The Administrator was never one for ceremony. When she had founded it all, more than a hundred years ago, she did not ask for contracts written in blood under flickering candlelight, or sacred oaths sworn with a hand over the bible during a thunderstorm. She had simply gotten to work.
And that was why it all ended in a dreary little park in East London. The place meant nothing to either of them, and it was of no particular importance to anyone. And that was why she had chosen it: because it was meaningless.
As she sat on the swing, listing back and forth slowly in the gentle night’s wind, she wondered if she was being petty. The Governor would hate that it ended here, and not in the room where it all began in Site-001.
“It’s been a while.”
She did not turn to look at her. She found herself unable to. “A hundred and three years, by my count.”
The Governor sat on the swing next to her. “The negotiations are over. All Foundation assets and anomalies are now under the control of the Chaos Insurgency. The O5 Council will shortly be liquidated. As for most of your personnel? We’ll keep them on in the same jobs, for the most part. Maybe we’ll even say they still work for the Foundation. The fall of the Foundation has affected, at the most, a hundred people."
The Administrator pushed herself pathetically against the ground, giving a slight little swing. A family of foxes scampered across the grass in front of them. “What’ll you do now?”
The Governor shrugged. “Same as you, I’d imagine.”
“So this was all for nothing.”
“It was for us. For what we had between us. So, yes, it was for nothing.”
The Administrator reached out and ran her hand over the Governor’s face. One half had grown old and weary and lonely, while the other remained as it had the day she was shot.
“Why?”
The Administrator did not answer that question for a long time. “Love is poison. I would have let the world burn a thousand times over to save you. So I made the right choice before I could make the wrong one. Everything I had to do after that was so much easier.”
The Governor held the pistol in her soft, warm hands. “This is the same gun, you know.”
At that, the Administrator simply sighed. “I’m not going to apologize. Ever.”
And the Governor shot her. The shot was muted, pathetic, and the family of foxes barely flinched.
The Administrator folded forward, and if not for the massive hole in her forehead, she might have looked asleep.
