25/08/2026
👁️ THEY LIVE AMONG US 👁️
Final Part: The Children Without Families
The black vehicles were less than two minutes away.
Tari could see dust rising behind them.
At Jonas’s homestead, Hammond was still sitting beneath the tree with the family he had discovered only days earlier.
He didn’t know they were coming.
Tari did.
Her radio crackled.
“Unit Seventeen. Withdraw immediately.”
She remained where she was.
“Confirm withdrawal.”
Tari switched the radio off.
Then she ran.
⸻
Hammond saw her first.
His smile disappeared.
He knew Tari only from the Friday-night network.
Unit 17.
They had never met in person.
Yet the moment he saw her running towards him, he understood.
“We have to go.”
Jonas stood.
“Who is this?”
“There’s no time.”
The grandmother looked from Hammond to Tari.
“What is happening?”
Tari heard engines approaching.
“Everyone inside. Now.”
Jonas refused.
“This is my home.”
Hammond grabbed his arm.
It was the first time he had touched the man he increasingly believed was his biological father.
“Please.”
Jonas saw the fear in the boy’s eyes.
He obeyed.
⸻
The vehicles stopped outside.
Four people stepped out.
Ordinary clothes.
No uniforms.
The woman leading them looked towards Tari.
“Unit Seventeen.”
Tari said nothing.
“Step away from the civilians.”
“What happens if I do?”
“That’s classified.”
Tari almost laughed.
“You trained us to recognise evasive answers.”
The woman’s expression hardened.
“You are jeopardising an operation that existed before you were born.”
“So did his family.”
She nodded towards Hammond.
“And apparently you missed them.”
For the first time, the woman looked uncomfortable.
Then Tari’s phone vibrated.
One message.
UNIT 4: ONLINE.
Another.
UNIT 11: ONLINE.
Then another.
And another.
Across the country, screens were lighting up.
The children were watching.
⸻
Tari lifted her phone.
“Whatever happens here is being transmitted.”
The woman stared at her.
Tari continued.
“If Hammond disappears tonight, every unit will know.”
“You’re bluffing.”
Tari smiled.
“You trained me not to.”
The woman’s radio suddenly exploded with voices.
Control had realised what was happening.
Units were refusing to disconnect.
Some were demanding access to their files.
Others were asking questions nobody had dared ask before.
Where did I come from?
Who were my parents?
Was I really abandoned?
Do I have a family?
One question became hundreds.
And suddenly the programme had a problem no containment team could solve.
It could silence one child.
Perhaps ten.
But not all of them.
Not without destroying itself.
The woman looked towards Hammond.
Then Tari.
Finally she raised her radio.
“Stand down.”
⸻
The investigation took months.
What emerged was worse than Tari imagined.
The programme had originally been created after the country emerged from a period of instability.
Its purpose had been legitimate: identify abandoned children with exceptional abilities, educate them and eventually offer them careers in intelligence.
But over decades, rules had changed.
Convenience replaced ethics.
Some children had genuinely been orphans.
Others…
had simply been classified as such.
Files were incomplete.
Families had been wrongly told children had died.
Children had been told relatives didn’t exist.
Hammond was not the only mistake.
There were seventeen others.
Then thirty-one.
Then more.
The programme was quietly dismantled.
Several senior officials disappeared from public life.
Some faced prosecution.
Others denied everything.
Government spokespeople insisted no such programme had ever existed.
Perhaps that was predictable.
Secrets rarely confess willingly.
⸻
Hammond was offered a choice.
Stay with the programme under a new identity.
Or leave.
He chose Jonas.
DNA testing eventually confirmed what the supermarket cashier had noticed in seconds.
Jonas was his father.
Years earlier, Hammond’s mother had disappeared while travelling with the infant.
Jonas had searched for them for years.
He had eventually been told both were dead.
When Hammond learned this, he cried for the first time Tari had ever seen.
Not because he had discovered that somebody had abandoned him.
Because he discovered that somebody had looked for him.
There is a difference.
⸻
Tari was offered the same choice.
“What will you do?” Hammond asked.
They were sitting outside her homestead.
The goats wandered nearby.
Tari smiled.
“Tomorrow is Monday.”
“So?”
“I have school.”
Hammond laughed.
“After everything that’s happened, you’re going back to Form Three?”
“I have a mathematics test.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
Tari shrugged.
“I’m top of the class. I have a reputation to maintain.”
They laughed.
Then Hammond left.
⸻
At 4:30 the following morning, Tari woke automatically.
For a moment she almost began her usual drills.
Then she stopped.
Nobody was ordering her anymore.
She stood outside beneath the fading stars.
The village was silent.
She fed the goats.
Watered the vegetables.
Put on her uniform.
And walked to school.
At 7:35 exactly, Tari entered the classroom.
Dusty shoes.
Old uniform.
Faint smell of goats.
Exactly as before.
A boy at the back whispered:
“Here comes the goat girl.”
Tari heard him.
This time she turned.
The class went silent.
For years everyone had expected Tari to ignore them.
Instead, she smiled.
“At least my goats smell better than you.”
The classroom erupted with laughter.
Even Tari laughed.
And something changed.
At lunchtime, for the first time since arriving at the school, she sat beneath a tree with the other girls.
They talked about teachers.
Music.
Boys.
Exams.
Completely ordinary things.
Tari discovered she liked ordinary things.
⸻
Years later, people in the village still told stories about the strange orphan girl who had lived alone at the old homestead.
Some claimed government vehicles once came looking for her.
Others insisted they had seen antennas rising from her roof at night.
Nobody could prove anything.
The underground room was eventually emptied.
The computers disappeared.
The floor was sealed.
Tari kept the homestead.
She also kept the goats.
But one thing remained beneath the old wardrobe.
A tiny metal box.
Inside were photographs of children.
Unit 4.
Unit 11.
Hammond.
The twins.
And dozens of others.
On the back of each photograph, Tari had crossed out the unit number and written something else.
Their names.
Because that was the first thing the programme had taken from them.
And the first thing they gave back to one another.
People often imagine secret agents wearing dark glasses, carrying weapons and disappearing into expensive cars.
But sometimes they look completely ordinary.
A mechanic.
A shopkeeper.
A teacher.
A farmer.
Or perhaps the quiet girl sitting beside you in class…
who always leaves immediately after the bell.
You wouldn’t know.
You’re not supposed to.
After all…
THEY LIVE AMONG US.
THE END 👁️
