Everyone you trust to watch your back will eventually stab it. My parents had really skudged up. The hatred for who they were and what they'd done far outlived them, almost growing as time passed. Who hated them the most? Not the Wardens. Not the Chancellors on The Judgement Board. Not even the people in Khizmit who'd been subjected to their crimes. The person who hated them most was the sum of all their parts, including, I'd been told, their proclivity for violent crime. Me. Victor-27. Khizmit had captured and killed the criminals, my mother included, and we-the lurpers, the offspring of the criminals-were trapped in this cold hell, not for the crimes of our parents, but for the crimes we were sure to commit. What a load of slag! None of it mattered anyway. All that mattered to me was graduation. I couldn't do it alone. But if there was one thing I'd learned in prison, it was this: Everyone you trust to watch your back will eventually stab it.