“Touché, and yet…” Cormac pauses, tilting his head slightly. The companels in the room prompt us once more for the pass code but now the evacuation sirens feel like background noise. I hear the prompt, but it doesn’t matter. “Hannox, initiate the troops in the Eastern Sector.”

My eyes fly up to Cormac’s and now there’s a glimmer of amusement in them. He’s made his puppet dance.

“Would you like to watch?” he asks.

“Is this necessary?” I ask him, reaching for any argument that might stop him. “The bugs will spread to Earth more quickly if you let the citizens go to the surface.”

“Who sounds desperate now?” He barks a security clearance code at the screen and it begins to stream the Eastern Sector. There’s a crowd of people gathered outside the Ministry offices. The camera’s stream sits far off the ground but I spot Jost and Erik directing the group.

“Stop this. I’m asking you to stop.”

“I can’t!” He knocks his glass from his desk, sending its contents flying across the room. “As long as the poison is in the system, it continues to spread.”

I set my chin defiantly and stare at him. “Then you’ll have to kill me, too.”

“It will be my pleasure,” he says.

Cormac hasn’t noticed the small changes I’ve made to my posture. He hasn’t noticed that I’m not sitting but rather squatting over my chair and that my arms are locked and ready, so when I fly across the room, my feet pounding out the few steps that lie between Cormac and me, he doesn’t have time to react.

I bound up the desk before he can move away and with one perfect, precise swipe, I’m holding his time strand in my left hand. It’s golden and new, much too young for someone as old as Cormac. I knit it through my fingers, raising it up to my face so that Cormac and I are both staring at it hovering there between us. My fingers are red with blood, and it oozes onto Cormac’s lifeline.

“Always lead with your left,” I whisper. “All Crewelers know that.”

“I guess this means that you win,” Cormac says. His voice is breathless. Expectant.

“I never thought of this as a game,” I say as I twist the delicate strand. I only have to pull it, but is it too late?

“Are you waiting for something?” he asks.

“You’ve always struggled under the illusion that one simply does or doesn’t do something,” I say, “but that’s taught me to think about my actions.”

“I suppose you expect me to beg for mercy.”

“I would never expect that.” And in truth I don’t. Cormac is too proud to beg, but there’s something else in his eyes now. It could be mistaken for dread, but it looks more like finality.

“The world tells us there is a black and a white. We’re told people fall into those two categories, Adelice. Good and evil. Light and dark. But that’s the real lie they sell us. Everyone exists in the gray. We’re only capable of living within that shaded perception of truth,” he says.

“So what you’ve done wasn’t wrong?” I ask, thinking of my mother and my father. Of Dante. Of Erik and Jost, who are probably dying right now at his hands.

“It’s wrong to you, but can’t you see the gray?” he asks. “If you were me, could you turn away? From the power? From the possibility?”

“And leave innocent people alone?” I ask. “Yes.”

“And yet plenty of innocent people have died at your hands,” he says.

I stare at the time strand wrapped around my fingers and wonder how his perception has become as warped as the strand itself. It’s no longer simply about the greater good. Cormac has made himself into a hero. He’s given himself the power of the creator, after bestowing that “gift” upon others before him. He doesn’t see himself as having committed any wrong, because he did what he thought was right.

And here I am, holding his life in my hands and knowing exactly what it means to persist in a gray area. Cormac Patton deserves to die. Of that much I’m certain, but do I deserve to kill him? Does anyone have the right to kill someone else?

There is enough blood on my hands for a lifetime.

I could unwind Cormac and wait. Wait for the singularity. Wait for the Guild officials to find me. Wait to die one way or another. It hardly matters anymore.

Because no one wins in this scenario.

“Don’t tell me you’ve had a sudden fit of mercifulness?”

“I’m thinking.” I press the time strand tightly between my fingers and Cormac gasps.

“What is the pass code?” I ask him.

“I will never tell you that.”

“You’re going to die, Cormac,” I say. It has already begun. His hair is slowly turning white and lines are appearing in his polished face. He won’t be the handsome face of the Guild much longer. “And without us, there will be no Arras,” I say softly. “So why not tell me the pass code?”

“Because I’ve lived over two hundred years and I will die alone,” he says. “I will cease and no one will mourn me.”

“You won’t be alone.” I realize then that fear is the barrier between us now, and only I can remove it. But I won’t say I will mourn Cormac. I won’t lie to him.

“You will die, too.” Cormac’s words aren’t a threat. They linger somewhere between a thought and a question. As though he needs me to know this, needs me to acknowledge this.