Chapter 2: Drew
“Wha-what?” I asked, my voice shaking.
I just couldn't process it. It was like I had a mental block preventing me from making the connection between the picture on the screen and the reality of the situation. This had to be some type of mistake, or a sick joke. Maybe Erin had something to do with it. She was constantly trying to trick me, but her pranks weren't usually more complicated than jumping out of the closet and scarring my pants off.
“Nancy Foreman,” the man in the suit said, in an authoritative voice, “You have been chosen to be marked.”
His blunt words broke down the barrier and released a flood of tears. I didn't want to die! I'd always known it wasn't fair, and I'd always dreaded being marked. but I'd never actually thought it would happen. No one wants to imagine their own death, but that's what I found myself doing. How would I be killed? By some gang of twenty-year-old, who were positive they'd survive? Or by some starving homeless man whose only option was to kill me? At the best I had a 5% chance of surviving the two months. I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe, if I was lucky, I'd survive the first month, but even the chances of that were virtually none existent.
The ebony skinned woman was the first to realize that I wasn't going to snap out of it. She gently grabbed my arm and propelled me into the lift. To break the silence the old man said,
“You know, the reason your class was called here was because we knew that we were marking one of you.”
I nodded. The process through which people were chosen to be marked was a mystery. However, one of the most widely spread theories was that the marked were chosen ahead of time and not on the spot. In retrospect, I should have known. Why else would they call a class of eighth graders to such an important government building? The lift stopped at floor three, the one that was completely encased in darkness. When we got of the lift it didn't get much lighter. All I could make out was the outline of the hallway and the small florescent lights running along the walls. They didn't give off much light. The entire place smelled like a hospital, and the cleanliness of it all made me uneasy. I, at least, wished I could see where I was going.
From somewhere in the darkness I heard sobbing. I swallowed.
“Where are we?” I asked, my voice wavering.
“It's known as the tattoo parlor,” said the woman, matter-of-factly.
“You're lucky your ceremony was here,” added the man. “Some of you had to travel from halfway across the city to get here. There are only two start points in the city.”
I made sure to make a note of this. The details of the marking were never made public, but one picked things up. From what I'd heard, the start points also served as a type of home base or safe zone, but this didn't make complete sense to me so I decided that I'd just have to wait until the rules were explained. A metal door slid open and I was ushered inside. The regular lights in this room were in such contrast with the dark hallway that I took a second to let my eyes adjust.
The room was simple with a tiled floor, and something that looked like a dentist chair. I'd never been in an actual tattoo parlor in the city, but I assumed that it couldn't be that different from this. Compared to the life changing thing they represented the marks, themselves, were relatively simple. They were just a small black tattoo placed on your left cheekbone. It wasn't large, in size. It was somewhere between a lid of a plastic bottle and the top of a pop can. It had two perpendicular lines intersecting right in the center of the circle. It had always reminded me of the cross hairs on a gun. A scruffy looking man, who obviously lived in the city, walked in. The old man gestured for me to sit down in the chair and the tattoo artist gave me a sympathetic look.
I watched as the tattoo artist pulled out a device that was linked to the table by a cord. I felt myself begin to shake when I saw the pointed needle at the end. I'd been so preoccupied with what the marks represented that I'd never given much thought to how they were given. I'd considered getting a tattoo when I was older, but getting one on the face was a different story. The tattoo artist noticed my expression and leaned down so that he was at my level.
“Don't worry, we're going to freeze your face. There are too many nerves in the face not to.” He held out his hand and smiled. “I'm Drew, by the way.” Then he lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “If you need any help, you know, after your marked, you can come to me.”
I had so many questions. Why would he offer to help me? Wouldn't he get in some sort of trouble? But before I could ask him any of my questions, he put a finger to his lips and looked in the direction of the room's other two inhabitants, and mouthed the word,
“After”
Then he lifted a syringe out of a compartment on the table and held it over the left side of my face. I flinched and braced myself for the needle to enter my skin.
“Relax,” he said, calmingly. “If you tense up it'll hurt more.”
