I Didn't Forget Pt 18: Callum Michaels

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text= While Jerry reunites with his comrades in containment, Evan finally drags the whole truth out of Callum, whose confession reveals that the world is in even more danger than the Foundation feared.]]
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CW: This tale includes depictions of captivity, manipulation and emotional abuse. It also contains mentions of solitary confinement and ritual human sacrifice as well as an allusion to sexual assault via mind control.
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**[[[i-didn-t-forget-hub|Series Hub]]]**

,,[[[xhawk77x|More by this Author]]],,
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**Evan**

Evan walks into the same interrogation chamber in which he last spoke to Callum. The former Fifthist looks up at him from across the table, smug as ever.

“Are we really doing this again so soon?” Callum asks.

“I think it’ll be different this time,” Evan says.

Callum sighs. “Fine. It’s not like I have anything better to do. I suppose you have more questions?”

“No. This time, I think I have answers.”

-----

**Jerry**

The day after I made my arrangement with Dr. Light, I’m escorted to the medium security socialization area after a long day treating civilians with mental afflictions.

It’s a well-guarded room, totally enclosed and located deep within Site-17.

There are plenty of chairs and tables in the room, along with a handful of entertainment objects. There are some board games on shelves in the corner. There’s a foosball table near the center, and a television on the wall that is currently showing a music video.

However, each of these amenities is carefully controlled. All furniture is nailed to the floor or affixed firmly to the wall. There’s nothing in the room that can be thrown or used as a weapon, and nothing that could allow prisoners to communicate with the outside world.

Add to that the heavy metal door, the armed guards, and the fact that any escaping humanoid would have an entire facility to navigate before they got out, and this room is quite secure.

Still, for members of the Serpent’s Hand, to be allowed in here is an enormous privilege, one the Foundation is granting only on an extremely probative basis.

Light neglected to mention that part of the deal. The Foundation is allowing us in here in exchange for the information I gave, but if any of us piss off the Jailors, we’ll all be yanked back into solitary confinement.

That means I can’t fuck up. I can’t do anything that would prompt the Jailors to take this away from my comrades. Even though I know that’s exactly what the Jailors want me to think, I still can’t do it. It’s my fault Sean and the others got captured. I can’t do anything that would make their captivity worse.

There are around two dozen humanoids in medium security. Most of them are strangers, but my eyes snap right to the ones who are familiar.

There, sitting in a corner, already talking to each other, are Jack, Mike, and Sean. They turn to look at me as I enter the room.

I look back at them. They wear the same bluish uniforms all imprisoned anomalies wear, but I don’t see any wounds or scars. Their mood is somber, but they don’t seem broken.

Considering the magnitude of the clusterfuck I dragged them into, they’re doing a lot better than they could be.

That should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. If it weren’t for me, they’d still be free. They gave up their freedom for me, for my mission, a mission that was doomed from the start.

As soon as the guards undo my cuffs, I run up to them. I hug all three of them in turn, tears trickling to the floor beneath me. Words I’ve wanted to say for months come spilling out of me like water from a burst pipe. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry I pulled you into all this.”

Sean shakes his head. “Don’t blame yourself,” he says.

“Don’t do that,” I say. “Don’t pretend it’s not my fault just to make me feel better. You got captured trying to rescue my brother. If I hadn’t made you guys help me, you’d still be free.”

“//I// inducted //you// into the Serpent’s Hand,” Sean says. “We knew the risks and chose to take them. Resistance is dangerous. It’s no one’s fault but the Jailors’.”

I shake my head. “No. You wouldn’t have come to this place if it weren’t for me, and it all turned out to be for nothing. Evan was…” I look up at him. I see no confusion, only concern. He knows. Of course he does. Jack and Mike saw Evan betray me. It was probably the first thing they told him.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Sean says.

“I should’ve known,” I say. “He was wearing an MTF uniform. He was eating with them. I was so stupid to trust him.” An edge of anger creeps into my voice. Anger at Evan, for betraying me, and anger at myself, for falling for it.

“None of us knew it was a possibility,” Mike says.

“He was wearing a uniform!” I say.

“I know,” Sean says, “and I’m not saying you didn’t make a mistake, but a lot of people probably would have done the same thing. Besides, at least your brother hasn’t been suffering this whole time. He’s probably better off in that task force than in a cell.”

“What happened is worse,” I say. “He’s an enemy, now. He betrayed me.”

