"Are you sure that we're safe out in the open like this?" Kaitlyn asks, her voice filled with concern. "I swear this stupid game is starting to give me chronic paranoia."

The group has just awoken for their first official test and are huddled up in a circle, raiding the bags they've just scavenged up for anything useful. For the last three trials the group had always collected the bags but never got a chance to see the items that they held inside before getting snatched in the claws of some mutated beast.

"It's fine! Every time, the lions would show up at least an hour after us waking up. It's only been," Nila pauses to look at her glassy-black, T.E.D issued watch. "Fifteen minutes."

"What do we have here..." Anna mumbles behind her and pulls out canned food, bottles of water and three torches from inside the crushed boot of a hatchback.

"Jackpot!" Riley bellows with an excited look in his chocolate brown eyes.

Everyone turns to his direction to see Riley holding two pistols in his hands, pointing them jokingly in the direction of the rest of the group.

"God, Riley! Didn't anyone tell you to watch where you point those things?" Kaitlyn lectures him, still crouched beside Anna on the road.

"Great find!" Anna beams. "Is it loaded?"

"No but there's some ammo scattered around in the bag. Not much but it'll do."

Slowly, Riley stands up examining them in deep thought.

"Well I can't really have one because I'm the navigator of the group," he pauses for a second then hands one over to Anna then walks over to Nila with the other. "Here you go. You're one of the top students, right?" He asks and smiles, plopping the gun into Nila's hands and walks away without bothering to get an answer.

"Uh, yeah but..." Nila starts, looking down at the polished white gun, but stops when she realises Riley isn't in front of her anymore.

The only reason she succeeded into the top ten was because of her efforts in other subjects. She still can't shoot properly even if her life depended on it, so she decides to take comfort in hoping it never will.

With a sigh, she places the gun into the back pocket of her pants.

The group had stayed up all night last night working on a plan on how to make it through this last simulation. No, they aren't going to go up, down, sideways or diagonally. The group is going to go straight through. But this time, they're going to use their time wisely, stealthily.

"Ok, it's nearly eight o'clock, we should start getting ready," Riley states.

Anna scrunches up her nose at Riley's remark. "Is it just me, or is time flying?"

With that, the group gather their duffle bags of goodies on their backs and start off following the cracked bitumen road. Sadly, there are no singing dwarfs or anything of those likes to greet them and definitely no good witches around to sing all their worries away. Nila remembers briefly of an Old-Earth book she read in the library back home. Wait, what does she mean back home? She's still on Mars, this is just a simulation. Nila shakes her head at herself and stifles a giggle. Abruptly, Riley comes to a stop and Nila looks down at a large hole in the road, holding a freshly made mud puddle.

Riley bends down and scoops up a handful of the foul-smelling, gooey substance in his hands.

"Uh...what?" Kaitlyn asks both in disgust and general confusion.

Anna seems to get the idea Riley is trying to convey and starts smearing mud all over her arms and legs. "Come on, Kaitlyn. You don't want the lions smelling your scent. It'll only be for a little while, to get them off our trail. We'll be passing through a river to get to our destination anyway," Anna lectures as she now packs the mud on her face.

Nila watches as she does this. If anything it will probably just make them look like chocolate-covered cat treats but she decides to trust Riley on this one. Nila sets her stuff down and starts painting, her body being the canvas.

"Ugh. Is this really necessary?"

"Yes, it is." Riley sighs.

Nila rolls her eyes at Kaitlyn's constant complaining. She can really be a diva at the worst of times. Though, it's not like she likes this either. She can't help but grimace as she slides the chunky yet liquid-like mud over her body.

Once everyone is ready, Riley grabs a stick off of the ground and squats down. He starts to drag the stick through the wet dirt and seems to be drawing a map.

"So this X here, is where we started from. Those squares and shapes are the buildings. Because those damn lions pretty much own this street we need to make a detour, which sadly is going to slow us down a lot. We'll have to go through this then behind this building and around the whole neighbourhood to get to safety," Riley explains as he waves the stick around and points in various places. He looks up. "Okay?"

The rest of the group simply nods in agreement.

"How can something so close be so hard to get to?" Nila complains.

"The woman probably planned it to be this way," Anna replies.

Riley clears his throat. "It's eight o'clock now. The lions will be coming, let's get going."

