A black night and the shadow of a mighty oak greeted George when he arrived in the clearing at the center of the Yellowstone Biodome. This was the place where he'd grown up. Once when he was a very small boy a simulated rain storm had caught him out in this field. Thunder had echoed from speakers in the ceiling far over head and fake lightning had shattered the sudden darkness brought on by the storm. Water dripping from his limp hair, George had raced through the field, wet grass whipping against his bare legs. At last he'd reached the oak tree and huddled beneath its massive branches.

Many times that tree had rescued him, when he was afraid and alone. There were few friends to be found in the isolation of the biodome, but the tree had never laughed at him, had never forced him, had never betrayed him. It was constant and eternal. In the end it had been him who abandoned the tree and left it to its lonely fate.

But now, with no where else to turn, George found himself picking through the darkness towards that shadow. The night air of the biodome was cool and clear, not like the smudged yellow brown that permeated the outside world. The leaves of the tree rustled in a gentle breeze and George knelt down in the dirt before it, his hands clasped as though in prayer. He put his hands up against the bark and felt the remaining warmth of a day now lost in darkness.

Footsteps startled him from his thoughts and he spun to find himself facing the form of a woman lit by a circle of light. Before she spoke he recognized her and stopped breathing.

"Oh!" She stopped on seeing him. One arm held the lantern forward and the other clutched an urn close to her chest. "I'm sorry. I didn't expect to see anyone out here at this time of night."

Monica, because it was Monica, shuffled nervously from foot to foot and bit her lip as though trying to decide what to do. George studied her face. It was as though all the hard edges had been smoothed away. Her hair was less shockingly blond, streaks of brown were visible. She seemed a little shorter also, although it was hard to tell. And her eyes radiated warmth, even in the limited light provided by the electric lantern. But it was still Monica.

"I--" She swallowed. "Do you mind?"

George shook his head no and turned away. He didn't want to see her alive before him. He didn't want to remember the way she'd felt when her body dissolved in his arms.

She stepped up to the tree and put one arm up against it.

"Well Daddy, here we are. It's...it's night just like you wanted. I can see the stars overhead...they make the world seem so much bigger."

She hugged the urn close and then pulled open the top. George couldn't help but watch out of the corner of his eye. Tears glistened on her face. Slowly, awkwardly, she turned the urn upside down and emptied the ashes at the base of the tree. The dust danced in the slight breeze and then blew out across the field and dissipated into the darkness.

All was silent.

Monica wiped the tears from her face and turned to George, her head cocked at an angle.

"Do you mind...my asking why you're here?"

"A little."

"Sorry. I...I should go."

She turned to leave and the wind picked up into a howl that rattled the branches of the tree

"Wait." He reached out towards her. "Please...don't go. I don't want to be alone. Not tonight."

She came back and sat down at the base of the tree next to the remains of her father.

"He used to take me to this tree all the time. He'd read me stories about heroes and about monsters." She hugged the lantern close. "The good guys always won in those stories. People didn't die. Not the wrong ones. Not people like him."

George nodded.

"I miss knowing that the world was like that. This is my favorite tree in the world. The tree that holds that knowledge...that knowledge that I can never have again."

For a while they were both silent in their separate thoughts. The image of the moon rose wispy in the screens overhead and sailed out across the sky.

"What do you do when you've lost everything?" George whispered this, as much to himself as to Monica.

"I don't know..." She closed her eyes. "That's the sort of thing he always knew. But he's gone now and I can never see him again."

And so they sat, two strangers under the shadow of their favorite tree.

The end of the world was silent and still. George floated in the center of the nanobots and all he wanted was to stay there. Stay where there were no people. No world to save. Nobody to let down.

But he felt a tugging in his stomach, that feeling of movement as a car accelerates down the highway. His body shot upward and broke through the surface of the white cloud that had been the earth. The edge of the cloud swirled with his passing and then closed like a wound closing.

George found himself floating beside the moon. He felt buried by stars and space. Looking around he realized that there were so many more stars than he'd ever imagined. And they were all unique, different colors, shapes, and sizes. The word star didn't do justice to the variety that surrounded him. Floating there he felt so small. He was just an atom in a mote of dust.