“I know,” Sean admits. He looks at me for a moment and seems to think better of continuing to speak, as if afraid his opinion on the issue would offend me.

I take a moment to contemplate what he’s suggesting, that Evan rotting miserable in a cell for six years would have been worse than what happened.

I spent six years having nightmares about my brother rotting alone in a cell. The entire time he was gone, I had no idea how he was being treated. I wasn’t even sure he was still alive.

Once I entered the Library and learned about the Foundation, the fearful unknown was replaced with a vivid image of Evan being treated the way Sean was treated as a teenager, the way most humanoid anomalies are treated by the Foundation. Do I really wish I’d found Evan like that?

I have to, don’t I? Not because I want him to suffer, but because, if he’d been a prisoner, he would have followed me to the Wanderer’s Library. I’d have brought him into the Hand, and my parents would’ve finally learned that their son was still alive.

A new image flashes in my head. Somewhere, right now, my mom is in tears, believing that she outlived both of her sons. The Jailors surely faked my death just as they did Evan’s, so now my parents think they’ve lost both their children.

Evan knew they’d do that when he helped the Jailors capture me. Whatever misery she’s suffering now, it’s his fault.

“Have you been okay since we last saw you?” Mike asks.

Of course not. No one in containment is okay.

“Don’t worry about me,” I say.

“We’re all going to worry about each other,” Sean says. “There’s no helping that.”

I close my eyes. I don’t want to tell them what I’ve been doing. I don’t want to tell them that I’ve also been helping the Jailors. Even though they trained me not to. Even though they spent months teaching me to shut down and give our enemies nothing.

“What’s wrong?” Mike asks.

I can’t lie to them, though. I can’t pretend I haven’t failed them. That would be yet another betrayal.

Tears trickle down my cheeks. “I’ve been helping them, too,” I say.

“What?” Sean asks. There it is. The anger I deserve. It’s almost comforting, knowing that, at least after this, I won’t be able to disappoint them any further.

“I’ve been letting them use my powers,” I say. “They’ve been putting people in front of me, civilians, victims of mind-control, and I’ve been curing them.”

“That’s all?” Sean asks.

“That, and the tidbit of information I used to get the four of us in here. It was about the Fifth Church. I don’t think they could use it against the Hand. Still… I failed you. You trained me to ignore them, to force my mind out of my body and give them nothing. Instead, I’ve been letting them manipulate and bargain with me.”

“What did they do?” Mike asks.

“They put a victim in front of me, someone who’d been cursed. I tried to do the fire thing. I tried to summon a vivid image to my mind and ignore them like you trained me to, but I only held out for a few minutes before I gave in and cured them of the spell that was torturing them.”

I expect anger. Judgement. Disappointment. Failing that, I expect some sugarcoating attempt to cheer me up. The last thing I expect is the genuine relief that passes across their faces.

“That was a horrible thing for them to do,” Sean says.

“I’m sorry for not holding out,” I say. “Now that they can use me to cure people, my brother is free to… well, I don’t know what he’s doing, but given that he’s a loyal Jailor, it’s probably bad.”

“It’s okay,” Sean says.

“No, it’s not!” I say.

“Listen,” Sean says, “I hate them too, but, if I had your powers, and if they locked me in a room with someone like that, I probably would’ve done the same thing. It might’ve even been the right thing to do.”

I look up at him. Is he serious? Could he really have just said that? “I… I’m helping them,” I say. “How could that be the right thing to do?”

“Are you doing anything that helps them hurt anyone?” Jack asks.

“Not directly,” I admit, after a moment, “but what I’m doing used to be my brother’s primary job. Now that I’m doing it, he’s free to go do Jailor things.”

“If you’d refused to treat those people,” Mike asks, “would the Jailors have used Evan to cure them, or would he be off doing whatever he’s doing, leaving them untreated?”

It takes me a moment to process the significance of this question. “The latter,” I admit. “At least, that’s what Evan said.”

“Then I think you made the right choice,” Sean says. “Those people don’t deserve to languish in a containment cell.”

“At least you got the Jailors to let someone go,” Jack adds.

I stare up at them.

The argument they just made, Evan also made it when he tried to recruit me to the Jailors right after he captured me.

//“I decrease the number of people in Foundation custody. Before I came around, there were hundreds of mental anomalies whose victims had to be kept in containment for the rest of their lives. I’ve cured thousands of people like that, allowing them to be sent back to their families. I’ve freed more people from Foundation containment than the Serpent’s Hand ever will.”//

Am I really hearing the same argument from Sean?

