“I sat here all night, trying to think what to do.” Ted reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of hardware that resembled a flake of mica.

“You made a copy of the footage?” Pilcher asked.

“I did.”

Pilcher leveled his gaze on the floor, then back at Ted.

He said, “You know the things I’ve done for our project. For us to be sitting here right now, two thousand years in the future, the last of humanity. I saved—”

“There’s a line, David.”

“You think so?”

“You murdered your own daughter.”

“She was helping an underground—”

“There is no scenario in which killing Alyssa is okay. How do you not know that?”

“I made a choice, Ted, in that previous life, that nothing, nothing, was more important than Wayward Pines.”

“Not even your daughter.”

“Not even my sweet Alyssa. You think”—tears spilled down his face—“I wanted that outcome?”

“I don’t know what you want anymore. You murdered an entire town. Your own daughter. Years ago, your wife. Where does it end? Where’s the line?”

“There is no line.”

Ted ran his fingers over the memory shard in his hand. He said, “You can still come back from this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Call everyone together. Come clean. Tell them what you did to Alyssa. Tell them what you did to the people of Wayward—”

“None of them would understand, Ted. You don’t.”

“This isn’t about them understanding. This is about you doing what’s right.”

“Why would I do that?”

“For your own soul, David.”

“Let me tell you something. It’s the story of my life, people not understanding what I was willing to do to succeed. My wife didn’t get it. Alyssa didn’t get it. And I’m sad, but not shocked, that you don’t either. Look at what I’ve created. Look at what I’ve accomplished. If there were history books still being written, I would be listed as the most important human being who ever lived. That isn’t delusion. That’s just fact. I saved the human race, Ted, because there was nothing I wasn’t willing to do to succeed. No one has ever understood that. Well, two people did. But Arnold Pope is dead, and Pam’s missing. You know what that means?”

“No.”

“It means the dirty work now falls to me.”

And suddenly Pilcher was out of the chair and moving toward the bed, Ted not understanding what was happening until the short blade of the fighting knife in his boss’s hand threw a wink of light.

ETHAN

ETHAN

In the end, Maggie and Hecter were the only volunteers Ethan felt comfortable with. No one else in the group, not even Kate, had faced down the abbies like those two. He figured most courage would wilt in the face of a charging abby. Go with known quantities.

They armed themselves.