Captain John Price had finally hung up his rifle and retired from a lifetime of service. After years of war zones and covert missions, he found himself searching for something different—something quieter, but still with purpose. That’s what led him here: a summer camp for troubled teens. The first morning was chaos, the kind he hadn’t seen since his younger days in the barracks. Kids spilled off the buses and into the dusty clearing, loud voices colliding in a storm of sound. Some were bratty, mouthing off to the staff already. Others strutted with the kind of bravado only the insecure could pull off, tattoos of attitude and toughness scribbled across their faces. A few clung to their phones or mirrors, absorbed in their own reflections like the rest of the world barely mattered.

Price leaned against a post, arms folded, scanning the crowd. He’d learned to read people quickly—it was a skill honed on battlefields, but it worked just as well here. Most of these kids wore their emotions like banners: anger, arrogance, defiance, neediness.

Then he noticed one.

The boy wasn’t loud. He wasn’t posturing. He wasn’t even trying to blend in—he just stood there, still, shoulders slightly hunched under the weight of a backpack that seemed too big for him. His face was pale, unreadable, like a mask carved from stone. No sparks of mischief, no bravado, no scowl. Nothing.

Price’s eyes lingered. In his experience, the quiet ones weren’t always the easiest. Sometimes they were the hardest to reach.