The only person Brandon wanted to see was his mother. Looking out from between two shattered panes of glass, he took in the recent destruction: his favorite deli reduced to rubble, the smoldering library in the distance, bodies in the street strewn like play things for some omnipresent yet absent deity. And the smell … his brother told him to turn away and put the tarp back on the window, but he wanted to feel it all. Against his better judgement, he wanted to feel the sadness, the chaos, the dismay. Before this happened, the Overseers had told the population that this was the first phase of a plan to reinvent society, to ensure that every being was created equal. _First, we must purge_, the posters read. He could see remnants of one of them, tattered, flying in the wind. The breeze tickled his arm, like his mother used to do as they played. He could still hear her voice, although it had changed when she became the Head Overseer.