“I don’t get it.”
Branch moved his hand again, and the crystals flickered once more. Only now they showed Hwa. Many versions of Hwa. All of them younger. All of them stained. All of them dead. Some were burnt. Some were beaten. Some rotted in the girders underneath New Arcadia, their eyes plucked by gulls. Some floated down past barnacles and sharks to the bloodworms down below. Some had never been born at all. Hwa knew this because those crystals showed Tae-kyung in them. An adult Tae-kyung. With medals and a championship belt and a pretty girl who even looked Korean and cute babies, and her mother was there, Sunny was there, too, and she was fat and grey and her eyes wrinkled when she smiled and she didn’t seem to give a damn. They were all so much happier. So much better off without her.
“Have you ever wondered why, deep down, you hate yourself and you want to die?” Branch asked. “It’s because you’re supposed to be dead.”
Hwa blinked tears away from her eyes. It was Lynch’s crystal ball all over again. She’d come back to right where she’d started: on her knees, weeping, seeing things that weren’t real. Couldn’t be real.
“Time is a panopticon, to me and my brothers,” Branch said. “Like this tower. We stand in the centre, and we open the doors we need. But this door, the door to New Arcadia, is the most important one.”
“Oh yeah?” Hwa made herself stand. All her sisters stared at her from their crystals. Maybe this same moment, this same fight, was playing out somewhere else, in some other time, forever. “How’s that?”
“Everything that shapes the vision, mission, and strategic plan of the Lynch corporation for the next two hundred years happens here. And it starts when your influence on Joel ends. When you leave the company.”
Hwa frowned. She started circling the room. Examining all her corpses. When her body was swollen or broken or burnt, her stain didn’t seem like such a big deal. It mattered a whole lot less when she was dead. Why had Lynch’s crystal ball shown her a face that was unstained? Whose future was that?
“But I would never leave Joel.”
The crystals abruptly turned black. Branch grinned widely. His hands clapped together. “I know! You don’t! You never do! You stick it out, right until the very end! That was the mistake my brothers all made. They tried killing you. But that was worse! He loves you even more after you die!” His eyes glowed. “But I knew, if I could only discredit you, weaken you, make you leave Joel behind…”
“You wanted me to quit.” Her hands became fists. “That’s why you killed my friends. You wanted me to quit.”
“I thought you would, you know. You did, after Calliope. And then you came back. Too bad, really. The others would be alive now, if you hadn’t.”
Hwa wanted to throw up. She didn’t. She took a deep breath. Thought of the master control room. All the buttons. All the switches. The big glassy screens with Branch on them, shrinking and shrinking to a single bright point and fading to black.
The master control room. Of course.
“You’re very hard to predict, though. No implants. So little data to work with. We have trouble modelling your simulation.”
Hwa couldn’t look at Daniel’s neck. She reached for his hand, instead. It was limp. Lifeless. She began feeling around for the gun. “What happens if I quit?”
“The human race, if you can still call it that, leaves this planet thanks to Joel’s corporate policy. He makes long-haul space travel a priority after his father’s death. Everything he learns in this town about long-term habitation in an isolated, closed system informs his intentions as a CEO. He finds the right people and makes the right investments. He becomes a captain of industry like his father before him. He doubles his father’s lifespan, creating a dynasty that lives in the stars for thousands of years after his passing. And all because he doesn’t get stuck here, in the mud, on the Earth, imprisoned by gravity and lack of vision. Your lack of vision.”
Hwa’s fingers clasped around the gun. She had never fired one before. It felt heavy. Cold.
“And if I don’t quit?”
Branch’s mouth formed a thin line. “The company fails. Joel disbands it. The Lynch name dies on this planet.”
“So you’re just here to protect an investment?”