A woman this time.
Her hands shake slightly on her rifle.
My pulse spikes.
They were children too.
Dear God.
Wu’s calm starts cracking around the edges now.
“Your emotional contamination continues to compromise operational order.”
Gabriel steps closer.
“No. The truth does.”
Wu’s eyes turn glacial.
“You survived because of Sentinel.”
Gabriel’s voice breaks with fury.
“No.” He points at Avery’s body. “We survived because of each other.”
The exact words I said.
The tunnel goes silent again.
And suddenly I realize something horrifying.
Wu built Sentinel on trauma.
Isolation.
Control.
But the children survived anyway by loving each other in secret.
Friendships.
Protectiveness.
Tiny acts of kindness.
Humanity survived underneath all the conditioning.
That’s what Wu could never fully destroy.
My chest tightens painfully as I look at Avery.
At Gabriel.
At the operatives beginning to look uncertain.
Then memory hits again.
Hard.
