Through suffocating walls of titanium, he can still feel her stare and hear those wretched words. “Where did all the people go?”

Ten men in suits sat in hovering chairs around a levitating table. They were in a glass room dripping with the sapphire luminescence of a light rain. Around, there were brick buildings with chimneys smoldering blue smoke, and below, there was no floor, but an abyss glowing cerulean. All but one of the men twitched, and sweat coarse down their faces, as with wide eyes and heedful speech, they discussed something called the Meld. Sitting at an end of the table, Cain was the only one of them who seemed at home. He straightened the hem of his lab coat with false dignity and scrutinized every word of the men before him.

“The Meld is a fantastic idea,” stated one, peering at the drop.

“Ingenious, indeed,” concurred another.

“Quite a fine way to get the job done,” a few others praised timidly.

And so the dialogue went on until one man dared defy him. “No, it’s not.”

The entire assembly went quiet as Cain’s eyes narrowed. “Continue,” he said with odd aloofness.

The man stared him straight in the eye as he protested, “Our DNA is our blueprint. Outside of experience, it is physically the very essence of who and what we are. In taking that away, you are killing us, and for what?” All eyes were fixed on this man as the tension grew. “Oh, but I know what you’re doing with it. I know where all the people go. When you kill them, you change the structure of their DNA into biocement, natural rubbers, glass substitutes and extract from their DNA the zinc, iron, and copper of their blood. All these genetic building blocks are your materials to make the people another office, another building, another Meld. You make them into the city… You’re a murder-”

The chair dropped and, with a scream, the man plummeted into the void. Cain was clasping a hidden button on his chair. He clicked another, and a glass floor slid underneath them. “I have seen what I need to see,” he announced lifelessly.

The people flooded out of the room in an instant.

Cain rose to his feet and moved toward a window with calculated steps. He gazed upon the blue smoke of the buildings. As he did this, the sprinkling, gleaming rain quickly became a downpour. He turned away, stumbled wearily, resting a hand on his chair. When the sickness was satisfied, he too would be.

Cain drops to his knees. The weight of what he had done is an unbearable burden. He thinks back to the construction of the city. Biocement was used for making buildings and roads. Metals in the blood and natural rubbers from the skin formed wires, light fixtures, and rods as supporting structures. Then there were the uses of the immune system, the functionalities of organs. The man was right. The people are the city.

Their DNA was the blueprint; it was all that a person was and would be, outside of experience. It was physically the essence of who they were, the person that was always there. And he killed it. He killed them. He sees that younger Clara. The brown hair she was destined to have. That spunky, strong-willed character. The times she would encourage him to keep going. The magical moments when she inspired him to do something great, to be something great.

His best friend, Clara, the people–they all were right. He was taking someone else’s Clara, someone else’s hope. He was a murderer.

He did it for the sickness, he did it for her. It was all for her. A warped resolve resonates within him. He needs to be strong, he needs to fight on, he needs to finish the job.

He checks his watch.

4:50.

Ten minutes are all that remain.