MARKED

CHAPTER ONE

You wake up and get hit with a blinding look at reality from your apartment window as per usual. The light hurts your eyes. You should be used to it by now but you cant just get used to it. Besides today something is off. Everything is tinted with some sort of mix of hot pink and purple. "hot purple" You think to yourself. Then it flashes. You flinch back, your eyes hurt from the blinding light. You feel something ignite in your chest as if it was laying dormant. You fall against the bed gasping for air and in pain. You start grasping for your phone but you cant feel the pain any more. Then you think "no one even cares" "my parents cant do anything and my brother is always too busy with his new job". You get up and start getting dressed for the day and see a mark. It looks like a plant with thorns on it, but it appears black and rotten. Then it hits you, you have a mark of power. You call in to your office job saying that you will take the day off for urgent business. You quickly get dressed and go onto your laptop looking for a bus heading for the OMC. Short for the office of marked citizens. You find a bus headed there grab your backpack, Stuff it with your laptop, and lunch, and exit your apartment building to catch the bus. As the craziness of your situation dawns on you, you think "this is crazy I have a mark! ". You hop onto the bus and you see many people sitting there with bruises and cuts. Wearing backpacks filled to the brim with anything of value they could find. You know that if your color isn't good or you'll end up like them. Bruised, and battered. Just to get enough money for a small apartment food and bills. While others are making millions buying yachts and such luxurious things. The reason is their power, they get it easy while others have to truly work to make a living. You enter the building for the first time. You truly realize how big it is, you know the numbers 2 square acers, ten stories, massive glass dome smack dab in Vegas. But now you understand how truly gargantuan the building is. But you ignore that and take a look at a map and see where you need to go. So you beeline it right to where you need to go. The man at the counter asks you "name age license" you respond by saying "Michael Smith, age 22," and give him your drivers license you never use, because cars are too expensive. He checks it he says "you are... good. Entrance fee" you hand him twenty dollars and the door next to you opens. You walk into a waiting room and sit down amongst a handful of people anxiously waiting for when they get evaluated. They're evaluation controls their percentage which controls their Status and how they are looked at. Eventually it is your turn. People there give you a crystal and tell you to give all your focus to it. After that you give the crystal back to them and they put it in a machine. They tell you to go back to the waiting room. You sit there for a bit waiting for the results anxiously. Then it happens they return with a registration card and you read the percentage 72%. You feel as if a weight has been removed off you.