It's an either/or world now.

What boy my age didn’t dream of fleeing the well-tended lawn and lamp-lit street for the untamed wilderness, where grand adventure awaited on the other side of the horizon, where the stars burned undimmed in the velvet sky above his head and the virgin ground lay untrodden beneath his feet?

Hold on tight, Sam." He puts me in a choke hold. "Ahhh," I gasp. "Not that tight.

Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another.

The world is a clock winding down.

Maybe you reach a certain point in evolution where boredom is the greatest threat to your survival. Maybe this isn't a planetary takeover at all, but a game. Like a kid pulling wings off flies.

Please, do not leave me, Will Henry. I would not survive it. You were nearly right. What Mr. Kendall was, I am always on the brink of becoming. And you - I do not pretend to know how or even why - but you pull me back from the precipice. You are the one... You are the one thing that keeps me Human.