This chapter hit close to home for me, I haven't experienced things as nearly as bad as Brian, thankfully, but I do know how he feels about so few people trusting him. I count myself fortunate I have someone in my life that trusts me as much as Allie does trust Brian. Still wish a woman could love me that much though... Depression sucks, suicidal ideation sucks, PTSD sucks, I wouldn't wish such feelings on anyone. Not anyone.

Hmm, you've got my gears turning trying to flesh out the story with the snippets of world building given. If almost all Chevaliers are chosen based on public questionaires given out by the government that are hidden pysch evalutions, then I'm convinced that all Chevaliers have been classified as sociopaths by the government and they are tapping into their use. It explains why Allison is an outlier. She was recommended by someone with influence in the program. Her quick and simple executions, and her borderline breakdown when confronted with the knowledge that an innocent person CAN be put into the program, show that she doesn't meet the standards of what typically comprises the psychosis of a typical chevalier.

It also establishes the first of my two theories for the world. It's all one big psychological experiment. Like The Enclave from the Fallout series vault programs, a powerful government may simply be tinkering with society. It's how Allison's law professor can tie in with being the one who recommended her for the program and secretly being a member of the program that implemented the SPAR system. It strikes me as odd the successful defense attorney turned prominent law professor willingly spoke out against the system and got publically punished, while at the same time "someone" involved in the justice system would recommend Allison to be a Chevalier and yet Allison can remember no one else that could warrant her recomendation.

My other theory is simpler; it's a system made too simple and easily corrupted. Bad people with money and corrupt officials simply worked away at the once strigent rules and protocols of the system to take care of people who were inconvenient to them.

Both theories are sending innocent victims to the Chevaliers, but in different ways. The secret experiment theory has the controllers falsifying records, staging disappearances, and slowly lowering the requirments to condemn people to SPAR to study how society takes it. From mass shooters to a single murder with circumstantial evidence, no violent crime, or even no crime at all how low can the bar be lowered and still have SPAR be justified in the publics eye? It also has the big brother, Allison we been watching you this whole time reveal.

The corruption theory is simply more and more powerful and influential people over time build a network of corrupt judges, lawyers, cops, and prison wardens to eliminate people who are an inconvenience to them. Soceity gets used to SPAR punishements and it gets easier to simply plant evidence and accuse anyone of even a single murder placed  as long as the bribes have been given.

The question is if the whistle gets blown and either the experiment or scale of corruption are exposed, what will society do? When dozens or hundreds of innocent and dead victims are identified, where will the blame go? The premise that was established is that society always wants a scapegoat. So will the blame fall on experimentors or corrupt officials sending innocents to their deaths, or will Chevaliers (now exposed as sociopaths complicit in murder albiet unknowingly) face a public outcry of being punished alongside the schemers?

If we do get justice for Brian, I'm curious who the big player skilled or powerful enough to open and overturn his case will be (assuming it's not the law professor) given just how much blind outrage his trial generated. And if the the fact that only shrinking and never growing can be done by the processturns out to be a lie.

P.S. Personally, I don't want to see Brian re-unite and make peace with his family. I know it was for the plot, but did his mother really allow herself to be completely out of the loop in her son's trial? And didn't find the circumstances of a two minute trial and sentencing the least bit sus?

Perfectly written and thoroughly capturing. This chapter really pulled on the heart strings. Well-done.

Will Allison's friend apologize if Brian's innocence is proven' I want that bitch to actually feel bad and want to feel psychology damaged like she did to Brian.