Still, I suck in a breath and hold it until my lungs burn. My heartbeat in my ears is a countdown clock. Tick tick boom. Stretching out the final moments before I really become a monster for as long as I can. I cram my eyes closed and reach out with the whole web of machines to see a little rock floating in my universe, which feels so close by. I open a gateway there, wider than I ever have—each machine in the whole network strumming like a plucked string—wider until a shimmering window of light opens, offering a glimpse of a little blue and white planet that doesn’t look like much. The rock sails through the glowing gateway and I snap it closed, leaving just the blackness between the stars behind.

“Show me,” I say in one ragged heave.

One of the huge All-Eye screens above me flicks to life.

Because the only thing worse than watching is not watching. When you decide to take billions of lives just to save the one that you love, the least you can do is watch and not be a goddamned coward. You owe it to all of them. You owe it to the man who you’re doing this for, who never asked you to do this in the first place, and who you can never tell. You owe it to yourself because you’ve been a burden to everyone around you—to everyone who ever loved you—and now you have to take on this weight. So you watch.

And here, I’m already zooming out. I’m saying you when I mean I, casting myself as a character and treating all this like a script. Maybe to give myself some distance from what I’m doing, maybe because there’s probably another me that’s watching this play out, on another Envisioner screen in another universe. So what would you do?

I step back to get a better view of Logan and Joel’s Earth—so blue and green, swirled over with clouds like piped cake frosting—across the screen. I force myself to live here in this moment. Shoulders heavy and already shaking, my eyes burning while they’re stuck to the screen because I’m afraid that if I blink I’ll miss the impact.

I can barely see the streak of light that sails against the blackness of space and slams into America over the Great Plains. Petals of fire from the blast rocket into the air and I can hear screams in my head, and the shattering bones of the Earth echo across my ribs. I shake and sway and lean onto my thighs to barf a puddle of yellow sick onto the gray floor. I must’ve begged the All-Eye to stop somewhere between my sobs and ragged breaths because when I lean back up on my weak legs, the screen is blank.