I didn't say anything, but I did my best to relax my face. I was afraid to say anything, or move my head at all, for fear his hand would slip and the needle would go somewhere it wasn't supposed to. It was just a needle after all, just like the vaccinations I'd gotten at school, countless times. But, of course, those didn't go in your face. I stiffened as the cool metal of the needle entered my cheek. It sent shooting pains throughout my face, and I couldn't even clench my jaw for fear of moving the needle. I prayed that it wouldn't go all the way through my cheek and enter my mouth. Thankfully, it didn't. When the metal finally withdrew from my cheek, I swallowed the spit and bile that had been building up in my mouth. In retrospect, I guess I'm lucky. It was either this, or a thousand of them when I got the tattoo.
It didn't take very long for a fuzzy feeling to spreed through my cheek. It felt like my cheek had swollen to twice it's normal size. I reached up to touch it, and it was discerning how I couldn't feel it. Drew moved my hand back to my side.
“I don't want to have to strap you down, but you have to promise not to move.”
I nodded, but I don't know if it looked right because loosing the feeling in the left side of my face had pretty much thrown off my range of motion. He lifted the tattooing device up to my face, and I felt a buzzing, almost like my phone was on vibrate and someone was holding it up to my face. I tried to close my eyes and relax, as the buzzing continued. It wasn't completely pain free. It felt like my foot did when it fell asleep. Except it lasted much longer.
I resisted the urge to rub my cheek in an attempt to make the pins and needles go away. It was over before I had much time to think. That was, in part, a good thing. Thinking would have brought on the hysteria again. Drew held up a mirror and I couldn't stop the gasp that escapes my lips. I'm marked forever now, my fate is sealed, with ink and a needle. But I didn't begin to cry again. I didn't think I could. Maybe the numbness in my cheek has also frozen my tear ducts.
I was about to get up when the woman put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back into the chair.
“One more thing,” she said, and gestured for the man to join her.
“What?” I asked. Whatever it was it couldn't be good. Nothing had been good since I'd entered the building this morning.
“We need to implant your tracker,” continued the old man.
“What?” I said again.
I'd never heard anyone say anything about a tracker. That was surprising. With two-hundred people being marked every two years, it was a surprise that no one had bothered to mention that they were implanted with some sort of tracking device. It was hard to imagine that no one had mentioned it to a friend or a family member. Usually when any new information about the marking surfaced, it spread faster than any gossip ever could.
“Excuse me for asking,” I ventured. “But is this a new practice?”
“No,” said the man. “It's been a practice since the very first marking. We wouldn't want a marked person to just disappear.”
This confused me more, because that was exactly what we were expected to do.
“Then why have I never heard it mentioned before?” I was aware that I was being blunt and president, but something about having my movements tracked bothered me.
The man shrugged. “Probably because they didn't find it that important. It's a given that the government would try to keep track of who's dead and who's alive. How else would we give out the rewards fairly?”
I restrained myself and kept from telling them off. The entire concept of the marking was wrong, rewards shouldn't be delivered for killing other human beings. At that point I was running out of arguments so I said,
“But what if someone found a way to view the government data base? They'd automatically know where all their opponents were.”
The woman raised her eyebrows and gave the man a surprised look. He returned it.
“I've never heard that strategy before.” The woman spoke up. “Of course it wouldn't be easy, but you should really consider it as a strategy once you've begun.”
I was surprised. This flaw in their planning was the first thing my mind had strain to. It couldn't be that no one had thought of it before. However, the thought that I might actually have a type of advantage, even if it was just an idea, was a tantalizing prospect. It made me feel less week and helpless. Then I remembered Drew's offer. Maybe I actually had a chance. But I couldn't be caught up in my plans yet. Right now my biggest challenge was surviving the first night.
“So, can we get on with this?” asked the man, impatiently. He seamed to have mistaken my curiosity for stalling.
I didn't say anything, but I pushed my head against the black cushion of the chair. That was the only answer the man needed and he drove the injector into my cheek. It didn't hurt, but I felt the presence of a unfamiliar substance in my face. I again resisted the urge to rub it. I was then escorted down to a room on the first floor. I was instructed to wait there until I was called to the briefing.
