"That's a dramatic revelation," Alex sighed, his eyes roving the walls as he looked at everything but WPN One.

  He could see beyond the walls in his magnetic senses, and a massive series of wires filled the area behind the woman. The wires from her head ran up and into the ceiling before finally becoming aetheric and forgoing the metal pipes and tubes. He didn't understand any of it, but it all looked really complicated.

  He didn't need to know what was in the walls, but it gave him a respite from staring into her dull grey eyes. WPN One, outside of her curse, was completely blind—on top of everything else. He grimaced at the thought and reminded himself why he didn't regret burning down the lab on August.

  "Is it?" she asked, a smirk crooking and twisting her face. "Of all the people who could have come to my door, I was sure you would understand the most."

  "Oh, I understand," Alex said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "And I'm very tempted to go through with it."

  "You can't."

  Alex had forgotten that Erick was in the room and turned to see the man trembling, spear in hand. He couldn't blame Erick. From what he could see, he still thought the Military Police were heroic despite the evidence to the contrary. Alex wasn't petty enough to break him from that illusion, but he didn't need him involved in the conversation.

  This was a conversation between experiments in the WPN project. No one else needed to be involved.

  "I said 'tempted'," Alex said. "Why do you head back up the stairs and watch my back for a while? I need to talk with her anyway about calling random outlaws into bases and demanding suicide options."

  "You're not going to," Erick said, looking Alex in the eyes with a conviction that Alex didn't feel. "You're better than that."

  "Maybe," Alex said, nodding his head toward the exit. "But we're not doing anything until I've talked with her."

  Erick grunted, walking out the door and back up the steps a few moments later. Alex watched him go, and made sure he was up the stairs before he reached out with one hand and pulled the door closed along a magnetic string. He would talk to WPN One, but he also didn't want Erick to come down and interfere with whatever he decided.

  "What happened to you?" Alex asked, looking up at WPN One. "I thought we were pretty much indestructible, but your arms and legs end at those sockets in the wall, and you look like you were dragged through a minefield."

  "So flattering," WPN One said, her head barely turning toward where what was left of her arm met the wall. "You're right that we're very hard to kill, but if you cut and burn often enough, not even Ozymandius's genius can overcome decay. I can't count how many times they tore me apart, and my core tried to rebuild me, but in the end, it gave up."

  "That's not great news," Alex said.

  "Do I look like I'm here to bring you any good news?" WPN One asked. "I asked you here to end me and put me out of my misery."

  "You keep saying that, but why can't I rip you out?"

  "This machinery is all that keeps me alive. It amplifies my curse and keeps my core running. If you rip me out of the machine, you do the same as I asked you to do. So, rip me out if you can, please. The only difference will be how much longer I am in pain."

  "And your curse has always been those aetheric strings?"

  "They used to be metal wires I could manipulate." WPN One laughed. "But after being placed in Tartarus, the system made me change. Itc hanged the nature of my curse to what the Empyrean needed."

  Alex didn't like anything about the situation. He could understand her position, but calling on him to kill her, making them all come into Tartarus, and putting all of his crew at risk—none of it sat right with him. That wasn't taking into account that it was wrong.

  Why did he need to be the one to pull the plug?

  "You ever think of just biting your tongue off and bleeding out?" Alex asked, looking away.

  "With what teeth?" WPN One laughed, opening her mouth to reveal dark black gums. "I called you here because you're the only one who might be willing. I even put your crew at risk to make you angry. Yet here you stand, sulking instead of getting it over with. What kind of outlaw are you?"

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  "The kind that doesn't go around killing unless he has to," Alex said. "That just brings more people after you."

  "After you burned down August?"

  "A lot of things happened on August." Alex looked at the door.

  He didn't want to admit it, but she had a point. He hadn't intended to take down the entire island when he escaped from the lab, but in the end, with the Outside flowing freely over the entirety of the island and the fires burning, he had been at the center of it all. If it had been a gun, he would have been the one who pulled the trigger.

  "It doesn't mean I'm okay with executing a helpless woman!"

  That was the problem. Alex didn't want to be the hand that killed her. He wasn't angry about the risk she had put on him and his crew. He wasn't appalled that she asked. The problem was that she was asking him to do it, that she was asking him to bear the weight of murdering her so that she didn't have to suffer anymore.

  At the same time, he understood her problem. He doubted that the Military Police would relinquish hold of a tool and put her out of her misery out of kindness. All of Erth seemed geared to make people suffer, and they were just one more weight laid on top of people. He could understand wanting to end it all when there was no other way out.

