The broadcast continued, but Carmine was no longer watching. He had pulled out his phone, and I could only assume that he was checking the website that was splashed across the bottom third of the screen. If the others had done their jobs correctly, that should link to all the information that the Organization had ever accumulated on the ubarae, for everyone to see. Centuries of data, secret until this moment, and now never again. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, after all. There was no way for Carmine or his people to undo this, and he knew it. I could see it in the shake of his shoulders, the pulsing of the vein on his temple. Whatever my doubts about the long-term consequences of this decision, in this moment, I couldn’t have hoped for a better reaction. After all, if it got to Carmine like this, it couldn’t have been an entirely bad idea. He muttered to himself as he skimmed the data, jabbing at the screen with increasing agitation.

“How could they have this? This data, it is all confidential, held only by the Organization. Not even the Council had access to this,” he wasn’t speaking to me, he seemed to have nearly forgotten I was here. “We took control of the Organization. We seized this data! It was hidden or destroyed. I confirmed it myself. No one could have access to this. No one.”

“You sure about that?” I interrupted his rant before he could pick up too much steam. “Because that’s the funny thing about data, it can be so difficult to control. All it takes is one copy slipping out, to make all your efforts pointless. Really, it is remarkable that it stayed secret as long as it did, isn’t it?”

He stared at me for a long moment before I saw the realization dawn in his eyes. He slammed the phone down on the table hard enough that I heard the screen crack.

“You!” he stalked over to me. “You did this!”

He smacked me across the face, bouncing my head off the concrete pillar. Stars exploded across my vision. I didn’t think he hit me especially hard, but the existing head wound probably didn’t help matters. He glared down at me, fists balled at his sides, radiating rage. As long as I had known him, Carmine had always been controlled, unflappable. It made sense, in retrospect, that was probably a useful trait for a double agent. Still, I had never seen him angry before. But he was furious now. Until this moment, he had been savoring making me suffer, toying with me. But we weren’t playing games anymore. Good. I was ready to get this over with.

“And how could I have managed that?” I smirked, blood oozing from my split lip.

He kicked me in the ribs, I coughed as the breath was forced from my lungs, splattering blood on his tan pants.

“How else? The breakout, at the Organization… you weren’t just there for your people, you were there to steal data. You set the fire to cover up what you had done.”

“Ding, ding, ding. You got it in one, Carmine. That makes you almost as clever as you think you are.”

He knelt down, clamping a hand around my throat. I clawed at his wrist, but his grip was iron. The chains rattled as he pressed me back against the pillar, stopping just short of cutting off my airway.

“You were planning this? From the beginning?”

I nodded, managing to croak,

“It was a last resort, at the time.”

“Do you know what you have done? The damage this will cause?”

“What I’ve done?” I choked, barely able to get the words out; he loosened his grip slightly, so I could speak. “You are the one who forced our hand, made this necessary. You are the one who set all this in motion.”

“My people will be hunted in the streets! They will try to wipe us off the face of the earth. Their deaths will be on your head.”

“That’s rich, coming from you. You planned worse for us.”

“So, is that what this is then? Vengeance? What you think we deserve? You would doom every ubarae for this?”

“Being a bit melodramatic, aren’t you? I am hoping that we can come to a more peaceful resolution. But even if we can’t, it was a risk that had to be taken.”

“More peaceful?” Carmine scoffed. “Are you familiar with humanity?”

“Honestly, keeping all this secret was always a bad idea. People deserved to know. It was never our place to hide it from them. Just look at the consequences,” I gave him a pointed look.

“Is that what you tell yourself, so you can sleep at night?” Carmine snarled.

“I really haven’t been sleeping much, anyway,” I shrugged. “Been sort of busy.”

“You have destroyed the Pact, everything that kept the ubarae safe.”

“No, I only finished the job you started. If you weren’t ready for it to come to this, you shouldn’t have gone down this road. Now there is no going back. I mean, did you really think we would continue to keep your secret, after everything you had done? Everything you were planning to do?” I shook my head. “There is no way the Domini can succeed in their plans, now. You can kill me, I don’t care, but the game’s over for you, too, Carmine. You are done.”

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“Done, eh?” he tightened his grip on my throat, and I felt my airway close.

I for a moment, I thought he was going to finish it. I grabbed at his jacket, trying ineffectively to push him away, but he didn’t even notice. Just as my vision was beginning to tunnel in, he dropped me with a snarl and whirled away. Stalking back and forth across the room like a caged animal, he mumbled to himself, running his hands through his blond hair.

“No!” he announced at last, more to himself than to me. “No. We aren’t done yet. I can still salvage this. In fact, now it is more important than ever that we succeed with our plans. If we can take control, convince people that this was never true, or that the ubarae have been exterminated…”

He fell silent for a moment, but continued pacing.

“Yes, yes, this is still possible,” he finally continued, thinking out loud. “We can disappear, go underground. We still have records of all the Partials we passed over. We can pick your kind off one by one, and when no one is left who can identify us, we simply slip back in and finish what we started,” he turned back to me. “You’ve changed nothing, you’ve saved no one.”

I spit blood onto the cement floor.

“Maybe, maybe not. That part isn’t up to me. Personally, I don’t think you’ll manage it. There will always be someone to stop you.”

