25. Choke Up
Ben
Nobody ran for the checkpoints.
Even the former Splinter Council members stayed, though that was probably only because helping to defeat the Slivers might get them back into Bates’ good graces, which might put them in line for new bodies at the ends of their current lives.
I kept hoping to wake up, even if it was only to discover that I was still in that pod, at the peak before the next plunge into another nightmare cycle.
I’d prepared for battle so many times next to some of these people, always with the silent understanding that we might not all make it back, but that wasn’t the same as one of us planning not to make it back.
Mina planning not to make it back.
The difference kept sinking in, over and over again. Whenever it did, I’d try to come up with some brilli
