A low hum vibrated through the cap. Jonas felt a gentle pressure behind his eyes, like a sneeze that wouldn’t come. Memories surfaced unbidden: his father screaming at a referee on a little league field. His own fist connecting with a classmate’s jaw in ninth grade. The hot, righteous flash of anger—so pure, so his .
Jonas’s lips moved with the others. Fifty men and women in grey jumpsuits, sitting on sterile metal chairs, their heads fitted with damp electrode caps.
The loading screen flickered, a sickly green against the perfect white of the clinic’s walls. Jonas stared at the progress bar: It was the final block. The one that would make him safe .
She looked at Jonas. “How do you feel?”
Jonas opened his mouth. The old Jonas—the one who loved his grandfather’s rifle, who remembered the taste of rage, who had a name instead of a number—tried to scream. But his vocal cords were no longer his to command.
