Not another day in 10th
It started out like any other totally ordinary day in Class 10.
With all nineteen students present, the classroom was packed. It was officially the Debate Club period, but since the teacher didn’t care to show up, it had instantly devolved into a glorious, loud free period.
Paper planes flew, chairs scraped against the tile, chatter bounced off the walls, and laughter echoed down the hallway. It was noisy, unorganized, and completely normal.
Nobody had any reason to suspect that in just a few moments, the normal day was about to come to an abrupt, terrifying end.
A strange, high-pitched hiss suddenly leaked from the classroom air vents overhead.
Before anyone could even ask what the noise was, a sweet-smelling fog swept across 10 C. Within seconds, the energetic chatter dissolved. Notebooks dropped from hands, paper planes floated uselessly to the floor, and one by one, all nineteen students slumped onto their desks as deep darkness took over.
When eyes finally began to flutter open, the hard tile floor of the classroom was gone.
Instead, all nineteen students were lying groggily on a cold, metallic mesh floor inside a dimly lit, compact dropship chamber. The air smelled of ozone, fuel, and metal, and the ambient noise was a low, steady hum of heavy engines vibrating beneath their feet.
“Ugh... my head,” Evander groaned, sitting up and rubbing his temples.
“Where... where are we?” Lyra whispered, staring around at the dark steel walls and glowing red floor-strip lights.
Zayn bolted upright, pointing wildly at the center of the room. Sitting right in the middle was a glass-topped laptop glowing on a sleek pedestal, its screen displaying a pixelated customize menu. Against the wall stood a long rack filled with colorful space suits, strange floating pets, and a wildly absurd collection of hats, mini top hats, sticky notes, plant sprouts, and flamingo floats.
“No way,” Lucien muttered, standing up and testing his balance as the dropship gently rocked in deep space. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Looking through the reinforced front viewport, Isolde, Aurelia, and Vesper gasped. Outside wasn’t the school hallway or the playground. It was a vast, pitch-black void filled with infinite, sparkling stars and a distant glowing nebula.
Rowan and Dante rushed over to the side doors, but they were sealed shut with heavy hydraulic locks. High above them, a large digital glass panel blinked with a bright red status line:
WAITING FOR PLAYERS... (19/19)
HOST: ???
“Guys...” Seren said, her voice trembling slightly as she picked up a brightly colored helmet from the rack. “We’re in the lobby.”
“Wait, if we’re in the lobby,” Riven said, looking at Soren, Nikolai, and Kieran, who were all staring at the glowing central laptop, “then what happens when the countdown hits zero?”
As if answering his question, a sharp, metallic chime echoed through the dropship speakers, and the screen flashed:
GAME STARTING IN 5... 4... 3...
“Wait, what the fuck?!” Lucien blurted out, barely having time to process what was happening.
2... 1...
The place went black.
The sudden darkness was absolute, heavy and silent, rendering the panic in the dropship instantly breathless.
For three agonising seconds, nobody moved. Nobody even dared to breathe.
Then, a low, mechanical hum vibrated through the floorboards, rising in pitch until a blinding streak of white light flashed before everyone’s eyes.
When their vision cleared, the cramped metal dropship was gone.
They were standing in a circle around a massive, circular glass table in the center of a cavernous, high-tech room. Glowing silver monitors hummed around the perimeter, heavy sliding steel doors led off into shadowy corridors, and high above, a thick viewport revealed the cold, infinite expanse of deep space.
Class 10 had arrived in Cafeteria.
“Is everyone... okay?” Isolde asked, her voice echoing strangely inside her helmet.
Every single one of them was now sealed inside a fully pressurized, color-coded suit. The fabric felt thick, synthetic, and shockingly heavy.
“Okay? Okay?!” Lucien yelled, waving his bulky, gloved hands in front of his visor. “We were literally just sitting in Debate Club and now I’m dressed like a giant blue jellybean!”
“Check your visors,” Samira said quietly, tapping the glass of her own headpiece.
Across every student’s internal heads-up display, glowing red and green text began to construct itself line by line.
LOCATION: THE SKELD
TOTAL CREWMATES: 19
IMPOSTORS: 3
OBJECTIVE: COMPLETE ALL TASKS OR IDENTIFY AND EJECT ALL IMPOSTORS.
A sudden, sharp ping resonated inside each individual suit.
YOUR ROLE HAS BEEN ASSIGNED.
Vesper swallowed hard, staring at the blurred reflection in Aurelia’s visor. “Wait... three of us?”
“Which three?” Dante demanded, instinctively taking a step back toward the central table. “Which three of us are the Impostors?!”
“Don’t look at me!” Rowan blurted out instantly, holding his hands up.
“Bro, nobody even looked at you yet, why are you already defensive?!” Cassian snapped back.
“Guys, quiet!” Elara called out, trying to restore the order of a proper debate captain, though her voice quivered. “Panic is going to get us killed. If we just stick together and do our tasks—”
HYDRAULIC HISS.
Before she could finish, the heavy steel doors leading to Upper Engine, Weapons, and Admin slid wide open simultaneously with a sharp release of steam.
The game had officially begun.
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the group. Nineteen friends stood in a circle, eyeing each other through tinted visors. The laughter from Class 10 C was completely gone, replaced by a cold, creeping realization: three people standing in this room were no longer their classmates.
“This is complete bullshit,” Nikolai scoffed, taking off his helmet and slamming it down onto the edge of the circular table. “Some stupid prank arranged by the school or the senior batch to freak us out. I’m not playing this childish game.”
He turned toward the open hallway leading to Admin, folding his arms and cursing loudly at the ceiling. “Hey! Whoever is running this joke over the speakers, screw you! Open the doors and let us out before I report—”
BANG!
A blinding flash echoed through the metal chamber, followed by a deafening gunshot that vibrated deep in everyone’s chests.
Nikolai’s eyes went wide. He collapsed straight onto the metallic deck, motionless.
A high-tech, automated turret mounted discreetly above the Cafeteria entrance quietly retracted into the ceiling, a thin wisp of smoke curling from its barrel. On everyone’s visor HUD, a stark red system notification flashed, cold and unfeeling:
PLAYER LIME HAS BEEN ELIMINATED.
REASON: REFUSAL TO COMPLY / NON-PARTICIPATION.
CREWMATE COUNT: 18 | IMPOSTORS: 3
“SOREN!” Soren screamed, dropping to his knees as a collective chorus of shrieks and terrified gasps exploded across the room.
“Oh my God, oh my God, HE’S ACTUALLY DEAD!” Lyra sobbed, scrambling backward until her back hit the cold steel wall near the Navigation doors.
“It’s real,” Kieran whispered, his voice cracking behind his visor as he stared at the pool of blood spreading on the gray tiles. “This isn’t a prank. It’s real.”
“If we don’t do the tasks... or if we break the rules... the system just kills us,” Zaria said, her hands shaking uncontrollably as she looked up at the ceiling turret.
The absolute horror of their situation slammed into Class 10 C like a physical weight. The playful banter, the joking, the disbelief—it all evaporated into pure, raw survival instinct.
“We... we have to do the tasks,” Vesper stammered, pulling up her wrist tablet with trembling fingers, where a list of electronic objectives blinked in faint blue light. “We have to do them right now!”
“Wait, everyone back up!” Seren screamed over the rising panic, pointing at the center of the Cafeteria. “Look at the table!”
Nobody wanted to step anywhere near Nikolai’s motionless body, but as if summoned by the sheer chaos, a series of low click-clack sounds echoed from the central glass structure.
