“She remembered her trigger every night when she dreamed. Doesn’t matter. Dreams, and death. We had enough come back from the dead. Mix the two… the idea was we’d put down every cape we could. Make the death slow, and riddled with heavy dreams. Pollute the system, so they can’t use the data. Let Fortuna get her end of the world… and find that there’s nothing to send out there. Force her to abort. Riley thought it would work. So did Cryptid.”

“That’s a heavy decision to make on behalf of tens of thousands.”

“It’s a heavy decision to make on behalf of billions, maybe trillions, to make the decision to not do it,” I replied while gently leaning my head and shoulder into the wall, despite the pain it produced, “as Chris and the Simurgh just managed.”

Last 20.9

The technology in my right eye winked out. It was still highlighting random things, showing text, and countdowns I could no longer ascertain the meaning or relevance of, and it went dark, turning my eye into an ordinary eye. If there was a light there, and I had no idea if there had been… there was nothing.

For a long, spine-chilling moment, I didn’t move a muscle or take a breath as I came to terms with the fact that that might be the world ending.

Medical monitors beeped, machines hissed, and at least one person was out of it and either didn’t care or didn’t know how much noise they were making. Screams, grunts, and inarticulate cries. People looked stressed and they had a thousand times a thousand reasons to look that way.

The area, at least, was well lit, although the brightness of the lights and the fact everything was white made my eyes hurt. My head was pounding, even if my short sit-down with Jessica had let me recuperate enough I didn’t feel like even flying would make me pass out.

A crew of nurses made their way through the throng of people who were sitting in the waiting area. Ten minutes had passed from my arrival, and I’d spent most of those ten minutes dwelling on the problem at hand. The Wardens would be telling Dauntless and Fume Hood not to engage. That gave us a short, short clock when it came to the Simurgh’s plan to end the world.

Around the time those ten minutes had passed, I’d stopped thinking about plans and counter-plans entirely. I’d started watching the nurse that looked like he was going to get to me first, my full focus turned toward him, the checklist of questions he was asking, and the answers I’d give. Could I make small talk? What would I say?

If the world was really ending, could I make the interaction as pleasant as possible?