Here is an exercise from a job application.  There were some restrictions, but the gist was to get this down in 30 minutes, so it is slightly shorter than my normal exercises.

So, if you want to see what I do when I have 30 minutes, a 500-word limit and a timer ticking away ion the corner, just click below…

Dorian sighed. He realised it had never been the best idea to join the Federal Guard. For six years, he had been fighting for a cause he did not believe in.

At first, it had been so easy to just go along with the other soldiers. He would get caught up in the nigh-religious fervour, saluting the flag and chanting oaths of loyalty to the senate and the cause. He learned the combat-drills, took the prescribed meds and did a damned fine job of pretending that he was someone else.

The propaganda was easy to swallow; at first, he knew how ridiculous it sounded and could not believe that anyone could believe it, but it was not long before he started to imagine the savage Caledonians and pagan Avalonians of the books. On some level, the people of his past and the caricature of them started to blur; he found himself joining in the victory whooping when he or a squad-mate blew the head off a red-headed practice dummy, started to feel excited by the thought of striking back against his former oppressors.

Someone higher up must have noticed too, as he was quickly flagged for ‘special operations’ and the gene-mods that would re-create him as a perfect infiltrator. “After all,” they told him, “with his pale colouring and blue eyes, he could almost pass for Avalonian himself.”

That was how he ended up dropped behind enemy lines in Luton, the town of the heathen god Lugh, looking like a clone of his Avalonian father.

No, he told himself, the word was ‘Brit’… It was only the governments and the soldiers who called them Avalonians. While he was here, it was Britain and not Avalon; the old names held on.

He must have been here for two years, maybe even three now. He had slowly worked through their intelligence people, becoming more trusted and better-liked. He smiled at the irony; the Feds had warned him that he might start to sympathise, but to tamp it down for the good of all.

All that time, all that training and all that work, to bring him to where he was now.

Dorian sighed again, keeping his gun trained on the man in the chair. He should be the one with the power here, facing an unarmed foe who would be dead in mere moments, but the man sat there without a care in the world.

“Dorian, just sit down.”

Something stirred; how could this man know his real name? He had been John for so long, he did not even think of himself as Dorian most days.

“Dorian… There’s no place like home.”

With those words, something shifted and Dorian realised he could not shoot this man. He had lost. He knew that he could walk out of the door, anything else, but could not pull the trigger.  The man smiled.

“Dorian. Can you not see that you have lost. Do you want at least to pretend I defeated you fairly. How about a ‘rock-paper-scissors’ game, if there is no other way?”