I don’t know how I’m going to get out of here when all of this is done, if blowing the network doesn’t rip me down to atoms first. But that doesn’t matter once I touch the machine again, gritting my teeth against the fire, and can see Yusuf. I can see him finding me in the woods the first day we met and slipping into his white lab coat—his black glasses resting on his nose, the shadow of stubble on his cheeks—in a room that looks like this if you squint hard enough. I can see him in a hotel lobby in Beatty finishing up his breakfast of powdered eggs and bad coffee when one of the electric cars from the Compound rounds the cul-de-sac outside. Kaori steps out, shielding her eyes against the glare of the morning sun, and rests one elbow on the car roof. Just here for the carpool.

Yusuf sees her, nods, and knows it’s time.

I can see the hospital that we jumped into after fleeing the Hotel Selene, and a million other places and worlds like it that use the machine to power cities, and satellite arrays that capture solar energy, and god knows what else. I can see the machine stuck in the side of the asteroid in our universe that started this all. And maybe I shouldn’t punish everyone else for the shit that Figueiredo and I can’t get right.

No more time to think, though. I close my eyes, already feeling the match ignite, when a pulse rips through me like someone is yanking at the All-Eye like it’s a leashed dog with a shock collar.

Figueiredo storms out of the glowing gateway in the side of the All-Eye, already screaming at his staff who scatter out of the room. I freeze, hands still stuck to the machine, an invisible ghost in this haunted house. Just the two of us, now. Of course. This is always how it had to end, right? All of the dice throws leading us here, all the shell games. He tears his blue blazer off his white collared shirt and hurls it to the ground, stomping on it as he screams at the walls.

And then he stops. His back rigid, he turns in a slow circle, one finger resting on his chin. His eyes hit me, which I know can’t be true since I’m still camouflaged by the light-bending device. The safety lights make the whole room look like an aquarium with blood in the water.

My trapped breath sears my lungs.

I just really wish he’d apply himself more, a teacher sighed at my mom a million years ago.