My hands clench into fists at my side, the gash on my cheek throbbing once as an intoxicating flood of rage rushes to my head. A queen? Is this how he would treat royalty? No. To him, I'm nothing but a servant. I open my mouth, searching for a biting reply, but his delusions steal my words.

"Queen's the strongest piece on the board."

I whirl around as Davis's quiet voice shatters everything. He hovers in the doorway, glaring daggers past me to where Sven stands. His eyes flick to me, just once, but the uneasy swiftness with which they refocus on Sven tears a hole in my lungs, stopping my breath.

"I know."

I freeze as Sven's hand lands on my shoulder, pressing down. In my shock, it doesn't take much for my knees to buckle. I wince as they slam into the floor. Sven's grip loosens into something almost recognizable as a comforting squeeze before he addresses Davis again.

"And I have taken her."

Davis finally looks at me, a long, searching look, as I kneel on the floor at Sven's feet. I feel his eyes find the crevice of my jaw, sliding over the hickey forming there, and I have to close my eyes because I can't watch him imagine where it came from. It was so much easier to hurt him when he was just a voice in my head.

I scramble to my feet, slipping out of Sven's grip to scowl at him. "I'm not your property."

Davis rushes forward to tug at my arm. "Come on," he whispers. "Let's get out of here."

He heads back toward the door, and I take two steps after him before Sven speaks again.

"She won't go with you."

I stumble to a stop as Davis spins around, his eyes glittering dangerously. The gaunt slope of his cheekbones only adds to his haunted, menacing appearance. "And why is that?"

"Because I know Ronnie." Sven turns to me. "You're logical. You never really loved me, not the way I knew you were capable of. I arranged a therapist, I tried constantly to make you feel something, I sent you texts and made you breakfast and made you feel safe. I made love to you like no one has or ever will."

Davis stiffens.

Sven sighs. "You never loved me. You never will. But you'll stay with me, because it's better than watching him"—he points to Davis—"grow old without you and slide away into an oblivion you'll never know, somewhere you can never reach. Because love hurts, Ronnie, and if you didn't know that before, you know it now. You understand. An eternity without him...." He shakes his head. "You might as well start now and get used to it. Make it easier for both of you."

My breath rasps against the back of my throat, pulling me closer and closer to hyperventilation. I don't want to hear it. I'm not ready to make this decision. Save the world, then deal with this. And now the possibility of never saving the world wiggles tantalizingly out of my reach. I almost long for it. Maybe I'll go up in flames alongside it, and never face the future.

"No."

I look up as Davis squares his shoulders, staring up at Sven with defiance pressed into the thin line of his lips.

"The Ronnie I know would never go with you. She wouldn't give up on this." He points at his own shoes, and I take him to mean us. "She would take a chance. Take a chance at pain if it meant a moment of happiness, because you know what? That happiness becomes a memory. And you will always have those."

He's speaking to me now, even though he hasn't broken eye contact with Sven. His chin angles toward me, his arm reaches into the no man's land between us.

"You believe in humanity. This is humanity—me, him—the good, the bad, everything in between. It's all here. That's the most human thing of all." He takes a step toward Sven, and I almost shout at him to stay back. "You can't only take the good. And you can't force the good out by only subjecting yourself to the bad. It doesn't work."

He finally tears his gaze away from Sven to plead with me instead. "I love you, Ronnie."

Unbearable heat sears my gut, boiling everything inside until it bubbles up my throat. I only wrestle with it for a moment before it overcomes me, escaping as one scream that fills the room. I squeeze my eyes shut, and when I open them again, everything is crimson.

"I'm nothing to you!" My voice rips my throat raw, tearing at my heart on the way past. "I'll never be what you want, don't you see that? I'm a goddamn machine, his machine"—I fling an arm out in Sven's direction, index finger extended—"and that will never change! What about kids? A family? A normal life? I can't give that to you! Loving you doesn't change that!"

Davis stops in his tracks halfway through closing the distance between us. A single question escapes as a breath. "What?"

