The door to my new bedroom quarters swishes open and I smile at the clean and neat interior. The Capital starship is a first class vessel. All the rooms and hallways and the mess hall, which we toured briefly before getting our room assignments, have a modern design. The ship even smells new, the windows are spotless and the carpets clean. Five students walked away before going through the metal detectors, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

I step inside and the door slides closed behind me. I look out of the narrow window above the bed. With no clouds or atmosphere to get in the way, the expanse is filled with stars and colorful gasses. I walk over to the bed. It's larger than the ones at the school and the blankets look brand new, tucked neatly under the mattress on all sides. 

Opposite the bed are two cushioned chairs with a small table between them and a reading lamp on it. I walk over and set my bag down on one of the chairs. I don't see any drawers but they might be built into the walls. I run my hand along the sleek detailing of the walls, circling the room slowly. There aren't any books or additional decor, except for one artist piece on the wall of a fighter plane zooming into a black hole.  

The ship hums with power beneath my feet as I walk. There's not one speck of dust or dirt anywhere. I smile. This is where I'm meant to be, not the rustic buildings of an old Jedi school where dust covers everything, and not in the forest, with all the animals. Here I can feel my Force powers coming alive again, growing stronger.

Suddenly a door hisses open, and I jump. It's so perfectly hidden in the wall that I didn't even notice it was there. I step inside. It's a washroom with a walk-in shower and a spacious sink with a mirror above it. I step in front of it.

There are no mirrors allowed at the Academy and I haven't seen myself clearly in a reflection for a long time. Mom was right. I have grown. And my hair is longer now. I run my fingers through it. I'm definitely going to take a shower. My black hair and light skin make me look so melodramatic, so opposite of Hux, with his light orange hair and bright blue eyes. He's better looking than me, and stronger, and meaner. He doesn't have any weaknesses, like I do. I guess I should be glad he agreed to be on my team.

I turn away from the mirror and begin to undress, bracing myself for the chill of a breeze as I remove my shirt. But room temperature is perfectly regulated and I feel comfortable. I check for soaps in the drawers before I get into the shower. There are liquid soaps in bottles but I can't find any hard soaps. I take a towel from the rack near the shower and set it close to the door, then step in. The settings on the small console beneath the shower tap are a bit confusing but I finally get it going and water sprinkles down over me like a light rain shower, but much hotter. I sigh, glad that I will either die here on this ship or continue on, never to see the Academy again. I suffered too much there this summer, although I don't exactly remember it. Snoke took most of it away, but the pain of it lingers inside of me, like a nauseating aftertaste. I suppose I should be grateful to him. Yet in a way I wish I knew what was taken from me. But it doesn't matter now. It's better to look forward to the future, than back.

After the games the remaining twenty-five will fly to another star system where Master Snoke has begun building a new super weapon and is finishing construction on the First Order Military Base. Hux says that the person appointed General for the First Order, after the games, will be overseeing a new Stormtrooper army. I think he wants to be the General, if he doesn't get to be the leader that is, which I know he won't be because Master Snoke promised it to me.  

After a long shower I finally turn the water off and step out. The room has grown misty, covering the mirror in a haze. I wrap a towel around my waist and walk out into my bedroom, where the air is clear. I take a seat in one of the lounging chairs, glad to have a room all to myself, and dig out my comm unit from my bag to look over the rules of the Game. There aren't any specifications on how to actually play the game or how to kill the other opponents, except for the 'no weapons allowed' rule, so the way we play must be up to us.

I skim through the details. We get seven hours of sleep time. During sleep hours the Game is on pause. The doors to our quarters open for exactly 2 minutes between 01:00 hours and 01:02. Before and after that time the doors are locked and unavailable, except for the two minutes we get to exit the room in the morning between 08:00 to 08:02. I sigh when I see the next rule. If you miss your door times you get locked out and remain in the Game for the entire night. So can we stay locked in our room all day, if we miss the morning door opening times? The idea of being locked in my room for seventeen hours makes me restless, but it could be a cheap way to win.

I get up and try unlocking the bedroom door. It slides open to reveal the dimly lit hallway. My shoulders relax. Now I'm too unsettled to sleep. My stomach rumbles and I remember that I didn't have supper before the shuttle boarding on planet because I was too nervous. But now that we're finally here, I can eat. 

I close the door and get my official Elimination Games uniform from my bag; black pants and long sleeved shirt with a First Order symbol on the shoulder. I check the time on my comm unit. Just after the 11:00 hour. I still have 2 hours before door closing time, if that rule is even in effect yet. But the Games don't officially start until after the opening ceremonies tomorrow anyway. I finish getting dressed and hurry out of the room to go get some food.

* * *

The evening power-saving lights running along the carpeted floor in the halls, light the way as I hurry to the mess hall . I feel safer in the dim off-hours lighting than in the bright day hours lighting, which was on when we first arrived.

