Logan shakes his head in disbelief. "But they're caged."
The other stares at him blankly, and then starts to laugh. "Don't you get it? They're where they deserve to be!" The laughter dies into something that might be a sob. "All we do for them, all we give up, and for what? So that they can run like sheep to be gathered up again? So that they can go back to being stupid and helpless? Look at them! They make me sick!"
"Michael, it's not their fault — "
"Shut up!" Michael screams at him, and all of a sudden the Ronin is pointing at his midsection. "Don't defend them! They killed your friends, your comrades, all the people who made a difference in your life! They killed them just as surely as if they pulled the trigger!"
Logan doesn't know what to do–except that he knows not to make any sudden moves with the Ronin pointing at him. He could argue that it is Michael who has chosen to attack Midline. He could point out that they all came here willingly, knowing the risk. But Michael's face tells him that he isn't going to listen to those arguments. He is barely listening to anything at this point.
"All right, Michael," he says gently, lifting one hand just a fraction of an inch in a placating gesture. "Let's just go. Let's gather everybody up and get out of here. We can talk about it later."
But Michael shakes his head slowly, and the madness reflected in his eyes is bright and ungovernable. "No, it all ends here, Logan. It all ends tonight.
This is as far as we go." He shakes his head, and the Ronin dips slightly. "I've had enough, boy. I don't want to live another day in this damned world. I don't want to endure one more moment of it. I should have killed us both years ago for all the difference it's made."
Logan feels a chill in the pit of his stomach. "Michael, that's crazy!
Listen to what you're saying!"
"I saved your life; I can take it away." The Ronin is pointing directly at him again; Michael's arm is steady as he aims it. "Think about it. Think about how hopeless it is! We've lost everything tonight–people, weapons, machines, all of it. Look at me; I probably won't live another day, and if I do I'll never be the same. If we don't end it here, we'll be caught and thrown into the camps.
We'll end up just like that!" He gestures again toward the prisoners in the cage. "I made up my mind a long time ago that I wouldn't let that happen."
"But these people need our help] What about all the others like them?"
Michael shakes his head once more. "I don't care about them. What happens to them doesn't matter. What happens to us does. You and me, now that Fresh is gone. I have to protect us. I promised you I would, when you were still a boy.
We've had a good run, but the time has come to step out of the race."
Logan is holding the Scattershot down by his side. Michael is going to kill him, and there isn't a chance in the world he will be able to raise his weapon and fire it in time to save himself. He catches glimpses of the prisoners huddling at the back of the cages, eyes wild with fear. No help there. He watches the smoke of battle ebb and flow through the building's deep interior, but nothing else moves. No help there, either.
"Michael, don't do this," he begs. "Put down the weapon and talk to me.
Think it through. There has to be another way."
"There is no other way!" Michael screams.
Logan doesn't stop to think after that. He simply acts. He shifts his gaze past Michael's left shoulder, as if catching sight of something, and says in a hushed voice, "Demon."
Acting instinctively, Michael wheels and fires, the Ronin spraying bullets everywhere. Logan does not hesitate. He brings up the Scattershot and levels it.
Michael is already turning back, realizing he has been tricked, when the Scattershot discharges its load into his chest. The force of the blow throws him back half a dozen feet and leaves him sprawled on the concrete floor.
For a moment, Logan cannot move. He cannot believe what he has done. The echoes of gunfire and the moaning of the prisoners waft through the building.
"Michael," he whispers.
Maybe there is still time to help him. Maybe he can still be saved.
But by the time Logan reaches him, Michael is already dead.
IN THE AFTERMATH, it feels to him as if he has lost everything. Unable to make himself leave, he kneels next to Michael's body for much longer than is safe. Finally, hearing shots in the distance, he regains sufficient presence of mind to realize that he needs to flee. Then he remembers the prisoners still locked in the cages, still trapped and helpless. Using the iron bar, he snaps the chains, flings open the doors, and watches them flee. When the last of them disappears, he slings Michael's body over his shoulder, picks up the Scattershot and the Ronin, and walks through the drifting smoke and the bodies of the dead into the night.
He finds Grayling outside, another man hanging on to him for support, the two of them working their way toward the only truck still intact. Grayling looks at him, sees whom he is carrying, and stops. When Logan gets close enough, the big man asks him where he is going. Away, he answers. It's over. And keeps walking as the other calls after him, Good luck.
He finds the Lightning parked back in the trees where Michael has left it.
Michael always drives it on these raids, to the attacks and then back, his own personal transport. Sometimes he lets Logan ride with him–more often than not since losing Fresh. Once or twice, he has even told Logan that one day the Lightning will be his. One day, it seems, has arrived. Logan knows the codes that release the locks and disarm the security system, and he uses that knowledge now. Then he puts Michael in the back and drives away.
When he is far enough out in the middle of nowhere–so far out that he doesn't know for sure where he is–he parks, takes out a shovel, digs a grave that is both deep and wide, and lays Michael within. After he has covered up the body, he sits by the grave site and tries to think things through.
Had it really been necessary to kill Michael? He asks himself this question over and over. He agonizes over the possibility that there might have been another way, a way he should have found, a way that would have kept the one person he cared about alive. But it happened so fast, and at the time he had been so sure. If he didn't kill Michael, Michael was going to kill him. Michael had gone native; he had gone over the wall and into the wilderness, and he wasn't coming out. His mind had snapped for reasons that Logan could only guess at, and nothing he did on that night–and perhaps for many nights before then–had been rational.
Logan would have done anything to save Michael. Anything. But he failed to act quickly enough, and so Michael is gone. He cries, thinking of it. It seems unfair, wrong. Michael did so much for others, for all those men, women, and children consigned to a living hell in the camps, to lives of slavery and worse.
Only Michael tried to do anything to help them, to give them a chance at life.
Someone should have done something for him in return.
No, not someone, he corrects quickly. Himself. He should have done something for Michael. But he didn't. Didn't know what to do. Didn't know how to do it. And now it is too late.
When dawn breaks in a thin leaden line across a sky so overcast it feels as if it is pressing down against the earth like the hand of judgment, he is forced to confront his future. With Michael dead and his followers dead or scattered, Logan has nowhere to go. He doesn't even know what to do, for that matter. Carry on Michael's work? Attacking the slave camps seems endless and ultimately not enough to make a difference. One man is not enough to attack the slave camps in any case. One man is not enough to do anything in this world.
So he wanders for weeks, driving aimlessly, until finally the Lady appears to tell him what it is that he is needed to do.