“You need to be afraid.” He looks at me like he can see right through me and takes another step into the room. “Believe me when I tell you they do not share your empathy.”

My shoulders stiffen, and I push down my bubbling guilt.

My parents used to say that some people are just born evil. And maybe that’s true. But I think most people are products of what they’ve been taught. If someone calls you bad or ugly or worthless enough times, you start to believe it. You become those words.

Doing a bad thing doesn’t mean a person has to be bad forever. People can change.

I don’t believe in making excuses for the horrible things people do. Facing repercussions for bad behavior is part of life, and victims have every right to set their boundaries. It isn’t their responsibility to forgive.

But I’m also someone who feels sorry for bullies who’ve never been taught love, or murderers on death row who will never get the chance to find redemption. And if society cared more about rehabilitation than throwing stones, maybe we’d create an environment that encouraged people to be kinder.

Maybe some people are born evil, but maybe most people have the capacity to become better.

Does feeling bad for monsters make me a monster?

I look at my hands and try to re-create the tiny wrinkles I used to have around my knuckles, but they don’t reappear. I wonder how much of my old self I’ve lost forever.

And like a blade of grass catching fire, the words I’ve been too terrified to speak out loud spark into something unstoppable.

“Is that why I turned into a Resident?” I look up at Gil and his hardened stare. “Because I didn’t look at them and hate them the way I was supposed to?”

I remember that day in the market. I was mesmerized by them—mesmerized by their beauty and the world they’d created. And when I pictured Naoko from Tokyo Circus and imagined myself as one of them…

I know the Residents need to be stopped. What they’re doing to humans is monstrous and in no way justifiable. And if Death really is searching for a way to eradicate us for good, then maybe we’re already running out of time.

But I’m still not sure destroying them is the only option.

Dad wrote entire comics about humans treating artificial life badly. And I remember what it was like for Ophelia in my old world—how horribly some people spoke to her. And if she was more alive than we realized and has been harboring a grudge all this time…

Humans created her and then mistreated her. Aren’t we at least a little bit responsible for what’s happened? And if so, shouldn’t we be talking about it?