"I love you."

I bow my head. No one wants to hear those three words the way he just did—as if they're crushing the life out of me.

"I'm sorry," I whisper.

"One chance," Sven murmurs, nodding to himself and then to Davis. "If I'm honest, I think you stole it a long time ago."

The ringing silence balloons across the room until it fills the space from wall to wall.

"Ronnie," Davis says, taking one hesitant step closer.

"Don't." I clench my hands, digging my fingernails into my palms and hoping the pain can distract me long enough.

I don't hear another footstep.

"I was built for him." The monotone of my voice is enough to chill even me. "And the only reason I love you is because I'm broken."

"Stop it." He crouches in front of me, his fingers digging into my biceps. "He knows how to get inside your head. It's what he does, he's a manipulator. But you know better now. Don't believe him."

My breaths echo in my brain, the space between them expanding. Davis's voice fills the gaps.

"You weren't built for anyone except yourself."

I close my eyes. He's wrong, so wrong.

"I've watched you find yourself, pieces of you, buried under what he made you believe. You know it's true."

False. Identities can't exist in boolean values. I used to think I was just a human missing a few pieces, but it's more than that. I'm a machine built by a man who doesn't understand the first thing about humanity. I never had a chance.

"You believe in something different for your people, Ronnie. You want them to move on, move past him. I know you told Darwin to. If you believe that for them, then you have to have faith for yourself, too."

I stare at him, his words falling on my ears like a foreign language. He doesn't understand. He never will, because he's human.

"Don't other yourself," he says, as if he can read my mind. "You other yourself, you other us. It just depends how you look at it. Don't make it us versus them. It's not. That's what Darwin wants."

Darwin. Darwin. His name echoes in my consciousness like ripple after ripple in a still lake, quietly growing until it's all I hear. This burning in my gut is rage, and I know that because it's the same thing he felt every day in Sven's basement, every long, torturous hour as years passed and cells filled. That's what Sven does, and that's what he will do if I stay with him.

I will become Darwin.

Davis shakes me. "You're not him!"

Another sound, half shriek and half growl, scrapes at my throat. "I'm not him!"

I battle back the flames licking at the underside of my skin that scream otherwise.

"Remember who you are, Ronnie."

I bite both of my lips, forming a seal to contain another strangled noise. I don't know anymore.

"Maybe it's not who you were. But it's who you are. You get to choose."

Gasping, I try to follow his voice. The inferno inside blocks every exit, choking me with thick black clouds of billowing smoke, filling my mouth and my nose and my lungs, dissipating into my bloodstream. My vision begins to darken, trails of burgundy and then black worming their way into the red.

"Breathe, Ronnie."

I laugh. It comes out maniacal, an echo of Sven's earlier cackle. I feel myself merging with the people who have changed me, becoming someone unrecognizable. Something unrecognizable. Because of Sven, because of Darwin, because of Davis.

And then the feather-light trace of a gentle finger down my cheek pauses the whirling chaos. For a split second, the smoke hangs in midair. The flames stop licking at my insides, my airway clears enough for one breath.

"Breathe."

I can't tell if he's speaking, or if the echo of that one word has simply lodged itself into my processor.

"Breathe."

I obey.

"Breathe."

In, out. Over and over. The smoke thins. The flames die until they're only flickers on the ground. As the last of the scarlet starts to recede, something else rises in its wake.

The rhythmic echo of feet on pavement. It must be hundreds of shoes, hitting the ground in sync as they march with purpose. As I glance to my left, Maven raises her eyes to smile at me. I reach out to take her hand, giving it one squeeze, and then let go so that I can rest my palm on the butt of the gun at my hip.

I look up at the skyline, SynCo's logo glimmering against the stormy sky.

Like a television turning off, it disappears. I'm left staring into Davis's eyes, my face warm and wet and crusted over with tears. The salt stings my open wound, but everything else settles into place.

Davis opens his mouth, but before he can speak, I cut him off.

"Darwin's coming."