THE LAST MAN:Part Twenty-eight

“I cannot allow you to leave,” she says, turning back to the last of her journals and notes.

“What am I to you? You’ve already seen how I protected you and the others from Sentinel and Section Twenty-one.”

“I have,” she nods, weighing the last of her things in her hands. “For that I will protect you as long as I am able, but at this moment allowing you to leave is a risk I cannot accept.”

“If you fear I will return to the city…I will take my chances with the refugees on the coast.”

“I am sorry.” She tosses the last of her things into the fire. She motions to the guards. “Bring him, we are going to the Reclamation Center.”

“You’re going to liberate the Reclamation center?” I asked, alarmed.

“Liberation?” she replies, with not a small amount of mockery. “There is no liberation. I will strike them at the heart of their hypocrisy. It will be historic, dear friend, and you shall be there to watch firsthand.”

“What of the innocents?”

“There are no innocents. This is war! There is no one to redeem. All are beyond redemption.”

“You would slaughter so many?”

She comes forward. Her back is to the fire, so that her features are all but obscured in shadow or lost in the glare. She is not enraged or hostile or threatening. Her mood is much different, rather like a teacher in the channels; wishing to impress upon me a crucial point. She takes hold of my arm to stress her position.

“Lucky soul,” she says. “What luxury you have to believe in the inviolability of human life. Yours is a perspective of the common man, in which life is large and death is a monolith. Your lives stand for nothing but struggle and pain and that is all you can see. At the end of that is only death, an ignominious death. You are relieved of the burden of history. You are relieved of the burden of being judged by future generations. Death is nothing to me in the face of that legacy. That is the burden I bear.”