Something inside me snapped cleaner and more final than my collarbone. My left hand, my uninjured hand, was trembling uncontrollably at my side. But it moved with a will of its own, fighting through the waves of shock and nausea. It found the cell phone in the pocket of my pajama pants. My thumb slid across the screen, clumsy and slick with sweat: three letters, SOS. It wasn’t just a call for help; it was a vow. In that moment, as my parents’ laughter echoed in my ears, the scared, hopeful girl named Kenya died on that floor, pinned to the wall of her childhood bedroom. And from the ashes of that betrayal, Private Mack, a soldier, was born. I hit send, not with the hope of being rescued, but with the cold, hard certainty of a sniper pulling a trigger. They would pay for this.

The last thing I saw before the world faded to black wasn’t my stepbrother’s snarling face or the glint of the screwdriver. It was the smug, satisfied smile on my stepmother’s face. The game had changed, and I had just fired the first shot.

I drifted back to consciousness slowly, pulled from a deep, dark well of nothingness by a steady, rhythmic beeping—a machine. My eyes fluttered open, assaulted by the harsh, clinical glare of fluorescent lights overhead. The world was sterile white walls, the faint smell of antiseptic, and the thin, scratchy blanket covering me. The pain in my shoulder was a dull, throbbing fire, a constant reminder of the metal, the bone, the betrayal. I was alone, utterly and completely alone. This cold, sterile loneliness… it was a horribly familiar feeling. It was a ghost that had haunted me for years.