“Archie.” I lick my lips, trying to figure out where to begin. “In the future you will do awful things. So awful that the future saw no other way than to travel to the past and kill you while you were still innocent. Charlie used you. Is still using you. You’re just too desperate to see it.”

An expression I can’t read crosses my brother’s face. He starts forward, hands curled into fists. Bandit darts his eyes from me to him, and I pray that Archie lets me finish before he charges.

“Charlie would never use me. Those people deserve it—” my brother starts to say.

“I love you, Archie. I love you, I love you, I love you!” I repeat the words louder and louder until they penetrate his haze.

He halts, five feet from me. Five feet from the gun that’s pressed at the juncture between my neck and chin. Uncertainty wars across his face, and I know I’ve bought myself a couple of minutes.

“I tried to show you with every conversation we had, with every meal I accidentally burned, that I love you. But my actions weren’t enough.” I swallow, and my throat moves against the metal. “And that’s okay. That’s not your fault. You haven’t been treated well. You’ve been made to feel worthless. And so I don’t blame you for not wanting to live in this world. I don’t fault you for creating a new one of your own making. Even if you were manipulated into thinking that was the only way.”

Perspiration gathers at my neck, drips down my forehead. “The truth is, if the future is right, if killing you is the only way to save all those people, I would do it. No single life is enough to justify all that death. All that pain.”

I take a deep breath. “But I don’t agree with the future. I don’t think your death is the only solution. It’s not even an effective one. So long as Charlie’s research exists, the future will just find a way to pass it on to someone else.”

Both of them stare. Bandit stops struggling, and Archie’s hands hang limply by his sides.

“But he chose me,” my brother says haltingly.

“Yes,” I say. “Because you’re brilliant. The smartest person I know. But you’re still a pawn. If you don’t invent the virus, he will replace you.”

Archie’s eyes flash. He’s getting angry, which I don’t want. He just needs to understand the truth. To see what he’s been missing.

“My older self is jaded,” I hurry on. “She’s lost so much, she hurts so deeply, that she can’t see the only thing that might save our world. Hope.”