The celebrations had spilled out into the streets like a dam finally breaking. Shouts and wild, unrestrained laughter rose above the pounding music, raw with the kind of desperate joy that only comes when people are handed back something they had long stopped believing was possible.
The new government's announcement had been blasting from every speaker in town since dawn: All people would be given abilities. The stray label—the brand that had marked them, confined them, kept them as the lowest caste behind the walls—was ending tonight.
Daphne sat alone at a corner table in the little restaurant, watching it all unfold through the open doorway like a fever dream.
