Chosen Ones

Chosen Ones

the lost souls

book one

tiffany truitt

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Tiffany Truitt. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.

Edited by Stacy Abrams

Cover design by Heather Howland

Print ISBN 978-1-62061-000-8

ePub ISBN 978-1-62061-001-5

First Edition June 2012

Manufactured in the United States of America

To my nephew:

May you always be brave enough to speak your mind and

reckless enough to love fully.

They taught us all the wrong things growing up.

They didn’t teach us what it meant to want.

Or that there was a certain kind of purity in feeling.

They taught us about lust but not love.

About losing power but not gaining it.

They didn’t teach us girls what we needed to know.

Instead, they damned us.

Chapter 1

I didn’t expect him to be so rough with me. It wasn’t what the chosen ones were made for. They were meant to protect and guide us.

My arm throbbed where his hand had latched onto it, dragging me from my hiding place. The thought of being touched by anyone, especially a chosen one, would be enough to make any girl flush with embarrassment, but I only felt confused. It was strange to feel anything at all.

He was good. The chosen one didn’t betray the desperate fierceness of his grip to the crowd that had gathered to watch my branding. He remained as we were meant to see him: beautiful salvation. No flaw marred his face. Perfectly symmetrical. He looked human. Only the mismatched colors of his eyes—one green and one blue—signaled his artificial status, despite all the genetic work done to make us feel comforted by his appearance. And he
was
human. He was humanity’s only hope for a future.

“You do understand why you’re here?” asked the chosen one. I wanted to smirk at the dryness that issued from his voice, but I didn’t think it would do me any favors.

Instead, I simply nodded. I wouldn’t speak until he forced me.

“Can someone silence him?” the chosen one said. It was the third time he had asked for the sobs coming from Robert to be quieted. The moment the chosen one had brought out the branding iron, Robert had fallen apart. I refused to look at him.

Louisa, my younger sister, moved to him. His sobs ceased for a moment, just long enough to listen to whatever she whispered to him, but he soon started up again. I couldn’t help but think of her then—Emma. She was the reason I was being branded.

She had died only hours before, and I could still hear her screams echoing inside the dark place I kept all the other memories.

Anyone else would have run to her, but I wasn’t so keen on watching blood ooze from her as that
thing
tried, granted pointlessly, to crawl its way out. I had remained rooted to the lopsided chair in the hallway outside the compound’s infirmary.

That broken chair, discarded and forgotten, clung to me as much as I clung to it. The chair was simply another reminder of the state of my people. It still existed, but no one seemed willing to notice it was damaged.

I had known my sister was dying. I would watch her go not in the comfort of a happy home, but in the compound, a place we were forced to live in during the war, when our women’s inability to breed started the creation of the chosen ones.

She’d screamed. I could hear it stick in her throat, caught in a mixture of saliva and blood. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Cry? Run around frantically? Beg God for her deliverance? These were the actions of the girls in the videos we were commanded to watch over and over in the compound—countless examples of weakness. There was nothing to be done. No cure. I couldn’t fight this battle for Emma. To feel was beyond dangerous.

I’d glanced down the hallway outside the infirmary and saw them waiting—the crowd. It was small, but I knew every scream, every outcry, every warning that the end was near would bring them closer. They needed to watch her death. They
wanted
to watch. Sometimes I thought the only way we could remind ourselves we were alive was to experience these moments of death.

What happened to Emma was a consequence of her breaking the rules. She’d heard the same lessons I had. She knew them by heart. Emotional entanglements only led to physical trespasses. We, humans, were weak. We couldn’t be trusted with our emotions. Unlike many of the naturals, she seemed to understand. But she fell in love. She gave in. When she was with Robert, she was crazed.

I wouldn’t be like her. I planned on surviving this place. After she was gone, I would be free of all connections, all parasitic relationships that threatened to make me care in a world where caring about anything was a waste of time. There was still Louisa, but I never knew how to be there for her. Robert would have to pull himself together for both of them.

I couldn’t care about anything or anyone.

I’d kicked over the chair before heading inside the infirmary. The outburst was all I would allow myself. Emma had been lying on the cot, soaking herself into the fabric. Sweat covered every inch of her body, and I noticed her blood seeped beyond the white sheets onto the cement floor. I looked to Robert. Her husband. What fools they had been. Didn’t they know this sort of thing was pointless?
I couldn’t understand why anyone got married anymore. It wasn’t commitment. It was murder.

She reached out her hand to me. I hesitated. It would make her feel better, but was this small bit of comfort worth the risk of feeling something?

I glared at the midwife who was vainly trying to keep my sister breathing. I wondered what it would feel like knowing no matter how hard you tried, you would always fail.

Death was expected.

There were no exceptions.

