_The Weight of Being Chosen_The night before launch, they gave us stars.Not real ones, projected ones, cast across the ceiling of Holding Bay Seven like a promise someone had already decided to break. I lay on my cot and watched them pulse, slow and rhythmic, designed to calm us. Everything here was designed to do something to us. The food made us sharper. The light made us sleep faster. Even the silence felt engineered.I was the only one still awake.Around me, nine hundred and ninety-nine of the most exceptional young minds humanity had ever produced breathed in quiet, dreamless sleep.