Defenseless.
The cold part of me understood it now—Mary would become a fine Morton. A prolific one. The fearlessness, the cunning, the sheer guile on display here. No nerves. No weakness.
Just meat, just dangerous.
I could save a dozen lives by taking hers. A hundred? A thousand? Some number starting with one, as per Benford’s Law.
But to cut her from the world was too much for my trembling hand. Mary’s dancing, her surrender, had somehow woven strings between us.
Change of plan.
I held the knife by its blade and offered it to Mary. She took the handle, grinning, her fingers tight.
I expected a thrust to my stomach, asnickacross my throat, but all she did was slip the blade into her pocket.
“They made you a bunny,” she said. “You’restilla bunny.”
With those words, she reached out and tapped me on the nose.
“I’m going to be taller than you.”
74
It was a week before they let me try again.
This was my last chance to keep things simple. I’d been off the empathogens for more than a month. If I was still incapable of following orders, there were other treatments. Empathy-reducing drugs to reverse the process. Even surgeries.
What everyone wanted, though, was for me to fix myself.
I sat in my room, preparing with math.
Mary was going to be culled either way. Grandmother wouldn’t have put a knife in my hand unless that die was already cast. Her insubordination, her obsession with Uncle Max, the rabbit droppings in the dance studio. Her bizarre mors curae.
Even with our generation’s depleted numbers—becauseof them—Mary wasn’t worth the risk of another Peter, another Uncle Max. I was more valuable than her, even in my current trembling state. Sacrificing her to fix me solved two problems.
All I had to do was go along with the plan.
Sebastian was out there waiting for me. If I was trapped here too long, he would move on from our safe house in Albany and go deep underground. I’d never find him.
Again and again, I ran the numbers, and got the same result. A dangerous Morton, erased. My freedom gained. A chance to rejoin Sebastian and help him destroy the levers of an unjust world. This was triage.
I could see the math of it clearly, but this kind of math had no music.
I spent a week visualizing the kill, teaching my muscles what theyhad to do, and wondering what sign I should give the elders to show my readiness.
Then they did something unexpected.
They sent Tom.
“You can do it,” he said, eating one of the sandwiches he’d brought.
I was eating too. Beatrice’s cheddar cheese and pickles on sourdough. Roasted acorn squash with maple syrup and cinnamon glaze, oven warm. A batch of cookies rattling in an antique tin.
The perfect meal for a pep talk.
“You culled Peter, after all.”
“Sure,” I said. “Same thing.”
