Yusuf stood absolutely still—which made me love him more—not even flinching.

“The next one is in his shoulder,” she said. “You have three seconds.”

“Fuck off,” I said.

“I’ll consider that later, when this is done. That’s two seconds left.”

I had to try. I slammed my hands on the machine, pressed my forehead against it, and gritted my teeth. Come on you motherfucker, light up. I pushed at it, slammed with my whole mind and heart because I really did know that when Kaori said blowing Yusuf away to save billions would mean nothing to her, she meant it.

I told him that I needed his vision, she told me of bringing him here. I told him I needed his help to change the world. Traitor.

And just for an instant, I could feel the threads of probabilities, of other universes, stretching out in all directions, with the Envisioners that Figueiredo dropped in—the hundreds of them—connecting each thread like a knot. One glowing spider web that spread out forever and forever. One second. The box felt like a part of myself, another body part I never knew I had. I slammed at the strings with my thoughts again. Keep Yusuf safe. Send the virus away. I heard the crack of the gunshot, just like before. Except—no—I didn’t hear it so much as I felt it, like one of the strings the box was connected to had snapped under the pressure of my hands.

Plane turbulence bowled over me. I sagged against the side of the machine. Yusuf moved in a blur to my side and propped me up. Kaori must’ve felt something in the room, too, some ear-popping shift in the atmosphere, with the way her lips parted and she lowered her gun.

“It’s done,” I wheezed.

Yusuf’s breath was warm in my ear.

“Good,” she said.

“What, I don’t even get a thank you?”

“Let’s check for sure before we start celebrating how you fixed a problem that you caused.”

I found my feet underneath me and stood up on my own. “If you think we’re going back to normal after you pointed a gun at us, you’re out of your fucking mind.”

Kaori sighed. “I understand your—”

“Don’t even,” Yusuf snapped.

She pressed her lips together, her hands on her hips—her problem-solving face I’d seen a million times—and turned to her staff, ignoring me and Yusuf.

“Would you please show them to an open dorm while I work with the machine?”