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"I'm dying," she said.
He gaped at her. "What . . . ?"
"Yes. Cancer. I've had it for years. My hair just grew back from the last round of chemo and radiation. They thought they'd gotten it all, but it's back. I can feel it growing inside me. Imagine what that feels like, Toys, to have something consuming you from the inside out. My uterus, my breasts. The doctors said that they could try radical surgeries, but what's the point? It'll come back. They said that I have a twenty percent chance of remission this time. Twenty."
Despite everything, he felt tears burn in the corners of his eyes. She saw them, too, and shook her head.
"Amirah wanted to transform the world, Toys," said Aayun, leaning into the words, using the urgent tension in her body for emphasis. "She wanted to create a new kind of life using Generation Twelve of the Seif al Din pathogen. Transformation into a new state of existence. Not alive, not dead, but rather living death. A kind of immortality. Alive forever, but different, changed. Think about it, Toys. To never grow old, to never get sick again. To never die. It's a wonderful thought."
Toys shook his head. "You have it wrong. Amirah turned herself into a monster. She was going to kill most of the world and turn the survivors into monsters like her. Like Fazir. That was the price of immortality."
"Yes," agreed Aayun. "And if you're alive, like you are, and healthy, like you are, with a future, like you have, it's too high a price to pay. But think about it from where I stand. I'm dying. If I allow them to cut me open and scrape out my uterus and cut off my breasts, I'll buy myself maybe another year. Maybe. Which means that in eighteen months I'll be dead anyway. Dead forever. Dead and forgotten."
"Oh, please . . ."
Aayun spread her arms wide. "If I embrace the transformation, I'll live forever."
"As a monster!" he cried.
"So what?" she snapped. "You're a monster. You're a soulless monster, Toys, and you know it. You're no better than Amirah. You enabled what she did. You share in every one of her crimes, and you own so many more of your own. You're a far greater monster than she ever was."
"She wanted to kill the world."
"She wanted to remake it."
"No."
"Yes!" said Aayun, pounding her thigh with a tight fist. "Not into the kind of world where someone like you would want to live. No. There wouldn't be a place for monsters like you. For the damned."
Toys closed his eyes.
"But it would be a world that would survive," said Aayun softly, almost gently. "And that's what I'm going to do. To finish her work, to ensure that her dream becomes the only enduring reality. I will build my lab right here. My uncle and the others I've already infected with his blood will provide me with all of the biological materials I need to perfect the pathogen, to bring it to Generation Thirteen, or higher. To remove some of the cognitive side effects, to create something that will help me bring about a wonderful new world. I mean . . . if God can't or won't save the world, if Jesus and Mohammad and all of those frauds can't do it, then I will. Science is, after all, the only god whose existence can be proved."
Toys shook his head. "Aayun, please, you can't do this."
"I've already started, Toys. It's taken me years, but everything I need is in these boxes. I'll have the lab set up in a month and I'll have a working Generation Thirteen within weeks. Amirah's lab was destroyed, but all of her research was backed up in the cloud. I have everything I need, and I have just enough time to do it before I'm too sick to work. And then . . . then I won't be sick ever again. No one will. All disease will end for those who survive the Seif al Din release. No birth defects, no cancer, no Alzheimer's, no anything. The
world will be purified of all of that."
He struggled against the duct tape, drawing shrieks of protest from the wooden chair. "Why tell me this, goddamn you? Why bring me here? Why not just cut my throat in bed? You could have, Aayun."
She looked surprised. "What? No . . . you don't understand, Toys. I don't want you dead."
"Then what, for fuck's sake? Are you looking for a confessor? Sorry, sweetheart, but I'm no priest."
"Not that, either."
"Well, I'm running out of ideas. If you wanted to gloat or if you want a cheerleader, sorry, I'm the wrong choice for those, too."
Aayun took his face in both hands. "No, you idiot," she said fiercely. "I want you to join me."
"What?"
"I want you to be one with me. To become immortal. Let's leave everything behind. God, sin, damnation, redemption. You can't go to hell if you never ever die. I brought you here this way because I didn't think you'd listen unless I made you. I wanted you to know that I was serious, that this is real, that I know what I'm doing. You're like me, Toys--you're damaged goods. You used up whatever this version of the world had to offer, so I'm offering something else. A new chance. A clean slate in a new world."
He stared at her, his mouth wide. There was such earnestness in her face, such deep pleading in her eyes, such total need, that it froze the world for a long, long moment.
Toys leaned toward her as far as the tape would allow.
