***
Earth.
A home to a million and one life forms. Some extinct. Some discovered.
With it's accommodating atmosphere, stable climates, large bodies of water along with other factors, it was the perfect planet to live on.
That is before the Virtual age began.
Mankind struggled and strived to make technology transform the world. And the earth suffered for it.
Chemicals began to soil the land, contaminating plants and animals and thus, food began to get scarce.
The atmosphere, contaminated with all sorts of toxic fumes, giving way for new infirmities and diseases.
For years, the Earth's entire ecosystem was damaged, mankind dividing against themselves to fight for whichever resources they could get their hands on.
Fortunately, scientists came up with solutions to these problems, putting the planet in total balance again.
Well, almost that is.
For you see, every action has a reaction. Inflation rose, along with the rate of poverty and greed and people were either forced to rise above it or get subdued.
The latter was the case for our little protagonist.
Jared lived in his broken town where his alarm clock was the sound of yelling and gunshots. His lullaby, the terrified screams of people and occasionally, the sound of fists and broken glass. With the option of food rare to find and even clean water being even rarer to come by, Jarad grew up malnourished, the pangs of hunger that would come from his stomach a daily thing he was used to.
Disaster struck when the slums were infected with an unknown virus, with nobody knowing the source of where exactly it originated from it began infecting the inhabitants of the slums areas, but a funny thing about it the virus was that it chose it's own hosts on its own as the infected people were random and sadly Jarad was one if those random people.
With his parents barely being able to cater for him and his sister there were a lot of options on the table which they had to choose from, one was to sell the infected child they had with them as they weren't yet sure if the virus could be spread so they desperately had to take their chances, but luckily for Jarad that choice went off the table sooner than he expected as some unknown specialists from some supposed backwater company came who proclaimed to have a cure for the disease and would even pay for the wards or families if the infected. It sounded a hella sketchy but nobody refused as they were all looking for a way to make a little bit more cash to take care of themselves so in a way Jarad and the other infected were all sold away to God knows where.
They were all hoisted away by bus and fed to their full, as there wasn't any sane person who would refuse good food and it indeed was good food.
Blank...
As if there was a gap in their memories nobody knew what happened after or rather they didn't remember anything happening after their pseudo feast.
Only thing they saw when they all woke up was that they were all packed together in a cramped room which could barely fit all of them as they were over a hundred of them all infected yet jam-packed like sardines in a can.
Then they all heard it, the voice of the one who brought them unto the bus. And he said a few words that terrified them all.
" As of right now there are a two hundred of you here all infected with the T04 virus, you all are here because you think we have a cire to that disease but I'm about to break it to you all, we do not."
" What is he talking about?"
" What does he mean they do not have a cure to the virus, that's insane"
" Right?"
They all mumured in disbelief
One of them who seemed brave enough walked forward even though he didn't know where the voice of the supposed doctor was coming from and said as he looked around "If you didn't have the cure then why did you bring us here, just let us go back to where we came from"
" Yeah, you heard him"
" We wanna go home"
" What's the point of keeping us here,if you're don't know what to do"
They grumbled in one accord
In that exact moment however, the head of the brave man who confronted the supposed doctor blew up and blood splattered from his neck which drew the crowd to a chilling halt, nobody knew where it started but the scream of a female resounded in the enclosed room and from there there was a sense of terror but all of that was brought to a halt.
"SILENCE" the doctor said, and as he did no words came out of the mouths of the crowds, it was so silent you could hear if someone breathed and it made one wonder if the crowd even breathed at all.
"Is there anyone else here who wishes to speak his or her mind, I welcome it ..just know that after you speak it will be your last"
Nobody spoke. A chilling silence fell over the room.
"Now that's better. First of all I want you to cut your sizes, you're all too much for this small room, so do yourselves a favor and cut down the sizes a little."
Still, nobody moved.
"Don't you understand me?" The doctor said in an impatient tone
" Kill yourselves, I want you to kill yourselves."