Are you scared?

That has been your life's question, ever since three weeks before your 6th birthday. The day when the stern-faced man and the woman in a black suit came to the orphanage. One by one, children were called into the room, then burst out a few minutes later, wailing, sobbing hard, snot and tears coursing down their cheeks.

You didn't really pay much attention to them. You had found a bug and were watching it - a big beetle with a glittery green shell. Its wings didn't quite work right, but that gave you the chance to catch up to it and watch it. Probably meant that it would die soon. But you could appreciate it for the time being.

Then the stern-faced man crushed it with his well polished shoe. "Your turn, boy." He motioned for you to follow. And you did.

The woman in the black suit smiled at you as you entered. On the counter behind her was something wrapped in flashy foil with a band of colorful printing around it. You stared. And as the man closed the door, standing outside, she picked it up and showed it to you. "Do you like chocolate, little one?"

You told her you haven't ever had it, but the smell - the smell is making your stomach twist in desperate want and flooding your mouth with saliva. She laughs a little at you, and puts it down again, out of reach. "If you're very good and complete all these tests, I'll let you have it. The whole bar. All to yourself. Now stand straight, please, I need to get some measurements…" And you hardly notice as she pulls out a tape measure and flits around you.

All you are focused on is that chocolate bar. It's imported - obviously so - and the label has a dancing cartoon panda bear on it. The foil is even stamped with smiling images of its face. It reeks of something you will later learn to call bourgeoisie decadence. You very clearly know things like it are not allowed here, because the Glorious Leader, who loves all citizens, looks out for the spiritual and physical welfare of the populous. But there is the way it smells, and the way the foil glints. You want it. You want it.

The woman in the black suit smiled at you and then wrote a few things down on her clipboard. "Very good. Now, I need to step out for a moment. My associate will continue the testing. Be sure to answer all his questions, and stand very still and don't move, and if you do these things, you'll get the chocolate bar." Her instructions were clear, and you nodded vigorously to show that you understood.

For a brief moment you considered trying to jump up and get the chocolate bar, and then running off with it. But you didn't think you could manage jumping from a standstill. You were staring at the winking panda mascots printed in the foil, thinking about how to get a running start or move furniture around, when you were interrupted.

The stern-faced man was not friendly, he was not smiling, and he was not holding a clipboard. Instead he reached inside his coat to bring out a gun. A pistol. He pointed it directly at your head.

This, you realized, was what made everyone else cry. For a brief moment it made you want to cry, too, but you were too busy staring at the chocolate bar. The lady told you not do move. So you don't.

The barrel of the gun was cool against your temple, and the man glared down at you, seeming impossibly tall in that moment.

And then he asked: "Are you afraid?"

You didn't answer him quite at first. If you were truthful, you knew, somehow, that the chocolate bar wouldn't be yours. They were adults looking for somebody to say the right thing. So you guessed, and you guessed well.

"No," you told the stern-looking man.

He put his gun away, then opened the door, and let the woman in. Then they talked in whispers: Nice flat face. It'll be a good blank canvas. No family, even distant - less chance of being compromised. On schedule for growing well. He'll do. Let's take him.

"Come along," the woman said. Actually, she used your name, but the day after she woke you up before dawn to start training and told you with cold seriousness that from that day forward you had no name. And you believed her. You embraced what she told you so thoroughly you can't even remember it - erased from distant memories completely.

Their car was large and black and foreboding. It was the first time you ever rode in a car. And there was no time to pack - you had to leave all your old clothes behind. You didn't really mind, though, because getting out of the orphanage was supposed to be a happy thing, and you were happy, not because of that, but because you had the entire bar of chocolate all to yourself.

Ten miles down the road to the capitol, your stomach heaved and rejected the sweets. The day after you were made to clean up every speck of the mess. But for those ten miles of bliss, it tasted like victory.

Now the lawyers are here, and they are asking you the same question.

Are you afraid?

They are dressing it in finer words, and the girl has her haptic interface up for her device, and you can see a bottom corner blink and pulse with the fear it reads. You can tell you have just started to break out into a sweat.

It would take a miracle for a distraction. And even if it did happen, you wouldn't leave immediately. You would stop by the vending machine on your way out. Food is good. Food is victory. You get fed by completing missions, by being flawlessly in cover, by doing what they tell you to do. A vending machine doesn't have those sort of qualms but your head is spinning sick and you desperately want a taste to remind you so you can feel full of something of anything -

There's a woman in the gallery who has been watching you, and you have been watching her (but in a casual way, a spy's way, a way she recognizes). She slipped out a few minutes ago. Down the hallway. Fifteen seconds or less to disable the emergency alarm on the fire door. Up the stairs. To the roof. Unpack bag. Put together rifle. Load rifle. Get into position. Aim.

Any moment now, any moment now -

They are asking that question to you again. How many times do you have to tell them that you are a void, a nothing, and you cannot be these things? You are an absence of, you are a black hole, you are a mask without a face or a soul, you are whoever they need you to be -

Your hands are shaking.

Even as you talk your eyes are desperate, searching. There are police at every exit. There is no way to jump from pieces of rubble up to the top - and even if there was, there is the sniper, waiting. All of these words are flowing out of your mouth before you can stop them. They are yours, but you are a nothing, an absence of, a lack - they cannot be yours, you don't have a voice, you only have voices that they give you - but they are yours?

Your fingers grab a little too firmly as you pull away another mask, and dig momentarily into your own flesh. There will be bruises there tomorrow.

Nearly down to your last mask. Taking it off is unthinkable. Your hands and shoulders are shaking now. Something is twisting inside you. It takes you a moment to figure out what it is. You are so used to looking at a distance, to casually dissecting and then moving on, but this is close and dug in deep to your bones and you can't pry it away. It has been so long since you pushed it away but it has always been there, and you have swallowed it down, and down, and down, until this point, because the floodgates are bursting. You can almost see the hairline cracks on yourself as you unravel. This was not supposed to happen, this was never supposed to happen, they are all so disappointed, they are all thinking you are so very weak, but most of all, they know you are a liability now -

Are you scared, they ask again, and you finally know the answer is yes.

When the sniper's shot finally comes, it is, above everything else, a relief.