Stateless

When you’re born without a trace, no one knows you’re a weapon. I lie for her. I hunt for her. I kill for her. And above all, I betray my mission for her. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t care why. I do. Treason comes in many forms. Love is one of them. Our training taught me to be a sociopath. A machine. A pawn. Nothing more than a tool for a larger goal, without attachments or feelings. Our teachers forgot one important detail: Pawns shouldn’t have hearts. Yet we do.

It's not against any formal rule for us to sleep together. It is, however, strictly forbidden to have feelings for each other. I can't do one without the other at this point. Which means I am doomed. When you don’t know who you can trust, reality distorts, reformulating to meet whatever needs its masters demand. Just like me. Just like Kina. Except everything is different now that we know who we really are. But there’s a second reality. This one can’t be manipulated. Solid and true, it takes our mission, our training, our orders, turning them into nothing but secrets and lies.

The future isn’t real. The past isn’t real, either. Only the present is, solid and full, flying at our faces, our bodies, our hearts and souls at breakneck speed as we work to take it all in. As we work to protect others. And, finally - ourselves. We’ve started to break the bonds of Stateless, a system as rotten as the one it seeks to destroy. But systems are organisms with one brutal goal: to survive, whatever it takes. Kina has to do the unfathomable to save a different system, one she created out of empathy and love for children we rescued from the only home they know.