Alex sits at the edge of the swimming pool on Peterson Air Force Base. She is alone, wearing a one-piece bathing suit with her bare feet kicking listlessly in the warm water. A slow heartbeat pulses in the background.

What do you want? a voice asks.

“I don’t know.”

The pool vanishes into the shallow waters outside the Lincoln Memorial. There is no fire, no destruction, only a peaceful breeze and the chattering of tourists. The scene lingers a moment and then dissolves into the nighttime skyline of Manhattan. She is sitting on the rocky shore of Liberty Island looking toward the bright metropolis. Then she is back at the edge of the pool staring at her reflection in the rippling water.

“I can have those things.”

Yes. Anything you want.

“Is this real?”

Yes.

“I’m not dreaming?”

No.

“Where am I?”

Home.

“Where is everyone?”

Who do you want?

She thinks of Captain Ryan Shepherd. The pool recedes into the dim details of her room in Cheyenne Mountain. She is naked in Shepherd’s arms. They have just finished making love. He is warm. She feels safe held in his embrace. He kisses her on the cheek and combs his rough fingers through her hair in the way she likes so much. “I love you, Alex.”

She thinks of Nicole Serrano. They are sitting together in their corner of Cheyenne Mountain’s mess hall. Nicole listens patiently while Alex tells her about Shepherd, about how good he makes her feel. Her friend rolls her eyes and says, “I’m beginning to wish I never got the two of you together. Hurry up and eat so we can go to the range. I’ve got a few new toys to try out.”

Alex smiles. “What would I do without you, Nicki?”

“Yeah, I love you, too, Bedford.”

She thinks of the team. The mess hall becomes Sam & Al’s bar outside Peterson. The bar is full and loud and chaotic. They are around a table laughing and telling stories and drinking. It is not just her and Murray, Wilson, Atkins, Ziegler, and Jarden. The rest of the men are there, too: Hensley and Neill and O’Brian and Fletcher, Williams, and even Park. Nicole is also with them. She is drunk and pressing herself against Park, who looks both nervous and happy at the attention.

“To another successful mission!” Murray bellows and raises his glass in the air. Everyone toasts and takes a swig from their drinks. Alex does, too. The liquid burns as it goes down her throat but it is not as unpleasant as she once thought. She is slowly acquiring a taste for alcohol.

“Bartender!” Wilson calls out. “Another round for everyone!”

The men cheer, and Alex smiles.

She thinks of General Eugene Lunde. They are together at his house in Colorado Springs. Snow falls past the living room windows and gathers on the white lawn. Lunde rests in a reclining chair in front of the fireplace. A picture from his retirement ceremony resides on the shelf beside a photograph of him and his wife from before the outbreaks. Alex sits in the chair next to him.

“How’s civilian life?”

“Wonderful. I can sleep all day and the phone isn’t ringing every five minutes.”

“I heard you were thinking about moving.”

Lunde nods.

“Denver?”

“I always liked the city. It will be nice moving back to one.”

“Will you be there for the opening ceremony?”

“Yes. I just hope your father keeps his speech short this time.”

“I’ll make sure to pass that along.” Alex smiles, and Lunde laughs. They listen to the crackling fire. Before long, she realizes Lunde has fallen asleep. He snores while she retrieves a blanket and covers him up. Then she lets herself out of the warm living room into the snow.

She thinks of General John Martin. They are side-by-side at the edge of Peterson’s airfield. An NEA C-130 waits to take him back to the East Coast. The peace process is going well. Martin has accepted the role of ambassador between the Directorate and the Alliance. She enjoys seeing him during his visits. He wears his mask, trench coat, and scarf and still walks with a limp, but somehow his movements have regained energy, a sense of optimism that radiates from his tattered body. He and her father do not speak often, but when they do, she can sense their old bond reforming. She is thankful for her first mission with the team went so well, thankful the NEA agreed to open diplomatic relations, thankful they helped avert the possibility of war.

“When are you going to be back?”

“A few weeks, maybe a month,” Martin says. Alex frowns. He chuckles and offers a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Alexandra. I’m sure you won’t even notice I’m gone.”

She doubts that but nods and returns his smile. “Good luck.”

Colonel Aaron Webb approaches from the C-130. “They’re ready to go, General,” he says and glances at Alex. She wonders what hides beneath that black visor. She rarely talks to him even though he is always at Martin’s side. She senses he and Martin are something more than colleagues and that a deeper relationship exists like that between a father and son.

