Tag, You're It

100 years ago, due to overpopulation, the world's governments, leaders, and dictators joined together to enforce a world-wide game to help the population to stop growing.

Tag.

There was a twist. At the end of every day, whoever was still 'it' would be put to death, and the 'it' would transfer to a random person in that area.

Why didn't they just 'run away'? Every human, excluding government officials and their children, had a chip in their neck. The chip connected to a major artery, and when 'tagged', the chip lit up blue. No one could see this 'blue' except for the police, who had special goggles to see the chips. Red meant you were safe. Blue? You're it. And if you were still it by midnight, boom. You're chip would shut off the artery, causing you to die in excruciating pain.

- - - - - - - - - - -

For Alexander, life was simple. He never worried about getting tagged, because for the past ten years, the taggers had always been in the poorest parts of China, India, and other parts of the world, far away from the USA.

Until it started to go downhill. The tagger had been from southern China and hated the american people. He was willingly tagged and flew to the USA, where he tagged someone, then died from suicide.

All of the sudden, Alex was in fear of his life. The tagger slowly got closer and closer to his state of North Carolina, and the USA was going into chaos. Mass suicides from fear of being tagged became a regular thing. People from his school started disappearing, and his own parents stopped going to work.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I ran as fast as I could, breathing heavily. They were behind me.

I rushed down the stairs, my hair sticking to my face from the sweat pouring down my body. I had been running for hours, and they never seemed to stop chasing me.

They were right behind me, I could tell.

Then I heard the words.

Those God-awful words.

"Tag. You're it."