This moment. How many times have you come back to it? The searing heat. The vat, with its strangely sweet scent, a green apple smell. The funhouse mirror curve of that helmet. Blood red. And him. Him, right there, inches from your fingers. So close you could feel the heat from him. There, but already falling—no, letting himself fall, like he knew. Like he was laughing at you from the start. At your mission. At your life. At all of it. Like none of it matters. Like none of it means anything. Sometimes, in your mind, you get there. You’re fast enough. You grab him. But he laughs even harder. Like whatever you do, it was all, always going to come to this.