The system wouldn't let up.
[You need to pull yourself together.]
Its voice sliced through my skull like cold steel as I crossed the sun-baked parking lot toward the building. Sherry's sharp eyes locked onto mine from across the distance, pulling at me even as the argument raged inside.
[You're running out of time. Get back to the purpose.]
I never left it. I just have a life as well.
[Everything you're looking for is inside your purpose.]
Sherry smiled, one hand raking through her short brunette hair as I closed the gap. She thought she had all of me. She didn't. Half my mind was still locked in brutal combat with the system, and I was losing ground.
Fine. You say you have answers. Then tell me who that person was—the one moving through the infected like smoke on the plain before I reached the walls. The one I couldn't see.
[That was before me. I can't access it.]
Then stay in your lane and only engage with things actually connected to the purpose.
