Commandment One: You shall not betray the State, for your life is not yours to control.

Commandment Two: You are to obey your superiors, to never question your orders. You will live for the State, and die for the State.

Commandment Three: You shall eliminate all enemies of the State. Spare no one.

From the age of four, we were taken from our families and locked in prison cells, forbidden to communicate with others. Each day, the familiar whisper haunted us, like a snake coiling its way around our bodies, never letting us go. Its silver tongue coiled around our ears, hissing, “Commandment One...” By the time we were five, the commandments had been ingrained into our brains, whether we liked it or not.

We were made to pick up a pistol for target practice at the tender age of six.

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A knife was forced into our hands at the age of seven. Our minds filled with fear and horror, we cried as they guided our trembling hands...no, held them with an iron like grip, as the knife, shining with a cruel silver light, drew a slit across the neck of the enemy of the State, restrained by iron cables so that he could no longer make the simplest of actions.

When we reach the age of ten, all Sinners, as they call us, are sent to a testing ground to decide our future. Which amongst us will be eliminated, left to die as monsters wearing the face of humans and adorned in clothes dyed with the blood of their own kind along with the sin of themselves, tear at their flesh, as well as each other’s throats. As the doors open, we walk toward the uncertain future with wavering hearts.