The Decision

The next two weeks pass like a fever dream.

I do my work. I split the wood. I carry the supplies. I eat in the great hall, I nod at the people who nod at me, I answer questions with the fewest words possible. Tom has stopped asking if I'm alright. Sarah has stopped trying to include me in conversations. The community moves around me like water around a stone.

At night, I go back to Eleanor. Not every night. Too risky. But often enough.

She tells me more. Small things. Names of people who've questioned Hugh and then vanished. Patterns in the supply runs. The way certain conversations happen behind closed doors while others happen in the open. She's been collecting this information for months, turning it over in her mind, and now she's pouring it into me like water into a vessel that's been empty too long.

I don't know if she's telling the truth.

That's the part I keep coming back to. I don't know. I can't verify most of what she says. Catherine and Derek left. People confirm that. But they can't confirm how they left, or why, or whether they chose it. Eleanor saw what she saw. But it was dark. She was scared. She could have misinterpreted.

Or she could be exactly right.

The two possibilities sit side by side in my head. Neither will leave. Neither will win.

Hugh doesn't help. He keeps appearing. In the courtyard, checking on the work. In the great hall at meals, moving between tables, talking to everyone. Sometimes he catches my eye and nods. Sometimes he stops and asks how I'm doing. Always warm. Always patient. Always exactly what a leader should be.

That's what makes him dangerous. He's good at this. Good at making you feel like you matter. Good at making you forget that three hundred people's lives depend on his decisions.

One evening, he finds me sitting alone after dinner. The great hall is emptying. Most people have gone to bed, or to the common room where someone's organised a card game.

"Mind if I sit?"

I shake my head. He takes the bench across from me.

"You've been quiet lately," he says. "Zoe's worried about you."

Of course she is. She told you.

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine. You look like you haven't slept in a week."

"Two weeks, actually." The words come out before I can stop them. Something in his presence makes me honest in ways I don't intend.

He doesn't flinch. Just nods, like I've confirmed something he already suspected.

"Two weeks is a long time to carry something on your own." He leans back. "I know what that's like. The weight of things you can't share. Decisions that keep you up at night."

Decisions. He said decisions.

"I'm managing."

"I'm not asking if you're managing. I'm asking if you'd let me help." He spreads his hands. "Not as your leader. As someone who's been where you are. Maybe not the same circumstances. But the same weight."

I look at him. Really look. And for a moment, just a moment, I want to tell him. Want to say, I found your prison. I talked to the woman you locked away. I know about Catherine and Derek and the midnight meetings in the forest. Explain yourself. Let me believe you.

If he's innocent, he'll tell you. If he's guilty, he'll lie.

And how will I know which is which?

"I'll keep it in mind," I say.

He holds my gaze for a moment longer. Something passes between us. Not trust. Not yet. Something closer to understanding.

"Goodnight, Jamie."

"Goodnight."

He walks away. I watch him cross the hall, stopping to speak to a woman carrying a child. He touches the child's head, smiles, says something that makes the woman laugh.

How many people in this place would follow him into a fire? How many owe him their lives?

The question doesn't help. It makes it worse.

---

That night, I can't sleep. Again. The ceiling has become familiar. Every crack, every shadow, every stain. I've mapped it the way I mapped the castle corridors. Obsessive. Thorough. Useless.

The facts haven't changed. Eleanor's testimony. The disappearances. The midnight meeting. The supplies that appeared after. The locked door. The guards.

Hugh's warmth. His patience. The three hundred people who depend on him. The children who run up and tug his sleeve.

Two realities. Two Hugh Gilespies. The one who takes in refugees and keeps three hundred people alive through a frozen apocalypse. The one who trades his own people to raiders in the dark.

Both can be true.

Both can be true.

I lie in the dark and I think about killing him.

Not in the abstract. Not in the way you think about something terrible to see if you're capable of it. In the specific. The practical.

The rifle is in the armoury. I can't get to it. But I have my knife. The one they let me keep. It's on my belt every day. Close enough to reach in a second.

Hugh's office is on the second floor. He works late. Sometimes I see the light under his door when I'm walking the corridors at night. Alone. Unescorted. He trusts his people enough to leave himself unprotected.

He trusts his people.

The thought sits in my chest like a stone.

If I do this. If I kill him. What happens to the three hundred people who depend on him? What happens to the supply runs and the guard rotations and the community meetings and all the small machinery of survival that he keeps running?

They'll manage. They'll find someone else. Marcus. Someone.

Or they'll fall apart. Like Eleanor's settlement. Like every other group that loses its centre.

If he's guilty. If he traded Catherine and Derek to raiders. If he locks up people who ask questions. Then he deserves what's coming.

And if he's not?

The question won't leave. It circles and circles, wearing a groove in my skull.

If he's not guilty. If Eleanor misunderstood what she saw. If there's an explanation I haven't found. Then killing him would be murder. Not justice. Not necessity. Murder.

Nine people. You killed nine people to save Zoe. You didn't hesitate.

That was different. Those people had her. Had taken her. Were going to hurt her. There was no ambiguity.

This is all ambiguity. All shadows and half-truths and a woman in a cell who might be lying and a man in an office who might be a monster.

Zoe stirs in the bed across from me. Turns over. Her breathing is steady. Peaceful. She trusts this place. She trusts these people.

She told Hugh I'm struggling. Made me vulnerable.

The thought is unfair. I know it's unfair. She told him because she's worried. Because she cares. Because she wants me to get better.

But the anger is there anyway. Simmering beneath everything. Anger at her for not seeing what I see. Anger at Hugh for being warm when I need him to be cold. Anger at myself for not knowing the truth.

I sit up. Put my feet on the cold floor. My hands are steady.

My hands shouldn't be steady. Not for this.

But they are. They were steady when I pulled the trigger on nine people. They were steady when I drove the knife into a man's ribs. They were steady when I watched him die.

The soldier doesn't shake. The soldier calculates.

Hugh's office. Late evening. Alone. Unescorted. The knife on my belt. One motion. Fast. Done.

You'd be killing a man based on the word of a prisoner. A prisoner who's locked up for seeing something she shouldn't have seen. A prisoner who has every reason to lie. A prisoner who's been telling the same story for weeks without changing a detail.

The argument goes nowhere. It's been going nowhere for two weeks.

I stand up. Walk to the window. Look out at the courtyard. A guard on the wall, silhouette against the sky. A light in the medical bay. Somewhere, someone is being cared for. Somewhere, a child is sleeping warm because this place exists.

And somewhere beneath my feet, a woman sits in a cell for seeing too much.

I press my forehead against the cold glass.

The soldier in me says: eliminate the threat. Hugh is a threat. Remove him, and the threat is gone.

The part of me that's still Jamie says: you don't have all the facts. You could be wrong. You could be about to commit the worst mistake of your life.

The soldier doesn't care about mistakes. The soldier cares about outcomes.

The part of me that's still Jamie is getting quieter.

I go back to bed. Lie down. Close my eyes.

Tomorrow, I'll get up. I'll split wood. I'll carry supplies. I'll eat in the great hall and nod at the people who nod at me. I'll do all the things that a normal person does in a normal day.

And underneath all of it, like a blade hidden in a coat, I'll carry the knowledge of what I've decided.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe not for a while.

But I've decided.

Hugh Gilespie is a threat. And threats get eliminated.

You're sure about this? I'm sure enough.

The cold certainty of it settles into my chest like ice water. I don't sleep. I don't need to. For the first time in weeks, my mind is clear.

I know what I have to do.