Chapter 1 // Purity

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On my fifth birthday, two men dressed in white dragged me into a room with several other adults. I screamed as they branded my forearm with the number "602" and threw me into the darkness of the Outer Circle. They threw out a girl along with me, she was marked "121". Her wavy brown hair picked up mud as she tumbled to the ground. We weren't one of the lucky chosen ones.

The Outer Circle was a place for the unruly; it was a dog-eat-dog world. Everyone worked for themselves, and themselves alone. 121 and I became each other's lifelines due to the harshness of the outer circle. We lived in a place for the Forgotten.

The Inner Circle of Purity was for the chosen. Breeders, people who were selected to be as close to perfect as humanly possible, created children for the nursery and parents adopted them based on their predicted intelligence and beauty. When children were chosen, their numbers were replaced by names. For us Forgotten, our numbers became our names. For the purpose of being organized, those born females had odd numbers, and those born males were given even numbers. Those who were not chosen by the age of 5 were sent to the Outer Circle.

In Purity, only the perfect survived.

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