"Do. The. Math."
Her voice is tiny. Broken. "If thousands... if the total was approximately seven thousand subjects over thirty years... eighty-three percent would be..."
"Five thousand, eight hundred and ten." I turn back to face her. "Give or take. You killed almost six thousand children, Helena. You tortured them, broke them, turned them into hollowed out shells, and then sent them out to die. And you call it 'acceptable parameters.'"
"It was necessary." Even now, even with her hands ruined and her face bloody and her death approaching, she clings to her justification. "The work we do... the subjects we produce... they change the course of history. Wars have been won. Governments have fallen. The ripple effects—"
"The ripple effects are dead children." I grab a letter opener from her desk. Silver, sharp, engraved with her initials. "Children who will never grow up. Never fall in love. Never have families of their own. You stole all of that. You stole futures from six thousand kids so you could feel important."
"It was more than that. The science, the advancements—"
"Tell me about Protocol Twelve."
She freezes. Her breath catches.
"Tell me," I repeat, "about the protocol where you forced us to kill the people we cared about."
"That... that was a necessary component of emotional severance. Attachment creates weakness. Weakness compromises operations. The only way to ensure subjects were fully optimized was to—"
"You made me kill a girl I cared about." The words come out flat. Deadly. "I was thirteen. Her name was... I can't remember her name anymore. That's how good your protocol was. You burned it out of my brain along with everything else."
"Subject F7." She says it automatically, like a reflex. "Female, age twelve, high aptitude scores but excessive emotional development. She was going to wash out anyway. Using her as a severance target was the most efficient—"
I bury the letter opener in her thigh.
Her scream is different this time. Higher. More desperate. The sound of someone who finally understands that they're going to die.
"You remember her designation." I twist the blade. "You remember her aptitude scores. But you don't remember that she was a person. That she had a laugh that sounded like bells. That she used to hum when she was scared because music helped her cope. That she trusted me right up until the moment I cut her throat."
"Please—"
"You don't get to say please." I yank the blade out, watch blood pour from the wound. "You don't get to ask for mercy. You didn't show mercy to any of us. You watched children scream and you took notes. You watched us beg for death and you increased the stimulus. You built an empire on our broken bodies and cities on our bones, and now you want compassion?"
She's hyperventilating. The blood loss from her leg is making her pale, her eyes unfocused. I grab her hair, yank her head back, force her to look at me.
"I used to wonder what I'd do if I ever found you," I tell her. "I had fantasies. Elaborate ones. All the ways I'd make you suffer, all the pain I'd repay. But now that I'm here, now that I have you, I realize something."
"What?" she whispers.
"You're not worth the time."
But I'm not done yet. I need her to understand. I need her to feel, for just a moment, what she made us feel.
"Here's what's going to happen." I release her hair, let her head fall forward. "I'm going to kill you. But first, you're going to tell me everything. Every facility location you know. Every operative. Every Custodian who bankrolled your work. You're going to give me the tools to tear down everything you built."
"If I do... if I cooperate... will you—"
"No. You die either way. But if you cooperate, it's quick. If you don't, I have all night."
She looks at me. Really looks, maybe for the first time. Sees the thing she made, the weapon she designed, the monster she created and called a product.
"The Harrison Protocol," she says slowly, blood dripping from her split lip, "was my masterpiece. You were supposed to be the perfect soldiers. Unbreakable. Unfeeling. But I made a mistake with you. With your brothers. I underestimated the power of sibling bonds. The connection between you was stronger than my conditioning."
"Is this supposed to be a compliment?"
"It's an observation. A scientific one." Even now, even dying, she can't stop being clinical. "You broke free because you had something I couldn't account for. Something I tried to burn out of every subject but could never quite eradicate."
"What's that?"
