Rage Against the System

Prologue: Before he became the Federation’s blunt instrument, before the world knew his name as either a killer or a savior, Garrison (Gary) Dexter was just a boy watching his mother bleed out under a broken pink and polluted sky. They called it a "domestic correction." One of a thousand phrases sterilized by the Earth Federation's lexicon—language engineered to strip away guilt, emotion, memory. But Garrison remembered. The way the Enforcers burst into their unit without warning. The way his mother screamed his name just before the phase rifle silenced her. The way his father stood still, stone-eyed and uniformed, as if it was just another protocol. What was this feeling? Sadness? Anger? Emotions that the ancient forbidden texts spoke of? It was the day he stopped asking questions. The day he learned that survival meant silence. Conforming to the code. He trained. He obeyed. He enforced the code. By twenty-three, he was leading purge teams through the slums of the Outer Colonies, erasing names from outdated registries, incinerating “dissident code”. Arresting non-compliant citizens to be reprocessed. A righteous enforcing of the code- or so he thought. He was a perfect weapon—cold, precise, loyal. Just like his father. But something in him had rusted. Maybe it was the eyes of a child staring up at him during a midnight raid. Maybe it was the fragment of old Earth music he found buried in a confiscated datapad. Maybe it was the dream that came back, over and over again—his mother’s voice, distorted but unbroken, whispering: They lied to us, Garrison. They lied to you. Now, rumors echo through the grid: a rogue cell of insurgents calling themselves the Knights of Rage or K.O.R.—digital ghosts striking from the cracks in the Federation’s surveillance state. They say they’re fighting for the soul of humanity. They say one of their leaders used to be an Enforcer. They say his name is Garrison Dexter.