Author:
M.J. Swenson has been writing stories since elementary school and earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. Besides writing and reading, M.J. also enjoys playing music and video games.

I woke up feeling that something had changed.

I blinked twice, waiting for my eyes to adjust, and glanced at the clock beside my bed. It read 6:38, as it did every morning. I slid out of bed and moved to my dresser, where I opened the third drawer and pulled out a dark blue V-necked shirt with short sleeves and a dark blue pair of pants. I changed in front of the mirror and examined myself. I looked just as I had the last time I’d looked in the mirror: long, straight, dark brown hair; blue eyes; an absurdly straight and narrow nose; the slight scar at the edge of my eyebrow. The scar whose origin I still couldn’t remember.

Familiar Assassins

"Please come back," I whispered, even though I knew it was irrational, that Cas would never come back. I would never see his face again. Maybe I would never remember that he existed.


Tears blurred my view of Terminus even further.


Would the System say I was to blame for his death? Would they claim I'd put ideas in his head, ideas that had forced him to end his own life? That I'd done it on purpose?


Would they think this proof that I was a rebel, and arrest me?


The tears stopped coming. At first I thought I needed to go back to Terminus, that I needed to find shelter with the rest of the revolution, but then I remembered what Thane had told me. That I needed to consider erasing myself from Incipio. That Cedric had infiltrated the office of Nero Randall. If I was arrested like Thane had been, would they spring me? Or would they leave me to find my own way out?


Chapter 39