I sat on the ground. It was morning now, and I had no food, no plan, and, honestly, no hope at all. I had no idea what I was going to do.

But as I tried to pull myself together, I was suddenly certain of one thing.

I no longer regretted what I'd done to Morgan.

If Morgan had known that her fate was to become like that desperately blank little girl of a human body I'd just seen walking along the highway, she would have wanted someone to end her existence.

Or at least I hoped she would have wanted it.

If my best friend would have chosen that over death, I'd wish I were dead myself.

But as I thought about how Morgan had been locked away in that silo during the sad last days of her existence, surrounded by her paperbacks and her strewn trash, I was reminded of something.

And suddenly I knew exactly what I had to do.

I'd been trying not to think about what had happened with Morgan all night. Now, I finally let myself remember the moment I shoved the knitting needle into her ear: the moment I ended her life—or expired her, or whatever they called it.

I remembered how I'd known right after I did it that I needed to stand up and run, fast, but that I couldn't bring myself to do anything but stare at the bloodied knitting needle in my hand. I remembered the boot steps of the Home Guard pounding through the house toward me. Then I remembered the ranger racing into the wash room, leaping past me, then kneeling beside Tyler, clutching my nephew in one arm while discreetly helping him pull his jeans back up.

I remembered realizing, slowly, that it hadn't been the Home Guards' boot steps that had been pounding through the house toward the wash room.

They had been Ian's.

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