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22 – Two Steps Forward
The trail finally came to an end at the base of a steep hill. The root they’d been following had come up out of the ground and lay on the surface, its slow pulses making it seem like a sleepy snake on a cold morning. Curt put his hand to his ear, acknowledged something, then pointed at the other three recruits on the East side of the hill, and they moved to join them. One of Brian’s cronies had a bandage around his arm, and bright orange paint had splattered onto his pants. ‘How many?’ Brian asked Curt. ‘One sentinel. Red saw four.’ ‘One conscious,’…
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20 – Forest for the Trees
There was an ocean above her head, and she couldn’t breathe. -pond, grandfather’s pond, she must have slipped- She reached for the surface. It was there. So close she could see the ripples in the- So deep, she was going to die- -floating, she was- She reached up, if only to see her hands, to see anything but the darkness- The bottom of the ocean was soft- But there was still so much further to fall- So much more darkness that could- She couldn’t stay- Stef jolted awake. There was darkness, and her heart slammed for a few beats, worrying that…
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12 – Objectivity
For a single moment when she’d first put on the uniform, she’d been a different person. There’d been a rip in spacetime, showing her a world where she was competent, where she wasn’t a total loser. In this reality, “total loser” was starting to look like an aspirational goal. Stef stared into the bathroom mirror and tried to calculate how much longer Ryan would let her hide before he sent someone in after her to enquire if she was experiencing a medical emergency. So far, he’d given her fifteen minutes, twenty would be pushing it. For the thirty-eighth time, she looked to the large frosted window, not…
