A boy whose home was taken from him seeks freedom. A mindrenderer with dangerous hands hopes to undergo his own redemption arc. When Cole was younger, his mother told him about the men who played at being gods. Self-righteous, arrogant fools who stole his people and used their wicked mindrenderers to take away their free will. And as he got older, they nearly took away his mind, too. Alistair didn't like his job. If it were up to him, he would've discarded the part of him that made him a mindrenderer years ago. Perhaps then he wouldn't have hurt so many people. When the pair are forced together after a failed assassination attempt, they discover they might have to put aside what they know about each other in order to survive. Or kill each other in the process. (WARNING: THIS IS A ROUGH DRAFT!! i'm so very sorry)

When a deadly plague spreads like wildfire, 17-year-old Bren Watts is trapped at Ground Zero of a global pandemic. ---- Bren and his classmates are stranded in New York City, now filled with thousands of murderous infected and desperate survivors. Forced into an unlikely alliance with his school bully and former friend, Logan Hardy, the two boys must find a way back home, traversing through the ravaged landscape of the United States. With their odds stacked against them, Bren has no choice but to use the skills taught by his ex-Navy SEALs father to fight and survive. But the path ahead is bloodied and broken, and if he wants to reunite with his family, Bren must tap into his darkest heart for not only the infected are capable of hatred and violence. The Bren Watts Diaries tells a dark and gritty account of the end, all narrated in the survivor's own voice as a first-hand witness to humanity's end. The story will cover the first year of the Apocalypse, depicting the beginnings of the disease, society's war against the pandemic, and the eventual collapse of civilization. [[Current word count: 450,000 - 500,000 words]] ----- The series portrays an LGBTQ+ protagonist and numerous other characters. Violence, like any medium of zombie stories, is described in detail.