I can still feel the weight of the dead child in my arms. The memory of the slackness of his muscles after the last breath rattled out of his chest, lingers in my brain. His sightless eyes continue to stare at me when I am alone, and I know that I will never cease to feel the burden of their gaze.
I deserve to feel it. It is a stain on my soul I must carry.
Before all this began, I had no true understanding of the world beyond the border of Prineville, my small town in the Pacific Northwest Basin. Like many others before me, I had accepted life under the control of the Company, though I had secretly harbored dreams of living outside the barbed boundaries. But those were empty fantasies, wispy things with no substance. I know better now.
My hometown seems like a distant memory these days, clouded in hazy recollections and indistinct feelings. So much has happened that I am at a loss to pick up the pieces and put them into some semblance of order and normalcy. It is as though that period in my life happened to someone else, and all I know is the after—the world of recruitment, training, and killing.
My journey into the underbelly of my world truly began with my assignment as a Pathfinder. Covert missions led to startling truths as I was thrust deeper into the web encompassing the Drought Mitigation Corporation, or what most of us refer to as the Company or DMC. Then, in the bowels of Renascence, a micro-city within the walls of Brigford, I stumbled upon a secret the Company had kept hidden, evidence of something so profound that to reveal it would shake the very foundations of our society.
The DMC is creating a new form of human, reared in seclusion and secrecy. This mutation, born out of countless trials and tragic errors, is being bred for a purpose, one that feels foreboding. Like so many others, I assume that I have become one of the expendable, while those cosseted few are provided a world of opulence compared to what lies beyond their safe borders. The remaining masses, undeserving wretches, struggle for the scraps they are given and plod through life in a haze of despaired acceptance.
However, there is leverage in my knowledge. I have been given an opportunity to reveal what I know and rip away the veil that shrouds the power that controls us. But it has come at a great cost.
The resistance, those hidden freedom fighters that embody my thirst for truth, offered Springer and me a place within their ranks. It is a bold move, an irrevocable step that will put me on a path against an enemy who will stop at nothing to see me captured and killed. But there have been too many sacrifices to stop now. There is too much that can no longer remain hidden.
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