The room was as cozy as any waiting room could ever be. It was furnished with a few small couches and a table covered with magazines. I suddenly realized how tired I was. The events of the day were starting to weigh down on me, and I didn't know how much more of this I could take. But the little voice in my head reminded me that I was going to have to take a lot more, two months more, to be exact. I kicked of my shoes and tucked my legs up under me. It dawned on me that this would be the perfect time to get some rest. Who knew the next time I'd actually be able to sleep? But try as I might I couldn't get my eyes to stay closed. It was like that part in a horror movie when you want, more than anything, to turn away and shut it out, but you can't because it's impossible to forget what's going on outside your eyelids.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I realized that I'd almost fallen asleep. What if I'd day dreamed thought the orientation? What if it had already begun? I couldn't die like this! Without looking I jumped to my feet and launched myself in the opposite direction of the hand, and into the coffee table.
“Ow!” I groaned as I pulled myself back to my feet. There was no use rushing, I was as good as dead anyway.
“Nance, calm down, it's only me,” said a voice I didn't recognize.
I spun around and sighed in relief. It was only Drew, and he looked like he was holding back laughter. I was suddenly embarrassed by the way I'd acted. What had I been thinking anyway?
He smirked at me, and I saw laughter behind his eyes. “God, if you're this jumpy now I can't imagine what you'll be like when you're actually in danger.”
My fear had been replaced by excitement. Maybe he really would help me. He was the type of person who would ordinarily never talk to me. He had shoulder length dirty blond hair, that was pulled into a stubby ponytail, and a scattering of stubble across his cheeks and chin. He had a tattoo of a dragon curling all the way up his left arm, and I think I saw another one poking out from under the collar of his shirt. He had a stud in his nose and another in one of his ears. He looked like he was in his late teens or early twenties. All together he looked like he had better things to do than help me.
“Yeah, I wonder too.” I said, finally responding. “I'm pretty sure I'll explode from all the stress, if I don't get killed first.”
“But I'll do my best to stop that from happening,” said Drew, like he was saying something normal, and not completely impossible.
“Wait what?” I didn't completely understand what he'd just said. “Why do you want to help me? Two-hundred people were marked and you chose to help me! Why?”
Drew screwed up his face in confusion. “You sound like you don't want my help.”
“Nu-no,” I stammered. I didn't know how to explain myself.
But I shouldn't have worried, Drew was smiling again. “Don't worry, you're not that special. Just, when you do this job you start feeling like it's your fault that all of the people are dying and you can't not try to help some of them.”
Now I understood, and I realized how horrible it must be to have Drew's job. Marking after marking, he was the one who physically marked the people to be killed. That had to take a tole on him.
“I could never do your job,” I said, and cringed at the thought.
He nodded then said. “It is hard, but there's no getting out now. I know far too much about the way the marking works.” I saw regret cross his face. “So I choose a few of the people I brand and offer them my help. Congratulations, you just joined the club.”
“So how exactly could you help me?” I ventured cautiously. This whole thing seemed to good to be true.
“Whatever you want,” he stated, flatly. “If you need a place to hide, I'm in. If you need some food, or some money to mysteriously find it's way onto your pass card, I'm in. Or, if you have a plan,” he gave me a meaningful look, “that you need my help to execute, feel free to ask.”
I licked my lips and swallowed. This was a bit too much information to take in all at once. Drew was willing to risk his own life to help me survive in this twisted game. Most people wouldn't risk helping me for fear of the minor price that was placed on the heads of accomplices.
“Where could I find you, if I need you?” I asked, but I couldn't keep the apprehension out of my voice. The entire thing still seemed to good to be true.
“I'm apartment number 102 in the Jackal road apartment complex. Don't be afraid to buzz up. If I'm not there try The Inner Ink tattoo parlor. That's where I work, it's a block away from my building, on Atlas Street.”
I nodded again and ran over the information in my mind. If I forgot it there was no chance I would ever see him again to ask. I mouthed his address over and over again and prayed that I wouldn't forget it, during whatever was coming. Suddenly I heard the sound of footsteps coming down the adjoining hallway. Drew stiffened then grabbed my shoulder.
“Good luck Nance,” he whispered. Then he released me and turned to exit. As he left he whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear, “Please try not to die.”
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