NOTHING.

It’s all been for nothing.

Noemi slumps against the side of her battle-scarred silver fighter, torn between grief and rage. This entire journey—everything she’s been through, everything that’s been lost—she’s told herself it has a purpose. The racking fevers of Cobweb, the terror of being hunted by the Queen and Charlie, Abel’s abduction, and, worst of all, Esther’s death: Noemi has endured because she knew that was the cost of saving her world.

But her world can’t be saved. She’s been chasing a mirage from the start.

“You’re sure that’s true for all mechs everywhere?” She will not cry. She will not. “Every single one of them that could fly the fighter?”

Abel looks up from the dead Queen model. “Almost certainly. Maybe a handful of mechs were never updated with the fail-safe, but they would by definition be located in out-of-the-way places. They’d be difficult to find and even more difficult to identify. The odds of finding one in time would be… You don’t want to hear the odds, do you?”

“No. I understand. It’s impossible.”

So she’ll go home. She has forty hours to see her friends and make her peace, and say good-bye to her life. Then she’ll rejoin her friends on her flight squad for the Masada Run.

At least she’ll die knowing she bought Genesis some time. And if nothing else, she saved Abel.

“That’s it, then.” Noemi’s voice betrays her, cracking on the last word, but she keeps going. “The plan won’t work. It’s over.”

Abel says, “Not if you use me.”

It takes a few seconds to sink in. “You can’t.”

Unsurprisingly, he takes her literally. “I can. As I said before, only mechs not updated in the past thirty years could make it through the Gate with the device. I qualify.”

“Abel, no. I told you before, I’m not giving you those orders. You have a soul, so you’re—you’re too human to be used like a device.”

“Then I’m human enough to make the decision on my own.” He speaks without hesitation. Without doubt.

“But you can’t.” Noemi can hardly put the reasons into words; so many crowd into her mind at once that she could never go through them all. She only knows the thought of Abel’s death is even more terrible to her than the thought of her own. “Genesis isn’t your planet. You owe us nothing.”

“I’ve come to believe in the essential rightness of Genesis’s cause,” he says, astonishing her further. “While I might personally have selected a different course of action, it’s clear that humanity’s best potential home in the cosmos must be protected. It is equally clear that Earth’s government has no intention of modifying the behaviors that would poison your planet. Whatever else happens to Earth and its colony worlds, Genesis must survive.”

“The Gate doesn’t have to be destroyed for us to survive! When the Masada Run is complete, we’ll have bought Genesis some time. Years, maybe. Those years could make all the difference in the war.”

“You would fly in the Masada Run,” Abel says. “You would die.”

“That’s always been true. It never changed. I only thought it had.”

“I can’t let that happen, Noemi. Even if I weren’t willing to die for Genesis, I would die for you.”

“Your life isn’t worth less than mine! You don’t have to follow Mansfield’s rules anymore.”

“I did not mean that I would die for you because you’re human. I would die for you because I love you.”

It steals the breath from Noemi’s lungs. She can only stare at him as—incredibly—Abel begins to smile.

“Maybe it’s not love the way a human would feel it,” he says. “Maybe it’s only a… simulation of love, a close analogue. But I feel it with all the strength I have to feel anything. Over the past weeks, I’ve come to—to listen for your voice, because I hope to hear it. I pay attention to irrelevant details of your mannerisms and appearance because I find them pleasing. I’ve begun to understand how you think and what you want. That means I can see through your eyes, too, instead of only my own, and it’s as if the entire universe expanded, grew larger and more beautiful.” He pauses. “You even make me think in metaphors.”

“Abel—” Noemi has to reply, but how can she?

“It’s all right. I know you don’t love me back. It doesn’t matter. Feeling whatever I feel for you—love, or as close as I can come to it—that has made me more human than anything else. You believed in my soul before I did, but I understand now, don’t you see? That’s what fought Mansfield. That’s the part of me that loves you.” Abel raises his hand, maybe to take hers, but then he seems to think better of it. Instead he gets to his feet. Noemi can only sit there, leaning against the fighter, looking up at him as he says, “Because of you, I’ve had adventures on every world of the Loop. I’ve made my first real friends. I broke free from Mansfield, and I found out what it would mean to love someone. Because of you, I’ve been truly alive. And now that I’ve lived, I can be ready to die for something I believe in and the person I love.”

There’s no answer she can give him. Nothing worthy of what he’s said—or who he’s become. What would be most true, most meaningful to him? The first thing Noemi comes up with is “You are… so much more than your creator.”

“I’m more than he made me to be, yes.”

“That’s not what I mean. You’re more than him. More human.”

Abel looks rueful for a moment. “Which in some measure testifies to his genius. At least no one else will ever know it.” Then he glances down at the Queen, which still lies in the pilot’s seat with no more presence than a bundle of rags. “I’ll need to prepare for my own launch. I should begin by jettisoning the Queen model. Unless you think Genesis would find her useful for instructional purposes?”

Numbly, she shakes her head no. “No. Earth—they send the Queens and Charlies through a few times a month. We can get all the broken mechs we need.”

He nods, brisk and efficient again. “After I’ve cycled the air lock to dispose of her, I can ready the fighter again for takeoff. It will only be a small matter of adjusting whatever elements are disturbed by the cycle. I can be under way within the half hour.”

“Give me a few minutes,” Noemi pleads. She needs to think this through—no. She needs to pray. “You don’t do this without me.”

“If you prefer—”

“Promise me.” Her mind floods with nightmare images of watching the fighter swoop away, Abel leaving forever without saying good-bye. “You have to promise.”

Abel looks confused. “Then I promise.”

“Thank you.”

Noemi rises on wobbly legs that don’t want to hold her up and walks out of the docking bay. Where should she go? Holing up in her room feels cowardly. Going to the bridge would be like pretending this isn’t even happening.

Slowly she walks the spiral corridor, around and around, remembering some of the meditation mazes on Genesis, the endless hedges through which you can wander, pray, and find your own path. Finally she reaches the sick bay door, but doesn’t go inside.

Right here, on this spot, she fought Abel for her life. And right here, he offered his service to her. She sinks down on the very spot where she sat when he gave his weapon to her, closes her eyes, and begins to pray for guidance.

This is where they began. Maybe that makes it the place where she can figure out how they end.