Chapter 58 The Breaking Point

• The air tasted like smoke and shattered glass. By midday, Willowbrook’s streets had become a fever dream—flames licking storefronts, sirens screaming into void, faces twisted into masks of rage or terror.
• Sentinel’s enforcers prowled in black armored trucks, their rifles glinting under the ashen sky. But the people had become something feral, something even Gregg’s mercenaries couldn’t muzzle.
• I herded the last family into the library just as the clock tower chimed five. Ghost trotted beside me, her lean greyhound frame a silent promise of calm. The children clung to her, their small fingers buried in her brindle fur as she nuzzled their trembling hands.