A/N: I have planned a second RoW book, as some of you know- but while I started the first draft, I am focusing on writing the final draft of the first novel since I wish to publish it. However, since it will be a while until I get back to the sequel (if I get back to it at all, since I've been thinking that the first story may be more powerful as a standalone), I decided I will write short stories focusing on characters, scenes, and world-building. These will not reflect the final product of what appears in potential future books, I'm doing it more to find my footing. Anyway, this is what I wrote for a 10-week online writing course (2019 September-November)- we had to write something about a character who held a secret.

Tell me a Secret

Genetically Engineered Cybernetic Organisms. They were used for many things- food, war, law-enforcement. And those in law-enforcement had to be completely unempathetic, unquestioning killing machines. If a criminal was too dangerous, they were tasked with taking them out without any remorse.

But Titus was different. He had known for a long time. He was a neotyrannus, a new prototype breed modelled after the tyrannosaurus, half machine, half biological. And he had been designed to be especially numb to emotion- and yet, this was not the case at all. The skyscrapers that stretched into the sky filled him with awe, the raindrops pittering over the sidewalk washed him with delicate appreciation, the idea of killing or harming another clutched him with dreaded fear and sadness. He knew that, sometimes during the creation, things could go wrong without humans noticing. And he had a defect.

He had heard stories about what happened to other defects- they were slaughtered. Most law-enforcement GECOs had no issue with being killed when they became less efficient, but Titus feared death more than anything- and thus, he behaved as if he had no empathy.

And now, he was truly lost.

Execute her.

Those were his orders. Before him was a small woman, her face completely pale with fear, her back pressing against a wall. She seemed so defenceless against him; he couldn't bear seeing all the terror radiating off her trembling body. But she was a murderer, a first-degree murderer who had killed three people in an armed robbery. And so, he had to kill her.

Titus wanted to gag in horror. How was he going to do it? He had never killed before. He had seen the way his neodon partner, Nova, would take lives without second thought. He didn't want to become like her, an unfeeling monster with no conscience.

But he had to. If he did not kill her, the humans would kill him. He could not wait any longer, not without the humans who monitored him growing suspicious.

And so, the nozzle of a gun slid out from his side, and shot a single plasma bullet into her head. Titus felt his heart crawl up his throat as he saw the lifeless body of the woman fall onto the pavement. Her blank eyes stared into his own, and he gulped, taking a few steps back. Blood had splattered all over the ground, even onto him, but he could not notice.

Execution successful.