I woke up the next morning in a bed I’d never expected to wake up in again. A basic straw mattress, which should have been nigh unusable by PanTech standards, was the most comforting thing I’d experienced in a long time. I didn’t fully realize how exhausted I was until this moment. My mother had guided me down familiar alleyways, quietly smuggling me into our home where… they’d most certainly look first if they knew who they were dealing with. If they knew, but they likely didn’t. Knowing who I was would’ve meant approaching me differently. Even if they knew all about me as a PanTech professor, they likely had no idea of my connection to this village or anyone here. Origins were rarely discussed.

A knock at my door pulled me from my thoughts.

“Breakfast will be ready soon,” my mother said.

Ah, a real breakfast. Not artificial, machine-made, nutrition meals with perfect macro and micronutrient composition. I could smell it already. It made my head swim.

As I sat up in bed, I saw a fresh set of clothes lying beside me. Changing would be for the best. I could at least keep my armor on underneath. The sword, blaster, and other items could stay hidden in my room. Ghost could certainly keep himself busy until I needed him again. Considering he wasn’t waiting at my bedside, something else must’ve gotten his attention. I wasn’t worried. Ghost liked doing his own thing.

“Coming,” I replied.

Could this really work?

I changed into one of my old outfits, surprised that it still fit. I’d gained a bit of muscle on my frame, but otherwise my body was almost exactly the same. After looking at myself in the mirror, I struggled momentarily with the mixed feelings toward the person looking back at me. With a quiet nod, I walked out of my room and sat at the dinner table.

Part of me hoped I’d see Ferris there, but he’d most likely been sent to some other adversity zone far, far away and fed lies about why he was there. PanTech didn’t send employees back to their own zones anyway. They claimed it was to avoid favoritism toward the citizens of the zone, but it was more likely they feared a soldier not following orders to oppress someone they knew the name and face of. Easier to abuse strangers. A sad fact of human nature.

Though I knew Ferris would not be joining us, my mother still had a spot cleared for him. If he walked in, she’d only need to put a plate down and we could all be a family again like nothing ever happened. For a moment, I wondered how things would have turned out had we never agreed to join PanTech. What would life look like right now?

If only I could be so selfish. That scenario was easy to see playing out. We’d likely be in an even worse predicament than we already were. I suppose I needed to give myself some credit there.

My mother silently filled my plate, placing it in front of me with a smile.

“Your father will be a bit late, but he insisted I make you breakfast so you wouldn’t need to wait for him.”

“Does Father still teach?” I asked.

“Until recently. A lot has happened in the past few years, Taylor. I’ll let your father tell you his part, and he’ll want to hear yours. For now, focus on eating your breakfast.”

I looked down. That certainly wouldn’t be a problem.

Ham. Real ham left a trail of visible steam in the air, invading my nostrils with anticipated flavor. Eggs. From actual chickens. Not the nutritionally perfect, uncanny substitutes PanTech synthesized. Authentic food, with all its flaws, may as well have been a gift from the gods. I cut away a piece of the ham and slowly lifted the fork to my mouth. It was all I could do not to cry.

“A bit overwhelming, isn’t it?” Mother said. “I still remember that feeling, after having spent years eating what they served at PanTech HQ. You get used to it, but then when you taste real food again…”

“I’m sorry, Mother,” I said. I’m not sure why that’s the thing I chose to say, of all the things going through my mind.

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

“I know,” I said.

I did know that, but knowing and feeling are sometimes at odds with one another.

Mother sat quietly, offering me a smile whenever I looked up from my food.

“Those were some pretty impressive moves you pulled off last night,” she said. “You’ve become quite the athlete since you’ve been with PanTech. Does that mean you ended up joining Adversity Management instead of one of the science departments?”

“Something like that…” I mumbled. “I was part of Animal Research for a while, before founding my own department.”

“Your own department? You became a professor then? Surely you’re the youngest professor they’ve ever promoted.” Her voice filled with involuntary pride.

“A bit younger than Elise, the College of Neuroscience professor, yes. But Mother…”

She sat across from me and took my hand in hers. “I know. You wouldn’t have come into the village the way you did if all was well.”

Before I could open my mouth, Father burst through the door, tossing his bag aside and rushing toward me. I stood, nearly sending my chair toppling behind me. He picked me up and spun me around. He’d aged noticeably since I’d last seen him, his beard now decorated with lines of gray.

“It’s so good to see you, Taylor. How is your brother? Do you see him these days?”

