Game Over

Chapter One

Leah woke up in a hospital bed with absolutely no idea how she had ended up there. She couldn't remember anything but vague feelings, a feeling of unsettlement, of fear. She wasn't supposed to be here. She was supposed to be somewhere else. But every time she tried to think of the place, it felt like knives had begun to stab her in the skull.

She opened her eyes groggily and registered the blood. She had already guessed that she was in a hospital because of the smell of medicine trying to mask disease but the blood on the white sheets that were being carried away just confirmed it.

"Ah, you've woken up!"

"Why am I here?" she asked the woman who had spoken, registering only a blurry figure as her vision hadn't completely cleared up.

"You fell pretty hard. There was internal bleeding. There may be some memory loss but nothing too life threatening. I'm Pamela, by the way, you can call me Pam" she said, coming closer to Leah. She looked friendly enough, a little mature and official in her formal clothes but not intimidating. That was, until Leah made eye contact with her. Her eyes were a hard blue, beautiful sapphires that seemed to be cut out of ice. Her smile didn't reach her eyes. They remained cold, terrifying and shockingly familiar.

All of Leah's instincts screamed 'enemy' but she gulped and ignored them, replying, "Hi. Uh...what do you mean by memory loss?"

"Oh, just of what happened an hour before you fell. I'm sorry but I don't know how you fell. I'd tell you if I did. I was the one who had found you when I was walking home and they'd told me to be here so that they could know whether you remembered anything."

"It's okay. Thanks. I probably wouldn't be alive if it weren't for you." Leah's words were robotic, the automated response. She didn't believe it much. Her brain kept trying to think of incidents that had never happened and her instincts were all over the place. She told herself it was just the internal bleeding and smiled weakly.

"It's okay. Would you like to meet your family now?"

"Yes, please. By the way, if you don't mind me asking, where do you work?" she asked her, a little curious to know what job had made those blue eyes so hard. In The Sanctuary, jobs carried weight. However, they all lived a life of Equality and therefore it wasn't offensive to ask about someone's job.

"Top secret," she said, smiling again, her pretty red lips looking more like a grimace.

"Government official?"

"Yeah. Your mom should be here soon. I'll go now but I'll keep in touch," Pam said as she left, one last click clack of her high heels as she shut the door firmly. Leah nodded numbly even though there was nobody in the room. She got up without much difficulty, feeling a little lightheaded at first.

She wanted to look at herself. That may have sounded narcissistic but it wasn't. She was merely curious. She touched her scalp self-consciously. They had shaved her head for the surgery. She knew it would grow back soon but she felt incomplete without those short jet black strands tickling her jaw. Then she saw her body. She was too skinny. It wasn't right. She felt so wrong. She guessed that she had been in a coma which was the reason for her sudden weight drop. Even then, she felt ashamed, as though she wanted to rip the skin off the bones because of how it was sticking to her, making her so unnaturally thin, so imperfect, so abnormal. She knew it could be fixed easily but nothing could stop the unease.

The only good thing was her skin. Her skin would always be the perfect shade of a creamy white because of the various skin creams she had used as a kid. She was Indian in origin, or at least that was what her mother told her. However, she knew that all the darker people had been the bad guys. The Government was kind enough to disregard the fact that she was descended from one of the bad guys because they felt that everyone deserved an opportunity. She was an Equal, a perfect citizen.