“You un-existed my wife!”

From the wall behind her, Thora feels Héloïse’s eyes boring into her back. The woman who was once her mother. The woman she led by the hand to her annihilation. Sickness rises up in her throat. “I shouldn’t have done it,” she says, looking away. “But—it’s always so easy for you to destabilize me. Like you did last time. Just show me Jules, and I’m a wreck. But you—you’re always so fucking serene, so in control. I just wanted you to react, for once.” She takes in a deep breath. “I did what I did because I knew it would make you angry. But I never thought it’d make you angry enough to kill me.”

He avoids her eyes. “I told you I thought there was something we had to do to atone. That we would have to give up something we didn’t want to lose.” He shrugs, helpless. “At the very end—I thought it was you.”

Thora puts her hand to her head. “Let me get this straight. You stabbed me in the heart because you thought God wanted you to?”

Santi has the grace to look ashamed. “Tests are supposed to be hard,” he points out.

Thora gestures emphatically around them. “Well, we’re still here. Obviously you didn’t pass.”

A heavy silence falls between them. Thora turns back to the portrait of the man in the blue coat. “You’re looking for him,” she says. “Why?”

Santi walks hesitantly closer. “Everyone else who comes back—they belong to you or they belong to me. But this man knows us both. I think he might be able to tell us what’s really happening.” He looks at her sideways, reading her silence. “What?”

Sometimes, she wishes he didn’t know her so well. “Nothing,” she says. “It’s a good idea. It’s just very—you. Find the man in charge and ask him to explain what it all means.”

She sees him resist a smile. “What were you doing on the bridge?”

Thora explains her plan. He listens with his usual careful attention. “Trying to find a miracle that will break the world,” he muses when she’s finished.

Thora rolls her eyes. “Of course you’d find a way to make me hate my own idea.” She watches his face. “Go on then. Tell me what’s wrong with it.”

“You’re assuming that if we crash the simulation, we get out,” he says. “What if we don’t? What if it just—takes away the only reality we have?”

Thora gnaws her lip. Why does he always have to see the weakness in her plans? “It’s possible. But right now, I don’t have any better ideas.”