The street was too quiet.
Jay's boots struck the pavement like a ticking clock—soft, measured, unaware they were counting down to the end of his world. He was eighteen. Barely old enough to vote, barely old enough to die. But fate doesn't ask your age before it carves your soul in blood.
He saw the red and blue lights before he heard them—flashes of color bouncing off the windows of his neighborhood like firelight. Home wasn't supposed to look like this. Not soaked in sirens and shadows. Not crawling with uniforms and suits that reeked of law and lies.
Jay broke into a run.
He shouldn't have. He should have stayed hidden. But he wasn't thinking—he felt something. Something wrong. Something tearing. His chest tightened with every step, until he turned the corner and saw the nightmare.
His front door was open. His mother's scream had already gone silent. His father's body lay crumpled on the porch like discarded trash. Blood soaked the walls. Agents—men with cold eyes and colder hands—stood over the bodies of his family, calm, detached, methodical.
And then he saw her.
His sister.
Ten years old. Innocent. Bright. Still holding her stuffed rabbit.
A gunshot.
Jay didn't remember screaming. He didn't remember charging. He remembered pain—searing, white-hot pain—and the darkness that followed.
They left him there.
A bullet buried in his side. Heartbeat slowing. Breath shallow.
They thought he was dead.
But death… didn't want him.