And like a seed on the wind he drifted away from the cloud of white that had been the earth. It danced and swirled. Flickered and glowed. He passed the moon, massive and gray like a mountain of stone hanging in the black of space. Planets flitted by like memories he couldn't grasp. Over the shock wave at the bow of the solar system he continued into the wasteland beyond. But it wasn't a wasteland at all.

Dark worlds lumbered in the black, shadows hidden from view but felt all the same. And there were always those stars in the distance.

Faster and faster George felt himself pulled further and further from everything he'd ever known. The stars turned to streaks of light drawn out against the black like chalk lines on a board. And then George began to move not outward, but up and away from space itself. He looked down and he could see the universe curving away. It was like looking down at the circle of the earth and finding stars instead of the sea.

Soon he'd left the universe completely and could see it laid out before him like a marble. He pulled back further and the edge of another universe came into view, and then another, and another until universes stretched out forever on every side. And every universe glowed with the light of the stars that lay within. Off into the distance George couldn't even see the individual globes, just a sea of light so bright that it hurt to look.

And he realized that every person who had ever lived, every choice that had ever been made, every possibility he'd passed without thought, and all the acts of love, hatred and sadness that came with them, were laid out before him.

And then just as quickly as he'd come George felt his stomach lurch and he began to fall down, down, down towards one of those globes. His body broke the surface and streaked along space until he found himself floating again over the earth. No longer was it just a mass of ravenous machines. It lay whole before him, brown and gray. Cities were visible sprawling out across the landscape, but not trees. Even the oceans were the color of granite.

He plunged into the atmosphere and felt the chill of water droplets on his skin. He broke through a thin layer of clouds and down towards the massive city of Chicago. The metal spires broke up out of the earth, bones through the skin. And then George blinked and found himself seated on the Airbus.

Rain pounded against the windows, thick and heavy. It thrummed in the air around him. People were packed into the seats. A thin wisp of fog remained on the air around George and dissipated. George watched rain roll down the windows and realized that it was over. There would be no more beasts chasing him down the streets, no more mad generals, no threat of looming destruction. This world would not die in a flash, it would wither forever on the vine.

George watched the rain and thought of Monica an infinite distance away from him. He remembered his arms around her and the way she'd dissolved like a dream in the morning. And all he wanted right now in the world was to have dissolved with her. Not to linger here, knowing that he'd failed to save her. Knowing that those forests were in the past now. That they, like Monica, lived in his mind alone and no where else.

Putting his head in his hands, George wept.

Next Week: Finale.

George and Monica stood together on the roof of the base and watched the world pass away around them. The sun glowed in the sky, so bright and yet so far away. A dull growl permeated the air, not a beast, but the earth itself shivering in the cold of space. George looked at Monica for a moment, and then...so gently...clasped her hand in his. He closed his eyes and waited.

*

Minutes earlier George led Monica on a rampage through the bowels of the compound. He spared no one. Amanda lay dead, her body cold and broken, behind. Monica, for once the follower, chased and provided covering fire.

At last they stood together on the threshold of a large command center. Guards rushed forward, but George dispatched them. Killing came easily with that rage burning in his heart. It came all too easy. Monica's face hardened. She knew that George had lost some part of himself. Some part that he'd never find again for so long as he lived.

George, his hand quivering, pointed the gun at General Lancaster.

"You...I should kill you for what you did to Amanda..."

"Ah yes, Amanda, it was a shame...a true shame. But she was a--"

"A security risk?" George laughed till his throat hurt. "Is that we he told you? Don't you see...he lied to you. He just wanted to make her love him."

"I...I can't believe that." Lancaster shook his head. "Lars was many things...but he would never betray my trust."

"You're a fool!" George stepped forward and then back. "He betrayed everything. And he killed Dr. Madison so that there wouldn't be any way to put things right again. He killed him and he killed her. And you let him. You let him."

Lancaster shivered and goosebumps rose up along his skin.

"You...you have to believe me...I would never have...I cared about Amanda...I truly...I thought I was doing the right thing."

George closed his eyes and felt the trigger against his finger. It would be so easy. He knew that now. A gentle touch on his arm, unexpected and soft, caused him to open his eyes. Monica stood there holding his arm. Her cold eyes stared into him, but...no...that wasn't right at all. Her eyes weren't cold. They were sad. George realized that now. They'd never been cold at all.

Just lost. Like him. Lost and alone.

