She’s already got her t-shirt on. Her feet slip into her boots as she scans the bedroom for her purse.
“Wendy,” I say, walking towards her. “What—” I grab her arm, but she shoots me a look. It’s a dangerous look, so I let go. “What did I do? You want me to stop hunting those girls? Fine. Let’s talk about it.”
She finds her purse, hikes it up on her shoulder, and turns to me. “You won’t stop. You’ve been doing this my whole life. That’s not a throwaway expression, either. You have literally been hunting down girls like me for twenty-one years.”
“That’s not true.”
“No? When did you kill the first one? Hm? When, Nick?”
“I dunno.”
“Think. I need an answer.”
“Why? Do I go around asking you when you made your first kill?”
“When?” Her face is dead serious. She is going to walk out of here no matter what I say. But if she walks out angry, she will stay angry. Wendy Gale knows how to hold a grudge like nobody’s business. And I didn’t call her here to make her angry. I have a job for us. A long one with the sweetest prize at the end. And if she walks out now, she won’t even get to hear my plan.
So I tell her. “I was ten.” She takes a step back, like she was not expecting that answer. “But it’s not what you think. It was me or her. It was a hunt, Wendy. Trust me, I didn’t choose to be on that island that night. My father made sure I was. And in the end, it was either me or her.”
Wendy just stares at me. And this new silence quickly fills the room and creates a chasm of distance between us. Finally, she says, “What was her name?”
“Her name?” My words come out incredulous. “I don’t fucking know her name. It was twenty-seven years ago.”
“Twenty-seven years ago. Do you hear yourself? I’m twenty-one, Nick. You’ve been hunting these girls for so long, you wouldn’t even know how to stop.”
I take a moment. Breathe. Calm myself. “Question for you.”
“Shoot.” She tips her chin up, letting me know her word choice is deliberate.
“What do you think we should do with them? Just let them… breed? Let this whole Company shit perpetuate for a few more generations? Let it get all out of control again?”
“Is it in control now?”
This is a trap question. And I don’t want to say what I’m about to say, but it has to be said. “We lost a lot of people, Wendy. A lot of people gave their lives to get us to this moment.”
She pushes both middle fingers up to my face. “Fuck you.”
“Do you want to make all those sacrifices meaningless? We are winning. We’ve practically won for all intents and purposes. They scurried away like cockroaches and now they’re hiding in the floorboards. But that’s only because we’re shining light on them. We’re still diligent. If we turn the lights off, Wen, what happens then? Hm? What do cockroaches do when you turn the lights off?”
“So when do you stop?”
“We stop when they’re gone.”
“What about us?”
“What about us?”
“We’re them. So I’m confused. How is it that you and me, we get to come out the other end alive yet they all have to die?”
“We’re the good guys, that’s why.”
She snorts. “That’s hilarious. There are no good guys. I’m pretty sure you’re the one who told me that when I was a kid, actually. We’re not the good guys, Nick. And they’re not the bad guys.”
I just stare at her for a moment, trying to see it from her perspective. “Who are you trying to save?”
“What?”
“Who are you worried about? That’s what this is, right? You’ve got a friend still stuck inside. Just tell me who they are, I’ll see what I can do.”
“I don’t have a friend inside. I’m speaking in general terms. I’m a Zero. You’re a Zero. We’re people, Nick. And so are they. People who did not ask to be born. People who had no choice in who they are.”
“That’s the point, Wendy. They don’t know any better. They think—”
“They think this is normal?” Wendy asks. She shakes her head at me. “That’s so fucking stupid. You think hunting them is normal. You don’t lose a single wink of sleep at night over this shit, do you? Don’t you see it? You’re no better than them.”
“I never said I was.”
“You’re worse,” she continues. “Because you’re a failed Zero. You, and James, and Santos, and Vincent.”
“Vincent wasn’t a Zero.”
“You men”—she clarifies by pointing her finger at me—“you men were the problem. And we were the answer.”
I don’t even know what to say to this. I can’t really argue with her because this is all true. All the male Zeroes in the initial program went insane. Only James really made it out. Adam and I don’t count. We were both pulled early enough. And Vincent was never in the program. He was being groomed for politics. But Santos… he was the poster child for what a male Zero was. Even he knew he needed to die.