Riley counted seconds the way other people breathed.
In her first foster home, counting meant survival. If the screaming lasted over a hundred seconds, the fight was ending. Less than sixty meant someone was coming for her next. Even years later, she still counted. It kept the noise in her head under control.
When Riley woke on the bus, dizzy and tasting blood, she started counting automatically.
The bus shook violently as it moved. Somewhere behind her, a boy cried until a guard hit him hard enough to silence him. Riley kept counting anyway. She thought about the gray-haired man who had smiled after she threatened to kill him. That's what I'm counting on, he had said.
Eventually the bus stopped.
The doors opened to harsh white light and armed guards in black armor. No faces. No voices except one cold announcement ordering them outside. Kids stepped off one by one, terrified and exhausted. Riley followed carefully, observing everything.
They were in a giant loading bay filled with identical government buses. Too many kids to count properly. Around a hundred and fifty at least.
The guards pushed them through concrete hallways that smelled like rust and seawater until they reached a massive military ship. Inside, Riley memorized every corridor and turn while the others panicked.
Their room was nothing but metal bunks, bright lights, and a drain in the floor.
Rachel, a girl from the bus, cried almost constantly during the first days. Eventually even that stopped. Everyone became quieter as time passed.
The ship moved for two weeks.
There were no windows, no clocks, no night. Just weak meals shoved through a slot in the door and the endless vibration of engines beneath the floor. Riley counted everything—the meals, the footsteps outside, the hours between stops. The others slowly fell apart.
Then one day the engines died.
Hours later the doors finally opened, and sunlight flooded the room.
Outside was an island.
Blue ocean surrounded steep green mountains covered in thick forest. Armed guards lined the docks while hundreds of children were marched inland along a freshly paved road.
The deeper they walked, the stranger the island felt. The trees were ancient and massive, the air heavy with heat and salt.
Then the facility appeared.
Concrete walls built into the mountainside. Razor wire. Watchtowers. Dark windows. It looked less like a school and more like a prison no one escaped from.
At the gate, a voice echoed through hidden speakers.
"You have been selected for Project Last Generation. You will be evaluated. You will be trained. Cooperation will be rewarded. Resistance will be punished."
Some kids cried. Some looked ready to fight. Riley just watched.
The gates opened.
And she walked inside already counting.