I have enough time to think how sad that smile seems, and then he’s gone, running out of the open laboratory door. I watch as he lifts his large frame elegantly over the banister of the sixty-fifth set of stairs.

He falls in a silence punctuated by my own inability to breathe.

For a moment, I wonder if the waterfall might save him, if he might get swept up in the cascade and somehow live. But I know it’s not possible. Even at its closest point to the highest floor, it’s ten feet from the edge.

“No,” I say, finally inhaling. “No. I could have saved you … I could have …”

Images of my father falling from the roof of the Black Road Vertical, saving my life by dragging one of Happy’s hosts to its demise, flash in front of my eyes. I can feel my chest tightening, my breath coming in and out in shallow gasps that leave me craving oxygen that I can’t seem to find. I fall to the floor, my legs collapsing beneath me.

“I … I … I …” My voice is a stammering motor that I have no control over. “I could have saved you … I … I could have … I could have saved you …”

My hands are shaking as the images of my father falling, Blue bleeding to death, Mable screaming, the rats biting, the Smilers attacking, all become vivid and real in front of my eyes.

The lights dim and a red light begins to flash as Happy’s voice comes over the speakers: “Incident on ground floor. Complete lockdown initiated. All floors to be scanned and searched.”

“I could have saved you … I could have … I …”

Somewhere, miles away, in the back of my mind, locked in a coffin buried underground, my own voice is screaming for me to get up, screaming that Tyco is still alive, Malachai is still alive, that he needs my help.

“Friend,” a soft voice says, and my eyes focus on the low pink lights of Apple-Moth.

“I could have saved him,” I tell the small companion drone. “I could have saved him.”

“You can’t save everyone, friend.”

“But he didn’t have to …”

“That was his decision. You have risked your life to save your friends. Is this correct?”

I nod, tears now falling down my face. “I can’t keep going, I’ve lost so many people already. They just keep on dying.”

“You have my permission to quit, friend, if that’s what you need. But if you need someone to tell you to get up, to keep fighting, to never give up, I can do that too.”

I wipe the tears away from my eyes, my hands still shaking, but I can breathe again, I can feel the oxygen slipping silently into my bloodstream and giving me strength.

“Tell me,” I say.

Apple-Moth’s lights grow brighter. “I believe in you, friend. Now get up.”