Months bled into one another, and the world finally started to feel like it could breathe again. The rescues never stopped, but they stopped being raids in the dark. Now they were missions with names, with teams, with hope. Cedric stood at the center of it all, voice steady as he coordinated the deprogramming, the therapy, the new safe houses that were rising like islands in a sea of broken kids.Dozens of them. Scattered across continents, hidden in plain sight or buried in the dark. Each one a ghost wearing someone else's skin, eyes that remembered pain instead of faces. They came to the new center outside the coastal town, quiet places with blue water and wide skies, and Cedric met them one by one, hand on their shoulders, telling them the same thing over and over."You're not weapons. You're people. And people can choose different endings."It was slow. Painful. Some of them fought every single step, screaming at the light, clawing at the therapy tables. A few couldn't be saved, t
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