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Inked

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Published in StoryStar 2014 The elders say that our world never used to be like this, that once upon a time everyone’s faces were bare and you could recognise true beauty, but it’s now recognised as a myth; a legend even. I was momentarily stood on the fourth floor of the vacant London City hall building, staring down at the people that who had evacuated the place a few minutes ago. Most of the people in the crowd were important figures to the inked revolution whilst others were just workers: receptionists, cleaners, secretaries etc. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.

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Published in StoryStar 2014 The elders say that our world never used to be like this, that once upon a time everyone’s faces were bare and you could recognise true beauty, but it’s now recognised as a myth; a legend even. The crowd below me was in uproar: their faces looked completely stained from where I was standing that I was finding it impossible to look for features: lips, eyes, noses and even ears. Most of them looked shocked at the turn out of events but all probably only had one thing in mind: my face. I could just imagine all the things running through their minds: Why is his face bare? He’s a disability; a disease. I was momentarily stood on the fourth floor of the vacant London City hall building, staring down at the people that who had evacuated the place a few minutes ago. Most of the people in the crowd were important figures to the inked revolution whilst others were just workers: receptionists, cleaners, secretaries etc. I suddenly felt disgusted at the inked faces staring up towards me, waiting for my next move. I wonder, did the Perileans feel any sort of remorse when they started the inked revolution? Or were they as heartless then as they are now? I stare at the symbols inked upon their faces, amused. It almost looks as if it’s stitched or imprinted. The emblems that define them. A few hundred years ago, the Perileans, the people that rule over us all, decided that they were going to start a revolution. The revolution that changed every single person’s appearance and the revolution that I was seemingly not a part of. Your first emblem is automatically imprinted when you’re 10; they call it breakage. The process of accepting who you will be and the act that is recognised as coming of age. Every year from then a symbol is inked on your face, for example if you were feeling potentially successful in exams or life in general all year your next birthday you'd have the symbol for knowledge appearing on your face. Like this every birthday, from the age of ten, one symbol appears that depicts your personality until your face is covered just as if an artist had been splashing black paint on a blank canvas. Your face would be covered with stains and casualties caused because of the GC, the genetic change. For a year I’d been seeking the truth, answers to why I was 17 but my face was clean, pure and innocent as silk and the secrets that I had uncovered, on the way, would surely start the new rebellion; the rebellion against the Perileans. Every single detail of the next ten minutes had been planned time and time again but I still couldn’t deny the anxiousness that was swimming around in my gut. What if the windows weren’t as bulletproof or as shatter- proof as they say? All they’d need is one bullet and one chance and it would be over. Imagine that. There would be no way that the truth would come out. It's funny how all these important people beneath me have no idea to the causes of the inked revolution. What did not knowing feel like? Not knowing that you were living the life of a lie and not knowing that you were living under the rule of tyrants. I was as naïve as them, once upon a time, but then again it is amusing to see how much you could uncover in a day. My mind suddenly takes me back to the day I had uncovered the truth. On that particular Sunday morning, my usual monthly meeting with my father had gone horribly wrong. He had somehow let it slip that he wasn’t my biological father, so I did what I had to do, and forced the information out of him. The things he said were overwhelming. I had found out that my actual biological father was a member of the Perileans. But he wasn’t just a member. He was the very person that all the orders and decisions would be run through before they were carried out, the person who was involved with the murder of my mother and the person I had been targeting for a long time. He was the leader of the Perileans and he was my father. So to say I was angry, was an understatement. The anger had gotten too much that afternoon, so much so that I was left on the brink of insanity, incapable of thinking straight. I was so drunk on the fact that I was the son of my enemy, that I couldn’t comprehend what I was doing until I had actually done it. What I did next was exhilarating and one hell of an experience; but it was also reckless and stupid. The Perileans’ offices were situated in the west wing of the Houses of Parliament - it was common knowledge. But no-one bothered to intrude because the offices were locked with a pass code and an eye scanner. I remember only parts of what I did, since it felt like I was half awake. I had scaled the building before getting in through a window near his office. The next part was a bit of a blur but all I remember was covering the camera in the hallway before pushing the doors open to my father’s office. I can’t recall how I had gotten through the office’s security measures but that didn’t at all matter once I had read over all the information I retrieved from his computer. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was... something else. The things that I had read over that night were disturbing. They were gruesome and horrifying and most of it explained how the inked revolution came to be. I was reading it on my PD – (pocket drive, a small, compact computer given to every citizen) when I came across the GC. The GC, short for genetic change, was the explanation to every single detail regarding the inked revolution. When a baby is first born, it would, naturally, be given the meningitis and tetanus jab. A week later, a nurse would retrieve bloods from the child, so that the child would be put into the database. This whole seemingly innocent process was just a cover; it was a procedure that withheld the truth. The Perileans had added the GC to the meningitis injection, which when mixed together, would then start to consume the body, a large amount of it damaging the genes of skin cells on the face - hence the inking. The inking existed to cover this up and to conceal the truth. The only reason the Perileans issued it out was because the GC also implanted something called 'spatons' in the blood, which acted as storage vessels. Spatons retrieved tissue from the ethmoid bone, a bone located in the nose, and then it would lodge itself in a deoxygenated vein in the arm. When the child would go back for bloods the next week, the spatons would be taken out with about 7ml of blood. The blood would be taken to a camp, where the child would be put into a database and the spatons would be separated from the blood. What happens next? I absolutely have no idea but amongst the sophisticated language used in the report, the words beast, 3.1 and food came up one too many times. So maybe the tissue retrieved was food, food for what? Who knows? Anything is seemingly to be possible after the Perileans have started the inked era. That Sunday was incredibly tense. Since then I’d been copying the data into hundreds of small USBs that would fit into a PD and for the last month I started to fill the London city hall’s air conditioning pipes with them. All I now needed to do was press a button on a remote and then it would be set free. All of it, all the facts and all the data. All free. Last night I had fiddled around with the circuits and components of the air conditioning so that if I were to press a button the panels on the front side of the building would drop. Then when the AC is automatically turned on, the USBs would fall down on the people that were currently trying their hardest to get inside the building. Many from the crowd currently started to take pictures of me whilst others proceeded to throw rocks at the glass. Too bad the windows were shatterproof. People covered in black suddenly catch my eye and as I stare at their protective head gear and huge rifles I grimace. They looked intimidating. SWAT team had arrived right on time but the helicopter that was supposed to be here, ten seconds ago, was late. Nothing was supposed to make me change my mind on pressing the button; not even death. Ten. The remote is pressed down in the palms of my hand, my finger hovering over the button. Nine. The people down below are now flanked by SWAT and are in complete and utter outrage. Eight. The helicopters have arrived. Its thirteen seconds late not that it was going to disrupt anything anyway. Seven. A huge range rover has arrived down below and lo and behold, there’s a Perilean. Six. Exhilarating; everything just felt unbelievably exhilarating. Five. I smile. Is it my fault that I almost feel like a crazed psychopath? Four. It’s as if I’m taunting them; telepathically screaming at them to come at me. Three. I rub the top of the small microphone I stole, from the ground office, to check to see if it was working. Big mistake. Two. It’s almost the end of a reign and the start of another. The rebellion would bring peace; it had to. One. The button is stiff as I press down on it. Entertainment; this is certainly what you would call pure entertainment. Zero. Let. It. Rain.