“Cam?” she asks gently as she nears him. He gives no response. He doesn’t even look up.

As she gets closer, she can see the bag beside him. There’s a syringe on the ground with a cloudy liquid. The needle is capped. For a moment she fears the worst, and looks around at the rewinds. She doesn’t spot any monitors that show distress, but perhaps he defeated the life-signs monitors, as well.

Then, as if reading her mind, he says, “I couldn’t kill them. I came here to do it—but I couldn’t.”

She knows she has to be careful with him. Handle him with kid gloves. “Of course you couldn’t,” she says. “They’re your spiritual siblings. Ending their lives would be akin to ending your own.”

“Spiritual,” he echoes. “I didn’t realize that word was part of your lexicon.”

“I don’t deny the spark of life,” she tells him. “But it’s forever debatable what that spark is, and what it means.”

“Yes, I suppose so.” Finally he looks at her, his eyes red and pleading. “I know too many things that I don’t want to know. Can you take them away, the way you took her away?”

“That depends on the nature of the things in question.”

“I’m talking about Proactive Citizenry, and the truth about it,” he tells her. “I broke into their computer network, and I know everything. I know that Proactive Citizenry controls the Juvenile Authority. And that they want to increase the scope of unwinding so all those condemned kids can be rewound into this army you’re creating.”

Roberta sighs. “We don’t control the Juvenile Authority, we just have considerable influence.”

“ ‘We,’ ” says Cam. “So it’s back to ‘we’ again. Not ‘they.’ You must be out of Proactive Purgatory.”

“I’ve always been appreciated, Cam,” she tells him. “My work speaks for itself. It always has.”

“Does your work involve clappers?” he asks. “You’re aware that Proactive Citizenry created them as well, aren’t you?”

She knows denying it will only jam a wedge in their rapport, and right now she needs that rapport. She needs for him to trust her unconditionally. So she breaks with all protocol, and tells him the truth.

“First of all, that’s not my department. And second, we didn’t create them. Clappers were blowing themselves up long before we had anything to do with them. Proactive Citizenry merely gives them money and direction. We shape their violence toward a purpose—so that it serves the greater good.”

He nods, accepting, if not entirely approving. “There certainly are historical precedents for manipulating the public through fear.”

“I prefer to see it as opening people’s eyes, so they continue to see the sense in unwinding.”

Cam looks down again and shakes his head slowly. “I don’t want my eyes opened—I want them closed. I don’t want to know any of this. Please, can you tweak me again, Roberta? Can you give me a new worm to make it all go away?”

She kneels beside him and puts her arm around his shoulder, pulling him close. “Poor Camus—you’re in such pain. We’ll find a way to make that pain go away.”

He rests his head on her shoulder. She can feel his relief. It’s as it should be. As it must be. “Thank you, Roberta. I know you’ll take care of me.”

She reaches into the pocket of her blazer. “Haven’t I always?”

“I know you’ve been there for me,” he says. “When my thoughts went astray, you fixed them. When I ran away, you found me and brought me home.”

“And I’m here for you now,” she says as she pulls out her pistol. The one she always keeps in her nightstand, but until now, has never needed to use.

“Promise me you’ll fix it all.”

“I promise, Cam,” and she brings the muzzle of the gun to his forehead, knowing that this will fix it all. “I promise.”

Then she pulls the trigger.

68 • Cam

Cam couldn’t be sure where this would end until he saw the metallic flash of the gun when she pulled it from her pocket. Now, as she speaks calming words to him, and brings the pistol to his forehead, he closes his eyes. He suspected it might come to this, but he didn’t want to believe it. Now he has no choice.

He’s made his decision. He won’t stop her. He won’t resist. He allows her to complete her deadly intention.

The trigger engages.

The hammer releases.

It flies toward the chamber, and strikes it.

But instead of a gunshot comes a harmless click. Still, that tiny, impotent sound tears through Cam’s brain just as effectively as a bullet. Roberta has failed him. He’s not surprised, but he’s deeply disappointed.

Before Roberta has a chance to react, he wrenches the gun from her hands.

“Do you really believe I’m such a pathetic wreck that I’d sit here and let you kill me?”

He stands up, and Roberta, off-balance in her murderous crouch, stumbles, breaking a heel before rising to face him.

“Your gun hasn’t had real bullets since we got here. I made sure they’d be as false as you are.”

“Cam, please—let me explain.”

“You don’t need to,” he tells her. “Your actions speak louder than your lies—they always have. But there’s something I need to explain to you.” He waves the gun, using it to point around the room. “This room is full of surveillance cameras. If you’ll notice, several of them have been repositioned to this very spot, providing various angles of what just transpired here. The rest are still positioned on the rewinds . . . and every single camera is currently streaming live to the public nimbus.”