The midwife looked to me and I could read the emotion in her eyes: she was asking my forgiveness. I gritted my teeth and moved my gaze away. Emma had decided some uncomfortable meeting of two bodies in hopes of creating life was more important than her family and her own existence. It wasn’t the midwife’s fault, but I couldn’t give her any comfort.

I knelt down beside my sister, hoping the action would quiet her unnerving, unceasing cries for me. Her bright, feverish eyes bore into mine.  “Did she live?”

“She?” I asked skeptically.

Emma repeated her question. Her longing for an answer was evident in her voice.

“No. It didn’t live.” I knew my words sounded harsh, but what was she expecting to hear?

Her gaze had flickered onto Robert then. She was done with me. She had only needed me for the truth he was too weak to give her.

…

“We have brought you together today to witness the branding of natural 258915. Do the naturals accept this transfer?” asked the chosen one. His words jarred me from my thoughts, and I reminded myself that thinking about Emma’s death would do me no good. I should remember my new responsibilities. As the oldest female in my family, Emma had been branded and forced to work at Templeton. Now that she could no longer carry out the term of servitude, I would take her place.

The crowd nodded together. They accepted this without question.

“Very well. Natural 258915, do you understand why you are being sentenced to work at Templeton?”

I nodded. I covered my wrist where my identification number could be found. Strangely, my leg twitched. I took a deep breath, steadying myself for what was next. The questions I would answer. The only time I would let them own my voice.

“We do these things to continue the education that can only save your people,” the chosen one said. “Why is the female so dangerous?”

I cleared my throat, wishing I didn’t have to do it before talking. I wanted to sound strong.

“Natural 258915?”

I blinked. How easy it was to fall away from this place, settle in my own mind.

“The female is dangerous because of her natural tendency to embrace humans’ emotional side and her ability to elicit and encourage sexual activity,” I responded. “Sex equates full and utter dependence on someone else both physically and emotionally. There is a brutal war going on right outside our home; we can’t afford to be distracted.”

I was happy with how confident my voice sounded. Sure, it was almost a word-for-word imitation of the videos we were compelled to watch growing up, but I had always excelled at playing the part assigned to me.

“How does the council offer you salvation?”

“The council created the chosen ones. These beings are meant to protect us, created to be superior to naturals in every way. They fight our wars. They offer hope that our species will go on.”

“And your payment?” he asked.

“Nothing but our aid in the chosen ones’ training center at Templeton. Every family will offer their eldest daughter as servant for a period of three years starting at the age of sixteen. We supply the female because it is her wantonness that has allowed our men to become weak. It is her body that will no longer bear children.”

“And what of the women unable to turn from their own feelings of lust? What do we offer them on top of our many gifts?”

“The council will sterilize any woman who chooses to have the procedure done. It’s a choice, not a mandate,” I answered.

Many women took the council up on the offer. Young girls at the first sign of menstruation would be rushed into surgery. Yet often this sterilization process was seen as a sign of weakness—no one wanted to appear ruled by her own desires.

I knew there was no point in physical relationships at all. I would never be stupid enough to enter into one.

“Do you see, naturals, how we offer you protection?” the chosen one asked the crowd.

Yes.

“What would make someone ignore our warnings? What would cause someone to quicken the end of her people?” he asked me.

At this moment, I looked straight toward Robert. I wanted to watch him as I said these words. “Not all women listen. Some are able to turn a deaf ear to the videos, choosing to ignore the connection between sexuality and betrayal.”

Many naturals claimed the council could fix us, rid us of whatever genetic coding caused us to want. Hell, they created life in a lab; surely they could end our suffering. Naturals for years begged the council to rewire us girls. But the council refused to force this on anyone.

The illusion of choice was all-important. Some people just didn’t realize that choice doesn’t necessarily mean freedom.

“Please, step forward, natural 258915.”

I didn’t blame the chosen one who would burn the mark into my skin. My eyes didn’t waver from Robert’s. I hoped he remembered the promise he failed to keep.

This was a small sacrifice to be protected. I would serve my time. I would do my duty.

As I stepped forward, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Someone else was watching me, as he always watched me. Henry. He was a boy who had once been a childhood friend. Somehow he had turned into a man without my noticing but, then again, it was hard to follow all the changes in a person when that person didn’t want anything to do with you. He was no longer my childhood friend; we were no longer children.

I felt my face go red. I could still always find him in a crowd.

I was ashamed.

A second chosen one entered to assist in the procedure. I found myself unable to look on him for long, afraid he would notice the redness of my cheeks. I quickly glanced at his face and saw the most peculiar thing: he had a scar. A chosen one with an imperfection. Right on his chin. Strangely, I wanted to laugh. It was there I stared. Right at that scar as the iron burned the slash mark into the back of my neck.

