“No need to look for shades of gray when an absolute black-and-white is in front of you,” said Dr. Wynne, reasonably. “We offered you a perfect bad guy, with no motives to question and no thought required. You were just too damn dumb to take it.”

“Dr. Wynne?” whispered Kelly.

“Hush now, darling, you be still.” He took another step backward. “You like stories, don’t you? Here’s a story for you. Once upon a time, there was a young doctor who wanted to save the world. But worlds don’t save easy, and this one needed to be damned a little longer before it would properly appreciate salvation. Salvation came with… complications. So he agreed to help some men who knew better than the rest of the world. Men who would be angels. And he learned that a man who controls enough can become an angel, too, in his own time.”

“Okay, you win,” I said. “You get to be the crazy one. I give you the crown.”

Dr. Wynne shook his head. “Here’s another story for you—one that’s going to be the truth very soon. I was stunned when the security cameras reported a break-in. It’s fortunate I came to work on time or there’s no telling what sort of damage you might have done before I could stop you. Of course, we suspected you might have had some involvement with the outbreak in Portland, but it wasn’t until you tried to repeat the event here that we understood just how far astray you’d gone. Without your sister to shore you up, and without a conspiracy to chase, you simply couldn’t face reality. You started making monsters out of thin air.”

“Why is it you assholes always feel the need to tell the media your evil plans before you kill us?” asked Becks. She sounded totally calm. I have never been more proud of her. “Is it a union requirement or something?”

“I thought you might like the truth before you died. You people are always so fixated on the truth. Like it’s more righteous than a lie, even when the lie protects what the truth would destroy.” His lips quirked in a regretful smile, making him look like the sympathetic figure who once greeted me with the news that I was going to live. I hated him even more for that. “I’m not afraid of being recorded. You can’t transmit from here, and it’s not like you’ll be leaving.”

I forced myself to lower my gun, saying, “How about this. We all put down our guns, you give Kelly back, and we go. Okay? Nobody needs to die. It’s not like we can prove anything’s actually happening here.”