“These children will be our blade in the dark,” Keller said. “Untraceable. Unstoppable. The world is changing. Conventional warfare is obsolete. With Project A.N.G.E.L., we’re not just fighting wars—we’re stopping them before they start.” The room went still as ( Senator ) Lockson finally signed. His hand shook as the pen touched paper. “Thirty-six kids…” he murmured. “God help us.” Above them, the Capitol slumbered beneath a light dusting of snow. Somewhere in the suburbs, b

Let the Hunt Begin Clouds smothered London’s moonlight, drizzle turning sodium lamps into blurred halos. The reek of jet fuel mixed with the stench of bad memories. “Here we are,” Destiny Petunia muttered, adjusting her jacket. “Never thought we’d ever come back as tourists. Can you believe this shit?” It had been years since they had been here. Last time, the city was on fire before they left. “What’s next, Rox?” Roxanne Rose was the smallest of the three, but she carried th

Athena learned early that healing was never clean. Blood carried memory. Trauma left fingerprints no antiseptic could erase. Bodies remembered what minds buried, and sometimes remembering did more damage than forgetting ever could. That was why she was afraid. Not of death. Not of pain. Of mercy. Jerika sat on the edge of the cot, boots unlaced, hands folded with the careful symmetry of someone imitating calm. A borrowed jacket swallowed her shoulders. Her eyes tracked every

Jerika didn't notice when it began. There was no moment she could point to, no clean fracture. Only a slow narrowing of the world, like a lens tightening. It likely started around the time sleep loosened its grip on her—when rest became something her body requested but her mind quietly denied. When she lay down and closed her eyes, darkness did not bring relief. It brought inventory. Threats were named. Possibilities weighed. Conversations replayed until every stray word had

“Five. Any update on our target?” Roxanne’s voice slid through the comms like a blade laid gently against skin—calm, controlled, dangerous only if you forgot what she was capable of. “Negative, One.” Jerika’s reply came soft, filtered through distance and glass. “Target’s still holding.” A thousand yards away, the safehouse squatted beneath the night like a bad memory refusing to rot. Once, it had been theirs. A fallback. A place to breathe when missions went loud and the wor

The storm didn’t arrive so much as crawl across the dead highway, dragging its black belly over the skeletal remains of Interstate 93. Lightning tore open the sky in jagged white wounds. Thunder rolled long and low, a sound big enough to swallow footsteps, screams, and the relentless echo of the ones hunting them. The A.N.G.E.L team moved across the collapsed asphalt when the first round shattered a rusted streetlamp above them. Glass rained down like dying stars. Then the su

She wasn’t the fastest or the smartest. But when things fell apart — she was the one who made them hold.