It couldn’t quite be called a smile. “Most of them. For now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll see.”

Walker bent down and picked up the gun, looked at it in his hand. “What did you mean, everything’s set in place?”

Snow tilted his head back and stared up at the ceiling for a long time, as if there were something there that interested him a great deal. When he looked back at Walker his eyes were thoughtful but not distracted; if anything, they focused on Walker with an intensity that unsettled him deeply.

“Everybody these days talks a lot about freedom,” Snow said, “free will, civil liberty, the right to choose. What a crock of shit.” He spat again, this time clearing his chin, hitting the floor. Walker thought it looked pink with blood. “The fact is that ninety-nine percent of you are nothing but a bunch of slaves. From the day you’re born to the day you die, this whole world isn’t anything but chains around your feet and doors you ain’t ever going to unlock.” His voice rose, a mocking falsetto: “Do we have your keys?”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“Take that gun in your hand. You’re already wishing you never picked it up. It doesn’t feel right. But I gave it to you, so you took it. Protector of life, physician, healer,” he snorted, “you’re just a slave to your baser impulses, Doc—routines, habits, just like everybody else.”

“So what’s your game?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who brought me back here tonight. How come?”

“You know why. To undo what I did,” Walker said. “Thirty years ago.”

Snow gazed at him coldly. “That’s not possible.”

“I have to try.”

“See, that’s exactly what I mean. You and all the rest, running in the same dumb circles your whole life, jumping at every noise, fumbling for the light switch since the day you were born. Trying to make things better, always making them worse, never knowing why, getting more and more turned around until somebody finally puts you out of your misery.”

“You’re referring to yourself, I suppose?” Walker asked.

“Not exactly. I always gave every one of them a choice.”

“Doesn’t make you any less of a monster.”

“Only a monster?” Snow’s eyebrows shot up in what appeared to be genuine disbelief. “Come on, Doc, you of all people ought to know better than that.”

Walker measured him, felt Snow’s leaden gaze resting on him. He took a breath and let it out. Snow was right about one thing. However much he might think he was free to choose, when it came to some aspects of his life, he had always known only one way to end this. Everything that had happened since Snow’s arrival here thirty years ago hadn’t altered that fundamental truth.