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't do, 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.