I try to keep my shock off my face, but, clearly, I’m failing.

“Look,” Jack says, “all we’re saying is, you’re being forced to make hard choices in here. Try to cut yourself some slack, okay? You’re doing the best you can.”

The best I can?

“You… actually think that?” I ask.

“I do,” Sean says. The others nod in agreement.

Could it be that they’re just saying this to cheer me up?

No. They wouldn’t lie to me like that. They wouldn’t treat me like a child. If they’re saying my decision is understandable, perhaps even //defensible//, that’s what they honestly believe.

I want to argue back, to explain why they should be disappointed in me, but I can’t find the words, and after I spend close to a minute trying and trying to think of something to say, I once again cave to temptation, and change the subject. “How have you guys been?” I ask.

They’ve been worse off than me.

Sean was moved to Site-17 almost immediately after his capture, and he’s been in high security containment ever since. All three of them have suffered the same mind-numbing isolation, only they haven’t had interactions with Evan, Dr. Light, my patients, or any other scrap of human contact. They’ve been completely alone for months.

“I’m so sorry,” I can’t help but say again. “You shouldn’t have had to suffer like that for my failure.”

“You got us out,” Jack says. “It’s thanks to you we’re in here. We can never thank you enough for that.”

“It was the least I could do, after getting you stuck here,” I say.

“Don’t think of it like that,” Sean says. “We embarked on this mission together. We got captured together. We got in here together.”

“You’d still be out if it weren’t for me,” I repeat.

“If we hadn’t been on your mission, we would’ve been on another,” Sean says. “It could have gone South, just like this one did. If that had happened, we probably never would have escaped solitary.”

My eyes are moist. I shake my head, but, once again, I’m not able to formulate an argument. I did get them out of high security containment, and taking Light’s deal was the only way I could’ve done that. In almost any other situation, that would’ve been impossible.

“We’re a team,” I say. “I had to help you.”

“Exactly,” Sean says. “We’re a team. We embarked on this mission together, we failed together, and we’re still together now.”

The others seem to agree with that, and I don’t have it in me to argue with them.

The heavy conversation dies down after that, and we set about just spending time together. We spend some time on the foosball table, and another chunk of time watching TV.

There’s another music video on, by the pop star Jimmy Pheonix. He’s a young singer, around Evan’s age. He exploded onto the scene about half a decade ago and has become one of the most popular musicians in the world.

His style could be best described as aggressively inoffensive, one of those pop stars cooked up in a corporate boardroom for maximumly broad appeal. I’m sure people who care deeply about music regard him as absolute trash. For example:

“Gods, do they have to play this?” Mike asks.

“Apparently,” Sean says.

“Eh, I think it’s fine,” Jack says.

The other two turn to look at him.

“What?” Jack asks.

“Nothing,” Mike says, looking away. “You can like whatever you want.”

“There’s probably an actual reason they’re playing this,” I say. “It’s not hard to imagine why they’d actively want to rot our brains with something mindless.”

“Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s mindless,” Jack says.

“What’s that?” Mike asks. “I can’t hear you over the four chords.”

“None of his songs use the four chords,” Jack says. “Do you even know which chords the ‘four chords of pop music’ are?”

After half a minute of embarrassing silence, Mike admits he does not.

Socialization goes on for two hours. When it’s over, me and my comrades are allowed to exchange goodbyes, then we’re sent back to our cells.

We’re all still prisoners. They’re still suffering immensely for my failure, but at least I’m lightening their burden. At least they’re with friends, some of the time.

Maybe it’s pathetic that the bar has sunk so low, but this is the best day I’ve had in months. I can only hope it was for them, too. That’s the least I owe them.

-----

**Evan**

Callum tilts his head. “Okay,” he admits, “you have me curious. What’s this epiphany you’ve had?”

“Do you know who Veronica Hall is?” Evan asks.

“The magician?”

“And Fifthist.”

“Is she? I hadn’t heard.”

That’s probably a lie, but it’s not an important one right now, so Evan doesn’t allow himself to get distracted by it.

“I talked to her yesterday,” Evan says. “She said some very interesting things. She knew about the Galaxy Plaza ritual, and she seemed to think of //you// as the one primarily responsible for its failure.”

