It’s almost midnight when we finish our third build for the day. Andrea heads into the cabin. and turns out the lights. The night is clear again, and there’s no reason to go inside, so it’s another night of sleeping on the deck for Evan and me. I take a seat on my deck chair next to my brother and start to settle in.

“So what’s going on with you, man?” Evan asks from the darkness next to me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I try to brush him off. I know full well what he means, but I really don’t feel like talking.

“You’re Mr. Sunshine for a couple of days and now you’re the world's biggest wet blanket again. What happened? I know it wasn’t just the joy of hearing about my date.”

I give him a smile, not bothering to hide the sadness behind it.

“I let myself forget for a couple of days, Evan. I took out my reminder to read what we did. What I did with Father and Jeff and all of it. And then I caught back up with it this morning and remembered what a piece of shit I am.”

He sits up and looks at me.

“Don’t say that, man,” he tells me. “You’re as good as any of us, and better than most.”

He’s wrong, of course, but there’s no point arguing with him. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t go on like this. I get up and walk to the railing at the back of the deck.

“Brother, you did what you had to do,” Evan says, coming to stand beside me. “We did what we had to do. We took down a monster. He killed your mom. He murdered who knows how many people. He experimented on us!”

All sort of true, but none of it makes me feel justified. I look down at the dark waves.

“He broke Andrea,” Evan continues. “Did you know she used to sing?” The anger in his dark face is clear even in the faint light from the sliver of moon in the sky. I shake my head.

“Like, really sing. Could have been a star kind of singing. Then he dragged her off to his lab to turn her into what he wanted her to be, and a few weeks later we never heard her voice again.”

“Did she say no to the procedure?” I ask.

“Well, no,” he admits. “But there are plenty of child molesters that take advantage of consenting teens. Doesn’t make it right.”

“Like you and Valerie?” I ask. I don’t even know why I’m arguing with him. He’s right about Father. He was awful, but that doesn’t make me feel any less dead inside.

“That’s different,” he protests. “I’m the one going after her. Plus I’m an adult now. And we haven’t done anything yet, nothing sexual anyway, and we won’t any time soon.”

I shrug noncommittally.

“Which reminds me,” Evan goes on. “Valerie told me more of what a dirty old man Father was. Do you know what she had to sign before she could work on the campus?” He doesn’t bother waiting for a response. “He could have done whatever he wanted to do to her any time he wanted.”

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I lean out over the railing and look out at the water again. It doesn’t matter. Nothing he says is going to make any difference. I know what I did.

I feel Evan’s pulse and breathing quicken. My floating eyes see his pupils constrict.

“She had to do a video affidavit consenting to everything. He had an impregnation appointment cancel on him once, so he came down to the infirmary for a booty call. Spent twenty minutes cornering her and one of the other nurses while he waited for his viagra to kick in. He ended up taking the other one, but she thought she was going to have to service him. It was like that for almost every woman on the staff. They even made her register as a sex worker before she could start.”

I check my index. I knew that already. I also know why they signed up for it. How they made ten times what anyone else would pay by working on campus, and how most of them looked forward to the prospect of being set for life with a ten million dollar payout if they ended up pregnant.

“And with the NDAs, she couldn’t even talk about it to anyone.” Evan’s enormous fists ball up. He’s literally shaking with rage. “If the lawyers found out what she told me, she’d have to forfeit everything she’s ever made working there and then get sued for more. Even if she beat that in court, she’d end up paying lawyers’ fees for the next couple of decades.”

I give Evan a nod of agreement that I don’t feel. It’s not that he’s wrong, it’s just that I don’t care. Father didn’t kill Mom. I’ve still never told Evan that. I never will. I’ll take that one to my grave. I killed him and broke Jeff and he didn’t even do it.

“We killed a monster, Noah.” Evan declares, slamming his fist down against the railing hard enough to crack the plastic casing and bend its metal core. “That’s what we did. Was it awful that we had to sacrifice Jeff to do it? Yes! But the world is better without Father in it. Yeah, he had big dreams, he did some good. But we can do everything that he always dreamed of and more now, and do it without his taint on it. We don’t need him.”

I look up at the million stars. A million points of light, each one brighter than my dark soul. Evan looks at me expectantly.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I finally say. But he’s not. How am I any better than Father was? I’m a murderer, too. At least Father was actually justified in the murders he committed. At least in the ones that I know about.

We stand there in silence for a long time, looking out over the starlit waves over the bent railing. I feel my brother’s pulse slowly calm back to normal, but his rage takes a long time to fully subside. Eventually, he heads over to the deck chairs and reclines his back all the way into a cot. I follow and do the same to mine. I don’t even bother stripping off any clothes or even pulling my satchel off of my shoulder. It’s not like I deserve to be comfortable. We lay there in silence for another long while. I hear Evan’s breathing get slow and even.

Sleep doesn’t come. I toss and turn for the better part of an hour. I need to pee. I get up and make my way through the blackness of the main cabin by the vision my bots provide. I hit the head, then walk back out onto the deck. It’s late, and I’m exhausted, but the railing calls to me more than my makeshift bed. Father may have been as bad as Evan thinks. Maybe he needed to die. But what does that say about me? I’m no better.

I lean out, looking at the dark roll of the waves. The water is beautiful. It is good.

I am not.

I look over at Evan. He’s fast asleep.

I step up onto the middle bar of the railing. I glance back, taking one last look at my brother and best friend. I hope he doesn’t hate me too much for this. He’ll have to save the world now, him and Louise and the rest. They can do it all without my taint on it. They don’t need me.

I drop the satchel that I always wear with my processing appliance in it onto the deck. I won’t need that where I’m going.

"Goodbye," I whisper. “I’m sorry.”

I turn back to the endless ocean. I lift one foot up onto the top rail. I close my eyes and jump into the black.