I walk past the doors of the other sleeping quarters but don't hear anything inside. The silence remind me of the dream I had about being alone on the starship and everyone else dead, except for Hux and Phasma. Now I wish I knew where their rooms were. But we got separated during room assignments. Everyone was randomly placed in sections all over the ship, only five or so in each section, probably to encourage the 'no teamwork' policy and 'each to himself.' 

Phasma said to go along with the room assignments for now and that we'd regroup tomorrow and share a room. The official opening of the Games tomorrow night is only three hours before evening door time. But a lot could happen in just three hours. 

I round the corner and step into the open mess hall, lit in a dim purple lighting. The tables and chairs lay covered in shadow and the various food machines buzz and hum all around. My shoulders relax. I made it, and I'm hungry.

"Ren?"

I jump at the sound of my name and turn to see Hux balancing an armload of food containers.

"Hux? What are you doing?"

"Getting food."

"That's a lot of food for one night."

"It's not just for one night. Go grab three bags of bread and follow me."

I nod and go look for the bread.

* * *

"They don't have meal breaks during the day," Hux says, setting the containers down onto the ground in his room. He pushes a spot on the wall and a door opens to a refrigerated food storage compartment. I take the bread over to him.

"The red group is planning to siege the mess hall," he says.

"The red group?"

"That's what I call them. They're the largest. There's twenty of them and they all want to survive." Hux piles all the containers neatly into the refrigerator. "I heard them talking. They're planning on attacking those with smaller groups or who are on their own, when they go for food in the mess hall."

Hux finishes stacking the containers then gets up. "I'm going to poison the food that's available in the mess hall and then break all the food synthesizers."

"What?" I look at him.

"Do you want to kill each classmate one by one, with your bare hands?"

"No..."

"They'll figure it out soon enough. I brought some contaminated treemeal with me."

"What's that?"

"It's got treemites. I found it in the treemeal..." He stops suddenly and I look up to see what's happened.

"What?"

His eyes search mine in an intense way that he's never looked at me before. "What?" I say again. 

"Nothing," Hux says. "I'm going back to get some containers of water. Come and help me carry some."

"We have water in our rooms and in all the washrooms on the ship."

"They'll all be contaminated by tomorrow night."

"What if it kills everyone and we're the only ones left?"

Hux grins. "Then we're the only ones left."

* * *

I set the water container down beside the other ones and sigh. It's our third round for water and we have enough to last us a month. "I think it's enough water," I say, stretching. I glance at the clock near Hux's bed. It's halfway through sleep time and if I went to bed now I'd get about four hours of sleep, at most.

"Tomorrow night you and Phasma can stay here," Hux says. 

I nod, my muscles aching. The thought of of walking back to my room, then staying there alone makes me anxious. The ship is so quiet that passing by the sleeping quarters is like walking past tombs. I frown. They will be tombs, soon. 

"I need to sit down for a bit," I say, rubbing my face with my hands. "I'll just rest in one of the chairs-"

"Take the bed," Hux says without hesitation.

I lower my hands from my face. "What? Why?"

He drops into one of the lounging chairs and sighs. "I'm going to stay up anyway, so I don't need it."

I look to the bed. It's still perfectly made and untouched. "Are you planning to kill me in my sleep?"

Hux smiles, a genuine smile that I'm not used to seeing. I smile too, despite myself.

"Sleep at your own risk, Ren," he says, raising an eyebrow. He's also had a shower, his face cleaner and paler than usual, making his freckles stand out. His hair has dried sticking out all over the place, after Phasma's hair styling attempt, but it looks good somehow, like he'd planned it that way. Our eyes lock and my stomach flutters. I look away, confused. Why is he being nice? Is it a trick? He's never nice to me. Will he actually kill me in my sleep?

"Stop being so paranoid," Hux says. "Do you want me to leave my own room?"

"No..." I say quietly, rubbing the back of my neck.

"Go ahead." Hux nods to the bed. His words remind me of something I'd forgotten. I'd said the same thing to him, when he was in my room at the Academy. 'Go ahead.' No, I wasn't my room but his. I was lying on his bed. But why? The memory is just out of reach and my head begins to hurt suddenly with a stabbing pain. It must be one of the memories Master Snoke made me forget. Even though I can't remember what I was doing there, I remember how it felt. It felt like... 

My stomach clenches. That makes no sense. Why would I feel that way? I must be confusing other memories. 

I glance at Hux. He's watching me silently, his blue eyes curious but glazed over with tiredness.

I walk over to the bed and pull the blanket aside then climb in, taking only my boots off before covering myself with the blankets and pulling them over my head. I don't want Hux to see me. I don't want to think about this weird stirring inside of me when I look him in the eyes. He hates me and I hate him. It's always been that way. We're just working together to win this game, and when Phasma is back with us, everything will be back to normal. As normal as it can get, in a battle to the death.