An interrogation room.

This is it. All the decisions and possibilities of my life, stripped off and sent fluttering away into nothingness. I can see only one path now. And it doesn’t lead anywhere I want to go.

But there’s still that goddamn question blinking in my head. Begging me, pleading for me to just say the word. You have to see it to believe it. But I don’t want to see what Lyle was trying to show me. You go whole hog and you’re giving it all away to the machine.

One Lyle is enough.

The interrogation room is a dense cube of space. The air inside is heavy, moves like water, sloshing into my nose and out of my mouth. In the middle of the room, a squat steel table is bolted to the floor over thin, stained carpet. A stool crouches on either side of the table, also bolted down.

And perched on one of the stools is a familiar tall man, graying at the temples, beckoning me lazily with one arm. Today, he looks just like he does on television.

“Take a seat, Owen,” says Senator Joseph Vaughn.

Big shoves me into the room and I land on the stool. The little guard pulls out a serpentine chain and threads it from my handcuffs through a U bar welded to the top of the metal desk.

“Sit tight,” says Little, snickering.

Vaughn nods, and Big and Little step out. The heavy door closes with a hermetic hiss. I clear my throat and the rough dirty walls chew up the sound and swallow it. I imagine that I can feel far-off thunder coursing through the bones of the building, through the floor, into the soles of my feet.

Vaughn peers at me with birdlike intensity, chiseled face held at a slight angle. He doesn’t blink. As he watches, I can feel the information pouring off me in waves: my body language, facial expression, rate of breathing—all of it being absorbed and categorized and assimilated by this perfect-seeming man thing.

I wonder if Vaughn can feel that I’m afraid.

Is it visible over the castle walls of my body? The mayhem of my mind leaking out through trembling fingers? The man sitting across from me is famous for his tendency to orate nonstop for hours, but right this second he is silent as a vacuum. His eyes are so green and still, and God I just wish he would blink for Christ’s sake.

“You,” he says.

Me.

“You have been quite a surprise.”

I don’t say anything, but Vaughn goes ahead and answers the question that I was thinking: What did you expect?

“I was expecting that you’d be more cunning. Defying Lyle couldn’t have been easy. I suppose I’d hoped you’d be dangerous in some way, shape, or form. But I suppose not. Look at you. Weak.”

He leans forward, palms down on the table, long manicured fingers outstretched, eyes locked on mine. A row of even white teeth swells from beneath cherry-red lips, lupine.

“Weak. And scared.”

“Tell me where I am,” I say in a voice that sounds small in my head but comes out so much smaller.

He blinks, finally, mercifully.

“You’re in a federal detention facility in Pittsburgh. I want to thank you for joining me all the way out here. More convenient for me than for you, perhaps. I would have tried to visit sooner, but I’ve been just swamped dealing with the aftermath of some very nasty extremist attacks.”

Vaughn leans over, examines my face. “Your eyes are different from Lyle’s. Clearer. Honestly, it gives me the shivers when he uses his amp.” Vaughn leans back on his stool, relaxing. “He led you down a dark and dangerous road, Owen. Left you there, alone in the night. No one else knows where you are or even that you’re missing. You’re all mine. And all I’m asking you to do is cooperate.”

“What do you want?”

“It’s not what I want. It’s what’s best for you and your nation. For your fellow man.”

This doesn’t sound good.

“You’re going to confess your role as the leader of Astra. Admit to orchestrating the timed explosions that destroyed or severely damaged skyscrapers in Chicago, Houston, and Detroit. Admit to training the amp teams who infiltrated those sites in the dead of night using light-sensitive retinal implants. Admit responsibility for killing six thousand three hundred and forty-seven citizens of the United States.”

“What? That didn’t happen.”

He waves his long fingers through the air, miming falling stars.

“I warned them for years. Told the people that someone like you would do something like this. And now you’re going to make me the most powerful man in America.”

“What did you fucking do? You and Lyle killed six thousand people?” I ask, adrenaline lacing hot and cold through my forearms.

“Oh, and you’re an angel?” responds Vaughn.

I think of Lyle’s little speech. Plants, animals, men, angels, then God.

“Not quite,” I say.

Vaughn abruptly stands up. “You crushed a man’s face with a cinder block. He happened to be a part of my field organization and a friend of mine. And he would very much like to see you again. If you will not cooperate, then that is exactly what will happen.”

Poor Billy. In a hospital somewhere, eating through a tube. The Zenith’s question is still there in the corner of my mind. A locked door with the black faceless unknown crouched and hungry on the other side.

“Why do you hate us?” I ask.

“I don’t hate you. I pity you. You people can’t see it, but you are no longer human. Does a worm know it’s just a worm? I even understand that what you are is not your fault. Yet I cannot let that affect my decisions. I have a duty to the children of humanity.”

“You bribed Lyle to commit crimes,” I say evenly. “Created a fake catastrophe and killed thousands of people. Is that part of your duty?”

“That is exactly my duty. Future generations will retain their humanity thanks to the sacrifices we make. Six thousand today is nothing compared to the countless millions yet to be born. Without me, a generation of children will be cheated of their one and only chance to live out their lives as God intended—as human beings.”

Vaughn stops, his eyes refracted with tears. He dabs his face with a pale handkerchief. Some terrible memory seems to pulse under his features, like a living thing, insane and in agony.

“Unfortunately,” he continues, gathering his composure, “you’ve already lost your opportunity. But others haven’t.”

“I’m not confessing to anything.”

Vaughn watches me silently, eyes wide and lucid. Finally he stands, hooks a crooked smile at me. “Deep down, I’m glad it’s come to this. There’s something I’ve been dying to share. You aren’t the only one I’ve brought out east. The lady with freckles is very pretty, don’t you think? And I hear her deformed son makes up for it in personality.”

I can feel my heart expanding in my chest. Things going dull around the edges.

“Lucy and young Nicholas are now residents of the west Pittsburgh Federal Safety Zone, compliments of me. And I want you to picture this scene, amp. On my word, a dedicated member of Elysium enters the safety zone. He drags mother and son out of their beds and into the night for questioning. Beyond the razor-wire fence, he puts the cold barrel of his gun into the mother’s mouth. And I mean really pushes it in there. He pulls the trigger and sprays her brains all over her own son.”

I can’t help it and I wince. Vaughn soaks it in.

“Ah, but don’t worry,” says Vaughn. “He doesn’t kill the kid. Instead, he produces a pair of pliers and forcefully removes the boy’s implant. And I do mean all of it this time. Digs it out of his overdeveloped brain and leaves him there … an orphaned, slobbering vegetable. Now, how do you like that picture?”

I flex my arms against the cold steel cuffs.

“And for your part, well, it’s not looking good. The agents here don’t have much compassion for you amps. Understandably, I’m afraid. There really have been so many atrocious crimes. So, either you walk out with me to attend your confession or you and your little family face a very different fate. You see—you’re either going to be useful, or you’re not going to be anything at all.”