The world is a clock winding down.

That's what you do when the curtain is falling--you give the line that the audience wants to hear.

When I cry - when I let myself cry - that's who I cry for. I don't cry for myself. I cry for the Cassie that's gone. And I wonder what that Cassie would think of me. The Cassie who kills.

Maybe the last human being on Earth won't die of starvation or exposure or as a meal of wild animals. Maybe the last one to die will be killed by the last one alive.

It's like a cockroach working up a plan to defeat the shoe on its way down to crush it.

You are the human clay," Vosch whispers fiercely in my ear. "And I am Michelangelo. I am the master builder, and you will be my masterpiece.

Oh, Will Henry. After all we have been through, how could I send you away now, at our most critical hour? You are indispensable to me.