“You didn’t know them the way I did. You protected them, but you weren’t one of them—you weren’t a scientist. You never saw some of the things they were working on. Or what they were really like. Obsessive. Vindictive. Ruthless. I knew a long time ago—long before anyone else—that there could be only one Looking Glass device. The other cells wouldn’t have stopped. We would have created a completely new type of warfare. A techno-war. Looking Glass projects competing, consuming resources, pitting nations against each other. It would have ripped the world apart. I saved us. I don’t regret that.”

“Do you regret sending those men to my home to kill me?”

Yuri looked away.

“Why didn’t you finish the job? You found me years later—when I was close to finding you and stopping you.”

As he said the words, William realized the truth—why Yuri couldn’t do it back then. The man had killed every one of his friends—except for William. He was his last true friend. Perhaps Yuri had realized that after the purge.

“I owed you. You saved my life in Rio. I pay my debts.”

“Yet you took my son’s life.”

“I did no such thing.”

A relief beyond words swept over William. It was true—the theory he had harbored for so many years: his only son was alive. His suspicions had grown when he found the old picture in Kazakhstan—it could have belonged to Lin or Andrew, William didn’t know which. But what had happened during the last twenty-five years?

He took his best guess.

“Andrew has been your prisoner?”

“For a time.”

“And then?”

“My partner.”

William shook his head. “Impossible.”

“You would have been proud of him. He resisted far longer than we expected. His re-education took years. But we broke him, showed him the truth. He found in the Looking Glass what we all see: a way to fix our broken world. And himself. The bargain we presented was simple: one last pandemic to end them all. An end to disease. And for himself, a world where he has two arms, where he is just like everyone else, a world where no other boy will have to sit on the sidelines while the others play ball, where no person is born with a disability.”

Rage built within William. “You brainwashed him. Chose him—to get me out of the way.”

Yuri seemed unconcerned by William’s anger. “And to complete my own work. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

William strained against the plastic zip ties, causing them to cut into his wrists. A trickle of blood rolled down his hand. He desperately wanted to rush the monster who stood before him, but he maintained his composure. Yuri had one commodity he desperately needed: information.