“Not many humans do.” He looked at the nuke, mud-spattered and scratched by a hundred thousand rocks and roots and whatever else it had passed through to get there. It was a simple metal cylinder, battered and dingy and absolutely terrifying. “The finger of God,” he said softly. He leaned over to grab the wheeled cart and pulled it closer. The end screwed off, and he found the inner electronics jury-rigged with a series of yellowed plastic light switches, probably scavenged from an old abandoned home. “You’re old,” he said idly, then shot her a quick glance. “Not old, of course, I’d never be so rude to a lady like yourself. But you’re old enough to remember the old world. The things we left behind. You remember how in all the movies and the holovids, everyone always had big red timers on their nuclear bombs? It looked like someone had stuck a digital alarm clock on there, though I suppose that’s still more high-tech than these things.” He gestured to the switches, their wires exposed, but he didn’t dare touch them. “The bad guy sets the bomb, or the good guy sets it accidentally, and then everybody watches as it counts down: fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven. Tick, tick, tick. None of that for you, though.” He looked at her again. “No timer, no ‘run like hell’ period where you try to get to safety. You were just going to flip these switches and blow up right along with us.” He screwed the lid back on, then looked at Delarosa, lying bleeding on the floor. He leaned forward and pulled off her oxygen mask. “I figure it’s not much of an interrogation if you can’t even talk.”

Delarosa watched him, saying nothing. Vale said nothing back. After a moment she spoke, and Vale heard the pain in her voice.

“This is still not much of an interrogation.”

“The things I want to know you don’t have any answers for.”

She adjusted her shoulder slightly, wincing. “Such as?”

“Such as why everybody in this entire world hates everybody else. Why I can’t get four people to agree to a peaceful resolution even when I lead them by the hand ninety-five percent of the way.”

“I don’t hate you,” said Delarosa. “You or them. Not personally.”

“But you still want to blow us all to hell.”

“This is going to end in war,” said Delarosa. “Everyone in the world is dying, and there’s no hope left, and the nerves are too raw. Look back at what’s happened and tell me which part we could have avoided.”

“You could have not brought a nuke into the middle of an army,” said Vale. “You think your island got invaded? Just wait until word of this gets out.”