "This isn't a prison camp like that. Nobody's actively trying to kill us." He sighed as he glanced over to the back corner. I followed his line of vision to find a lifeless corpse.

"But if it happens, it happens."

(Trixie's PoV)

    I sat down in one of the food court chairs and put my three bags next to me. I loved the mall in Lincoln way more than the ones in my hometown. Unfortunately since it was over a half hour away, none of my friends wanted to come with me, but that wasn't gonna stop me. It was so much more convenient to hit my three favorite stores all in one trip. Plus it was my birthday, so I was treating myself.

    I opened my compact mirror to reapply my lip gloss. As I puckered up, I could see a girl in the corner of the mirror. She had a set of crutches leaning against the table, although one of them slipped and toppled over out of her reach.

    Oh no, I thought. I should help the poor cripple. Was that a bad thing to say? As I pondered on that, I definitely knew that leaving her to fend for herself was a worse thing to do. I grabbed my bags and walked over to her table, my heels clicking every step of the way.

    I grabbed her crutch from off the floor and handed it to her. She was small bodied with curly red hair and freckles all over her face and arms. She sighed in relief. "Thank you so much."

    "It's no problem," I replied. I looked over her shoulder to see a pencil and paper. "What are you writing?" I asked. Heather always said I get way too involved in other people's lives, but whatever. I pulled up a chair to the girl's table.

    She blushed slightly. "I'm just writing a letter to my boyfriend."

    That word stung a little. I had been casually dating people for months now, but it had been a while since I'd had anyone to actually call a boyfriend. I tried to ignore the feeling. "Oh, does he not live here?"

    "I mean, not currently, I guess," She responded. "He's in the army."

    "Drafted." I assumed.

    "Yep," she answered. "Into the 63rd platoon."

    63rd? Why did that sound so familiar? Then it hit me. "I have a—" Unsure of what to call Gavin, I corrected myself. "I know someone in the 63rd platoon too."

    Her eyes widened. "No way!" She broke out into a small smile. "I'm Emmy, by the way."

    "Trixie," I replied, smiling back.

    "I just miss Matteo so much," Emmy said. "It's bad enough that I don't get to see him every day anymore, but I'm constantly worried about him."

    Come to think of it, I did miss having Gavin around. He was always around when I needed him. Listening to me. Putting up with me.

    Emmy and I talked for nearly an hour--mostly about the war and keeping in touch with drafted boys, but there was at least a solid ten minutes of complaining about the state math exam.

    Emmy looked at the clock on her phone and sighed. "It's just so nice to have someone who knows almost exactly what I'm going through."

    "Yeah," I agreed, but then a thought hit me. "But what if it didn't have to be just us."

    She tilted her head to the side in confusion.

    "Think about it," I prompted, my voice growing shrill with excitement. "Gavin told me there are almost thirty guys in the platoon and all but one of them are from eastern Nebraska."

    Emmy furrowed her eyebrows. "I'm not sure I'm following."

    "I'm sure all of those guys know people back home, back here. We could try to find those people and meet up or start a group chat."

    "But how do we find them?" Emmy asked.

    At this point, I was beaming and already pulling up my twitter account. "You just leave that to me."

    The two of us exchanged contact info before heading home. Once I got back to my house, my mom had an envelope in her hands.

    "Trixie," she called. "There's a letter for you. It's from a boy." I tried to ignore her last comment as I took the letter out of her hands to see Gavin's familiar scribbled handwriting. Something felt comforting about seeing that again, but I couldn't quite figure out what.

    I raced up to my room and carefully opened the letter. (I didn't want to break my nail). Once I got it out of the envelope, I read it over.

Dear Trixie,

    I hope this letter gets here on time, otherwise this might be super awkward. But anyway, Happy Birthday! Can you believe it? You're already 17. It sucks that I have to not be there for another one of your birthdays, so this letter will have to do. Hopefully I'll be back before you turn 18.

Anyway, recently one of our guys went missing and things aren't looking good. Things are getting real tense around here lately. I wish you were here. Well, not that I wish you were in a war zone, but like. . .I just wish we were together. I miss hearing you talk and laugh and just miss being around you in general. I hope you have a great birthday.

                                        --Gavin

By some stroke of luck, the letter actually arrived on my birthday, but it would've been just as sweet a few days later. It was just so sweet that he remembered at all. He probably had a million other things to think about, and yet, he still didn't forget about me.

