"Please tell me this isn't real," he says across from her, his hands kept so rigidly still she knows it's only to keep them from reaching out to her, and she closes her eyes for a moment, forces them back open. She cannot be so weak now, not at the end, not when the answers will be out soon.

"I knew they'd send you," she says instead of any answer, and watches his face crumple into despair with all the detachment of a bomb waiting for the fuse to finish burning.