As if on cue, a menacing roar erupts from where the group had just walked from. Right on time.

"Agreed," says Kaitlyn and the group follow Riley into a large building, a factory, surprisingly still standing.

The factory is huge with a twenty meter high ceiling hanging above them, though bits and pieces of it lay on the factory's floor. Rows and rows of conveyor belts fill the centre of the room and Nila wonders what was once made here. The place smells odd as well. Even more so when they walk into a smaller and much more crowded room, filled with large, steel, filing cabinets. Exposed piping and plumbing line the walls and floors of the factory and the group carefully tiptoe through the mess.

"Ah! Dammit!" Nila exclaims, she drops her bag and tries to catch the filing cabinet she's sent crashing down but to no avail, the cabinet falls to the ground with a loud crash.

The group looks back at her in unison like a squad of robots.

"What do you not get about the words: be careful?" asks Riley in a sarcastic tone but he gets no reply and turns around to keep walking.

Nila mumbles an apology as she picks up her bag and leaves the cabinet behind. She runs to catch up with the group but abruptly stops.

"Does anyone else smell that?" Nila asks but the group ignores her.

The room continues to get more and more compact the more they progress, the pipes starting to remind Nila of vines. Different ones of all shapes and sizes twist and cover the walls.

Ahead of her is Kaitlyn, whose hands, Nila's noticed, have started to tremble. Almost as if she were topped up on too much caffeine.

"Are you feeling alright, Kaitlyn?" she asks, raising an eyebrow.

Kaitlyn takes her left hand to steady the trembling and turns around, "What's it to you?" she questions before turning around and accidentally banging her forehead against a pipe.

Letting out a whole line of curse words, she drops her duffle bag on the ground. Nila goes to pick up the bag, however, gets interrupted.

"Hey I found that bag, I'll get it," Kaitlyn argues, holding her forehead. Nila looks up at her in annoyance and notices something odd about her eyes, they're quite bloodshot, a little more intense than usual.

"Just trying to help. Why are you being so irritable?"

"Guys, lets not fight," Riley unsuccessfully intercedes.

Anna walks over to Kaitlyn, raising a hand to her head. "Here, let me see."

However, Anna's hand gets slapped away and before anyone knew it, there was a loud slap and Kaitlyn stands with a hand now holding her reddened cheek.

Anna gasps. "I'm sorry! I don't know why I-"

Kaitlyn clearly doesn't accept her apology and with a low growl, she pounces on Anna like an animal, strangling the girl. This catches Riley by surprise as he stands in shock for a few seconds. Meanwhile, Nila finds herself trying to pry Kaitlyn off of Anna by her hair, an uncontrollable anger taking over. More insults are thrown around which only serves to escalate things. Nails are used to scratch and claw at each other's skin. Eventually, Kaitlyn's hands are pried from Anna's neck by Nila, allowing the redhead to finally have a breath of fresh air or any air for that matter and she is rewarded for it by an elbow to the face by Kaitlyn. A sharp pain suddenly spreads along Nila's forearm. She's been bitten by Anna. Now it seems that they're brawling each other for no reason at all. Nila responds to this with pulling out her pistol and aiming it at Anna and Kaitlyn in a blind rage. With wide, bloodthirsty eyes Nila notices a shadow looming over her and looks up to see Riley holding some sort of gun of his own. The other girls do the same. Then there is only darkness.

Nila's eyes flutter under her eyelids as what she could probably describe as an ant crawls across her face. Birds chirping little melodies in the distance and the scent of the rich soil beneath her paints a pleasant image in her head.

"You're awake," someone grunts.

'Is he talking to me? What's happened, why am I lying on the dirt?' a whole array of questions pop up in Nila's brain at this statement and she opens her eyes.

Nila finds herself immediately regretting opening her eyes, as all she sees is the barren, charred and cracked stretch of a dirt road behind a row of decaying buildings. It is no longer daylight, but edging towards mid-afternoon. Which is definitely not what she pictured in her head. Or the head in her head in the simulation? Nila scraps that thought all together as it becomes all-too confusing. She sits upright to see Kaitlyn and Anna. Kaitlyn paces back and forth whilst Anna slouches on the ground, massaging her bruised neck. It's at that moment Nila gains some recollection of what happened, something that feels like it occured only moments ago.

