TW: This chapter will have a scene of killing/death and mentions of pedophilia
"My body is my journal, and my tattoos are my story" -Johnny Depp
*9 Years Ago*
(7 years old)
Annie POV
I suppress the need to scream in pain as the sharp blade slices into the upper part of my leg. Unfortunately, I feel a tear fall from my eye. Marissa rolls her brown eyes at me, wiping the stray tear from off my cheek. My hands tighten behind my back as I resist the urge to move away from her touch. Her dark green heels click against the floor as she walks back over to her glass desk. She takes a minute to clean the blood off of her knife before putting it down and turning her attention back to me.
"I hope that this serves as a lesson to you, to remind you who is in charge here. And if you ever disobey your superior again, I will send you to the box, understand?" Marissa calmly asked. My heart started beating a little faster at her threat of putting me in the box. I haven't been in it yet, but I have heard of what happens there.
"Yes, ma'am," I respond to her question, ready to be allowed back to my room so I can finally sit and take care of the wound in my leg that is oozing blood. A satisfied smirk falls on her face at my answer.
"77572394, you've been here for nearly a year now and, from what I've seen and heard, the best soldier of your year. Despite that, you still haven't killed anybody. The word is that you refuse to kill, even though your trainer has taken the necessary steps to get you to do so. As you know, it's the very reason that you're here now." Marissa stated, tapping on her desk twice with her pen.
She hadn't even placed the pen down yet when the double doors to her office opened, revealing two soldiers dressed in their usual all black attire, dragging in a girl who has a B on her wrist where my S is, meaning that she's a breeder. I can tell she's older than me but I don't think by much. She has long blonde hair that is covering the majority of her face. I don't get it why is she here? Even if she got in trouble she would go to her superior before she came to the superiors of the soldiers.
The girl keeps her head down as she is forced to kneel by the 2 soldiers standing on either side of her. The confusion I'm feeling must have been showing since Marissa began speaking, "You said earlier that you understood that you should obey your superiors when they told you to do something. And in my experience, actions speak louder than words so, as your superior, I'm telling...no I'm ordering you to kill her."
I loudly gasp, my eyes widening as I look between Marissa and the poor girl kneeling beside me.
"I-I... No, no. I can't, I-I won't" I stutter nervously, fearing for the safety of both myself and the girl beside me.
"Sweetie, I don't think you understand, I am your superior. And when your superior tells you to do something, you do it, without question. I tell you to jump you say how high, I tell you to get me food you get me food, and if I tell you to kill, you kill." Marissa tells me in a sickly-sweet voice, "you've been here for 2 days shy of a year now. That being said, you should know, here it's kill or be killed. And if you don't kill that girl right here, right now then forget going to the box, you're going straight into a body bag."
Marissa takes my hand from behind my back and places the knife she had discarded on the desk into my small but callused hand. Marissa stands tall in front of me, the look on her face neutral. Flashes of my family appear in my mind as I think of just letting them kill me. If I die then I'll never see them again.
With that thought in mind, I turn to stand in front of the girl, now squeezing the wooden handle of the knife so tightly my knuckles are turning white.
The girl lifts up her head, showing me her stormy blue eyes that hold nothing but desperation in them. Desperation for me to kill her or not, I'm not sure which one. I turn away from her, taking a place behind her.
My hands shake as I place the sharp tip of the blade against the place in her neck where her carotid artery should be. I make a glance at Marissa silently asking her to tell me to me stop. She doesn't.
I squeeze my eyes shut and take a deep breath before hesitantly pressing down and swiping the blade across the girl's neck. The two soldiers stepped away from the girl as she slumped over onto the large, taupe rug. Her hands reached for her throat, gasping for air, before the gasps stopped and she became motionless on the floor right in front of me.
It took everything in me to swallow the bile in my throat back down, so when I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, I had no energy left for me to keep them at bay.
"Well done, 77572394," Marissa congratulated me, a look of disgust showing up on her face as she looked at the motionless, bloody body lying on her rug. "You two dimwits clean this up, and if you want to save yourselves from bathroom duty then you better find me a new rug."
I stand still as the two soldiers work together to pick up the bloody rug and the body of the girl I just murdered. Once they clear the room, I slowly limp over to Marissa's desk, I turn the knife around before shakily holding it out in the air for her to grab. Marissa's brown eyes flick between me and the knife I'm holding.
"Keep it, let it serve as a reminder to you," Marissa tells me. I slowly nod my head, placing the bloody knife in my hand into the belt loop on my pants, I put my still shaking hands back behind my back.
"You're dismissed," she announces, turning her attention onto a vanilla folder on her desk with the words confidential written on it. "I'll be informing your trainer about your weapon, oh and make sure to get a sheath for it."
As soon as I exited the room, I animatedly start limping down the very grey and dull hallways, down the path that will eventually lead me to my room. The guards stationed around the place don't even give me a second glance as travel down the hallways and even if they did, I don't notice.
My eyes land on the third door located in the hallway named sector 7B. Though they keep the outside of the 4-inch steel door clean, the inside is a far different story. I soon stand in front of the door, bringing my labeled wrist up to the piece of tech installed on the side of it to scan. The green light goes over it 3 times before the click of the lock sounds and the door automatically swings open.
A gust of wind is felt on my back and the click of the high security lock sounds once again just as both my feet step into the room. Letting me know that I'm once again trapped inside this 4 walled room that is just barely big enough to keep everything that I need in it.
A shower head next to the door that automatically turns on twice a day. The stainless-steel toilet opposite from the shower head that has no back and barely flushes. My ration of 2 rolls of toilet paper that I get per month sitting on the dirty floor beside the toilet. Beside those is a little bottle of green germ-x one of the older members snuck to me.
It's considered a no-no item so during a room check and one of the soldiers caught me with it, I almost got into big trouble. But thankfully, the soldier let me keep it and agreed to not turn me in as long as I let him watch me get dressed for training. I let him since it wouldn't hurt anything, and I know that sometimes people get sent to the box if they get caught with no-no items. I was kind of uncomfortable doing it, especially when he got this big bump in his pants, but I really don't want to get sent to the box.
