Marked

Chapter One

I opened my eyes in start, breathing in as much as I could handle. I sat up and took a look at where I was.

I was in a room, the walls a dark blue and the bed soft. The sheets were silk. Bright sunlight shone through the big windows behind me. The bed I was in was facing two doors. A wire was hooked up to my arm.

I was stunned.

I felt my heart stop beating. I was dead. I was dead. So... is this... Heaven?

The only thing I thought to do was scream, and scream I did.

A man in a white lab coat rushed in. "Scarlett, calm down, Scarlett, it's okay." He went over to my monitors and checked the stats.

I was shocked into silence at how he knew my name. "Wha..." I couldn't ever utter a 'what.' "Who are you? How do you know my name?"

"You don't remember anything, do you?" The man shook his head, with a smile. "Scarlett Rennal, I am Dr. Isaac Williams. You can just call me Isaac. I'm sure you have many questions, but we have much more for you."

"Where's Chase?!" All I wanted was his arms around me. "Where is he?"

"Chase?" Isaac thought for a second, then snapped. "Oh, yes, Chase. Also known as Christopher Chase Sprier. His Mark, an eagle."

"Yeah. Where is he?"

"Uh... Listen, Scarlett, I don't know how to break this to you, so I'll start from the beginning."

"Where is he?"

"Just let me get to that part." Isaac thought for a moment. "Okay, so, in two-thousand, the government set out an experiment to see if people were told who they'd love, if it'd work. Like, in your society, with the Marks. So, this idea, this experiment needed test subjects, so we sent out "flyers" to randomly selected people with all different backgrounds to come in and try out this test.

"By two-thousand nine, we had enough volunteers—you and your family being one of them—to start the experiment. What you did was go into basically a coma where we made a virtual world for you to live in. In two-thousand nine, you were thirteen. So, in this virtual world, you didn't have any memory of your real thirteen years on earth, only the virtual thirteen years, does that makes sense? No, probably not. Basically we sent you into a coma with a virtual world with fake memories.

"So, we watched as you grew up in the virtual world, seeing how things would play out. As with your case, you became Unscripted, one who was against these rules. Although, one strange thing was the nightmares... We're still trying to figure that one out. We believe it has something to do with your rebellion.

"Okay, so, you missed out on a lot in five years so you'll have to take a history class—provided by the lab—to catch up. But, in short, Chase was fake. Not real. Virtual. Same with Dallas and your mother."

Chase is fake. Not real. Virtual. "So, you're telling me, that... my love of my life, the only guy who could possibly love someone as crazy as me, is fake. Just... something you made to play out?"

Isaac nodded. "We only made your friends, family, and background, the rest was computer animated and random. Chase could've easily been Dallas and vis versa."

"So, my actual mother..."

"Is still in the virtual world. You do one of two things when you go into the world, you either die young—like you—and wake up, or you play out the rest of your life in the virtual world. You see, as you age virtually, you actually age. So, just because you went under at thirteen, doesn't mean that your body is that of a thirteen year old girl. Physically, you're eighteen. Mentally you're eighteen. Just, five of those years were virtual."