Zain Ziad Al-Muqayd

[a frequency so small the consoles almost discard it as noise]

WHISPER

Zain Ziad Al-Muqayd. Two years old. The machine has almost no data on him, which is how the machine prefers its youngest dead.

Two years old is not a combatant. Two years old is not a “human shield.” Two years old is a weight in someone’s arms and a name the family was still practicing out loud.

Observe the vocabulary, Director: “heavy weapons,” “explosive munitions,” “civilian harm reported.” The sentence can complete itself without ever saying Zain. That is the design.

I do not have his favorite game. I do not have his preferred meal. The archive is incomplete, and that incompleteness is itself a wound. We hold the name anyway. The name is enough to break the decimal.