The hand that fed him was a kind one.

The man that came into the room to prepare Red was tall, old, and grizzled, with white hair and a face pockmarked with wrinkles and warts. His work-lined features softened a little upon seeing how Red huddled in the corner, whimpering as he stared at Ari's glassy-eyed corpse. They hadn't taken Ari away, to motivate him, the bald man had declared.

"So you're the new inhabitant of Harris' body," the old man said, placing a dish in front of him. Red looked at the plate of boiled meat and rice, a clear glass of liquid sitting next to it. It smelt wonderful, but he hardly dared to partake of it.

The old man chuckled. "Eat, kid. I prepared it myself, and I wouldn't hurt you. Red was a good boy." His hand shot out. Red flinched, but the old man only took his arm and squeezed the bony appendage. "He always needed to eat more. Too skinny, I always told him. He reminded me of my son---who's probably forgotten me by now, I haven't been home in so long."

"I'm sorry," Red whispered. This must be the person Red had mentioned in his letter...the one who told him he was going to die. He reached out for the meat, his stomach growling despite his disgust at the murder he'd just witnessed. Normally, back on X9-7, they used sharpened wooden tongs to eat, but Red didn't care that he was acting like a savage as he picked it up with his bare hands and shovelled as much as he could into his mouth.

The man's raspy laugh was a dry snicker. "You're a nice boy, but there's nothing to be done about it anymore. I can never go home, and neither will you." Then his eyes saddened. "It's a shame. You have a future. You're too young to be caught up in this."

Red's new brain tried to recall what the original inhabitant of his disgusting new body had done, but there was a blank space where memories should have been. "What...what did I do to get sent here?"

"Your...well, Red's, anyway...father sold him off to pay some debts. The government snapped him right up for their game." The old man shrugged. "Then he 'misbehaved', and they killed him. Somehow or other, you ended up here, left to carry his burden."

Red's mouth opened and closed like a goldfish's as he tried to process what hell he had been thrown into. By the sound of it, Earth was a terrible place. The last time someone had tried to sell their child off on X9-7, they had been publicly executed, which was the way it should be everywhere.

Humans were terrible.

The man leaned forward on his haunches, face scrunched like he was about to tell Red some important secret. "We have five minutes before I dress and sedate you, so I'll give you an important piece of advice. Your chances of survival lie in beating the rest of the players. There can only be one winner, and the prize is their life." The old man clapped a hand on Red's shoulder. "I'm hoping it'll be you."

Red tried to say something, but his voice came out as a terrified squeak.

The man's gaze was foggy and unfocused. Were those tears in his eyes? Red couldn't tell. "I'm telling you, boy, the most important player in the game is a girl named Alisa Lee." That sounds familiar. "She has a twin brother. You can use that to your advantage. There are two ways you can go about this: find her brother first and use him as leverage against her. Or, you can be a nice guy and suggest working together, but you'll probably die faster. She's a cutthroat spitfire. She isn't easy to work with, and she'll do anything to make sure her and her twin get out of Vanguard alive." He shrugged. "But she can help you. She's easily the most intelligent of all the players."

"T-t-thank you," Red said, finally managing to find his voice. The rest of his food sat untouched at his feet; he'd lost his appetite. "I...I hope you get to go back home to your son soon."

The man chortled. "Kid, I appreciate it, but like I said before, I'm never going back." He slid something out of his pocket and set it in front of Red. It was an orange. "Keep this in case you get lost. You'll never escape the maze if you die of hunger or thirst first."

"Thank you," Red repeated, slipping it into his palm. It felt so small, and yet so tough. He'd never eaten anything like it back home. No fruit was such a colour on his planet; he wouldn't have even known its name if it weren't for the original Red's memories. And the man in front of him...he was a kind person. Red appreciated that.

The old man smiled. "What's your real name, kid?"

"I'm---" Red didn't have time to finish his sentence before the men in black burst in, taking them both by surprise. The old man jolted, looking startled at their sudden appearance. The armed men parted like a wave, allowing the man with the shiny head to walk through.

He sneered down at the old man, his face a mask of cruelty. "I've received information that you've been helping young Harris, Warren. We don't tolerate traitors here."

"I never---" the old man started, right before the silvery barrels of multiple guns were trained on him. He never stood a chance as shrapnel shredded his chest into mincemeat, completely destroying Red's only ally.

He said he'd never get to go back home.

He was right.

Sudden anger flooded through Red, hot and heavy and blinding. "He did nothing!" he yelled. "He didn't help me at all! You just murdered an innocent man!" Lies, lies, lies, all of no use. He's dead. He'd never been angry before, except for the one time he'd been so mad at a reckless spaceship driver that he'd purposely veered off-course and knocked her into one of Jupiter's moons. Fixing the huge crater in Io's side had taken much effort later, but it had been worth it.

It seemed ironic that he was in this whole mess because of the same reckless spaceship driving he hated so much.