My skin was enflamed.

It was bliss.

I felt safe.

Chapter 2

I stared at myself in the mirror in the compound’s communal bathroom. If I turned my head just the right way, I could see the edge of my bright red scar creeping out from the collar of my shirt. I would be marked forever. There was no erasing the slash mark from my body.

It tingled, like skin after ripping off a bandage. The only difference was this sensation didn’t seem to be going away. I thought about the young chosen one who assisted in my branding, about the imperfection that marked his chin. Was his scar like mine? A punishment for something he had no control over? Payment for some act he wished he didn’t need to perform?

I wanted to know more about the chosen one. The mark on my neck felt like the final line in some story no one bothered to read. I wasn’t the author of my own history. And no one cared how it ended.

I tugged on the sleeves of my uniform. Perfectly fitted white cotton shirt with a ruffled collar. Ankle-length gray skirt that didn’t dare show any leg. My hair covered the wound on the back of my head. I looked exactly as if I had been pulled from some nineteenth-century painting of a little servant girl.

The uniform was like a second skin.

Footsteps sounded from the hallway. I left the bathroom to see Robert staring at me. He looked sickly, like any minute he could join Emma in death. This was what love did to you.

He opened his mouth to speak, but I held up my hand to stop him. “Don’t bother. I’ll be fine,” I said.

I didn’t wait for a reply. I pushed past him and headed toward whatever future had been decided for me.

The smell hit me first. It was unfamiliar and seemed out of place in the chosen ones’ posh training center. It burned my nostrils. I tried to push my nose under the top of my cotton shirt, but still the odor invaded my space.

The light of the room was blinding and so different from the natural light that streamed from the windows of the upper levels of Templeton. Here in the basement, the darkness felt like it was hiding Templeton’s secrets. But of course, this place didn’t have any secrets to hide.

A continuous beeping noise drew me away from the doorway and deeper into the room. I was not prepared for what I saw.

They were everywhere. Young chosen ones, not older than ten or eleven.

I clutched the bucket my supervisor had given me earlier.

They lay perfectly still in medical beds, tubes protruding from their seemingly innocent-looking shells. I could barely contain the need to touch one. They couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, and despite their eyes being open, I knew it would be years before they were truly awakened. So many chosen ones waiting for their moment to seize control.

This was not how I expected my first day at Templeton to go.

Built in the mixed styles of Jacobson and Victorian architecture, Templeton was a monument to what the council sought for our war-torn country—a return to supremacy. The large estate was built of brick and stone, the inside filled with works of art and period furniture ravaged from museums left penniless when funds were redirected to war programs. Everything in the mansion was a statement of purity, including the glaringly white walls and floors. Combined with the pastel-colored adornments, it was a reminder to all naturals, who themselves lived in glorified prisons, of what we once were. Nothing could appear too modern in the home of the very things that defined our modern age.

It was the picture of deception.

I would have to pretend I didn’t notice the imbalance of it all. The council watched my people lose their homes, move to shanty towns and tent cities, before finally being rounded up to live in barely hospitable compounds that were mostly renovated abandoned buildings—somehow having survived through the bombings.

But nothing came free. We would have to pay dearly to feel so protected.

The war started before my grandparents. My father’s generation was the first to live in shantytowns, and my generation the first to die inside the walls of the compound. The next generation would be filled with only chosen ones. Places like Templeton would be their homes.

We were supposed to be thankful to have a training center located in our sector. There were only three total in the whole of the Western lands, and because our sector lay close to the borders that separated us from the Middlelands, we were honored with a whole young army of genetically engineered superhumans.

My time at Templeton would be spent making sure the training chosen ones had everything they needed. I would stand silent as I watched them learn physical combat. I would clean out the trash from classrooms where the teacher preached on about the evils and wantonness of the naturals. I would scrub floors as the chosen ones wandered aimlessly among the bountiful grounds of Templeton, while my people were confined in the compound. I would wash dishes as the chosen ones wished for the day when they would no longer have to keep watch over the naturals. I would fold laundry as those above us lavished in their life of decadence, while my people struggled to mend our hand-me-down uniforms.

At least that’s how I expected to spend my days.

Instead, I met with something a little different. I was directed down to the basement while the other girls were given the menial jobs I expected to receive. And there I found nearly thirty of them. Thirty incubating chosen ones.

Perhaps this was some sort of initiation? Most new girls at Templeton started in the spring, but because of my family’s special circumstances, I started in the fall. No one bothered to spend much time welcoming me or boring me with all the rules. I couldn’t help but feel slighted and wondered if it was because of the way in which my sister had died. I was marked, and not just by the branding that graced my neck.

