Milestone! This is a momentous occasion," he tells her cheerily. "It should be witnessed by a friend." She throws him an icy gaze, and he does a verbal back pedal. "Aaaand since no friends are present, I'll have to do.

Leadership is about keeping toilets flushing," the Admiral once said. "Unless you're on the battlefront. Then it's about staying alive. Neither are pleasant.

How much do you know about the Heartland War?' Connor shrugs. 'It was the last chapter in our history textbook, but we had state testing, so we never got to it.

Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.

All this time, Lev ever realized what he needed. He did not need to be adored or pitied. He needed to be forgiven. Not by God, who is all forgiving. Not by people like Marcus and Pastor Dan, who would always stand by his side. He needed to be forgiven by an unforgiving world.

This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds.

Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are.