Callum raises a brow. “Did she? I will admit that’s a bit interesting. I suppose it could be seen as my fault. The ritual might have worked if I hadn’t had it moved.”

Evan shakes his head. “It’s more than that,” he says. For a second, he has to fight down his nerves. He’s about to make a big claim. If he’s wrong, he’s going to make himself look really stupid, which could permanently damage his rapport with Callum.

He’s not wrong, though. His theory makes sense. It explains everything. It explains what all of this has to do with Cassidy Redwood. It explains why Callum chose to meddle with such an important ritual, when he could have easily taken revenge on Evan in another way. It explains how Callum could have been foolish enough to think that a ritual designed to require thousands of sacrifices would still work with only a few dozen.

Or, rather, it explains that he was never that foolish.

Evan looks Callum right in the eye. “I think you got the ritual moved to Galaxy Plaza knowing that would cause it to fail,” Evan says. “I think you wanted it to fail.”

For a moment, Callum is frozen. He’s clearly surprised. But is it the correctness of the claim that has him shocked, or its absurdity?

The smile that slowly creeps across Callum’s face does little to resolve this ambiguity. “Oh?” he asks. “What makes you think that?”

“Hall said something very interesting to me yesterday. //‘I told them that what didn’t work for Redwood wouldn’t work for us.’// She meant Cassidy Redwood, the Ortothan who tried and failed to resurrect her god with a blood sacrifice. Redwood left behind extensive notes detailing how she tried to reduce the number of sacrifices her ritual required.

“You’ve already admitted that you approached your father and asked him to move the ritual to Galaxy Plaza. I always took it for granted that you had enough pull with him to get him to say yes, but that doesn’t really make sense, does it? This ritual was the most important thing the church had ever attempted. There’s no way your father would allow its effectiveness to be jeopardized just so you could get revenge against me.”

“But it was moved,” Callum observes. “Clearly I //did// manage to convince the Church to move it.”

“And in order to do that, you had to pair your proposal with an argument that the ritual would still work. You had to provide some kind of explanation, grounded in thaumaturgic theory, for why such a tiny number of sacrifices would still be enough.”

“What about the giant machine Cassidy Redwood built? There was nothing like that at the Galaxy Plaza.”

“I’m sure you altered the details of the plan. You didn’t need to use every trick she did. You just borrowed enough ideas to create a somewhat convincing case that the ritual could be completed with fewer sacrifices. You didn’t even need to admit you got the idea from Redwood. Maybe Hall just made that connection later. Either way, you must have told them something.”

“And how do you know I was lying?” Callum asks. “Couldn’t I have honestly believed the ritual would work with fewer sacrifices?”

“No. You know magical theory too well.”

“I was a Fifthist. The same people who tried to take a bus to another solar system, remember?”

“But you’d been interacting with me for months. Fifthism’s grip on your mind had weakened.”

Evan takes one more second to push down his nerves. It’s time for the killing blow.

“In fact, I don’t think that weakened grip //just// made you too smart to think the ritual would still work. I think it made you want it to fail. I think, after months of being friends with me, my voice eroding the Starfish’s influence on you, a tiny bit of your conscience showed itself, just enough that you didn’t want to end the world.”

Callum stares up at Evan for several seconds. Slowly, as if out to milk the tension in the room for as long as he can, he closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Tsk, tsk, Evan. For a second, I really thought you had it all figured out, but then you had to start blabbering about my conscience.” He pauses for a moment, then looks Evan right in the eye. “My choice to sabotage the ritual had nothing to do with morality.”

“Then what did it have to do with?”

“I realized that I liked the world the way it was.”

“How’s that different?”

“Because it had less than nothing to do with other people’s wellbeing. Before you had me captured, I had money, power, and magic, and I was in a position to lord those things over the masses who lacked them. Most people didn’t even know magic existed. None of them had any way of protecting themselves against my spells. I could do whatever I wanted. I could make them do whatever I wanted.”

That makes Evan grimace. Jerry said something similar, a while back, that the Veil helps the world’s monsters by ensuring ordinary people don’t know how to defend themselves against them.

“I still don’t understand how you don’t see the appeal of it,” Callum continues. “In a clueless world, there was nothing stopping me from taking anything I wanted. I wanted a tome of arcane lore? I made someone sell it to me for a pittance. I wanted the hottest girl I knew to date me? She did. Everything I wanted, I got. I had power, and other people didn’t. Do you know enough about Fifthist doctrine to know what’s supposed to happen once the Fifth Church finally wins?”

