"I tell you," Lubin said, "and you call off the attack."

"No, Ken, you call off your attack. Use whatever clever code words you set in place to shut down your sub's autopilot, or to convince Helsinki that you were mistaken, or whatever it takes."

"And you blow up Atlantis anyway."

"What for? I have other options, as I said. Why waste all those perfectly good hostages for no payoff? They're worth way more to me alive."

"For now."

"Now is all we've got, buddy."

Clarke glared: from the man who had tried to kill her, to the man who'd risked his life to stop him. Every hour you're in this place, you kill more people than ever lived in Atlantis, she thought.

Every hour Ikill more people, by leaving you here.

And Ken Lubin was about to cut a deal.

She could see it in his stance, in that ruined blind face that had been at her side and behind her back all these years. He wasn't entirely inscrutable. Not to her. Not even now.

"I know you, Ken," Desjardins was saying. "We go way back, you and I. We're soul mates. We make our own rules, and by God we live by them. People don't matter. Populations don't matter. What matters is the rules, am I right, Ken? What matters is the mission.

"If you don't deal, the mission fails."

"Ken," she whispered.

"But you can save them," the 'lawbreaker continued. "Isn't that why you came back in the first place? Just give me your stats and the mission succeeds. You walk away, I abort the strike, and before I disappear I'll even send you a fix for that nasty new strain of ßehemoth your buddies have been wrestling with. I gather by now a fair number of them are seriously under the weather back there."

She remembered a floating machine that had used his voice: If killing ten saves a thousand, it's a deal. She remembered Patricia Rowan, torn apart on the inside, the face she presented to the world cold and unflinching: I tried to serve the greater good.

"Or," Desjardins said, "you can try and take me out, and kill everyone you came up here to save." His eyes were locked on Lubin's. It was as though the two of them shared their own pocket universe, as though Clarke didn't even exist. "Your choice. But you really shouldn't take too long making up your mind—your tweaks are fucking things up all over the place. I don't know even how long I can keep control of these circuits."

She thought of what Patricia Rowan would have done, faced with this choice. She thought of the millions dead who would not have died, if only she had.

She remembered Ken Lubin himself, a million years ago: Is there anything you wouldn'tdo, for the chance to take it back?

"No," she said softly.

Desjardins raised an eyebrow and—finally— deigned to look at her. "I wasn't talking to you. But if I were Lenie Clarke—" He smiled. " — I wouldn't be shameless enough to pretend I gave a flying fuck about the rest of the world."

She twisted in Lubin's grasp and kicked, as hard as she could. Her boot plunged deep into the gash in his thigh. Lubin staggered and cried out.

And Clarke was free, and springing forward.

She launched herself directly at Desjardins. He won't risk it, she told herself. It's his only leverage, he's dead if he hits the button, he must know he's—

Desjardins's eyes flickered left. His fingers twitched. And a tiny thread of doubt blossomed into full-blown horror as the numbers on the wall began to move…

Holding transmuted into a whole new word, again and again and again along the bottom of the board. Clarke tried desperately not to read it, drove forward on the wings of some frantic infantile hope maybe if I don't see it it won't happen, maybe there's still time, but she did see it, she couldn't help seeing it, spelled out in quadruplicate full-stop before the whole board went dark:

Commit.

With the next step she toppled.

Something hummed deep in her head. Her bones sang with subtle electricity. Her legs collapsed beneath her, her arms were dead weights at her sides. Her skull cracked painfully against the back of a workstation, cracked again against the floor. Her lung deflated with a tired sigh—she tried to hold her breath but suddenly she was slack-jawed and drooling. Her bladder voided. Implants clicked and stuttered in her chest.

"You gotta love the symmetry," a voice remarked from somewhere on the other side of the universe. "The ultimate victim, you know? The ultimate victim, and the most powerful woman in the world all rolled into one tight little bod. And I, well, I'm the last word in one or two things myself…"

She couldn't feel a heartbeat. Darkness roared up from somewhere deep in her skull, swept swirling across her eyes.

"It's fucking mythic is what it is," the voice continued, distant and barely audible. "We just had to get together…"

She didn't know what he was talking about. She didn't care. There was nothing in her world but noise and chaos, nothing in her head but commit commit commit commit.

They don't even know they're dead, she thought. The torpedoes haven't reached Atlantis yet. They're living the last few minutes of their lives and they don't even know it.

They'll live longer than me…

A hand around her ankle; friction against the floor.

Bye, Jelaine. Bye Avril. Bye Dale and Abra and Hannuk…

A great gulping wheeze, very close. The sensation of distant flesh expanding.

Bye Kevin. Bye Grace. Sorry we could never work it out…

A pulse. She had a pulse.

Bye Jerry. Bye Pat. Bye again…

There were voices. There was light, somewhere. Everywhere.

Bye, Alyx. Oh God, I'm so sorry. Alyx.

"…bye, world."

But that voice had come from outside her head.

She opened her eyes.

"You know I'm serious," Desjardins was saying.

Somehow Ken Lubin was still on his feet, listing to port. He stood just beyond the pool of light. Achilles Desjardins stood within it. They confronted each other from opposite sides of a waist-high workstation.

Lubin must have pulled her out of the neuroinduction field. He'd saved her life again. Not bad for a blind psychopath.Now he stood staring sightlessly into the face of his enemy, his hand extended. Probably feeling out the edge of the field.

"Dedicated little bitch, I have to admit," Desjardins said. "Willing to sacrifice a handful of people she actually knows for a planetful of people she doesn't. I thought she was way too human to be so rational." He shook his head. "But the whole point is kind of lost if the world blows up anyway, no? I mean, all those runaways on the Ridge are about to die in—oh, sorry, who've just died—and for what? The only thing that'll give their deaths any meaning at all is if you turn around and walk away."

They're gone, Clarke thought. I killed them all…

"You know how many battellites are still wobbling around up there, Ken. And you know I'm good enough to have got into at least a few of 'em. Not to mention all the repositories of chemical and biological weapons kicking around groundside after a hundred years of R&D. All those tripwires run right through my left ventricle, buddy. Lenie should thank the spirit of motherfucking entropy that she didn't kill me, or the heavens would be raining fire and brimstone by now."

Clarke tried to move. Her muscles buzzed, hung over. She could barely lift her arm. Not the usual med-cubby field by a long shot. This one had been cranked to quell riots. This one was industrial.

Still Lubin didn't speak. He managed a controlled stagger to the left, his arm still extended.

"Channels seven through nineteen," Desjardins told him. "Look for yourself. See the kill switches? See where they lead? I've had five years to set this up, Ken. You kill me, you kill billions."