This time, when I get to the lizard’s toes, I’ve gotten the hang of it. Nick finishes his trans lizard and ties off the end.

“Here,” he says, holding it out to me. “You can have it if you tell me where you were going.”

“You drive a hard bargain.” My words are wet and raspy but still recognizable as words. Just like I have a particularly bad sore throat or lost my voice screaming.

“Where were you going?”

I can’t say it. I should, I know, but—”Out.”

“Why?”

“Does it matter?”

Nick says, “It does.”

I need to tell them. I have to tell them.

I can’t do this alone.

“Can we get Erin?” I say. “I really, really need to tell you guys something.”

The only place I can talk is the roof of the ALC, where nobody but the birds will hear when I inevitably lose it. Ash streaks up the sides of the building. The night-shift sniper has been sent down to get some rest. Our footprints track soot in the gravel. The moon is high in the sky, Erin has her hair up in a silk scarf, and I’m still wearing Nick’s jacket.

The city is beautiful. I stare at it instead of Erin and Nick standing close together, watching me.

I’ve been up here with Nick before, but it’s so different at night. The empty, still city. Perfectly quiet, perfectly dead. It’ll take decades for this world to start breaking down, centuries for it to fall, and eons for Earth to swallow every bit of it and wipe all trace of us from the world.

“Are you okay?” Erin asks. “I don’t mean—” She gestures helplessly at my face. “Because I know that isn’t—it can’t—”

I say, “I fucked up.”

Erin laughs a little. “What?” She looks to Nick, who says nothing, and back to me. “If it’s about the Flood, we can figure something out. If you want to tell everybody, we can do that. They’ll accept it, I promise. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

God, I need to tell everyone. “It’s not that. I’ve been lying to you.”

It all comes crashing out.

My voice is high and desperate. The words tumble out like prayers, or maybe begging, or maybe they’re the same thing. I do not leave out anything. Finding Theo at Reformation and how happy I was to see my fiancé again. The food and masks I stole for him. How I went back to him. How terrified I was when he asked me to stay. When I realized it was him that brought fire down on the ALC, and it’s all my fault.

My fault. I did this to them.