“The world turns into a hellscape based on the Starfish’s warped imagination.”

“And with that newfound power, the Starfish destroys the barrier between desire and reality. All desires become real. //All// desires. Everyone would be able to bend reality to their whim, and if they decided they wanted to bend me, they’d be just as likely to succeed as they’d be to fail.”

Callum shakes his head.

“Why would I want that?” he asks. “Why would a wolf want the helpless sheep he fed on to become wolves as well? My family’s money wouldn’t matter. My magic wouldn’t be anything special. Everyone on earth would become my peer, and I don’t want peers. I want the kind of power that can only exist in an ordered world.”

Evan stares at Callum. Somehow, even though Evan’s initial guess was mostly right, Callum still managed to surprise and disappoint him.

Maybe Evan should have known better. He wants so badly to believe his high-school best friend is buried somewhere deep inside Callum, but maybe he isn’t. Maybe that person was only ever a mask, and the real Callum could only have sick, selfish reasons to do anything, even save the world.

“I was right about the rest of it, though?” Evan asks.

“Right enough that I’m impressed,” Callum admits. “I didn’t lie when I said I moved the ritual to Galaxy Plaza because I wanted revenge against you. I really did hate you for taking so much power away from me. At the same time, with the help of your magic voice, I’d come to recognize that the Church’s ultimate victory would, in its own way, do the same, so I hatched a plan to take care of both problems at once.

“I got my hands on Cassidy Redwood’s notes. I drafted a similar proposal for our ritual and presented it to my father. I argued that the smaller number of sacrifices would attract less attention. Bullshit, of course. I knew a few dozen sacrifices could never be enough. I knew that the only thing my new ritual would succeed at doing was luring you into danger. I told you something would happen, knowing you’d show up and try to save everyone. I thought you’d run in and get yourself killed, and once you did, everything would be back to the way it was before I met you, with me ruling as crown prince over a town of magicless simpletons.”

There it is, then. After six years, the full truth about the Galaxy Plaza disaster, with no loose ends or lingering questions.

As cathartic as it is to see it all laid out, Evan needs more than that to save the world again.

“If the Church were going to try the same ritual again,” Evan says, “what kind of venue would they need?”

“Please, don’t insult my intelligence by pretending you’re talking about a hypothetical. You’re here because something happened. Just come out and tell me.”

Evan sighs. On paper, he isn’t at liberty to disclose the situation to Callum. However, Callum’s talking right now because Evan earned a bit of his respect by figuring out what he did six years ago. For Callum to continue talking, Evan needs to keep that respect.

“Fine. I admit it. They’re trying again. What kind of venue do they need?”

Callum smiles. “That’s wonderful to hear. I hope they succeed. I certainly won’t be telling you anything that would help you stop them.”

“We just established that you don’t want the world to end.”

“I //didn’t// want it to end six years ago. My circumstances have changed since then. I no longer have money, power, or freedom. I’m not in a position to lord my magic over anyone. Compared to my life in here, maybe the Fifth Church’s new world would be an upgrade?”

“Their new world would be hell for anyone sane.”

“But that’s the beauty of it; there wouldn’t be anyone sane.”

Evan shakes his head. “I would still be sane, as would anyone I chose to interact with.”

“And you think I //don’t// want you to experience eternal torment?”

“Not if I can drag you down with me.”

That finally wipes the smile off Callum’s face.

“I promise you this,” Evan says, “if the Fifth Church does remake the world, and it’s because you didn’t tell me how to stop it, I will make //sure// you’re perfectly sane until the end of time. I will find you, and I will force you to endure every second of our new eternity just as agonizingly lucid as me.”

After a moment of trepidation, Callum shakes his head. “No, you won’t. You aren’t capable of that kind of vindictiveness. If the world is already beyond saving, you won’t torture me just out of spite.”

“In most situations, you’d be right,” Evan admits, “but you’re forgetting something. Jerry has my powers. He’d also be sane, trapped in an insane world of eternal torment.” Evan looks Callum in the eye. “I swear to you, if that happens to my little brother, and it’s your fault, I will //happily// dedicate the rest of my existence to punishing you.”

Callum meets his gaze for a moment. His smugness falters.

“Fine,” Callum says, through gritted teeth.

“How does the ritual work, and how would we stop it?”

“The //Starlight Saga// books have a memetic agent inside of them, similar to the one we put in //Star Signals//,” Callum says.