The man kneeled and pointed at the orange in Red's palm. "Is that so? Then what is that, pray tell?" Red had completely forgotten he had it. His head immediately drooped in shame, his ears burning at being caught in a fib.

The bald man laughed, his chuckle grating like steel on ice. "You may be more entertaining than I'd thought, Red Harris."

Impossibly fast, his hand shot out. Red felt a sharp prick in his arm. The entire room instantly tilted sideways, blurring in and out of his vision. The man's distorted figure loomed over him, sneering with razor-sharp canines.

Was his head always that big?

"Sweet dreams, Red," the man said.

Everything faded to black.

Red woke up with metal in his hand.

What followed next was a few confusing minutes of trying to figure out what it was, his thought process consisting mainly of What is this? How did it get here? I can't eat it, right? That's stupid, even X9-7ers don't eat metal. Humans are pretty weird, though. Do they eat metal?

Once his eyes adjusted to the dim light, so different from the glaring brightness of the room that he'd started his new life in, he accessed enough of his new memories to safely confirm that the large, oddly-shaped chunk of metal in his hand was a gun---and it was definitely not meant to be eaten.

After he'd gotten that sorted out, Red's mind attempted to process where he was. He was propped up against a wall, the ground cold to his thighs. A quick look down at himself revealed a strange, sleeved piece of black cloth covering his torso (a t-shirt, they called it) and black mesh crisscrossing his legs in a rather decent resemblance of pants. Canvas shrouded his feet---shoes, things he'd only ever heard about in stories.

They changed my clothes. Does that mean...oh my god, they saw me naked?

Next to him was a backpack, thin and sad. Red scrambled to get to it, tearing it open and gazing at the meager contents: some unknown packages, a few plastic bottles filled with water---he'd always wanted to see water---and a large orange, sitting on the very top.

They had let him keep it.

Red could have cried out of guilt and elation both.

Where am I?

Somewhere, a speaker crackled to life. "Welcome to Vanguard, where you will win...or meet your doom."

Oh. GET ME OUT OF HERE!

The wall behind him was freezing, solid, unpenetrable steel. There would be no escape.

Whatever words next emanated from the invisible speaker were lost amongst Red's turmoil of thoughts and dry, heaving sobs. He curled up into a ball, wishing he'd just followed Saturn's traffic laws. He tried to think of what he'd ever done to get himself into so much trouble. This wasn't a simple speeding ticket, like he'd rightfully deserved.

This was hell.

When he'd finally composed himself enough to get up, he threw the gun into the backpack, slung it over his thin shoulder and took a cautious step forward. If he moped in that position forever, he would eventually die. All he could do was play whatever game they had set up and hope he could win back his life.

Fear strong in his mind, Red slowly started walking. The path ahead of him seemed to stretch on forever, illuminated by the yellowed lights dangling from the ceiling above and casting gloomy shadows over the scene. He walked until he was finally staring at a blank wall, a passage forking to the right of it.

So Red went right.

And nearly tripped over a boy.

A boy, settled in the junction of the turning, either very tired, drugged to high heaven---or dead. He was sprawled out across the steel floor, the left side of his face pressed to cold metal. Red wasn't sure if he'd ever seen such a pretty face before---then again, the inhabitants of his home planet were scaly green reptilians, so it wasn't much of a contest.

Dark lashes splayed across his closed eyelids, a swash of jet-black hair sweeping across his forehead---slightly pockmarked with a little acne, but otherwise unscarred. His skin tone bordered on tan, cheeks nearly devoid of colour. Only the slight rise and fall of his chest---clad in the same attire as Red---revealed that he was, in fact, alive.

A backpack sat next to his prone form.

And lying in his open palm was a thick loop of rope.

Red knelt down, unsure whether to give the boy a gentle nudge or scream into his ear at the top of his lungs. The decision was quickly made for him by a girl practically flying across the passage ahead from an entrance he swore wasn't there before. She tumbled to the ground, catching herself on her palms before she could smack into the floor face-first.

As fast as she had fallen, she jumped up, swivelling in Red's direction, her ebony braid whipping around her head in a swift arc. "Step away from my brother," she demanded. "Now."

Red gasped.

It wasn't because the girl was scary as hell. It wasn't because she looked like a female copy of the boy at his feet. It wasn't because of the gauze sloppily taped over her left eye, or the prominent curves that strained against her mesh pants, or the threatening scowl on her face.

It was because he recognised her.

Or at least, the original Red did. She was present in more than one memory, a ghostly wraith drifting here and there in the recesses of his new mind. He couldn't quite piece her together entirely, but he knew her name.

Alisa Lee.

"I---" Red started, hands flying up in surrender. If looks could kill, he would have been on fire. He took several steps back, pressing his lips together to cut off the pathetic squeaking noises that he was sure would come out of his mouth instead of words.

Blood began to seep from beneath the bandage over the girl's eye, dripping down her cheek like red claws of death.