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Chapter eleven

Forest

M y feet dig into the ground, kicking me farther away from the group of Officials now swarming the girl in a ring-like formation. Fallan moves with me, scanning the area repeatedly. My head is filled with an indescribable pain. Clutching my mark, I feel its burn grow with each passing second. I grab a fistful of Kai’s shirt, doing my best to pull him back with me. Kai looks dazed, as if he has no idea where he is. The group begins whispering, all stagnant, waiting for someone to ease their worries.

Some try to leave, only to be stopped by the wave of new Officials beginning to fill the area. Fallan’s hand still lingers on me, grabbing the back of my collar to stop me from slumping forward in a pain-filled scream. Rae and Max observe the girl, both wide-eyed and nervous, not even batting an eye in our direction.

“S-Shifter!” the girl on the ground yells again in a groggy voice, escalating the whispers into a full-blown panic.

“God damn it,” Fallan whispers, grasping his head. He begins grinding his teeth with a look of pain. His hand retracts, holding his chest while his other fist bangs to the ground.

Kai turns toward me, barely acknowledging Fallan’s proximity to the both of us. Hunter stays back by the booth, hiding behind the structure. Kai grabs my face, letting his panic overcome him in shallow breaths. I feel his pulse work against the side of my face from his wrist.

His hands shake, lined with nervous sweat.

“Did she just say Shifter-” his words are cut off by his own eyes rolling in the back of his head. His mouth hangs open, losing his voice seconds after he begins to speak. His hands drop away from my face. His body slumps backward, hitting the ground with a loud thud. His chip blinks green behind his ear. The scream is ready to leave my lungs as I move toward my brother’s motionless figure.

Fallan’s hand drags me back by my collar again, forcing my head and body harshly into the ground. His hand presses on the back of my neck, keeping my body still from my squirms. His eyes are barely opened, his chip blinking in the same way as everyone around me. I see the glow of my chip in his eyes before he shuts them. Feeling the dirt coat my face, each Official holds out their devices like remotes. Everybody begins collapsing like Kai, only to become still on the chill ground.

All the students are motionless. All except the girl, who still screams in pain, begging for a sense of relief as she slowly bleeds out.

“If you want to stay alive, close your fucking eyes and don’t move,” Fallan whispers, letting his body go as limp as my brother’s. I let my eyes shut nearly all the way, only allowing a tiny sliver of vision to pass through the slit in my right eye. Fallan’s hand is warm against my neck. I try focusing on the heat it gives off rather than the fear encompassing me. The Officials drag over the girl's partner, letting his blood trail along the grass as they toss him next to her. She grasps her throat as tight as possible, clinging to life in any way she can.

Why have they not started treating her? Why is no one moving?

The Officials kick the feet of the boy, cocking their heads at him, ignoring the girl’s loud painful grunts. Dirt coats my mouth. My breathing has slowed despite my want to hyperventilate. Kai is still motionless. The twins are slumped on one another, looking as peaceful as they do when they sleep. Each student's chip blinks.

No one is awake.

No one. Except us.

Fallan looks peaceful, only convincing me of his consciousness with tiny peeks of his eyes at the Officials swarming the two injured students. His thumb moves every so often, running along the bare portion of my neck, keeping me from screaming out in pain.

Why are we awake? Why are the Officials just standing there when these Untouchables need help?

And how did Fallan know what was happening?

“Can he be saved?” an Official questions, kneeling toward the boy with a curious expression.

“Yes,” another says, spinning around his Re-Regulation device with a grin. “Without any recollection or proof of it, just like the rest of these sorry idiots,” the man says, mocking every student utterly unaware of what is happening to them. My throat feels dry, as if it will close on me at any moment.

I don’t move a muscle. In every scenario, I should be able to run to these men and get them to take me home or bring me to safety. They’re Officials. Their sole purpose is to protect the Untouchables and regulate peace. But now, at this moment, all I want to do is get far away from them. They smile as if a girl is not bleeding out in front of them.