“That’s not true. We tested them.”

“You tested whether the books have any effect on your stupid D-Class. Your tests came back negative because the meme doesn’t do anything after it’s first implanted. It just lingers there, waiting to be activated.”

“Activated?”

“That’s what the ritual is for. It’s all part of a deal we made with an extra-universal entity. A tiny piece of that being’s essence is implanted in everyone who reads those books.”

Evan’s eyes widen. “Everyone?” Evan asks. “Everyone who’s read //the Starlight Saga//?”

With that, Callum’s smugness returns. “Every last one. As we speak, our trigger waits, latent, in tens of millions of readers all over the world.”

Evan takes a step backwards.”

“Once we give the entity the sacrifice we owe it,” Callum continues, “it’ll activate the trigger. All those minds will be ours, and they’ll start remaking the world.”

Tens of millions. Tens of millions of people. The implications are so heavy that it’s hard to stay standing. “Tens of millions would start to develop Ojai syndrome?”

“They wouldn’t ‘start to’ develop it. They’d become fully affected, instantly, just as if they’d read //Star Signals// cover to cover.”

“Instantly…” Evan doesn’t want to show Callum’s weakness, but he can’t keep the horror off his face. For that many people to fall fully under the control of the Fifth Church would be the greatest disaster in human history, anomalous or otherwise.

Callum’s delight is no less obvious than Evan’s fear. “The problem with //Star Signals// is that it was too slow. We’d barely started to spread the book when you identified it as a threat and started shutting us down, so the Church created a new memetic agent which would activate all at once, after it was already widespread. Once those millions of minds are under the Church’s control, they’ll begin the same ritual the //Star Signals// readers started, and, about two weeks later, the world will be remade.”

Evan takes a deep breath. Focus. He can’t let himself get overwhelmed. He needs to keep his head in the game. His job is to save the world. That’s all that matters.

“How can we figure out when and where the sacrifice will take place?” Evan asks.

“Before I interfered, the Church was going to do it at some massive nerd convention in California.”

“Why there?”

“The people we sacrifice have to be affected by the memetic agent. Part of the deal. Something about the entity getting to keep their souls. If the Church is planning to try again, they’ll pick somewhere where thousands of //Starlight Saga// readers have gathered.”

Back at the height of those books’ popularity, any large gathering of sci-fi fans would be full of people who’ve read them. Six years later… honestly, it wouldn’t be that different. There’d be thousands of events that could potentially qualify, and even if the Foundation identified and stopped one, all that would do is buy a bit of time. So long as that seed is prevalent, the Church can try again.

“Is there any way of purging that memetic seed from people?” Evan asks.

Callum shrugs. “You might be able to do it. You’re pretty good at cleaning magic gunk out of people’s brains. Still, given how many people there are to cure, and given that you have no way of identifying them, I don’t like your odds.”

Evan doesn’t like the Foundation’s odds, either.

The Foundation’s people need to have a very, very long talk about this information, and that talk needs to begin as soon as possible.

“I think that’s all my questions for now,” Evan says. “Thank you. What you just said might save the world.”

“What can I say? Threatening to torture someone for all eternity is a good way to get their secrets.”

“Still, you’ve done a good thing today. Maybe there’s—”

“Evan, it’s been five minutes since we went over this. You haven’t dug up some faint echo of my better nature. I don’t have a better nature. I said what I said because you threatened me. That’s all.”

“Fine,” Evan says. “Goodbye, then. Me or another Foundation agent may be back with more questions later. Be candid with them, or else.”

“Of course. Goodbye, and, from the bottom of my heart, I hope you fail.”

It’s almost enough to goad Evan into taking the last word, but that’d be as much of a victory for Callum as anything. Evan leaves.

Light is waiting outside. “Good work,” she says, though there isn’t any cheer in her voice.

“Thanks,” Evan says.

“I’m arranging an emergency meeting.”

“Of course.”

Light’s gaze lingers on him for a moment. He meets it. He does his best to force the worry off of his face.

She can probably still see it. After, he can tell she’s doing the same. The truth is, unless everything Callum just said is completely wrong, this is the gravest situation Evan has ever faced. Unless the Foundation does something very clever, very quickly, tens of millions of minds are going to be brought under the Fifth Church’s control.

Once that’s happened, it’s hard to imagine how even the Foundation could save the world.

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I Didn't Forget Pt 18: Callum Michaels

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