I sighed, returning to my seat. “Please, get your breakfast. Both of you. I’ll try to give you the abridged version.”

I waited patiently while they filled their plates and sat at the table, but I could see the worry and anticipation was killing them. Father, who had always hated PanTech, was no doubt waiting to have his views validated. And for the most part, they would be.

“I’ve seen Ferris, but not recently. My visit here isn’t authorized. The truth is there’s no one left to authorize it.”

“What?” Mother gasped, her face growing pale.

“I mean it has collapsed. The whole thing. PanTech HQ itself is destroyed. Only a few of us made it out alive. A lot of Adversity Management was already deployed to the zones. I’m certain that’s the case for Ferris, because I didn’t see him there when any of this was happening. I just don’t know where he is.”

I’d half expected Father to launch into an “I told you so” rant, but he seemed even more at a loss than Mother.

“Was it a rebellion?” he asked.

“PanTech’s president would say so, but no. This all started with a foolish old man who dreamed of becoming immortal and was willing to destroy everything in the process. I can’t claim to know every last detail but… Wait here,” I said, stepping away from the table to retrieve a small pouch I’d brought with me. When I returned, I unrolled it on the table next to my plate.

“Syringes?” Mother asked, her confusion only growing.

“Part of his grand plan was a virus that could target very specific human traits. A culling of the less worthy, where almost everyone met the criteria. I can only assume he planned to shrink humanity down to a small group of immortal elites, with him at the helm.”

“But things didn’t work out as planned for him, did they?” Father interjected, seeming to speak mostly to himself as he struggled to process what he was being told.

“No. The virus was far deadlier to humans than anything ever created by nature or in a lab. It behaves strangely. It can seem to disappear, only to return and kill months or even a few years later. We urged them to destroy it and start over, but by then a former Adversity Management soldier, someone I… trusted, infected himself, the dogs and cats that were in my Explorer’s League and Adversity Management, and sent them to all the zones to act as carriers, none the wiser.”

“Those strange anthropomorphic animals are the carriers?” Father asked.

“Anyone can be a carrier. The animals only carry it but aren’t killed by it. They pass it to humans,” I said.

“What is the mortality rate?” Mother asked. She’d been eager to ask that question, and I had wished I could avoid answering it forever.

“Guaranteed. It can’t be survived.”

“But you’ve developed a cure?” Father asked, gesturing to the line of syringes in front of him.

I paused, taking a deep breath.

“No… I’ve developed a vaccine that prevents the virus from becoming fatal to the host.”

“I can see it on your face. What are the costs of the cure?” Mother asked.

“Complete sterilization,” I said, dropping my fist on the table. “Do you understand what that means?”

They both sat quietly for a moment. Of course they understood what it meant. It didn’t take a genius to reach that conclusion, but Mother and Father were both sharp.

“Is this really the end of humanity? Decline the vaccine and die, or take it and be unable to reproduce?” Father stroked his beard as he asked, as though he was hoping to reach a better conclusion. I wished that was possible. More than anything, I wanted someone more capable than me to point out something I’d been missing all along. A small flaw in my conclusion I wasn’t seeing. A solution right under our noses.

But that wasn’t reality. That wasn’t the truth.

Father held out his arm, frowning. “Perhaps… we can develop a cure later with the time bought by your vaccine.”

I took out a sterilizing wipe, along with a syringe. I wiped his arm, and quickly administered the dose.

“Considering all of those facilities are now destroyed by giant murder machines and it would take us generations to rebuild them, assuming the machines don’t suddenly deploy and kill us all first…”

Mother placed a hand on my shoulder. “You did the best you could, Taylor. You’re doing the best you can.” She extended her own arm.

“I’m sorry…” I said, failing again to hold back my tears. “In the end, all I can do is delay the inevitable. I tried so hard. My friends too. We failed to stop any of it.”

“For those who remain, this is no small thing,” Father said. “There is a time for stepping back and looking at everything, and a time for stepping forward and looking closely at what is in front of you. This is that time for you. Your vaccine can ease suffering and allow children to grow up and die old as they were meant to. You said these animals aren’t killed by the virus. Perhaps it is their time to inherit the world, and our opportunity to shape that world for them. We can leave them a gift, instead of a burden.”

This was the most optimistic I’d ever heard my father, a true cynic, ever be in his life. I needed to hear it. More than anything, I needed to hear someone frame it exactly as he had. Maybe, in the end, I wouldn’t save anyone.

But… I still had a purpose.