  How would he feel if he was trapped at the end of his journey with no way home or hope of escaping the Erth? Would he try to end it all? Would he have to ask someone else to do him a mercy because his broken body couldn't do it?

  Bzzt.

  Alex reached out a hand, and a series of sparks flashed through the air. He visualized what he wanted, and in moments, a stool appeared in his hand. He set it on the metal floor before sitting down in front of WPN One.

  "We have assisted suicide in some countries where I'm from," Alex said, leaning back on the stool. "For people who are in too much pain to keep living."

  "Sounds nice," WPN One said, turning to look down at him despite her blindness.

  "Some people are very against it. They think that you should keep on living regardless."

  "An easy position when you're not the one suffering." WPN One laughed, her head shaking slightly. "Are you one of those people?"

  "No."

  Alex sighed. He wasn't sure how to explain it to her. The people who were against the practice often held the position for religious reasons. They believed that God should only decide when people lived and died. They believed that suicide was a sin, regardless of the method. He could understand their position, but there was always a simple problem: No god ever showed up to sort the entire situation out.

  He wasn't sure that would translate to a world that worshiped the Scions, which he understood were very real. What was their position on assisted suicide? Did it even matter?

  "They aren't here right now, right?" Alex whispered. "Does power mean that they should even get a say?"

  "What?"

  "Silly thoughts," Alex said, shaking his head. "No, I'm of the mind that the only people who matter in a conversation about right and wrong are those who are involved, and in this situation, that's you and me."

  "And you think me dying would be wrong?"

  "I think me killing you might be." Alex shrugged. "But at the same time, I don't see a lot of other options."

  He stood up, stomping over to the far wall before walking to the other. His senses ran through the walls, and he understood none of it. He couldn't even begin to understand the systems around him. He had nowhere to put WPN One even if he managed to free her. More importantly, he was the only one that would be able to act.

  Boom.

  He slammed his fist into the wall as he came up to it. The pain throbbed through his fingers, and he grimaced. It hadn't accomplished anything.

  "You know, we screen people who undergo the procedure," Alex said. "They have to talk to psychologists and be evaluated. They have to get permission to die because they want to make sure that the person isn't depressed before they choose to die."

  "Why would that matter?"

  "Because there's a right way to do things," Alex said. "There are morals and ethics, and we shouldn't get rid of people just because they're inconvenient."

  He paused.

  "But that's a better world than this one. I can't go and find a psychologist to evaluate you. I can't give you the time to evaluate if it's what you want or if you're depressed. I can't even free you so that you're not under duress."

  "And I sit here in darkness," she said. "While you dally."

  Alex hated everything about the situation. He couldn't get someone else to decide, and he couldn't leave it up to a community, as he had with the fiery cursed man or Goldfist. He also wasn't under direct threat, like when facing off with Mister Deadman or Captain Hawkins.

  He could leave her behind, but then he would have to live with knowing that she lay suffering beneath Tartarus. While he wasn't always the best person, that didn't sit well with him. No one should be made to suffer just to be a weapon. That was why he broke free from the WPN Project and burned down August. If he left her here, it would mean that the entire thing was just him being selfish.

  "What's your name?" Alex asked, turning to her again and walking back to his stool. "I'm not going to keep calling you WPN One."

  WPN One looked down, and if she wasn't blind, Alex might have thought she was avoiding eye contact from embarrassment. However, she couldn't see him, and without her strings, she couldn't see anything in the room.

  "I don't remember," she said.

  "You don't remember?" Alex tried not to laugh.

  "There's much that I chose to forget," she said. "There's much that I was made to forget. I no longer remember their names. I just remember the fires that haunted my nightmares for years afterward. I remember my reason, but I do not remember my name."

  Alex grimaced. That was just one more rock to add to the pile of suffering around the WPN Project. A woman who couldn't remember her name. A man kidnapped in the dead of night. That didn't account for the torture they had both endured, but burning down the lab had balanced a little of that for him.

  "I do remember a name, though," she said. "Arci."

  "Well, no one should die being called a WPN," Alex said. "And it won't hurt anyone to take a name. Nice to meet you, Arci."

  "And you, Alex," she said.

  Alex reached up and touched her cheek, and she leaned into it. Even after everything that had been done to her, she was still warm. After a moment, he pulled away and looked over the machinery around her.

  "Alright," Alex said. "Tell me what to do."