I’ve always hated the word “orphan.” It’s supposed to mean someone lost, someone abandoned. But here, in what they so charmingly call the “St. Lucien Orphanage,” it means nothing of the sort. Orphans, yes, but not of parents—they are of society. Of money. Of morality. Of rules designed to preserve the comfortable and punish the inconvenient. I am sixteen, though they’ve never bothered to check my actual age. I am, as they like to classify, an “experimental subject,” though the term is cleaner when pronounced in French: Sujet d’Expérimentation. It rolls off the tongue, as soft and elegant as the velvet ropes surrounding the richest people’s playgrounds—the ones funding this little paradise of rules, injections, and subtle tortures. They feed us, clothe us, educate us, and, oh yes, test us. The truth is always wrapped in sugar and politeness. A needle, a notebook, a smile—they all taste like authority, and we learn to swallow it. Or choke. I remember the first time I realized I could make things move without touching them. A book, a chair, even a fly—twitch, sway, flutter—and it obeyed. I was terrified and exhilarated, all at once. The headmaster called it a “developmental milestone.” The nurses whispered that I was “special.” And somewhere deep inside, I wondered whether they meant it as a compliment or a warning. Because here, being special doesn’t make you human—it makes you useful. But I am not entirely compliant. There’s a spark of rebellion in all of us—or maybe it’s just hope in disguise. We dream in whispers, we exchange glances that burn with secrets, we plot small defiance that, if caught, becomes another line in our case files. They will never understand that the power of the human spirit cannot be quantified, extracted, or injected. That it exists stubbornly, unaccounted for, between the lines of their reports and spreadsheets. So I hide my thoughts, like everyone else. I smile when asked, I participate when monitored, I let them think they control me. But behind every polite nod, there’s a plan, a question, a spark that refuses to be extinguished. And in this playground of the privileged, of the rich and the systematic, I am learning: survival is a game, power is a game, and perhaps, just perhaps, freedom is a game we might yet win.