Terrance woke up to a gun pressed against his forehead. Fear gushed into his eyes for a second, as rapids towards a waterfall, but then evaporated into acceptance, even though I thought wrath would nestle in his soul. Resignation that he would die perhaps. That I would kill him. “The seventy-eight thousand one hundred twenty-two souls you massacred clamor for justice.” I slid the gun to his temple. He gulped, and I could hear his sweat drip to the floor, even though he tried to pretend his best that he could die a stoic death. Good. I wanted Terrance to fear. I wanted to make him feel weak, vulnerable. More than that. I wanted him to suffer. Feel anguish. I wanted to hack every finger of his until he begged for mercy. Like those who had attended Julius’ address felt. Like those he slaughtered in my district must have felt, because even though they probably died in a second, it was a timeless instant of horror. A frozen second of melting organs and vaporized bones. Perhaps at first Terrance didn’t think I could kill him, but now he did. Yet, I wasn’t sure of what I’d do. I placed my finger on the trigger. Rage engulfing my veins. My chance to avenge my family. My chance to bring him to justice.

But then Ellie flashed in my mind. If she were alive, she’d put herself in front of Terrance to save him. If she had died, I was certain her spirit would emerge right there to tell me she had forgiven him. That she didn’t want me to lose my soul for a stupid revenge that would solve nothing. Actually if she hadn’t appeared that meant she was alive. I hoped. I guessed I should follow the advice I gave others. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. And then I glanced at Girgor, stern. He shook his head and snatched his gun from his pocket. Probably to shoot me if I killed Terrance.

They were right.

If anyone had the authority to execute Terrance for his crimes, it was the government, as corrupt as it was. Not vigilantes. Not other terrorists. Not me. But the state.

And if I were in his position, I’d want my enemy to treat me with mercy. But that didn’t mean he’d walk away as if nothing had happened.

I placed the gun in my pocket. “I will spare your life not because you deserve it, Terrance,” I said. “But because it’s the right thing to do.”

“You spare my life because you don’t have the guts to kill me, bridger.”

Girgor drew out his gun and aimed at Terrance. “Do not stoke the fire, young man.”

“Do you even care about the innocent people you’ve slaughtered?” I said. “Or are they just pawns in your war?”

Now ire blazed in Terrance’s eyes. “I care more about the Naturals than you do, you damn idiot!” He reeled back from the pain that blasted his recently-punctured chest. “The people of your district were—”

“Don’t you dare, you …”

“Casualties,” Terrance said, as if it pained him to say it. Bastard. I expected that he didn’t care. I wanted him not to care. “Each and every single one of them were casualties in our fight for freedom. Our fight for—”

“Spare me the lies you brainwash your followers with.” I clenched my fists. “Was my family a casualty?” It took everything in me not to clout his temple. “Was Almyra a casualty?”

“Just like you, Cael,” he said. “Caring more about your family, about an Enhanced, an Achroite to boot, than about the Naturals, than about Impures and Esneas.”

“Because they were innocent, because we’re all the same,” I said. “Natural and Enhanced. And your idiotic civil war won’t solve a thing.”

“Easy for you to say,” he said, bitter. “You lived in a district with all the amenities of modern life. But for those outside your bubble, life was an agony where they could only hope for death’s sweet reprieve.”

“I was changing that, with Almyra, with Aisha,” I said. “But you ruined everything with your virus and your terrorist attack at the Ceremony. You doomed not just our country, but the whole world.” I punched the wall. “Damn you, Terrance. What are you going to do once the virus spreads worldwide? How long until we find a cure? Do you even have one?” I paused a second, to let my rage settle. “So don’t tell me that you care about innocent people. You only care about yourself and your gang of terrorists seeking absolute power at all costs! You only care about making everyone an Enhanced so you can become the new Zielkkenhom and can control them with ease! You care about nothing but fulfilling your ego and God-complex, just like Zielkkenhom!”

Terrance stood now, despite the pain that his eyes revealed. “And you solely care about your family, and about hot Achroite girls who remind you of the girlfriend you let die!” He placed his hand against his chest, and clutched a chair to help him remain on foot. “You only care about helping those who already love you! Care enough to betray your allies! Enough to betray your nation! Enough even to betray Aisha!”