The girl spits up more blood, hitting the pant leg of the Official closest to her. Her blood reaches my face, coating my lips. Fallan’s hand clenches my neck, stopping me from flinching at the feeling. I remain still, listening to the curses of the Official as he scolds the girl for dirtying his pants.

“Help me,” she spits up, watching the men use my mother's Cure-All to begin healing her partner. Another holds a device close to her partner's head, letting the pairing light sync up with his chip before inputting a series of codes I cannot see. The boy's breathing begins to regulate. The Official had healed him, leaving him with nothing but a deep scar.

“Make him think he got it from hopping a fence to spend some alone time with her,” the Official closest to the girl begins with a point toward her.

If memory serves me well, that voice belongs to Adam, Josh’s father, a man I have seen my own father with several times.

“She still looks terrified and conscious. Have you not run the commands yet?” Adam questions, looking over to the man waving a device over the girl in the same fashion as he did to her partner.

“I already put it in, sir. She should be unconscious like the rest of them,” the man holding the device says in a tone that suggests nothing good.

Adam looks thrilled, kneeling to observe the girl carefully. She continues gasping, trying her best to push away his hand, which has now found itself exploring up her front. Grasping her shirt, he tugs away at its bottom to reveal her slender torso. I hold back my vomit at his actions, biting my lip as hard as I can, tasting my blood in the process.

“Sir?” the man holding the device questions, watching Adam tug up the girl’s shirt. Adam pauses, stopping at her collarbone as all the men take a sharp breath. Her chest rises and falls at a rapid rate. She’s barely able to take a full breath with the weight of Adam’s hands now holding her down on the ground. His finger traces below her collarbone, finding a blemish that makes my blood run cold.

A mark.

It's the exact mark I bear.

“No wonder a Shifter attacked her…. She’s Tainted,” Adam says, forcing his knee on her chest, motioning the other men around him to look closer.

“Holy shit, how did she slip past her Expulsion Test?” one person questions, getting only a scoff from Adam.

“Katiana has been getting lazier and lazier with those tests for years. If you ask me, she’s purposefully letting them roam free to ruin this society. Just like the rest of those Unfortunate fucks,” Adam seethes, spitting on the girl’s face.

He just defaced an Untouchable as if she were an Unfortunate.

She writhes away from the crude gesture, wincing as Adam grasps her jaw.

“What do we do now?” the man holding the Re-Regulation device questions.

Adam says nothing as he jabs his fingers into the girl’s wound, coating his fingers in her blood and letting her screams fill the air once more. Adam quickly swipes the Re-Regulation device away from the man, placing her blood on a small test strip often used to test blood sugar in older Untouchables. The screen loads as Adam remains crouched over the girl.

My anxieties grow as Fallan clenches the back of my neck so tight I think he might be trying to suffocate me. I know it is nothing more than fear driving his touch. The device sounds a chime, the screen flashing red, coating Adam’s face in the light from the device.

“What a shame,” Adam murmurs, reaching into his coat pocket.

“What did it say?” one of the men questions, looking over the screen with wide eyes.

“You, my dear, are only 12% Tainted,” Adam starts, looking over the girl with a wide grin. She claws at him, only hurting herself in the process. “Sadly, that's not enough to keep you alive,” Adam hisses, pulling out the pistol from his holster and pointing it straight at the Untouchables head.

The loud bang fills my ears. It takes everything inside of me not to flinch away. Her blood covers my face and Fallan’s, streaking our cheeks in red. I see the smoke exit the wound in her head. The horrific scream in my lungs only festers at the sight of her fragmented brain scattered across the lawn. Her eyes are dull and lifeless. Her blood coats the ground around her. Adam’s face is splattered with her blood as well. His smile remains plastered to his face as he draws his weapon back to his holster. All of the men look unamused, conversing about after-work activities as if this is all nothing to them. There are no words to describe what I felt at that moment. If Fallan weren’t touching the back of my neck right now, I would have vomited right there on the spot, outing myself to the murderers who have always been our protectors.

But they killed her without a second thought.

They killed an Untouchable.

An Untouchable who was supposed to be protected by the very man who pulled the trigger, all because of a mark like the one that paints my torso, like her blood that now paints the lawn.