“Then why didn’t you stop it?” I screamed at him, the words ripping themselves from me. He didn’t even blink.
“Should I have?” he asked. I stared at him, aghast, and he continued. “Why? Why should I have stopped?”
“Because you just killed—” I had to pause, the number so high I couldn’t even fathom it. “Innocent people. Billions upon billions of innocents.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “That was a side effect of my ultimate purpose.”
I continued to just stare at him. Several other thoughts were making their way through my head; if he was FrostNight, if he was its heart, maybe killing him would stop it.
The problem was, I wasn’t even sure I could kill him. Not just physically, but morally. I felt for him. Even knowing he’d allowed the destruction of an indeterminate number of worlds, including mine, I felt for him. He hadn’t asked to be created for this, and he certainly hadn’t asked to have his consciousness shoved into a mash-up of science and sorcery made for the sole purpose of eradicating all life.
Still, his unfortunate circumstances didn’t entirely excuse his lack of personal responsibility, if you wanted to break it down to simple psychology.
Personal responsibility . . .
“But you said you were sorry,” I reminded him. “I heard you, remember? You said you were sorry you couldn’t stop it.”
His whole body flickered as though he might fade out, as though I’d shaken his very reality. “Yes,” he agreed hesitantly.
“If this is your purpose, and what you want to do, why be sorry?”
“It . . . is my purpose,” he said. “I did not say it is what I want to do.”
“Then change it!”
“I don’t know how.”
“You’re a self-aware ripple in time and space with the power to recalibrate entire worlds! The how is easy—stop doing it!”
“I can’t exist any other way,” he snapped. “This is what I was made for! You’re asking me to stop existing!”
The words hung in the silence, ringing true for both of us. I just looked at him, my sympathy growing with sudden certainty. “Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I’m asking you to do.”
“Why should I?” he asked bitterly. “Why should I, when I could just take your power now and sustain myself forever?”
“Because what kind of existence would that be?” I asked, struggling to keep a lid on my temper. “Even if you fulfill your purpose and reshape the entire Multiverse for HEX and Binary, then what? Do you really think Lord Dogknife will wave his magic wand and make you into a real boy?”
He wavered again. “I . . .”
“Or that the Professor will grow you another body to live in? You’re made from us, Joaquim. You’re not a machine like Binary, they won’t want you. You don’t fit into their equation, their dream of a perfect, cold, and calculated existence. You’re not an entirely organic being like HEX, and you have no magic except what they gave you. And that magic,” I continued, desperate to drive the point home, “comes from us. From the things they hate.”
He stared at me, his expression saying more than his silence. He looked hurt and vulnerable, like a child. “You’re not one of them, Joaquim,” I pressed. “Of either of them.”
“And what am I, then?” he snapped, the little blue lights of his body pulsing with electric anger. “One of you?”
“Yes,” I said. “You are.”
He went still, surprised and wary. “You don’t mean that,” he said. “You are just trying to get me to stand down. Negotiation Tactics in High Stress Situations, Lesson One, Reasoning with Your Opponent by Identifying—”
“Joaquim, listen to yourself!” I interrupted. “Yes, I am identifying with you, because you’re just like me. I hate that you were made by my enemies, I hate that you betrayed us—but I hate that they betrayed you, too! You wanted to live, and you should have been given the chance. I wanted to save you,” I admitted, surprised by the words as they tumbled from my lips. “I tried to save you, at the end. I’m sorry I cou
ldn’t.”
He continued to look at me, still wary and suspicious, but I could tell he was remembering. He was remembering all the lights and the fires and the wind, and the machines we’d both been hooked up to, and how he’d held his hand out to me and I’d taken it.
“So if I’m just like you,” he said finally, keeping his tone even and betraying nothing, “what would you do? If this was your only chance at existing, what would you do?”
“I’d give it up,” I said immediately. “I would stop it.”