“Not you.”

“No, not me. Probably for the best. I am not sure how much I have left in me, anyway. But there will always be others, Carmine. You can’t stop them all.”

“Are you so sure? We nearly got all of you this time.”

“Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, Carmine. You spent years planning this, caught us almost completely by surprise, and you still couldn’t manage it. This was your best chance, and you failed.”

“I haven’t failed yet. As long as I am still alive, I will do everything in my power to right the mistakes of the human apologists, who insist that we bow and scrape before our prey. We deserve more. We will have more.”

“I appreciate you clarifying the situation,” I mused softly.

“What?”

“You said as long as you are alive, you will be a danger. That is good to know.”

“What difference does it make to you?”

I sighed,

“I don’t like to kill people. Even people who seem like they objectively deserve it. But sometimes it is necessary, to protect others. This seems like one of those times, honestly.”

Carmine laughed,

“You still think you are getting out of this, do you?”

“Oh, no, certainly not. But I don’t think you are, either.”

“Don’t be ridiculous…”

He trailed off as I raised my hand to reveal his detonator closed in my fist.

“How did you…?” he tensed and stepped towards me.

I flipped up the guard and placed a finger on the trigger; he froze in place.

“Turns out you were stupid enough to get close to me after all, weren’t you, Carmine?” I laughed. “You should have taken your own advice. Now, I wouldn’t make any sudden moves, if I were you, I am feeling a little jumpy at the moment. And keep your hands where I can see them.”

“You’re bluffing, you won’t collapse the room with you in it.”

I flipped the trigger guard closed, then back open again, toying idly with it. It made a satisfying click, like a retractable pen.

“Why not? What are my other options? You made it very clear I am dying here today. I’m chained, so I can’t leave. If I stall for too long, or let you try to ‘release’ me, you will just take the detonator back. And if that happens, you escape, and you might even manage to spring this trap properly and catch some of the others in it. I still think they are too smart to show up here, but it is probably better to be safe than sorry.”

Click, click.

“Let’s not be hasty, Rayna,” he raised his hands, placatingly. “I wouldn’t want you to do anything you’d regret.”

“Regret? Can’t regret when I’m dead, can I?” I laughed. “You know what I do regret? I promised myself a drink when this was all over. Oh well, I guess that’s just how it goes, sometimes.”

Click, click.

“This is unnecessary. We can come to an arrangement.”

“Can we? How about this, if you can propose anything that doesn’t require me to trust your word, then we’ll give it a try. Because you have made it abundantly clear I shouldn’t trust a single thing you say, Carmine.”

Click, click. His eyes flicked up to the ceiling, a bead of sweat trickling down his neck.

“We can both walk away from this. How about you just let me leave? I won’t approach you at all.”

“What, so you can trigger the explosives from another location, or send some thrall in to finish me off? Try again.”

Click, click.

“We could call your people. I will even wait for them to come and arrest me. They can free you themselves.”

“Nope. That is a problem for a few reasons. One, if another person enters this room, I lose my leverage. Two, if you touch that phone, I have no way of knowing who you really contact or what you tell them. And finally, I strongly suspect you have a gun somewhere in this room, so I really don’t need you getting any closer to that table. Sorry Carmine, I don’t see another way out of this one.”

Click, click. He eyed the table with a quiet desperation that made me certain I was right about the gun. He hadn’t wanted to use it, because he had wanted to play with me, drag it out, but of course he would still have it available, in case he needed it. I knew him well enough to be sure of that. Too bad he wouldn’t be able to get to it in time.

“This will accomplish nothing,” he tried another tack. “Even if you kill me, you know I am not the only Omega. Another will take my place.”

“Oh, but Carmine, you are the one with the plan. The one responsible for changing the world. Right?”

Click, click. He swallowed hard,

“Now, Rayna, you know that James wouldn’t…”

“I would be very careful how you finish that sentence,” I cut him off. “I don’t want to hear you, of all people, speak for him.”

The incubus wisely clamped his mouth shut. I could see him considering his options, glancing from me, to the table, to the door. He was too far to get to any of them in time.

“You don’t want to do this,” Carmine attempted, weakly. He was out of arguments.

“Why not? It seems like a fitting end, certainly better than the one you were going to give me,” I shrugged, leaning back against the pillar. I was starting to feel a little dizzy, and I could feel warm blood trickling from my scalp and soaking the back of my shirt. “You were right about you changing the world, Carmine. Everything either of us ever fought for, or against, changed today. So, maybe this is how we were meant to die. Two relics of the old regime, going out together, at the end of an era that we both played a part in tearing down. This can be our Reichenbach Falls.”

“Bullshit,” he raised his chin, still defiant. “You won’t do it. You are just stalling for time.”

“Am I? Carmine, you are an incubus. Look me in the eye and tell me, am I bluffing?”

Click, click. He studied me for a moment, and I met his gaze without flinching. Finally, his eyes widened, and I saw real fear on his face. That was what I had been waiting for, one last little pleasure.

“Exactly,” I grinned.

Seeing the truth, Carmine sprang at me, but I knew he wasn’t nearly close enough. After all, I only needed to twitch a finger. Before he was even halfway across the room, I pressed down on the switch. There was a deafening roar, and then nothing but blissful darkness.