“They want you to see that your world can’t be helped by easy fixes. The solutions that these people need—access to clean water, minimal food rations, humane living conditions, basic health care? Your world has all those things already, and yet these people still suffer. There are a small few that can be helped by people like you and me and the aid workers, but there will always be more.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I can’t not be,” she says simply. “But I know that not everyone can be here. Genesis is solving new problems, and that’s needed too.”

“But you think they should do things differently?”

“Some things.” She shrugs. “No society and no individual is perfect.”

When I lived in New York, this horrifying reality was so foreign. Why worry about catastrophes so far away when there were homeless people on my own doorstep—sometimes literally. But now that I’ve been living among the Makers on Arcadia, coming here feels like coming back to my people. They may not speak my language or look anything like me, but this is my world crumbling to ruins.

Perhaps coming here has made me realize no solution is simple, but it has not convinced me that the Makers couldn’t make things better if they shared their knowledge. Not just of medicine and technology, but of philosophy and structures of government that could lead to widespread change.

Hilde has me sanitize before I leave, but I feel like I’ll never wash away the smell of death. The reek of a whole world’s apathy.

Before he ushers me back to the jeep, Michael takes Hilde’s hands in his. “I know you’ve received our messages. You know Sires are being hunted. If you still refuse to come home, you need to hide better.”

“I’m hidden fine.”

“I found you easily.”

“Maybe that’s because I wanted you to find me.”

“Hills, I’m serious. Sires are being kidnapped all over the world. You need to move on from here and disappear. Even from me. Tell me you understand.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “What are you planning?”

“I’m not planning anything. I’m just doing what has to be done.”

She stares at him for a long moment, their hands still gripping each other. “You think you’re so different from me, Michelangelo Loew, but you’re wrong.”

I agree with her. He would be doing what she’s doing if he weren’t so set on trusting his precious council. I wonder if that’s what broke them up. That question ties my feelings into a complicated knot of disappointment and relief.

On the ride back to Arcadia, I can’t stop thinking of the faces of the children, of the bodies.

“Do you understand now?” Michael asks me.

“Yes,” I say.