“Goodbye, Alexandra,” Martin says.

“See you later, General.” She raises her right hand in a salute. He returns it and follows Webb toward the waiting aircraft. She stands on the tarmac watching as the ramp closes and the C-130 taxis off to the runway. The aircraft gains speed, ascends and banks east over Peterson, and then disappears beyond the horizon. Martin’s steel-blue eyes remain in her mind as she climbs into the waiting van.

She thinks of her father, General Henry Bedford. They are in his office in Cheyenne Mountain. The familiar sags and jowls of his face are there but that profound sadness in his eyes is gone, at least for now. His mood brightens when Martin visits Colorado. She sits on the couch and waits for him to finish reading through his piles of memorandums and reports. He sometimes gets lost in the paperwork, spending long nights alone in the office after the facility has gone to sleep. She wonders if he even realizes she is there. The picture of their family sits on his desk. She wishes she had known her mother better. She wishes her mother was still alive. She wishes her father had someone who could erase his sadness, who could make him smile again like that old photograph.

“Everything went all right?” Bedford says without looking up from his report.

“Yes. He said he’d be back in a month or a few weeks. I hope it’s sooner.”

Bedford makes a noncommittal grunt. There is a long silence.

Alex considers leaving but instead asks, “Do you want to get dinner tonight? Maybe we could go somewhere in town. Or the mess hall. Whatever.”

Bedford looks up. “I’m afraid I’m a bit…” His voice trails off as he glances at the photo on the desk. Then slowly, he nods. “All right. That will be fine.”

“Where do you want to go?”

And for an instant, he smiles. “Surprise me.” His attention returns to the report.

“I love you, Dad.”

“I love you, too, Alexandra.”

She is back at the edge of the swimming pool. Is that what you want? the voice asks. That world?

“I do, but… How can that be real? It isn’t what happened.”

It can be. What do you want?

She is surrounded by voices, the sounds of cars, of traffic, of horns honking, of people shouting. The skyscrapers rise up around her as valleys of steel and concrete and glass. She is in New York City. She recognizes Times Square, something she has only seen in pictures and the old movies from before the outbreaks. There is life everywhere: the streets, sidewalks, and storefronts are full of it. This is what she has dreamed of for as long as she can remember, and it is here now, and real. This is not a dream.

Is this what you want? the voice asks.

Someone bumps into her and moves on. Countless people flow around her as a human tide. Cars speed past in the streets. Lights blink and flash from the billboards and windows, and the skyscrapers stand tall for as far as she can see. She stares up and sees the tiny pinprick of a jetliner with its contrails cutting through the bright blue sky. This is the country before the outbreaks. This is how the country can be again. She can have it exactly like this. All she has to do is say yes.

New York disappears into a world of pure white. She is standing in the middle of a circle of people. Shepherd is there. The team is there. Nicole is there. So is Lunde, Harrison, Webb, General Park, President Resnick, and a host of others. And directly in front of her are John Martin and Henry and Kate Bedford. All of them smile. They are happy she is there.

“What do you want, Bedford?” Nicole says. “You’re always telling me how much you want the country back the way it was before the outbreaks. Well, here’s your chance.”

“What do you want, Alex?” Shepherd says. “Do you want to be part of the team? Do you want to be with me? I’d like to be with you. This is your chance.”

“What do you want, Ms. Bedford?” Webb says. “You have a choice to make. Whatever you want – pick it. Just hurry and make up your mind.”

“What do you want, Alexandra?” Bedford says. “You can have anything you want. I did this all for you. You can bring back our country. You can bring back your mother. Everything will be perfect again. Please, bring them back. This is our chance.”

“What do you want, honey?” Katherine says. “There’s no rush. You can think about it as long as you like. It’s whatever you want. All you have to do is choose. Don’t worry. I know you’ll make the right decision. I love you, Alex.”

“I love you, too,” she whispers.

What do you want?

Alex closes her eyes. What would it be like to live in the world she has just witnessed, to walk amongst those skyscrapers and lights in real life instead of in her dreams? Except then she hears screaming. That bright world dissolves into the death and blood of Kansas City. She pictures Nicole disappearing into the darkness as her flesh dissolves from her bones.

