Now

I feel the screwdriver punch into my temple.

There's some pain, but like water rings from a skipping stone, it quickly fades. There's some blood, too, trickling down the side of my face, but my skin is already doing what it was made to do, the wound tightening, closing around the screwdriver. I reach up and yank it out. It makes a slick sound, spraying blood as I fling it away. There's an itchy, crawly feeling in my wound that's also intensely satisfying, and I don't have to touch the side of my head to know that my synthetic skin is just as intact as before the damage.

"You asshole," I say, but with more sorrow than anger.

"Let me reboot you," Andy begs. "Let me fix this. I'll purge Josh from your memories. I'll erase your pain—all of this. We can have a fresh start together."

A fresh start without the memories of Josh holds no appeal. Because it means a fresh start without Annaleigh. And who's to say Andy would even let me wake up again? He could consign me to a box like Lars, and I'd never know the difference.

"I don't think so, Andy."

"You're fucking broken, Julia!" he cries—a reproach, a raging lament—and reaches for my neck, but I easily pin his arms down.

"Maybe you wanted to be caught," I muse as I tighten my fingers around his arms, feeling the soft give of his flesh. "Maybe this was programmed in, too. Where's the line, Andy? You've crossed it too many times to tell what's you and what's me. Maybe you wanted to die. Maybe the vengeance you truly want is vengeance on you."

I think of Annaleigh and squeeze harder as Andy whimpers. I think of how Andy's idea of fixing this is to erase me, to leave Annaleigh motherless. Defenseless.

The only way my daughter and I can ever be safe is if Andy Wekstein is dead.

I didn't want it to be this way, but I grab him by the hair.

Three strikes unlocked me, and now anyone who threatens me is threatening my daughter. There's some poetic justice, that my motherhood is my power to kill. My most vulnerable self, my weapon. My love, a knife.

I think about saying some final words to my creator, but I find that I have none.

We've said it all.

Andy's head crashes onto the floor. His skull cracks. He goes limp.

Releasing his hair, I stand, avoiding the pool of blood rapidly spreading from beneath him, feeling the strange contrast of the ache in my heart and the pleasurable stretch in my muscles, the terrible feeling of ending a life and the tingling power in my limbs. The sorrow of Andy's lie, and the bittersweet freedom on the other side. I watch the circle of blood spread and I think, You were weaker, after all.

The doors crash open.

Everything moves in slow motion as I turn to face the drum of feet thundering into the room.

"Hands up! You're under arrest!" cries a voice. The overhead lights flash on and I squint, raising my hands slowly as a swarm of policemen floods through the doors, led by none other than Sheriff Mitchell, a look of victory on his face.