Sniper’s black eyes met Ockham’s. “¿May I handle this?”

“¡Don’t come near me!” The lab door vibrated as trembling Cato held it across him, like the shield of a novice hoplite, fearing he will make the phalanx fall. Such an unkind mistress Science is, her branches so infinite, each subspecialty demanding a lifetime and a lab to even scratch the surface. Cato has been Science’s True Disciple all his life, yet does she bless him now with knowledge enough to cobble a gun from the trash in his dustbin and defend himself? “Please, Lesley, they’ll listen to you, please, I’m sure you understand. We’re the last remnant of something dirty that’s been keeping the world on this track instead of something better. It’s time we died out.”

Sniper again to Ockham: “¿May I?”

“It’s your decision now, Ojiro Cardigan Sniper, Thirteenth O.S.”

With a nod of respect to its predecessor, Sniper sprang with full Olympic speed, ripped Cato from the doorway’s haven, and pinned him to the ground.

“¿You think you’re different from the rest of us?” it pressed, seizing Cato’s black hair in its right fist. “¿You think you’re less guilty than the rest of us because you didn’t want to do it? ¿Because you felt bad all these years? ¿Because we forced you? ¿You think you’re innocent just because you would finish the program and then hide under your desk and cry and wait for me to come and push the button? That makes you the worst of us. Prospero, Lesley, me, we did this because we think it’s right. We chose it. We believe in it, saving lives, helping the world. ¡You thought it was wrong and you did it anyway! Two hundred people you’ve killed, Cato, you, not the rest of us, you with your poisons, and your accidents, and the science you love so much. You could’ve ended it any time. You didn’t.”

Salt crusts would not let Cato fully close his eyes. “I still can.”

Even injured, Sniper’s left arm was not too numb to feel Cato reach for something in the depths of his lab coat pocket. Sniper seized Cato’s wrist and twisted. “You know the penalty for pulling a weapon on—” It stopped short as Cato’s fingers slipped, and a jar with one coarse white pill rolled out across the floor.

“¡Coward!” Sniper cried, its voice black. “Oh, no you don’t. You’re going to live through this, Cato. You’re going to live to see what the consequences are when it all ends like you pretend you always wanted.”

“¡Cardie! ¡Please! ¡I just want it to be over!”

“It’s Ojiro now,” Sniper corrected sternly, “and it won’t be over.” Twisting Cato’s arm, Sniper dragged the sobbing Mad Science Teacher to his feet and steered him back into the lab, where festive flashing screens stood ready to weave more murder. “This is beginning, Cato, not ending, and you don’t get to run away.”

A bin of scraps and string and other bric-a-brac standing by for quick inventions supplied tape strong enough to strap Cato’s hands behind him.