His eyes had clouded with tears. Still holding the gun, he used his arm to swipe his sleeve across his face. But it was useless as the tears kept coming. It was as though a dam had burst inside him and the tears would flow for ever, until they had destroyed everything in their path.

He knew what she was holding.

He thought he had killed his memories when he’d destroyed his own copy. He thought his heart had hardened into a stone, like his father had always wanted.

But here it was again, risen from the flames like a phoenix that was telling him he could fly.

Just like he’d believed he could all those years ago. Up there, standing beside her and Leo on the Ferris wheel.

‘You left me,’ he found himself saying. His voice felt like the gravel under his feet.

He knew that the day Elsa said she was leaving was the day he’d begun to break. The day the dark chasm of his loss had begun to engulf him.

And then he’d lost Leo, and then his home and his city. And then he’d lost himself.

No. That was a lie. He couldn’t pretend he had sat back and passively let this happen to him. He had yearned to be taken. He’d welcomed it, sought it out. He’d run from the boy he had been, desperate to find who else he could become instead.

All he had ever really wanted was to be loved, to be part of something, to make someone proud.

She took a step towards him. ‘I’m still here,’ she said. She was still holding the photo out to him.

‘SHOOT HER! NOW!’ Thomas was beside him, screaming in his ear.

Was Thomas what Max would become? A monster, a cog in a machine that did nothing but hate and kill, hate and kill until there was nothing left?

She was holding his eyes. ‘You don’t have to do this, Max,’ she said.

And she was right. He didn’t have to do this. He didn’t have to do any of it.

The realization hit him like a bullet. It wasn’t work that set you free. It was love. All these years, he’d told himself what he had to do to fit in, to be happy, to earn his place in the world.

Through Elsa’s eyes, he finally saw clearly. It was a lie. Every bit of it.

He smiled at her. He almost went to her. So nearly. And then…

‘Come on, Max,’ Thomas said. ‘Don’t test me.’

Wait. A test. This was a test. Just like all the other tests of his true commitment to the regime. This was the moment for him to prove himself.