Alex slammed the hatch switch with all his weight. The hydraulic motor kicked in. He dropped low and aimed out the ship. No Katherine. No flechettes. Sibyl lay toppled from where he'd shoved her. He was clear.

Then he glimpsed her. Naema had rolled to her side. She looked right at him for a single moment before disappearing behind the closing door.

"No! You bitch. Don't look at..."

Me? That was how he was going to finish the sentence, but what sentence was that? The hatch door sealed. He looked around. It seemed he was alone.

"Huh," he said. The word echoed off the hull.

"Huh." He said it again. Neat echo.

It must be a military ship. The walls were steel, and it was cramped as hell. Nobody would want to be in here unless their country demanded it.

So why was he?

He thought hard, but he couldn't recall the chain of events that led to him here. He had been on a plane, and he'd been playing with the seat controls. Sakhr had been angry at him again. Because...

Right! Because Alex had been teasing him about his fear of planes. That man was afraid of everything.

Jesus. Why did this seem so long ago? At least a month. Everything since was a blank. Was he on drugs again? Sakhr would be pissed, but fuck him. Then again, maybe Sakhr had a point.

Alex had no idea where he was.

And holy shit! He was holding a gun! And he was a woman. A hot woman. It must have been a wild night.

"Alexander."

The voice came from outside the ship. It was strong, masculine, and angry.

"Open the hatch door."

Ah. Authority. Alex was already climbing to his feet. Anton must really be angry if he's using that. Alex hoped he hadn't fucked up too badly, whatever it was he'd done.

The door lever was in the first place he looked. Strange, considering he'd never been on this ship before. The hatch eased open, revealing an interesting sight.

A bleeding black girl, an asian girl, and a hispanic space marine who must be Anton.

Sure. Why not.

For some reason, he couldn't read anyone's mind. That was troubling. He'd have to figure the situation out for himself. Did he shoot the black girl? Maybe. And that asian girl sure looked like someone had hurt her feelings. Was all this his fault? Was that why Anton was glaring at him?

Well, Alex couldn't feel bad for something he couldn't remember. Might as well own it. He put on his signature grin.

"Drop your weapon and kick it over," Anton said.

Alex shrugged, still grinning. It must have been one hell of a drug-fueled rampage. He complied. He wanted to say something witty as he did it, but he couldn't think of anything good.

And from the look in Anton's eye, it didn't look like anything would go over well anyway. He looked really pissed, so much so that Alex dropped his grin. Was this serious? Had he gone too far? He hoped this was something they could put behind them. He'd hate to lose his only friend.

Victoria pulled off Naema's helmet. The girl flailed. Victoria settled her down and checked her wounds. A solid leg shot. It looked like it damaged the bone. The helmet deflected the head shot though, and the neck wound, despite all the blood, was just a graze.

She removed Naema's earbuds. Music blasted from them. Between those and the blinders, her sensory awareness must have been nothing. When she removed the gag. The girl gasped for breath.

"You're going to be fine," Victoria said.

Naema's eyes were wild. She struggled again.

Victoria calmed her. "Settle down. I know you're in pain, but I need you to concentrate on me."

"Who are you?" Naema asked.

"Don't concern yourself with that. I'm working with Josephine, and I need you to do exactly as I tell you. Understand?"

Naema glanced at Alexander.

"Don't worry about him anymore. He's harmless."

"Harmless?" said Alex.

Victoria ignored him. "I need you to close your eyes for a moment."

Naema did. Victoria looked at Sibyl. "Come here and look me in the eye."

Hesitantly, Sibyl approached. Victoria pilfered her mind for everything she could. The bomb was upstairs like Alex said. Password is as he said. The timer was forty seconds before the main bomb, and—

...And Alexander broke the wrist monitor. That son of a bitch. Victoria glanced at it. Even from here, she could make out the cracks running across its blank screen.

The time had said eight minutes.

In eight minutes, that world destroyer would go off. If Alexander had left her here as he planned, she would have had let the nuclear bomb go off, or else the world-destroyer would send everyone back into the dark ages.

She looked at him. He stared back innocently, as though genuinely concerned. She yearned to switch bodies with him and kill him now, but no. He may have been the monster a minute ago. Now, he was just a man, lost and confused. To kill him now would be like putting down a dog that had bit a child in confusion. Maybe it was the effect of his Sympathy glyph on her mind, but she couldn't do it.

She pulled Sibyl toward Naema. "Unbind her. Get her on the ship. Keep Alexander from running off. I'll be watching both of you."

Sibyl nodded vigorously and snapped to work. Victoria collected the damaged monitor. It wouldn't even turn on.

She might disarm the warhead, then find lesser explosives to destroy the world-destroyer. That depended on whether such munitions existed onboard, which she doubted.

Of course, she could just leave. Millions of lives of the still-reeling human race would snuff out. The world might blame her, or the terrorists. Either way, society would take another massive step backward. But she would still be alive. She had Alex under control now, and Helena's body. She could drag the world back to order.

She'd just have to do everything all over again. Wage wars. Conquer. Cause suffering and death. It might be more difficult now that the world knew what Victoria had done, even if she hid in another body. And it would take years.

Years of pain.

Could she really go through it all over again? Maybe Alex was right. Or maybe it was just because she was so damn tired of being the monster. She'd always wanted to help, yet somewhere during this exile she'd started to wonder: maybe the world would have been better if she hadn't existed at all.

Victoria fetched two fallen flechettes from the floor and moved to where Naema couldn't see her. In her head, she formulated every plan she could think of. Her goal? She wanted to be able to look back on this moment and say, "yes. That's what I wanted. I'm happy with how this turned out, and I wouldn't change it even if I could."

And then she tossed the flechettes into the air.

They landed and rolled to a stop. Both pointed to her left. She knew which plan that corresponded to. Somehow, she'd known they would fall that way even before she tossed the dice. Yet she had to toss them again just to make sure.

Same result.

So that was her path of least regret.

Her happy ending.

She hated so much that it was true, but she knew it was.

Victoria headed back toward the others. They'd gotten into the shuttle. Alex took the pilot's chair, although he wasn't taking advantage of it. Naema had limped to a passenger seat. Victoria knelt by her.

"I need you to listen to me very carefully..."