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Chapter 1: by Drew Katronick

It would have been a spectacular sight if they weren’t running from it.  Unfortunately, they were running from it.  Awe-inspiring as it was, it was also sinister: the dark, looming shape of the black starship rising over the horizon, blocking out the starlight with its massive shape.  They knew they had to get away from it— they had to.  The floodlights illuminating the peanut plants around them.  The huge, green leaves were dripping with chemicals sprayed from the starships.  They began to choke on the disgusting chemicals as their smells filled the air.  Zach yelled, though his voice was impaired by the chemicals, “Mia— Mia!”  But his twin sister, Mia, did not hear a word.

“I can’t keep on running, we have to stop.” Zach shouted, trying again to contact his sister.

“We can’t stop now,” replied Mia, who now heard her brother, “We can’t let the starship find us.”  Searchlights were everywhere, flashing in and out of the thick foliage. The peanuts that grew on the planet Zach and Mia lived on were gigantic.  They had been genetically modified to produce larger, tastier peanuts.  They kept on running, and in the distance they began to hear a deep grinding sound.  Zach began to think he heard some muffled yells, but the grinding sound was too great to be sure.  He knew of the great danger, but he didn’t want to lose his sister.  So he turned back and Mia was not there.  His fears confirmed, he ran back into the lights of the starship, showing a streak of bravery.  Suddenly, a great blaring alarm rang across the land.  The starship began to flash red.  “Oh no!” thought Zach.  He knew that the alarms could only mean one thing: they’d been spotted.

The twins had lived on the peanut planet for as long as they could remember.  Their mother had once lived on the starship, they knew, but after their father died she escaped with them to the planet.  Zach and Mia thought they were the only ones on the planet (after all, it was illegal to live on the planet).  Living alone on a planet covered with giant genetically-modified peanuts, always running from a starship, had definitely helped the twins grow resourceful.  Even if they were also competitive, they had to work hard to stay alive.  Mia was a strong, courageous young lady, of about 14 years of age, with light brown hair and a somewhat grim face.  Zach, on the other hand, was a small boy for his age, full of trickery and smiles.  He was always impulsive, maybe even brave, but in the end, he was not as determined or resilient as his twin sister (though he certainly thought he was).

At this moment, though, Zach was more focused on saving his sister than anything.  He wanted to be seen as courageous.   Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do— a magnificent blue light had begun to pull him off the ground and towards the ship, surrounded by the unusual peanuts.  The beam had curious effects on Zach: his thinking seemed to slow down and he could not move a muscle.

“What will I do?” thought Zach, “They might kill me— They will kill.”  The twins had a very negative relationship with “them”, or the starship’s commanders.  After all, the commanders had probably been looking for Zach and Mia since the day their mother had escaped the ship.

“No, No.” Mia worried, “I am way too young to die.”

“I don’t deserve this.”

“It’s not fair.”

“Father died for them, they couldn’t kill us now.”

“It’s simply wrong.”

“We were just trying to survive.”

“We weren’t trying to hurt them.”

“Oh, there’s no hope.”

“They’ll just say ‘The law is the law.’”

“They have no mercy.”

“Think of what they did, or what they didn’t do, after father’s death.”

“Well, it's their fault that we were on that planet, even if it’s against the law.”

“Still, they don’t care.”

“They’ll blame us, not themselves.”

“They only care about themselves.”

“They’re so greedy.”

The twins knew there was no hope, no matter how innocent they really were.  The starhip’s commanders were just concerned about themselves, and they would likely execute the twins just to show the starship’s citizens who was really in control.  They had heard stories about how ruthless the commanders were from their mother when she was still alive.  She had died a few years earlier.  Ever since, Zach and Mia had lived alone on the planet.  Anyway, the commanders had certainly peculated a lot of money from their positions.  The commanders would charge the twins with living on the planet, and that would be the end of their sad existence.  Still, it wasn’t fair that they were the ones blamed for being on the planet in the first place.  When Zach and Mia were just babies, they knew that their father had died working on the starship and that the commanders wouldn’t offer any assistance to their struggling family.  Years later, they were returning to their place of birth: the starship.  The blue light pulled them up, off the ground of their sweet home planet, towards the starship.  Though they were just a few hundred yards apart, they didn’t know where each other were.  And they were scared.