JACK
I believe that sometimes in life, our entire existence boils down to a single moment, one single decision.
This was that moment for me.
All my past and all my future rested on top of the bullet I aimed at Sage.
Afterward, everything would be wiped out, and my life would collapse around me. In the moment I pulled the trigger and the bullet impacted her heart, I would lose the girl who had saved me from myself. I would have conquered my worst fear and emptied my soul, all at once.
My life would end, too, with hers.
Why hadn’t my finger pulled the trigger yet? I knew that if I didn’t, Vasterias would come back for her, and she’d waste away at the hands of the Corporation. They would test her, get every last bit out of her until she died.
If we hid her somewhere, we would watch her suffer until she died. Like someone in a hospital. Brain dead, on a ventilator, but yet consciously in pain. Just like she’d said.
Do it, Jack.
Do it.
I am Jack Adamson. I do the things that have to be done. This is what I’ve been best at my entire life: doing the thing that no one else has the strength to do. This is what I pride myself on.
And now, here I was … in a moment I didn’t want to face, with the weight of a promise I’d made to the only girl I’d ever loved.
She stared at me.
And I stared back. At the girl who had been my beginning and who would be my end.