Cora first noticed the change in Alex when he stopped arguing with strangers and started calling out family.
At first, it was just frustration, muttered complaints over dinner as he scrolled through his phone. His aunt had posted some article about how immigrants were draining the system, about how the economy couldn’t support people who “didn’t contribute.” His cousin, a man who had once bragged about never voting, was now parroting the Circle’s rhetoric about how crime was rising because of “the wrong kinds of people.”
Alex didn’t ignore it. He never had that ability.
“You know this is bullshit, right?” he had said one night, slamming his phone onto the table.
Cora looked up, startled. “What is?”
“My uncle. He just shared a post about how the new camps are for ‘processing and rehabilitation.’ Rehabilitation for what? For being born in the wrong place? For speaking the wrong language?”
“Alex, they don’t mean it like that—”
“No. They do. That’s the problem.”
It wasn’t just the strangers anymore. It was his own family, their own people, slipping into the machinery of the Chairman’s world.
He started responding. At first, polite but firm—calling them out in the comments, linking sources, dismantling their arguments piece by piece.
It didn’t matter.
They dismissed him. Called him brainwashed. A radical. A fool.
His aunt sent him a private message: You don’t understand how the world works. We need to protect what’s ours. These people don’t belong here.
His mother told him to “stop causing fights” at family gatherings.
His father, once quiet about politics, had started talking in slogans.
“We need strong borders.”
“The government is finally working for us again.”
“These people take and take.”
Alex had laughed—not because it was funny, but because it was terrifying.
“You lived through the recession, Dad. You know who took your pension. Who shut down your factory. Who bailed out the billionaires while you lost your house. And you really think the problem is some guy washing dishes in a restaurant?”
His father didn’t answer. Because he didn’t have to.
He had chosen a side.
And Alex had lost him.
The arguments became less frequent because, over time, there was no one left to argue with.
His family stopped talking to him. His messages were left on read. He saw them at gatherings, but there was a new distance, an unspoken rule to avoid politics, to keep the peace, to pretend the world wasn’t crumbling outside their door.
Then one day, he went to send another response, to argue one more time—
And he stopped.
He stared at the screen, at the endless threads of lies, the propaganda, the unshakeable certainty in their words.
Then, he deleted everything.
His accounts. His comments. His entire online presence.
It was no longer safe.
Not just because of them, but because he knew what was coming.
The day he bought the gun, he didn’t look like a man preparing for a fight. He looked like a man preparing to disappear.
Cora had been home when he came through the door, the black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. She saw the way he clutched it, his fingers digging into the fabric like it was the only thing keeping him upright.
“What is that?” she asked, even though she already knew.
Alex didn’t answer right away. He set the bag down carefully, deliberately, like something fragile was inside.
“Insurance,” he said finally.
“For what?”
He exhaled, running a hand through his hair. His eyes, once sharp with defiance, were now heavy with something else—resignation.
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “But I don’t think we’re going to have much of a choice soon.”
Cora had always thought of guns as something other people owned—paranoid preppers, gun-nut hobbyists, the kind of people who built bunkers and stocked canned goods and talked about being ready for something vague and unspeakable.
Alex had never been one of them.
But he wasn’t talking about rebellion. Not about fighting back.
He was talking about survival.
“The economy’s collapsing,” he told her. “The Chairman’s locked out half the agencies. Magnus Vail controls the Treasury. The Circle owns everything now. Food prices are through the roof, but they’re still cutting social programs. Rationing’s next. And when people start starving, when they can’t afford heat this winter, when the banks start freezing assets for Unity Score violations, you tell me what happens next.”
She didn’t answer.
Because she already knew.
They had watched it happen before, in countries far away, places they were told were different from here. But it wasn’t different. Nothing had ever been different.
The descent was always slow, until it wasn’t.
Cora didn’t argue when Alex hid the gun. Didn’t argue when he stocked the pantry with food that didn’t expire. Didn’t argue when he made her swear never to open the door for strangers.
Because by then, even she knew he was right.
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