"I'm Alexis. Alexis Rey, #51589 if you're like the officers who love to address me by your prisoner number. If you asked me about myself - I'd say I don't really matter, because I'm just another delinquent stuck back on Earth. So, I suppose I don't amount for much in the grand scheme of things; the entire purpose of this experiment is to find out if I wind up dead or not, to see whether they can bring everyone back down here and rebuild. So to speak, I'm a guinea pig and the officers are the scientists, poking and prodding us. If we run away, it doesn't matter and they won't come looking for us, because they know we'd die out there in the wilderness without their oh so gracious support. As much as I hate to admit it, they're right, and because they're right they hold it over our heads because they're those kinds of people."
"I find Earth fascinating. Of course, I don't want to be down here, and it feels like as much of a prison as Advivo was. I suppose it is at least slightly better, but the vindictive nature of the officers gives me somebody to argue with, and they can't arrest me like they did on Advivo. My spirit, my daring nature - I hope it rubs off on the rest of them. Maybe one day, we'll prove we're worth saving, and they'll take us back into space. Or, at least, that's my dream. At least I know, in all realism, that we're never going back on Advivo ever again. If we prove it's not livable, we die. If we prove it is livable, we live down on Earth forever and they come down. I'm a survivor - if I make a friendly alliance with a few people, we could easily survive.""People call me vindictive. That might be true, because I hate people and I have an amazingly colourful array of words I can use to explain myself as well as a colourful array of languages. I suppose I am naturally suspicious, and with my suspicion comes my sarcasm, quick wit and sass. Sometimes, I can be a very dislikable person, but I'd rather be disliked and have a backbone than be liked and be an officer's pawn. Being a risk taker, sometimes I risk death but something good normally comes from it. Officers won't intimidate me - I'll lie, I'll smooth talk and I'll steal to get things out of them. Years of practice makes me a good liar, in the same way I perfected my chaotic nature - so, although my first thought is, quite selfishly, always about myself, I have a slight soft spot for friends and family, so I won't refuse to help somebody out. People say I'm naturally social, and if I were a bit less snappy I'd be popular. I prefer the few people that can understand me for who I am, though. I'm a realist and not a dreamer, and I can be sour and bitter. I don't believe in love, or any of that sappy trash, either."
"My parents were okay people. John and Freya Rey (they were my parents' names) were just a British couple pursuing their life on Advivo. They were well respected and generally well liked by most of the community (with a community as large as Advivo's, you could never be liked by everyone) until I was born. A lot of people told me that I was ruining my parents, and I think I would have disagreed with them then, but not now - I know I was a horror child, but that's something I was - I am - proud of. Somebody had to be, so I stepped up to the podium, into the limelight of negativity that would influence my life."
"Advivo's security were so bloody stiff, and tight, that you couldn't get away with the slightest thing. Someone framed you - to jail. Slight bit of evidence - to jail. Falsely accused - to jail. And after that, there was no getting out, so I always imagined the prisoners crossing the days on the walls until their 25th birthday, or their day of death. But never did I think I'd go there, to suffer like that - dying on your birthday seemed like the most depressing thing ever. I never thought it would happen to me, the images of my nightmares."
"So, at first it was harmless, and I was detained at least five times before I was fourteen. I could tell they wanted to lock me up permanently before I could cause any more damage with my rebellious nature, but because I was under fifteen they just couldn't. By the age of fourteen I was stealing food, to look after myself and my family - I had a knack for not getting caught, at the time, except for a few times."
"When I turned fifteen, about a week after that I think, I was a bit less subtle, and I was caught, for good. I think it was Kirkland before she got the officer job, actually - and you should have seen the grin on her face when she was finally able to lock me up permanently. And so I became like them - crossing off days, counting how many I had left to live. It didn't wear me down like it did the rest - so to speak, because I was still perfectly sane when they packed me off to the second assembly."
- "I used to have a fetish for strawberries, so I stole a lot of those. And bottles of water. I don't think they minded the water as much as the strawberries."
- "People could call me feminist. Then again, I grew up listening to "All Men Are Pigs", so you couldn't blame me, right?"
- "I have colourful language, but I learnt German from my German peers, so I swear in Deutsch rather than Englisch."
