I just found out this book is ranked #37 IN SCIENCE FICTION!!! Thank you so much, guys!

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A dull ache pulsed through my body when I first opened my eyes. Blinking a couple of times to clear my blurry vision, I began to survey my surroundings.

I lay on a cot in a small room with metal walls. A coarse linen sheet covered my lower body and I was still in my bright blue Team Codie Glitchketball shorts, though they weren't in the best condition. My shirt was off, and my entire chest and stomach were wrapped in bandages.

I placed my arms by my sides and attempted to sit up, but a wave of intense pain shot through my upper body, causing me to drop back down with a yelp of pain.

"Vince?" A voice called out from behind the door across from me. "Are you awake?"

"Yeah," I managed to croak out. "Who are you? And where am I?"

The door squeaked open and a tall, fierce looking woman who looked to be in her early twenties entered.

"Boy, Vincey, you've grown!" The woman exclaimed. "And don't worry. You're in a safe place."

Vincey. There was only one person in this universe besides my mom who ever called me that.

"President Solace?" I asked, my jaw dropping past my knees. "There's absolutely no way. I must be dreaming."

"No, you're not dreaming," she said. "And it's just Ashley now. Welcome to People Amanda Thinks She Killed But Are Still Alive club.

Typical Ashley Solace humor. It had been five years since her supposed death, but no one in WGO could forget how she made you laugh. She and her successor Amanda were polar opposites.

"How did you survive?" I asked, my eyes sparking with curiosity. "And what about Vice President Murphy and the rest of our old Government? Are they still alive too?"

"No," Ashley said darkly. "That scheming witch Amanda and her little friend Jade ambushed us while we were watching a movie in my room the night after we tried to get her kicked out of WGO. And we did that for good reasons too! I watched her shoot my boyfriend, Vincey, and there was nothing I could do about it," tears welled up in her eyes as she told the story of the worst night of her life.

"He was lying on the floor bleeding to death and I was hiding in the closet, scared for my life. When the noise was gone I came out, and the whole place looked like a crime scene. It was a crime scene. My three friends lay dead in a pool of blood and an imprint of Amanda's knife was on the carpet. I immediately ran away as fast as I could, just took off with no specific destination in mind. I knew if I stayed there one more minute, she would come back for me. When I left WGO, I fell into this random underground bunker-thing. Good thing for me it was abandoned. Ever since then, I've been living off the canned food supply in here."

"An imprint of her knife..." I trailed off. "Wait, she had that knife back then? The long pocketknife with the smooth black hilt?"

"Yeah, she loves that thing for some reason. At least she did back when I was President. I still remember the day she first showed up to WGO, back when we were just a couple of scared kids with powers we didn't know how to use huddled in an apartment. She carried the knife clutched to her chest and was super attached to it for the first few days. Like, she wouldn't ever let it out of her sight, and she would slap anyone who tried to touch it. She relaxed a little more as time passed, but she always treated that thing like something special."

Amanda being that clingy was unusual. There was something about that knife, something I didn't know about...

"That's strange," I shrugged. "But it doesn't matter. You need to come back to WGO! Amanda's killing us!"

"No, I can't, I'm sorry. I can guess what a tyrant Amanda probably is, but I don't want to risk it. She'll kill me! Then we'll have no hope of ever fighting back. Have patience."

"At least let me go back. I have to tell Justin about you!" She knitted her brows in confusion and I quickly added, "he's my friend, a new reg."

"I don't think you understand what happened, Vince," Ashley said gravely. I was snooping around WGO's perimeter when I saw you laying on the ground behind that concession stand they use for the Glitchketball games. You had been stabbed, and were bleeding profusely. If I had gotten there a second later, you would've died. She clearly wants you dead, and when she wants someone dead, they die. You can't ever go back or next time, you won't be so lucky."

"What? You mean I'm stuck in this place forever? No!" I tried to reach out in protest but the wound in my stomach stretched, staining my bandages with blood. I bit down on my tongue, curling into a ball in my agony.

"You probably shouldn't try to move for a few days," Ashley said. "And you aren't stuck in this place forever."

"Does that mean I get to go back into the real world when I'm better?" I asked, both scared and hopeful. I had come to WGO when I was very young and remembered almost nothing about the world outside. 

"No," Ashley grinned. "Didn't Amanda tell you guys about Mission B?"

"Mission B?" I tilted my head to the side, confused. Everyone in WGO had heard of Mission A, the process of recruiting all twenty six Glitches, WGO's main purpose. However, Claire had been the last one, Mission A was now officially complete. Ashley was right, what next?

"Oh, she'll probably announce it soon though. Probably after Glitchketball season," Ashley explained. "Our radar started picking up signals of a girl named Claire King's Glitching abilities six years ago, when I was still President. We knew she was the last one, and Mission A was nearly complete, so we came up with a plan for what to do next. Mission B. It's infinitely harder than Mission A, and a hundred times more crucial. It involves the entire world, and the purpose of the Glitches themselves."

"What? But how come I've never heard of it?" I asked. "The first person Amanda would tell is Jade, and the first person Jade would tell is me."

"Oh, come on, Amanda's not that stupid," Ashley shook her head. "If Jade's still as much of a blabbermouth as she was back in the day, the whole organization would know by now! Amanda obviously wants it to be a secret until her official announcement."

"Well, what is Mission B?"

"We only did the basic outlining, and Amanda probably finished it after I 'died', but this is what I know. Have you ever wondered why the twenty six- twenty seven actually- of us have Glitch powers and the other seven billion people on this planet don't?"

I shook my head. None of us Glitches ever thought about things like that, and honestly, most of us took our powers for granted.

"It's because, Vincey, the rest of the world doesn't just have Code that we can control, they are the Code."

"What? You mean all the regs are just...Code? Does that mean that this..this world isn't even real?" I asked, utterly dumbfounded.

"Yes. But there is a world that is real, and they created this Code world. They also sent thirty people from the real world into this world, the Glitches. The question is who did it, and why? Is it possible for us to escape this world and reenter that one? The purpose of Mission B is to find out."

"Sounds like some weird science experiment," I muttered. "But there's no way we have the technology to do something like that. An entire hyper-realistic virtual reality universe that real people can enter? I don't think so."

"We don't," Ashley agreed. "But maybe they do."

"But what does that have to do with us getting out of this bunker?"

"Because when we figure out Mission B," Ashley slammed her fist on the side of my cot triumphantly. "We're outta here!"

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I'm actually about to start adding pictures of the characters on the chapters they are introduced or chapters they are important in so you can visualize them. If you want, you can go back through the book and look for them! On this chapter is Ashley Solace.