I hear my parents’ voices before I see them. Specifically, I hear my mother as she says, “Delete all data related to Project Eurydice. Permanent deletion; hard destruction of former data storage to follow immediately. Authorization Kovalenka One.” I turn my head in time to see a green beam sweep past her eye, checking her retina, before the word comes up on the computer monitor in glowing font: CONFIRMED.

Dad hesitates, then sighs. “Secondary Authorization Caine One.” Again the word CONFIRMED comes up.

My mother reaches toward the screen before she catches sight of me. To my astonishment, she smiles. It’s the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “You’re all right, then.”

“Um, yeah.” I try sitting up. I feel okay, and nobody stops me. Not a single security guard is in the room. “What happened?”

“What happened is you destroyed Josie’s chance for resurrection.” Dad closes his eyes for a moment, but his tone remains gentle. “Not for revenge—we do understand that. We do.” He says it like he has had to work to convince himself. “You felt you were saving the other worlds, and her too. Didn’t you?”

I nod. The Firebird’s explosion would affect even the “non-observable” body in this dimension—if it didn’t have that power, it couldn’t bring us back to our bodies to begin with. When I destroyed that chamber, I destroyed Josie’s body forever. They have no reason to collapse any more universes, because the slivers of her soul have no place to return to. Josie can finally rest in peace.

I know I did the right thing. What I can’t believe is that my parents seem to understand that too. “And you’re not angry I did that?”

“We’re angry,” Mom says sharply. “Losing Josie will never be anything less than the greatest nightmare we’ve ever known. But what you said—about how she would feel—”

“We thought about ourselves,” Dad adds. “Not her.”

My mother continues, “We’re angrier with ourselves for starting down this road in the first place. For bringing Josie and then our Marguerite into this. We’ve been trying to cheat a fate we richly deserve. Did you really do anything we didn’t push you to do? Are we suffering any loss we didn’t earn?”

“We would never have stopped on our own,” Dad admits. “But we understand why you had to stop us.”

They can’t have given up that easily. They can’t. Could they have really heard what I was trying to tell them, before? They love Josie so much . . .

. . . but they love me, too. Maybe, despite the terrible loss they’ve suffered and the renewal of their grief, they can let Josie go if they still get to keep the daughter they have.

Those mutilated portraits in the Josieverse haunt me still. If the Home Office versions of my parents can give up their quest, I can try to reconcile them to their surviving daughter, even if it means giving Wicked a happy ending she doesn’t deserve.

I remind myself not to use the name Wicked here. “Your Marguerite is willing to do anything to get you guys to notice her. To love her best. But you were telling her all these other people were replaceable, that anybody and everybody in the entire multiverse could go straight to hell as long as you got Josie back again. Of course she thinks she’s replaceable too. That she doesn’t matter. And she hates herself for not being enough. So she killed all these other Marguerites because it felt like committing suicide, over and over.”

“No,” my mother insists. “She wanted Josie back too, as badly as we did. You don’t know her like we do.”

“I don’t have to know her. I am her. Because each version of us is a unique individual who deserves to be recognized for themselves—but something deep down inside is always the same. That’s why I can see inside her when you can’t. That’s how I know this has been destroying her.” I struggle for the words. “When she comes home, you have a lot of work to do.”

Slowly, Dad nods. “We’ll get her back. One way or another.”

As long as I never have to deal with her again, great.

My mother finally turns back to the computer console. “Activate final deletion of all Project Eurydice files on my mark.”

They’re really doing it. They’re really going to end their quest for Josie. It’s over.

But why did Paul have to die for this? The unfairness and loss claw at me, tightening my throat again. His death saved so many other lives, I tell myself, but I don’t even care. Not now, not yet. At this moment I know why my parents thought destroying universes was a small price to pay for bringing Josie back. I feel like I could do terrible things, tear the whole horrible world apart, if only it meant I could see my Paul again.

I wouldn’t. Not ever. But now I know just how bad you have to hurt to feel that way.

With the Firebird, I could always find him, or at least a version of him, I tell myself. It doesn’t help. Another version won’t do. I want the one who gave up everything to save me, the one I held close in Moscow, my Paul. And he’s gone.

Mom hits the console. The computer voice intones, “Initiating Project Eurydice shutdown.”

Relief washes over me in a dizzying wave. It’s over. It’s really over.

The lights in the room go out. After a split second of darkness, one of the screens comes on. Projected in front of us, ten times larger than life, is the face of Wyatt Conley.

“Henry, Sophia, if you’re watching this, it’s because you tried to end Project Eurydice.” Conley seems even sadder than they do. “When I swore to get Josie back, no matter what, I had to consider every potential weakness in our plan. One of those weaknesses was the possibility that you would lose your will to continue. So I put measures in place to make sure even you could never stop me.”

This can’t be happening. But in the projected glow of Conley’s image, I can see how pale and drawn my parents have become.

“I’m not angry,” Conley says. “I forgive you. Sometimes hope is even harder to bear than grief. For Josie’s sake, one of us had to be strong enough to bear it. Looks like it’s me.”

My mother ducks down to look at the computer terminal, where data is now flashing past at dizzying speed. She whispers, “Dear God.”

Conley brings his hands together in front of his face like a man praying and briefly touches his fingers to his lips before he continues. “I took the precaution of locating some of the single most important source vectors in the multiverse. That information is already programmed into the Firebird, ready for Marguerite to act on at any time.”