As I stared wide-eyed at the young boys, I wondered how many would make it through the incubation period. The first thirteen years of their lives were spent in this fashion. The creators had to make sure they were flawless, with no sign of deformities or illness. From ages thirteen to seventeen, they trained.

Should I have felt sorry for these things? They had no knowledge of the world. They had no parents. They had no God. They were soulless.

“Through the next door,” a voice called out, startling me from my observations.

An older natural looked at me over the chart he was holding. A creator. The chosen ones may have been wielding the power, but the naturals created them. We gave away everything. I wondered how I didn’t notice him when I first entered the room.

“You’re in for a treat,” he said with a chuckle. His laugh sounded odd as it echoed off the walls. He worked directly with the chosen ones. How did he have time to laugh? His job was so important.

I said nothing as I pushed past him and headed through the second door. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I dreaded going inside this room. I actually feared it. And I didn’t embrace fear—it was a harmful emotion. Yet some part of me had awakened, now screaming to turn away.

The bucket I was holding fell out of my hand.

I had entered hell.

There was blood everywhere. It was spilled onto the floor and splattered against the walls. I vaguely heard a low cough somewhere in the room, and it reminded me of my sister—the way the blood had gurgled up from her throat. The beating of my heart inside my ears made it difficult to determine where the nagging, wet sound was coming from.

I could see the outline of a man hunched over a table, could make out what appeared to be red-stained handprints on his white coat. He didn’t stop whatever he was doing to instruct me. He merely called out, “I’m almost done here.”

I couldn’t move. I drew breath in ragged increments, hoping to force air inside my quickly closing lungs.

“There. Finished.”

It was as if these words suddenly wiped out the mysterious sound of coughing.

The man turned to me. A smile graced his face.

“Sorry for the mess, darling. But that’s how these things go sometimes. It must be your first day. They always send me the newbies.”

As he moved away from the table to come and shake my hand, I saw it.

The body was so small, so lonely. So pathetic. I could see in the structure of its face that someone had wanted this thing to be perfect. I could see the attempt. But it was a monster.

One arm, obviously longer than the other, was covered in cuts and bruises. It hung halfway off the medical table. The legs, which appeared to be broken, lay at such jarring angles that it seemed geometrically impossible they should exist. There were fresh scars and stitches covering the small thing’s abdomen.

And the blood. It was everywhere. A memory whispered to me. I had seen something like this before. Something to do with my father.

I couldn’t turn away, unable to deny what I saw. I noticed the dirt and blood that lingered under its fingernails. This thing had tried to fight back. There was no way it had been allowed to be awakened, not fully, but somehow it knew to fight.

“If you could just clean up the mess, please. Someone will be down for the body.”

He didn’t wait for me to shake his hand.

I wanted to scream at the man, beg him not to leave me in this room, but he was gone before I could produce the words. I hadn’t been alone in years. Living in a compound with hundreds, I was never able. Here, just me and the body, I couldn’t fight the growing sense of panic, no matter how hard I tried. If fear were going to devour me, it would be in this place.

I stumbled to the floor, pulling my bucket closer to me. I didn’t reach for the rag, but placed my hand directly into a puddle of blood. I let it ooze through my fingers. It looked and felt just like our blood. It was nothing to be afraid of. You must face your fears in order to conquer them. My father had always told me that. It was only blood.

But I couldn’t stop the images.

I thought of her, my sister. I thought of the dead thing they ripped from inside her.

I wondered, was this what life was?

Blood.

I let it drip from my fingers.

Nothing to be afraid of.

With a shaking hand, I grabbed the rag and began to scrub.

After I was done, I somehow made it back to the main floor of Templeton, where my supervisor was waiting. She was a natural just like me; I vaguely remembered her saying her name was Gwen. Everything about her was perfectly tailored, from her starched skirt to the gray hair she had tightly pulled back. I wondered how long she had spent at Templeton. What sin had been committed for her to work here long enough to be promoted? Not that it was really a promotion.

A slave’s still a slave no matter what you call her.

“You are probably thinking I sent you down there as some cruel joke,” she said, leaning against the wall. It was the first time I noticed how tired she seemed. When she’d met me earlier in the day, she’d snapped out her commands, barely looking at me. Now, it was as if she was too exhausted to even put on an act of disdain.

I said nothing, just looked at my hand. There was still blood there. I began to furiously wipe it against my skirt.

Gwen sighed. “Down this hall and to the left. That’s where you must go. The room needs dusting.”

I continued to rub my hand against the fabric.

She shook her head and started to walk away. “Welcome to Templeton,” she called out. As she moved down the hallway, I noticed there were two slash marks burned onto the back of her neck.

I wondered if the old saying held true: three strikes and you’re out.