"It's okay George. Let it go." She eased the gun from his hand and nodded to a large screen, which displayed a wind worn middle eastern city and a count down. "We don't have much time left."

George nodded, his mouth dry and his heart numb.

"General...I know you don't have much reason to believe me, but you..you have to. There's a fatal flaw in the weapon."

Lancaster's eyes widened and then he started to laugh low in his throat.

"You think I don't know that?"

George took a half step back.

"What do you mean? I don't understand. What do you mean?"

"I know about the flaw, but we're not the ones about to use the weapon. Madison's death delayed the project by months." He shook his head. "General Hammond..." He spat the name out. "It's all him. It's always been him."

George sagged against Monica.

"He...he promised me."

General Lancaster simply shrugged and turned to face the screen. The numbers rolled ever lower and then at last read zero. A blinding white flash caused the screen to flicker. When the image had cleared a bubbling mass of white was expanding out. The city sunk under it, like Atlantis slipping into the ocean. When the bubble had covered the city completely it paused.

George gasped. Maybe Hammond had fixed the code...

The edge of the bubble quivered, a gelatinous blob of nanobots, and then it began to expand again. At first it came slowly...but it picked up speed like a snowball becoming an avalanch.

"This...this can't be happening...this can't be happening..."

Monica put her hand on his shoulder.

"George...let's...let's get out of here. I don't want to die in the earth. I don't want to die buried down here."

"But...but we're the good guys!" George grabbed her by the shoulders. "We can't loose! We...we just can't."

"Everyone loses eventually George."

*

And so they took the elevator to the top and now stood there watching the trees swaying in a gentle midday breeze. In the distance some beast roared and a flock of birds exploded out of the trees into the sky.

*

Hammond sat in his black office and stared at the paintings on the walls. He'd watched the wave of nanobots swallow most of Europe. Even now it devoured the sea. Reports were coming in that the oceans themselves had began to pull away from the shore exposing land that hadn't seen the sun since the Earth had been born so long ago. He'd watched until his eyes were numb of it. He'd watched until his stomach had tied itself up in a thousand knots.

He tried to understand how he'd become this person. How he'd become the destroyer of the world. The ultimate villain. The very thing he'd spent his entire life fighting. He tried to understand, but there are some things we never understand...some things that even were we given a million years we wouldn't understand. Hammond didn't have a million years. Hammond didn't have half an hour.

*

The Rex stood over the forest and surveyed the world. He could see to the horizon. He could see the wall of white coming now over the world. His world. The world that he'd owned since he was created. Nothing stood in the path of the Rex. But all things must end.

*

The Barlack kicked the car over and peeled it open with its tentacle. The scar on its stomach was still sore, but it didn't worry about that pain. The only thing that mattered was that it do what it had been programed to do. Kill. So it peeled the car open and plucked out a screaming man. The two of them died together when the wall of white came over them. An embrace. Not everyone must die alone.

*

Alternate George sat in his office above the city and stared out the window at his fate. He remembered his other self and wondered if he could have chosen different. Been someone else. He closed his eyes and dreamed.

*

Monica, the wind tangled in her hair, remembered what she'd done to Lars. She remembered his cold black eyes and how he'd pleaded for his life. She pulled her hand from George.

"We deserve it." She whispered at first, but her voice grew firm as she spoke. "This..this is what we deserve. What we've earned."

"Don't say that." George took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. He remembered now so long ago when he'd seen those eyes and thought that they'd be the last things he ever saw. "Don't you dare say that."

"Oh George, you...not you...you don't deserve this." She shook her head and felt the sun on her skin. The earth was really rumbling now. It shook, as though with fear that the end had finally come. A sliver of moon watched from the horizon, faint in the daylight. "But...but I deserve this. I...this is how it should end. The things I've done..."

George clasped Monica's head in his hands. He kissed her tightly, his eyes squeezed shut. Still kissing her he said, "You don't deserve this. You are so much more than a killing machine. So much more..." And so they kissed—George tasting Monica's tears--there at the end of the world. The wall of destruction crawled over the horizon, lumbering and rolling along, but they didn't see it.

It embraced them and George felt Monica dissolve in his arms. She faded away, like a distant childhood memory...there and then gone again. George floated alone in the white and for a while he felt warm and protected.