I looked over at my laptop. I needed to start looking for other people connected to the 63rd platoon, but first, I was gonna reply to Gavin.

(Gavin's PoV)

    At the end of the day, we headed back to our base, talking the entire way back, as always. The strange part about today was that Holly seemed to be waiting for us at the doorway.

    "Um...Sgt. Stockhold," her voice faltered despite the guts it must have taken to step directly in front of his path. For the first time since meeting her, she looked almost nervous. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it was the first time any of us actually called him by his proper title. "Sgt. Stockhold, I need to speak with you--"

    "Quiet, Holly," Sgt. Blake cut her off. He went back to addressing us guys. "Which one of you has guard duty now?"

    "I do!" Marcus replied, raising his hand. "I'm on my way out," he added.

    "Sir, this is really important," Holly urged.

He scoffed. "Holly, there is nothing you could ever say that would have any importance." As she grew more visibly flustered, Sgt. Blake stopped her once again. "Now is not the time for your petty complaints. Why aren't you getting the MREs?"

"That's just it!" Holly screeched. The room went deadly silent in the following moments as she tried to regain composure.

"The MRE shipment never arrived," she explained.

Sgt. Blake eyed her down, and her entire body went even stiffer. "What do you mean it never arrived?" His voice was cold and slow.

"Exactly that," Holly tried to cover up her stutter. "The plane was supposed to come and deliver this week's shipment, but it never did. I don't know if it's just late or if it got shot down--I haven't received any information indicating an alternate delivery schedule for this week or of the expected plane's status--"

"How could this have happened?" Sgt. Blake yelled at her.

"I didn't do anything," Holly shrieked. She tried backing away from him, but she just hit the wall. She exhaled nervously. "We've only got about 30 MREs left from this week and I didn't know what you would want to do with them."

Still not backing away from Holly, Sgt. Blake thought for a moment.

I shot a panicked glance to Landon and Tristan. Sure, MREs were gross, but starvation would probably suck more.

"No dinner tonight boys," Sgt. Blake announced, queuing our whole platoon to surround him.

"You can't do that!"

"That's not fair!"

"How am I supposed to up my calorie intake?"

"Shut up!" Sgt. Blake shouted at all of us. "You all heard her. This week's meals never showed up. We'll be rationing the dinners meant for tonight throughout the week."

"Can't Lt. Jason just make another McDonald's run?" I asked.

"Absolutely not, and I will beat the shit out of any of you who thinks it might be funny to suggest it to him," Sgt. Blake replied irritably. "I'm honestly shocked the first time didn't get him killed."

"What are we supposed to do for food?" Ned whined.

"Don't eat tonight and if you simply must have more than what I ration for you, then break into your care packages," Sgt. Blake both mocked and advised.

Landon looked a little uneasy, seeing as he never got anything so much as a letter, but Tristan set his hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, I'll share some of my birthday one. . . I just wish I'd saved more of it."

(Tristan's PoV)

    I looked longingly at my birthday care package. There were still about 8 snacks left inside, but I had to make them last all week, plus it would have been a real dick move not to share with the guys who didn't have anything.

    My stomach growled. "Shut up," I chided at myself. It had been two days since finding out about the missing MRE shipment and all I had eaten was a bag of barbeque chips and about five spaghetti noodles.

    Holly came out with four MREs. "I'm not bringing out anymore, but split these however you see fit."

    We crowded around the MREs after she set them on the table. After splitting them up, I ended up getting a piece of chicken about the size of my thumb.

    I decided to distract myself from hunger by writing a letter.

Dear Kierra,

        This totally sucks. This week's shipment of MREs never came in. Even though MREs are gross as hell (seriously, they're worse than school lunches) I'm still practically starving.

        I am curious about why the shipment never arrived though. Several of the guys are worried that the cargo plane may have gotten shot down. Despite my curiosities, I'd still rather have dinner than an answer.

        Anyway, I hope junior year is treating you all right (or at least as well as something called "hell year" can treat someone). But next time you think about complaining, just remember how I have it so much worse.

        I'm kidding, of course. Both of our lives can suck. But if I'm competing and winning with the shittiness of my situation maybe I can trick myself into thinking there's some good to it. (It's dumb, I know). I wish this war would end soon, but I'm losing hope that it ever will.

                                        --Tristan