“Everything has a beginning and an end,” I say to him. I pull gently on his time thread, careful not to remove it entirely. I can feel the end of it barely holding on, still running through him. I could pull it completely out, unwind him, but instead, with a gentle twist, I snap the thread at his chest. Maybe he has seconds left. Maybe he has days.

“Why not unwind me entirely?” he asks.

“I want you to face your own end.” By removing most of his time strand, I’ve taken back the life he’s stolen from others. I could have unwound him entirely and watched as he crumbled to dust, but I want him to stare his death in the face, knowing he can’t stop it.

But now that I’ve released my hold on him, he pushes me against the wall, his arm crushing my windpipe. I struggle to breathe, black spots blotting my vision, but I don’t fight against him. And then he drops his hold on me and stumbles back, laughing. I gasp as my throat reopens and air rushes into my lungs.

“It doesn’t matter. I will make certain you fade with me. Neither of us will be the hero of this story,” Cormac says, falling onto his back and clutching his chest. “Authorization: Alpha One Destruct Three. Arras will be destroyed and you along with it.”

Cormac isn’t going to let me walk out of here, and I don’t blame him.

“Now we’re even,” he says between heaving breaths. “We’ll both die here. Neither of us wins.”

His breathing becomes more labored and I know he’s close to the end. The color drains from his face. This is it. The man who took everything from me is finally going to die. It hardly matters that he’s found a way to kill me now.

“The evacuation has already started. The people are safe. It doesn’t matter if I die,” I say without flinching.

“You’re prepared for this? To lose the looms? To lose the control?” he asks. “You could have lived forever.”

“I’d rather die than continue with this lie.”

“It takes a talented girl to do that,” he says.

I regard him for a long moment before I answer. “I know.”

His body seizes as the light fades from his dark eyes, and then he’s gone. Standing, I walk to the window and stare out. There’s no point trying to run now. There’s nowhere to go. Whatever security forces are left here won’t let me go, although I doubt anyone’s sticking around.

The door bursts open and Hannox barrels in, nose still bloody, stopping to stare at Cormac’s lifeless, withered body. I close my eyes and wait, both for retribution and for peace.

But nothing happens. When I open them, Hannox’s gaze has shifted to me.

“He’s dead, then?”

I can’t read his face. It is entirely absent of thought or feeling, nearly slack with apathy. “Yes.”

Hannox looks up to the ceiling and then lowers his head to nod once. “I’ve waited a long time for this day.”

“You were his best friend,” I say, hoping to prompt a reaction, because fear is starting to filter through my blood. I’m not sure I can fade away with the world. I’d rather die fighting.

“Duty and friendship are not the same thing,” he says.

Outside, the sky is a shimmering web of color, loosening and blurring in a spectacular display of light. Closing my eyes, I listen to the discord of space and time colliding and crossing as the pattern of this world collapses on itself. I wonder what it will feel like to fade into the universe. I can almost imagine the numbness of nonexistence creeping through my limbs like a slow-moving drug, and yet I feel oddly at peace.

There’s a crackle of sound in the room and I whip around to find myself standing face-to-face with Alix.

“How?” I ask, staring at her.

“No time for that,” she says, tossing me a backpack.

I look at Hannox, and Alix freezes, drawing a gun from her hip, and in the same moment that I scream, “No,” I hear one word escape from his lips.

“Please.”

The shot is off before either word registers, and Hannox falls back against the wall. His eyes find mine and he smiles. It’s then that I realize he wasn’t asking for mercy, he was asking to be freed.

Alix shifts back on her heels. “I didn’t know that he was an ally.”

“I don’t think he did either.”

Alix shakes her head as if to dissolve her guilt. “We can’t worry about it now. Put that on.”

I examine the pack, unsure what to do with it until Alix groans and grabs it, holding out the straps. She slides them over my shoulders and pulls a strap around my waist. I buckle it into place and wait for her to give me any indication of what’s going on.

“How did you get here?” I ask her when nothing happens.

“How do you think?” she snaps, pivoting around the room as though she’s looking for an escape route.

“But Cormac destroyed the Eastern Sector,” I say.

“Most of it, but Loricel is talented and she wasn’t going down without a fight.” Alix spots Cormac’s body and whistles. “I wish I could tell her about that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say confidently. I’m enough like Loricel to know that the victory would be as hollow for her as it is for me. I wonder what we’re waiting for, what impossible feat Loricel is going to pull off now.

And as I wonder a fissure of light splits the room, in the middle, like a seam ripping open. But there’s no Interface beneath us anymore. It’s already dissipated as Protocol Three unwinds Arras from existence. This is her plan? This isn’t like my escape from Arras. Then the Coventry was in the Interface, closer to the ground. We can’t survive jumping from here to Earth.