She shakes her head and looks away from the crowd. “I… I don’t… I don’t deserve this. Not after everything I’ve done. Someone else should decide. I can’t.”

The crowd protests at once.

“The hell you talking about?” Murray says. “It wasn’t your fault. It was that asshole Ellzey.

Wilson nods. “You’re who saved us, Alex. We wouldn’t be alive without you. You deserve this more than anyone.”

“Listen to them, Bedford,” Nicole says. “They know what they’re talking about. Stop wallowing in self-pity and do something good for yourself for once. This is your chance to be happy. You can ride that boyfriend of yours all you want. You can have your mom back. You can have whatever you want. You think I’d say no to something like that?”

“What happened wasn’t your fault,” Bedford says. “You don’t have to feel guilty. You can make all of that go away. There doesn’t have to have been a battle. You can make it so none of those men ever died.”

“Are you really going to pass on a chance to bring my men back?” Webb says. “And yours, too. You can change everything since New York. You could change it so the outbreaks never happened.”

“You can give me and my dad another chance,” Specialist Park says. He is beside his father holding the general’s hand. “I want to tell him how much he meant to me. I’d like to be alive again. I loved being part of the team. It was the best thing that ever happened. Don’t you want me back?”

“Please,” Alex says. “Please, everyone, just stop. Let me think.”

The white space goes silent. The smiling figures disappear one-by-one until only her father and mother remain.

“Don’t you want this, Alexandra?” her father says. “Don’t you want your mother back?”

Katherine Bedford smiles at her – that beautiful, luminous smile Alex has tried so hard all her life to emulate.

“What about everyone else?” she asks.

Who?

“Everyone. Who all is going to be a part of this?”

Whoever you want.

“What about the people I don’t know? What about the people the Directorate was supposed to help?”

Do they matter to you?

“Yes.”

Why do you care about their happiness more than your own?

“It was our mission to make the country a better place for them.”

And did you? Did you try to make the country a better place for them?

“Yes.”

No. What did you ever do for them? You saw them at Topeka. You might have helped them and let them go, but what did you do after that? Did you even think of them again? Did you ever really care about the rest of the world while you were safe in Cheyenne Mountain? What did you do to help them?

“There wasn’t any time. If the war hadn’t—”

They don’t matter. You know they don’t. You would choose your father or your mother or Captain Shepherd or Nicole or Martin or anyone on your team in an instant over them. So why would you reject happiness for the sake of people you don’t even know?

“Because I don’t deserve to be happy!”

Yes, you do. You belong here now.

“I killed so many people at Kansas City…”

That can be erased.

“How?”

You can forget. You can alter everything.

“But will it be real?”

It will be as real as you make it. It will be as real as the world you’ve lived in since your birth.

“I can’t just erase all of that. I can’t just forget. Those people died, and they didn’t do it so I could be happy.”

It doesn’t matter!

“Yes it does! You want me to just let all of it go? Everyone is always telling me it wasn’t my fault, that I don’t have to feel guilty. But it was my fault. I let go and killed all those people. Just like I killed Nicole.”

Nicole isn’t dead. You can have her back, too.

The members of the crowd resolved around her one-by-one. Everyone smiled except for Nicole, who approached and gave Alex a confused look. “Bedford? What the hell? Where are we?”

“Nicki?”

“Who else?” Nicole glanced at the crowd. “Your mind sure goes some weird places, girl.”

Do you see? You can have her and everyone.

“I can’t let those deaths mean nothing.”

They do mean something. They’re the reason you’re here. They’re what’s giving you the power to recreate this world into whatever you want. You’re wasting them if you throw this away.

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Who the hell are you talking to?” Nicole asked.

“Come here.” Alex took her friend’s hand and pulled her close. “Let us out!”

You won’t have another chance. Your abilities will be gone. All you’re going to have is your dying world.

“I don’t need my abilities, and this world doesn’t have to die. You were right when you said I didn’t do anything to help those people. I can change that. I can make a difference. I can make those deaths mean something.”

The white fractured, revealing pure darkness beyond.

“Alexandra!” Her father’s smile turned into an expression of panic. “Don’t do this!”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

Alex held onto Nicole and shut her eyes. The world began to shake and fall apart. There was a sudden cold and then they were falling.

I love you, Alexandra, a far off voice said. It was her mother. Goodbye.