The Marked

Something Amiss

I glowered at Ashley who shrugged her shoulders as if to say "I can't call you Addy here." I looked back forward as the council conferred. Some (Elise) didn't want to "compromise their safety." I snorted to myself and everybody looked at me. I realized quite suddenly that it wasn't so much to myself.

As they continued to confer I noticed Elise giving me odd glares. The more of them I got the more I began to feel like a particularly nasty bug about to be squashed under a boot. I stopped noticing when they all came back to the table.

"Based on a unanimous decision," Ashley said looking at Elise who sighed and held her hands up in defeat. Ashley smiled, "We have decided it wouldn't jeopardize our safety for you to become one of us." She cleared her throat before continuing.

"First off I'll start by telling you who we are. We are the Society of the Obluctation Marks. We are like a rebel group who rescues Marked children off the streets and into our loving care. We organize small attacks on government facilities near us and blame terrorist organizations for it. Our facility is located underground that is why there are no windows."

She took a break to see how I was taking it. It was quite a lot to take in. taking my silence as reason to continue, she continued. "The reason we selected you had nothing to do with our friendship. We had been watching all of you for quite some time now. We began to plan an "excavation." The plan was to take all of your group. But, as I'm sure you know, somebody else got to you first. We aborted our mission of getting all of you and focused on getting you away from them. And we did and now you're here." She said as she gestured around her.

Everything seemed to make sense now. Although some part of me knew they didn't tell me everything about them or how they got me. I knew I should be grateful that they told me anything but I was still curious. The meeting adjourned and I ran to catch up with Emma and Zach.

I hugged them both and they told me what their jobs were like. "I get to blow up anything I want in the testing room and I get a boatload of firearms." Zach said proudly. "I just have to oversee all attacks and participate in them if I want to." Emma said and shrugged her shoulders.

I pulled them over to the side as people passed by. "What can y'all tell me about our Marks?" I asked curiously. Emma got a frightened look on her face and Zach looked around to see if anyone heard. "We aren't allowed to tell you anything about our Marks." Emma stammered out. "Please just tell me about this," I said as I held up my foot.

In the first few days since I'd had the injury it healed faster than normal. By the time we were at the fair the pain was manageable without crutches. The first day I got here the pain was gone and all that was left was scars. Now it had no scars and no crutches were needed. They didn't understand that so I gave them the backstory.

They both looked at each other and then at me. "Okay I shouldn't be telling you this but the Marks self-heal their hosts. Technically the Mark is a parasite but it helps the host because it can only survive in our bodies." Zach said as Emma kept looking around.

I just needed to ask one more question. "How many people have ever left here?" I asked Emma. She laughed, "No one, who would want to?" I found that odd. Out of all the people here I'd guess that at one point or another one of them must have wanted to leave.

"So I guess we've lost Josh, Will, and Jenna forever right?" I asked Zach. "No we are much more clever than that. We stuck a tracking device on Jenna's backpack so we can keep tabs on them." He said as Emma gave him the look like he's said too much. I thanked them and walked back to my room.

I'd gotten all of the answers I needed. I knew if I played on Zach's pride of the rescue team's skills then I'd find out if they knew where the gang was. I felt bad for tricking them but it had to be done.

Something wasn't right here I thought to myself. And I was going to figure it out.