The scent of freshly laundered clothing that had been dried in the desert sun lingered around him. She breathed deeply, remembering how kind he had been to her that day, and she closed her eyes....

Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity.And if this is humanity’s last war, then I am the battlefield.

And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.

Kudzu is going to destroy something called Aevum.

For one last time, I said my goodbyes to the place I’d known as home for the last decade, and for the first time, I welcomed the unknown.

HECUBA: I had a knife in my skirt, Achilles. When Talthybius bent over me, I could have killed him. I wanted to. I had the knife just for that reason. Yet, at the last minute...

…because of the foulness of her mother’s emotional river, a current which ran swift, changing its path without warning…

The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness,...

Perfect crime,’ he said softly. ‘Yes?’ ‘Persuade an innocent, idealistic young girl that the future of the human race depends on her sacrificing her own life. She will come into hospital as trustingly as a...

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even...

I know who I am, and I’m being true to myself.

Find our way out, Greenie. Solve the buggin’ Maze and find our way out.

A glacial chill rushes through Gage. He whips around just in time to see arms clutch Summer around the middle and drag her into the dark. Panic seizes him, and he takes off after her,...

I run from nothing and no one.

I would kill for a cheeseburger. Honestly. If I stumbled across someone eating a cheeseburger, I would kill them for it.

To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically. Because you cannot discern our differences, you assume we have none....

Who the hell are you?

The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.

(ghost of)ACHILLES: How can I force obedience on this? In other times I’ve used the fear of death to make a woman bow herself to me. If not the fear of her own death, then...

knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith

A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each...

Zombies are not just fictional creatures that devour the flesh of the living. They also include those who follow the words of others without thinking for themselves. This world is falling apart. I don’t think...

Sorry, kid. You don’t get to exist in story; you’re too different.” You don’t want to be part of our present dystopia that tells kids that if they just stopped being who they are they...

Life involves a lot of unknowns.

A twisted, pale figure writhing in agony, chest bare and hideous. Tight, rigid cords of sickly green veins webbed across the boy’s body and limbs, like ropes under his skin. Purplish bruises covered the kid,...

Homo sapiens! The name itself was an irony. They had not been wise at all, but incredibly stupid. Lords of the Earth with their great gray brains, their thinking minds had placed them above all...

When it comes to matters of the heart, immortals know nothing.

Time for the world to end.

should know that freedom is more important than being safe.

A mix of revenge, sadness and anger funnels into a decision that’s so simple and neat, it could fit in my pocket. I will help Kudzu destroy Aevum. Just like Magnus destroyed my mother.

Eric, you need to look at the whole picture,” the PM said. “You look at the jobless as a huge pile of scrap and you’re looking for what can be recycled. That’s good. That’s your...

Oh that voice, so sweet. Rich, like the taste of vanilla ice cream, vowels like flute music, warm caramel consonants. She could float in that voice forever and not miss a thing.

They say that when people still rode on vehicles powered by oil, they could go anywhere they wanted.

…I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life railing against the game of soccer, an exercise that has been lauded as “the sport of the future” since 1977. Thankfully, that future dystopia has never...

Two-thirty comes during Testifying. It’s Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion.But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger. Her fault, her fault, her...

He saw the rules of life clearly for the first time and they were simple: it was a game where Death was the only winner.

This was my world: cold, tangled and distorted. -Keira

Who did the council fight?””It split in two and fought itself.””That’s suicide!””No, ordinary behaviour. The efficient half eats the less efficient half and grows stronger. War is just a violent way of doing what half...

The wren goes to’t

Simon hated her for that. Perhaps it was automatic. Her appearance alone made her different from him, and human beings had always feared and hated anyone who was different. Two thousand years of history saw...

Another man’s property or not, Creed could not walk away from this and ignore it. He draped an arm around her and drew her to him so that her cheek rested against his thigh. His...

Saben cómo pensáis, pero no saben cómo sentís.

Hold on!” The ground is so close and I can see the green grass and smell the scent of it mixed with the sulfur. He helps me turn around and I lock my arms around...

My fingers find his. They are warm, pulsing with genetically altered blue blood, powered by mirror matter.

Beyond the queues, the vacancy screens listed jobs in a multitude of languages. Invariably, they were low-paid and short-term dead-ends. Nearby, people in headphones sat at a bank of machines: the blind and the illiterate...

The zoo grounds reeked of desolation, but the silence had an undercurrent, a silvery vibe, like the hush of a concert hall just before the first note.

I don’t understand’, I say,’why they care what I think, as long as I’m acting how they want me to.”You’re acting how they want you to now’, he says,’but what happens when your Abnegation-wired brain...

Should have taken warning it’s justPeople mourningRunning, hiding, lostYou can’t find, find a place to go, so it’sRed skies at nightRed skies at night, whoa oh, oh oh oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh… red skies at night, red...

It was a sad loss, this illusion of importance, a humbling blow.

It was a room full of ghosts, arranged in readiness for days that would never happen.