“We should’ve left right after the attack. I should’ve dragged you out of here when you told me what you did.”

“I dig the hero thing, but we both know you weren’t going to drag me anywhere.”

“We were stupid. This was our fault.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said, scooting up on the bed. “We’ll figure this out. Somehow.”

I measured time in the steady tick of his feet as he paced the room and the finger puppets I threw on the wall in the light cast by the desk lamp. Hours could’ve passed by the time the first knock rattled the door.

“Finally,” I groaned, hauling myself off the bed and opening the door.

No bottles of water or food. Fred and the other guy escorted us back to the Theater for round two of Kaori’s universal hostage negotiation.

Apparently, I’d nixed the superflu after all, but there were more dice rolls, more questions of the Envisioner, according to Kaori, who by then had left the gun-pointing to the two black-body-armor clad women from her new security detail. Now we apparently were weeks away from a nuclear war that would irradiate all of Eastern Eurasia for tens of thousands of years. I connected to the machine, after a little inspiration from one of the security guards who dragged Yusuf from my side and socked him in the stomach. Then back to our room again while we waited.

A continent-cleaving earthquake. A shudder deep in the Indian Ocean that sends tsunamis all over the world, knocking out coastal cities and drowning island nations. Each of these disasters might as well have been my fault with the way that I held two thoughts in my head, each time I touched the machine. Stop whatever’s coming. But keep Yusuf safe.

You’ve heard of the butterfly effect, right? The idea of consequences—how a butterfly flapping its wings can set events in motion that’ll cause a hurricane in another hemisphere. This is more like the pterodactyl effect. I summoned a huge dinosaur out of nowhere, and now it’s flying around a city with its huge fucking wings and crashing into bridges and toppling skyscrapers.

On our fourth visit to the Theater, I was so drained that my hands were limp against the Envisioner’s facets until one of the guards lurched forward and jammed a Taser into Yusuf’s shoulder. He slumped against me, heaving breaths, his head lolling to the side as I held him up.

“I know what you’re doing,” Kaori said, her blank face calm even with me screaming and swearing at her, even with her staff mumbling to each other like maybe we should say something. “Stop being so goddamned selfish. Tell him or I will. At least let him be the one to make the choice.”