Riley explodes off the rock he was sitting on. "I can't believe all of you! Do you realise how much time you've cost us with that little brawl of yours? Do you?!"

Anna attempts to intercede but Riley continues, seemingly knowing exactly what she was going to say. Nila's never seemed him so angry before, or even angry at all.

"It's been hours. I had to shoot you three like animals with the tranquiliser darts we had. Guess what? You've costed us resources too because they're now gone."

"It was Nila who caused the gas to leak in the first place!" Kaitlyn jabs an accusing finger in Nila's direction - which makes Nila wish she could recoil in on herself and disappear from existence - then grimaces and brings a hand to her head.

Riley sneers. "Shut up, Kaitlyn!"

Kaitlyn's arm drops by her side.

"We're sorry," Anna mumbles. "We were under the influence of-"

"Under the influence my ginger ass!" Riley furrows his eyebrows and massages his temples. "Look, I don't..I don't want to waste anymore time then we already have. Just pack up the stuff and let's just...go."

Everyone goes silent for a few moments. There are watery eyes, bitter expressions and sore wounds that anyone would clearly see but no one dares point anything out. Riley wants the group to head out and so that's what they do.

Once they're all fully prepared, the group follows Riley in quietude down the dirt road, which eventually fades, hidden under tall grass and rocky soil. Beside them appears a forest.

"Nila!" Kaitlyn calls out and jogs to her side, startling her a little seeing how Kaitlyn has been the first to utter a word in a while. "Hi, um...I just wanted to say thanks for helping me. I just left you to be mauled by that lion and when karma came to get me back, you did the opposite. I'm...sorry for reacting the way I did. I guess I was just bitter about how you handled it. Also, I know the leak wasn't your fault. If anything, I should be mad at the simulation. They probably made it work out this way. Hate the game, not the player right? So..," Kaitlyn blubbers all of this in a matter of seconds, her electric blue eyes avoiding eye contact with Nila's. "So, I just wanted to say sorry."

Nila just walks beside her silently in shock. Kaitlyn's apology takes a while for her to process and when it is, she quickly jogs away before Nila can say anything. She wasn't expecting that at all. Though, she accepts it. Perhaps Kaitlyn isn't really that mean, stuck up girl persona she's been showing these past few trials? It's merely an act. Maybe one day, they can take a good shot at becoming friends?

A choir of barks and growls fill the air and it seems to be coming from the forests. The group stops and turns back to look. The noises certainly don't sound like the mutated lions, so what now?

Nila squints her eyes at the trees in the distance, trying to spot any animals hiding in their shadows.

And she does.

In the darkness hides a pack of about fourteen wild and severely mutated dogs. The dogs are all furless with sickeningly disproportionate bodies. Their abdomens are large and bulky while their heads and snouts are small and long. Not to say that they don't have a threatening set of teeth. The dog's teeth don't look like they belong in their mouths at all. They're jagged and sharp, pointing out in all directions, too big to fit correctly in their jaws.

Anna gasps, throwing her hands over her mouth. Nila almost does the same, but she's too scared to do so. It's horrific what the radiation has done to the animals of Earth.

The group sets off in a sprint, not bothering to converse in what they should do because they already know that these "dogs" are certainly not looking for a pat or a tummy rub.

The dogs howl and bark as they run after the group. The tall grass that they're running through doesn't help at all as it's about the same height as the mutant dogs. Nila, not wanting to fall behind like last time, runs to Riley's side at the front of the group.

"Nila! Use your gun!" shouts Riley.

That's when she remembers what she has in her back pocket, how could she have forgotten? Nila reaches behind her and pulls out the small gun. She doubts it will do much but it's worth a shot, right? Anna, at the back of the group, is already firing her own. Kaitlyn runs past.

Nila shoots as she runs and hears a distressed scream. The voice belonging to Anna. Nila looks around and spots Anna lying on her back, wrestling with a mutant dog that's trying to bite her head off.

At first, Nila feels obliged to help and takes a step forward but remembers, Anna left her when she was in need and no one else was around to help. Anna left her to die. Why should she not do the same?

'Karma bites back hard, doesn't she?' Nila thinks bitterly and turns her back on her 'fellow' group member, pretending not to hear her cries for help. The same way Anna ignored her while she was wrestling with death in the form of a lioness.