“I didn’t betray them,” I yelled. Suppressing my wrath. “And if some of them loathed me for what I did, then they weren’t my real friends anyway.”

“You deserved becoming Feather Lad and losing your family with our attack!”

And with that I lost it. I clouted his chest wound as if I wanted his ribcage to shatter, and jabbed him with my other arm as if I wanted to dislocate his jaw. One of his teeth flew out, I heard a crack, but his jaw didn’t seem to dislocate.

And it hit me right there. I had just punched a survivor of a plane wreck. What was I becoming? “Terrance, I’m—”

“I apologize, Cael,” he said, contrite. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry if your family perished in the attack. And you certainly didn’t deserve Feather Lad. I punished Belisario and Marina for laughing and sharing that disgusting video. And even commented in your support.”

His words pounded me more than any actual fist. Because that meant Terrance wasn’t as horrible as I had him to be. Before, he was just a genocidal maniac. But now, he was the maniac who had apologized for killing my family. With actual remorse. Terrance was no sociopath as he initially seemed. And that just made it more difficult to loathe him.

I was about to apologize, but something Terrance had said struck me. Our attack? Not my attack? Was Terrance not Freedom’s Voice as I had thought? Then who was? I handed Terrance a healer. “Are you Freedom’s Voice?”

“Are you so naïve that you think I’ll answer with the truth?”

“Are you then?” I said. “Did you even set off the attack at the Ceremony?”

“I am Freedom’s Voice, Cael,” he said. “I set off the attack.”

Exactly what I needed. “You’re lying,” I said. I had noticed a slight change in his timbre when he answered. “Whom are you protecting?”

“I’ll die before I tell you.”

“I’ll find out soon enough,” I said. “But thank you for being a worthy foe who refuses to use dirty tactics such as that video.” I shouldn’t have care that much about that thing. Was just a video. But online humiliation sometimes was worst. Because you could never forget. That video would never disappear. Never. “Yours and Aisha’s support meant that it wasn’t just my family who was standing by my side. It meant a lot to me, Terrance. Really.” I extended my arm and we shook hands. Though we both knew we were not friends.

“Why do you care about the Enhanceds, bridger?” he muttered. “Do you even know what they’re doing at the base? Massacring Naturals on behalf of Julius’ orders. Using them as guinea pigs to find the cure.” His voice thickened. “And yet, you support them. Despite—”

“Despite what, Terrance?” I yelled. “I will always save the innocent. I will always try to save as many people as possible, Enhanced or Natural. And if that means for now we have to work together to save the Naturals, then let’s become a team. But if you insist on going the way of war, then only one of us is going to stay alive to tell his story.” I forced the words, thinking he wouldn’t see through my cover if I pretended to be resolute in my resolve to kill him.

“That’s the problem, bridger, that you think they’re innocent,” Terrance stammered. “You’re a bridger. The Enhanceds need you. They’ll never purposely treat you like dregs.” And before I could even utter a sound, he shot, “Just because Naturals may have hurt you more than the Enhanceds, that doesn’t mean the Enhanceds are all pure and innocent. You can’t use your personal experiences as your guiding posts, because you’re not like most Naturals.” He paused a second to not overexert his injured lungs. “Most Naturals, and even the Impures and Esneas, are treated like crap by the higher classes.”

“So then let’s work together,” I said, hoping that the Holy Spirit would illuminate him. “Let’s win freedom through peace.”

Terrance sneered. “I used to be as naïve as you, once,” he said. “But idealism is not enough to weather life. Tyrants don’t change. People can’t change, bridger. And the more we blind ourselves to that fact, the harsher the consequences that will befall us shall be. For eventually Zielkkenhom’s tyranny shall turn into Eudora’s one, if we do nothing. If we reform society, instead of bringing about a new one, Naturals will eventually suffer again. And it will be your fault.”

