Chapter 45: Rift
'You see? I think you see now. In my life, I was many things. A child growing up in the ruins of a slaughtered world. A foolish young man dreaming to destroy the Agency. An adult fueled by a great purpose. A scientist, a teacher. A father. But through all of it, one thing about me never changed: I was a wraith, first and foremost. And all of it led me to that single point of time and space after your mother died, when, starting to succumb to the Disease myself, I finally understood what I was meant to do in this world.
We wished to save the wraiths from their fate, and we almost succeeded. But there wasn't enough time. The thing we were trying to overcome had come for us ourselves. And it would have been okay. The basis of our research would have paved the way for the next generation of scientists. The only thing is, there won't be a next generation. The Silent Genocide is too strong, and its poisonous sloth is too infectious. Everyone has given up, and wraiths are dying. If anyone could save them, It had to be us, no matter how old, and tired, and compromised we were. Do you understand?'
He stood up and paced, excited. Something of his usual self, the mad Zero, was sipping back in, igniting his features.
'So, we gathered for one last time -- those of us who remained, the last of sons and daughters of the Second Generation. We evaluated our options. The scientific path was too time-consuming, and time was our enemy. Diplomacy has failed. And that left us with only one option.'
He stopped and looked at us, grave heaviness in his eyes.
'Do you understand?'
Mickey was leaning in, catching his every word, hypnotized. He nodded eagerly and said:
'War.'
I felt cold run down my spine. Suddenly, I was snapped out of it -- the mesmerizing litany of Zero's heartfelt, pain-fueled manifesto. I looked at my small kitchen with new eyes, and saw something that disturbed me to the core -- the intense, almost fanatical gleam in Mickey's eyes. The same gleam I had in mine, too, just a minute ago. I wondered how many horrible things started just like that -- with a passionate conversation between a few people, sparks of anger and perceived righteousness flying in the air, ready to combust into something massive and deadly.
Zero nodded.
'Yes. War. In the end, I came full circle from wanting to destroy the Agency, to joining it, to realizing that, in the end, my initial purpose was right, if for the wrong reasons. The cure will come. The wraiths will be saved. The only thing that needs to happen to allow these things to come true is change. The destruction of the status quo. The death of the Silent Genocide. A new hope for our people, who are beaten down into unwillingness to go on living.'