Prologue: Gwen

"I'm recording this in case anyone ever finds it, so you can see...you can see how the world ended."

"Those were my words. And I believed them. That day they took the children, ripped them from our arms in the cruelest way possible…that would be the day the world ended.

"Except it didn't. The world didn't end. Children were taken. People died. Governments toppled. And yet the sun rose. The day after became the week after. Weeks became months. And the world simply refused to end.

"It felt like it should. Millions of children stolen in an instant, sold into slavery by those sworn to protect them. If the human race had any decency, we would blink ourselves out of existence in that instant. And yet we continued. The end would not come.

"I used to ask myself, why? How could we continue on after what we had done? But I knew the answer. It's because 90% of people looked at their children and were secretly glad the tragedy had happened to someone else. Someone else's child. I know because I felt it. Even as that sweet someone else's child was wrenched from my arms, deep down I was thanking whatever divine forces may exist in this god-forsaken universe that my own child was still safe in my belly.

"And it broke my heart. It breaks my heart to look at her now, because I still feel that way. As much as I may hate myself for it, my feelings haven't changed since that day. The day we looked our humanity full in the face and were terrified by what we saw. That was the day humanity died…and the world didn't end."