“I know!” My shout tears through my ribs, and I gasp through the pain. Nara moves, but I lift one hand to stop her. “I know what he did. I was there.”
“Then let me end this.”
Every person in the ruined primate house goes silent.
Kauss stands beneath leaking rain and shattered holo-light, pistol aimed at the man who nearly killed me, and I see two battles inside him. One is here. Ron. Gang members. Blood. Crime. The immediate threat.
The other is older.
Horus IV.
Smoke. Civilians. Failure. Promises he could not keep because ships came late and corridors collapsed and war devoured children while men told him strength should have been enough.
I step closer.
Kauss’s eyes sharpen with panic. “Stop.”
“No.”
“Evie, please.”
“You are not on Horus IV.”
He flinches.
Good.
I need him to feel it.
“You are not in that corridor,” I say, voice shaking but clear. “You are not carrying Anika through smoke. You are not waiting for ships that come too late. You are here. With me. In Vedder City. In the stupid abandoned zoo where this nightmare started.”
His jaw trembles once.
Ron mutters, “Pathetic.”
Kauss’s finger tightens on the trigger.
“Kauss,” I snap.
His eyes cut back to me.
“You saved people,” I say. “Today, yesterday, every day since I met you. You saved Al. You saved Mira’s clinic. You saved the bakery. You saved me more than once. But if you kill him on his knees because grief tells you it’s the only way, Horus wins again.”
His face contorts.
Not anger.
Pain.
“You think mercy will stop him?” he asks.
“No.”
“Then what is the point?”
“The point is that you get to choose who you are when there is no good choice.”
The pistol does not lower.
