The Marked Ones

Intro

My grandmother passed away when I was 10. But she didn't leave this world before telling me stories her grandmother told her. About the war that ravaged the Earth. According to her, there was a war for water because it was running out. Millions of lives were lost and dozens of countries were destroyed to a point that it could never again be salvaged.

It didn't make much sense to me. I mean yeah they needed water but they also demolished 90% of sustainable land. It was basically genocide that they brought upon themselves.

Thankfully people managed to survive. But if the war didn't kill then the diseases did.

When war struck global warming was at its worst and got worse when the air was polluted further. Ice caps began to melt completely and pathogens trapped inside the ice was released. People had never been exposed to these afflictions and so their bodies didn't know how defend against them. Again millions of lives were lost.

But the human race is resilient.

Younger generations began building up an immunity to these diseases and once again our race began to grow in numbers.

They learned to live in this new world and survive against species that had evolved over time. The harsh chemicals released during the war had enhanced the genes of natural predators. Just imagine a lion. Now imagine a lion on steroids. Times that by 5 and that's the type of animals that were stalking the Earth.

The human population never regained the numbers it once was years ago but they still managed to survive. Their numbers stayed constant.

They realized there was safety in number and so created communities. In these communities they began developing small sustainable farms from algae and learned to defend against the evolved animals. But things turned sidewards when they once again became their own worst enemies.

No one understood why some children were being born with symbols on their arms. These tattoos were unique and didn't harm the children but could not be explained. It was only as time passed that their meaning became clear.

The tattoos were not unique. For one person with a tattoo, there were two others with an identical one. My grandmother told me that these two people represented good and evil. If someone had the same tattoo as you it meant they were either your soulmate, who the universe hand picked for you... your match, or your worst enemy, who the universe hand picked to destroy your life which they called your clash.

More and more people were being marked with these tattoos. Unfortunately those who weren't marked became jealous. They thought it was unfair that these people could find their soulmates so easily and so resented the marked. Eventually societies in those communities split up. Into the marked and the unmarked.

This didn't last long though because marked people were hiding amongst the unmarked to avoid ever meeting their clash. Of course the unmarked now resented them so the marked had to be careful to hide their identity.

However not many marked hid. They instead stayed in their community or searched other communities for their match.

And that brings us to me.

Adeline Scott.