My father finished dabbing at the blood and stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. "Well," he said, folding his arms. "This does seem a bit . . . anticlimactic, don't you think?"

I said nothing, eyes lingering on my limp mother and her broken neck and the lifeless eyes that didn't look that much different than from when she was alive. They would haunt me all the same either way.

"You must know the truth," he continued, "for you to be this composed, and for me to have to kill her."

I was tired. I was hurt. My heart was broken. I didn't have time to play his stupid games that would do nothing but give me headaches and prolong the inevitable. I stepped over Lucille's body and sat in the chair. After a moment Dr. Edmund joined me. We sat there, the two of us, surrounded by destruction and this world that teetered dangerously between us.

"This is how it ends," he said.

"This is how it ends."

"One of my favorite quotes growing up. 'This is how the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.' Fitting, huh? No screaming. No fiery balls raining down from the sky. Just silent terror."

He reached into his jacket and withdrew a long, complex syringe with some additional mechanism I failed to understand. The metal clinked the table where it rolled to a stop, the long needle pointed toward me like a compass, and a chill passed all the way through my body.

"For you," he said.

For me.

"Why did you do it?" I asked. There was too much silence. Too much inside and outside and all around. Too much threatening. Too much everywhere.

"Do what?"

As if he didn't know. "Create me. Create the serum. Why would you do it?"

I didn't expect an answer. Dr. Edmund looked away, eyes drifting, seeming to ponder the question, but I knew he wasn't. Because there was no answer. Nothing definite, nothing exact. Maybe he didn't even know anymore. Maybe he never really knew. There was no way to tell for sure. There never would be.

He didn't answer, gaze falling, and I sat there staring at my father who looked like he hadn't ever even entertained the idea of sleep.

My sister was pregnant. I would never see her again. My mother was dead. I sat with my father at the beginning of the end of everything.

This family was seriously messed up.

"I have to kill you."

His eyes snapped to mine, unsurprised at my calm claim. "So it seems."

I swallowed. Hard. "You have worked immeasurably hard to make my life hell. And I want you to know you have succeeded."

He didn't smile, didn't frown, didn't move.

"You had this . . . this virus in me the entire time, and you knew it, and it must have been hilarious to you. Everybody thinks they can manipulate me and laugh and have a good time. But this is me getting the last laugh. This is me pulling the final card."

Dr. Edmund lounged back against the chair, legs extended. He pushed graying hair off his forehead. "You are not the first person to want me dead."

"I will be the first to make good on that want."

His eyebrow inclined. He studied me. An expression of shock twisted his features. "I'll be damned."

"What."

"How noble, that you think sacrificing yourself will save the day."

"It will."

"No, see, that's where you're wrong." He leaned forward, bracing his palms on the table's surface. "Alive, dead, rotting, it doesn't matter. Anybody can extract that serum, and start over, and thus the cycle repeats. Ellie, you are patient zero. Patient zero of the rest of the world."

My mouth dried. My palms began to sweat. "No. The world isn't ready."

"The world will never be ready. It changes nothing."

Tiny dots danced in the corners of my vision. "Then I'll kill you and extract the serum and destroy it. I'll make sure nobody can ever access it again."

The smile that curved his lips was empty and cold and final. "You can't."

"I'm not afraid to die."

"But that's just it. You won't die. It's infinitely worse than dying, what will happen to you."

My stomach dropped. A strange buzzing erupted in my ears, like an annoying fly. I listened.

"The serum is you, Ellie. You take the needle, you insert it, you draw out the serum one agonizing batch at a time. And you know what will be left? An incapacitated mess. You will be nothing. You will be a shell of a body forced to watch the world spin by while you can do nothing but drool and feel sorrow and piss yourself. That is your reality, darling. A life of perpetual longing for death, and the death will never come."

I flinched. It was instinctive. The truth was worse than a smack in the face.

He awaited my next move, smirking, almost certain I would choose self-preservation. That I would choose to let him live and negotiate and save myself and hide away and watch the world burn. But he was wrong. He was wrong.

There was the second option.