“War is not the answer,” I said. “It only brings about—”

“You escaped, bridger,” Terrance said. His voice kind of broken, but with the stench of resentment. “Don’t pretend like you know the horror of war because you escaped. You fled to America.” He stood. Tears surged in his eyes. “But I could not. I stayed, bridger. I stayed in the EF. And your alleged horrors of war are nothing compared to the torment that followed. You did not suffer the consequences of Eudora’s policies. I did.” He shut so I did not hear his broken voice. He wiped his eyes before the tears fell, so I did not see him cry. “Do you know what the first law Eudora passed was?” Terrance glanced down, not at the floor though, but at his groin. Just for a second.

“The sterilization laws.” I thought by now rage would not pulse when I thought of that, but it still did.

“It started like that, bridger,” Terrance said. “Until her conquest wars were over and she reformed the government.” Terrance paused, though not to make his words sink in, but as if it pained him to talk, as if he did not want to remember, but still had to tell someone. “She created the Secretariat of Population adscript to the Ministry of Health and Citizen Welfare.” Terrance clenched his fists even more, to the point that specks of blood dripped from his hands. I thought I knew where he was going. Pa had told me about it when he returned. But it was worse. Much worse. Not even in my worst nightmares could I have pictured it. Because I never thought I’d meet someone who went through that.

“Eudora decreed that only the best specimens of citizens would be allowed to procreate, all dependent on the needs of the state, so they froze sperm samples and ovaries from these superior specimens, best suited to fulfill the jobs required by the nation, and proceeded to sterilize them afterwards.”

“And they sterilized you?”

“I was not a superior specimen,” Terrance stammered, voice broken. “I was not suited for the jobs the state needed. And Eudora wanted to make sure inferior genes did not infect her perfect race, her perfect country, so she … so she …”

I had never seen Terrance so broken. Water surged into his eyes again. I leaned toward him and placed my hand on his shoulder. “I don’t mind if you cry, Terrance.”

“Crying solves nothing, bridger.” Terrance still didn’t cry, but only because he held his tears in his eyes. “So Eudora made sure we could not reproduce, not even with assisted reproduction methods. So …” And then tears scratched his face, though he did not sob. Did not care that I saw him. How long had he kept that to himself? “So she made sure no inferior male could produce sperm, and no inferior female be with child.”

I hugged him.

He sniffled and hugged me back.

Had to force the words through his pain, through his sobs.

“The Ministry’s health officials removed the testicles of all unfit men,” he said. “And then they removed the ovaries of the unfit women. So only the most suited humans could reproduce, and populate her perfect, efficient state with no poverty and no crime. Where the state’s bureaucracy knows best.”

And at that moment, Terrance ceased to be just the brainwasher, just the Harmonist mouthpiece, but the man who willed to avoid tyranny, who willed to bring freedom to the Naturals. The man who had weathered such a horrible trial, and done so much more valiantly than me, for he still lived. And did not choose suicide. I didn’t know what I’d have done in that situation. And prayed I never had to face it. But, when I thought of his methods, when I thought of what the Harmonists stood for, of the possible genocide they could have caused, I wasn’t so sure that I could support him.

“I had to grow up with testosterone shots and pellets,” he muttered. “And will have to live like that for the rest of my life.”

I let him cry on my shoulder for a minute. And did not say anything of it. I just hoped I could help him. Because at that moment, he was not my enemy. He was my friend. And I had to help him.

He moved away from me and wiped his tears. “Crying doesn’t solve—”

“You don’t have to justify yourself for crying,” I said. “You do, however, for trying to start a civil war and let a genocide decimate the planet. And you ruined things for me.” I saw Terrance’s bewildered expression. “I can’t kill you now.”

He chuckled. First time I had seen him chuckle. Ever. “Thank you, brid … Cael,” he said. “You are a kind person at heart. Mistaken, but kind.”

“Same as you, Terrance,” I said. “You’re too good for the Harmonists.”

“Once we arrive at the base, while you save the Naturals there, I’ll hack into their servers, locate the bases being used for human experimentation and send operatives to rescue the Naturals in each and every single one of them,” Terrance said. “I will always fight for liberty, regardless of the casualties. So after we rescue those at the base, we return to being enemies.” He lowered his voice when he said that phrase. Even hunched a tad.

Terrance and I shook hands. “I know, Terrance. I know,” I said, disappointed.

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