For three years they called me a freak—and I stayed silent—until they touched my little sister in front of everyone, and the truth I buried finally came out and changed everything.

“The shooter is an old classmate of yours from the Second Generation batch, and he doesn’t possess your unfortunate civilian sentimentality.”

My brain entered a state of hyper-acceleration, a cognitive overdrive mode that the facility instructors used to call the tactical zenith. The room around me slowed down, the rhythmic ticking of my old desk clock continue reading …