There was thinking of all that I had lost at his hands. The Prophets that sprung up because of his lunacy. The innocent people in my town who died because of an experiment they had no say in. Tia. Jim. Esme. August's families. Countless other families who were only pawns in the government's game. I thought about Jessica and Blake and Ryan, poor Ryan, who never got to go to medical school. I thought about Rex and Angel and how war changed people. I thought about the rest of the world who had no idea this was happening and could continue to lead normal lives only if I chose the second option.

I thought about August, who lived a life of expectations and pain and sorrow, a life of masochism and coming so close to achieving what he wanted only to take it away from himself. I thought about normality, how overrated it was, how irrelevant to life, because living was about seizing whatever moment was given to you and milking it until it ran dry. I learned this from my friends, from my experiences, from my own grief. My whole life was seeking normality, when my whole life should have been seeking happiness.

And I found it. I found it too late.

So the only real questioned remained, was, how many more people had to die?

And the answer was simple.

One.

Just one more.

I stared at Dr. Carlton Edmund, my father, stared right into his soul with all the rage and anger and hate and fury that twisted me up inside. I summoned the monster always stirring beneath the surface, calling it to action, giving it one last mission, filling it with purpose. It roared. It begged for blood. It would take nothing less.

My father's eyes bugged when he sensed my hold on him. His hands grasped his throat. Tears flooded my cheeks. He toppled out of the chair and hit his knees and scrambled through the air for something he would never find. Lucille split the space between us. I stood and walked over and forced him to look at her face, for him to know he knocked her up and created me and killed her, and he would kill himself.

"How do I do it?" I demanded.

"The base of the neck," he said. He told me it was the base of the neck. Plunge the needle down, down, down, pull it up, lock it, release, do it again. And again. And again. That I would know when to stop, because my body would fail.

I squeezed the life out of him, watching the color leave his cheeks, watching the panic rise on his face. And my life flashed before my eyes. I was in my town, surrounded by dead bodies, never belonging, not human. I was on the hill with Lana, about to die, kept alive for an even more insidious reason. I was with Tia, watching her die, holding her dead body, burying her in the woods. I was with Muffy and Ray in the warehouse. I was with every innocent soul that died at the hands of the Prophets on account of me. I was with Jim and Esme. I was with Ryan bleeding out in the kitchen of Jessica's cabin. I was with August, dying in my arms after taking a bullet for me when he promised he wouldn't.

I was Ellie, broken and weak, wishing for death, wishing for answers, wishing for something to make sense.

And then I was there, with my father, killing him, realizing nothing would ever make sense, and that was life. Life was nonsensical and illogical and that was what made it beautiful.

And I cried, because I knew this now, but it was too late.

It was too late.

It was too late.

I watched Dr. Edmund's body hit the ground, and everything within me felt numb. Because something snapped. Something gave, murdering my own family. Something irreversible. Something wretched.

I was human and I was a monster and I was something else entirely.

The needle was heavier than I expected, pressing gravely into my palm. My own mortality hunched around me like a shadow. I think maybe I always knew I would end up here, that maybe somewhere along the way I naively hoped this conflict could be solved through words and understanding and peaceful deliberation. But I should have known. I should have known.

There was only one way.

War would cause war, and be caused by it, and that was the circle. And circles never ended.

I skimmed the tip of the needle against the skin at my neck. I was scared and alone. I was out of options. I always knew it would end this way.

I slumped into the chair, elbows thumping on the surface, syringe in my hand, tears falling, heart humping, head filled with a thousand different things.

And this is how it ends.

My knee bounced up and down, impatient, terrified.

And this is how it ends.

I closed my eyes and thought of all the good things in my life, and when that became too painful I thought of nothing, and then I told myself to quit being a coward and broke the skin. I cried. I screamed. I couldn't turn back. I couldn't turn back.

And this is how it ends.

******

Yes! Yes, that is the final chapter! Ambiguous, right? Maddening, maybe. Regardless, there will be an epilogue to come, I just had to get this up now. I couldn't wait any longer. Reactions, thoughts, rages, I want them all!

-EJ