0 January Secret Agent #35

TITLE: Black Reign
GENRE: Young Adult Dystopian/Action

Axel Schwartz began to stir as a powerful vibration shook his bed. The bed continued to shake as he took a startled breath and his eyes snapped open. He rolled on his stomach and commando crawled over the mountainous sheets and blankets until he reached the bed head. The instant he jammed his hand down on a raised square at the head of his bed, the vibrations stopped.

Above the bed, bright blue LED numbers silently flashed ‘0600’. He swung his feet onto the white porcelain tiled floor and pushed himself upright.

“Praise be to Szva, almighty god of everything!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.

Axel shuffled to the far side of the perfectly white room where a golden skull about the height of a small child sat on an ornate wooden stand. Its eyes were red crystals that gleamed in the light that filtered through translucent wall sections. Like a dead man, Axel fell as prostrate in front of it.

After five full minutes Axel arose and paced on the cold, hard tiles towards a wall and pushed a panel. It retracted and slid aside revealing a glass box about a metre by a metre. It reached from floor to ceiling. There were two knobs on either side of a hollow cylinder that projected a short distance from the wall. He dropped his white sleeping garments to the floor, placed a pair of goggles on his eyes and stepped into the box.