Matched

Chapter 2

Light. Kate opened her eyes to the world around her and saw that she was in a brightly-lit room with three doors in front of her. She glanced at each one and wondered what she was supposed to do. Something inside of her told her to turn around. She looked back, and the wall behind her was slowly closing in on her. It became clear that whoever was controlling the simulation wanted her to choose a door. She turned around and quickly picked the door on the far left.

    As she walked through the door, she felt the floor drop from underneath her and she was falling. She closed her eyes and braced herself for impact, but that impact never came. She opened her eyes slowly and looked at the scene before her. She was standing in her house, and her mother was just feet away, turned around and humming to herself as she washed the dishes. "Mom?" Kate said as she approached her. Kate touched her mother's shoulder, but she didn't turn around. Kate stopped trying to get her mother's attention and slowly began to survey the room around her. The walls were not as grey as the were now, and there were pictures that dotted the walls throughout the house. One picture in particular caught her eye.

    Kate slowly approached the picture and found, with shaking hands, that she could take it off the wall. The picture was of her father and her mother, on their wedding day, smiling. Her mother's eyes were filled with joy and her father's hand was wrapped around her mother's waist, pulling her close to him. The picture was lost after the fire on the day her dad went missing.

    "Maureen!" came a shout from the living room.

    Kate whirled around to see her father, charging into the room.

    "You didn't think I would find out?" he said. He grabbed her mother's collar of her shirt and shook her. "Did you love him more than me? Did you?" He turned quickly when the sound of a gunshot rang throughout the house. Kate knew what was coming. She couldn't watch her dad disappear. Even knowing how abusive had had been, she just couldn't bear to watch it.

    Everything happened in slow motion. Kate heard footsteps behind her and turned around in time to see the younger version of her standing by the stairs. She was only seven at the time. Kate whipped her head around, just in time to see her mother coming to scoop young Kate up into her arms. Kate knew the rest of the story. Her mother would escape out the roof with her, and they would stay away for a very long time until her father's debts could be paid. That was the last day Kate ever saw her father. She didn't know if he was dead or alive.

    What she didn't see coming was that when she turned back around to face the living room where the gunshots had come from, there was a man standing in the doorway. He was wearing a hood, but his eyes stared daggers right through her soul. He pointed his gun at her and fired. Kate let out a small yelp of surprise and when the bullet entered her brain, and then she felt nothing.

***

    "- there a doctor somewhere?" somebody said. Her mind was foggy for a while before she fully became aware of what was going on, but Kate eventually recognized her surroundings. She was fully aware that she was no longer sitting in the chair that she had started in, and that she was laying horizontally across a flat, hard surface. She looked up, careful not to tilt her head fully to the side, for the pain from where her detector had been ripped out was still shooting up and down her neck. A pair of hands steadied her head and tilted it back to the side.

Kate felt hot breath close to her ear. "Not now," a voice murmured, "You need to rest." After a while, Kate felt herself being lifted off wherever she had been lying. She tried to fight but a different voice murmured softly, "Stay still, we will help you." She felt the cool pinch of a needle entering her arm, and the voice slowly dipped out of her hearing range and she faded into blackness.