It wasn't easy to pull the trigger.

I knew I had to do it, but still. When the moment arrived, it wasn't easy at all.

I'm trembling a little when Duke tucks me in his car.

"It was the first time you shot at a human, right?" he asks after we speed off.

"Yes."

"It always feels terrible, no matter what. We're lucky to have Frank around. You can talk to him about it."

"Did I kill Mr. Toe?"

"No, you didn't," Duke answers. "But you did very well."

"You taught me how to hold a weapon."

"What? But before you get the license, you must—"

"I don't have a license. It's Mint's gun."

Duke stares at me with a displeased frown.

"You could have told me," he says, after scrutinizing my face for much longer than I deem safe while driving.

"If I had told you, we'd be dead."

"Or I could have prepared for this possibility."

"By trying to prevent me from using it," I snort. "And getting both of us killed."

"Not necessarily."

"Excuse me, why did we run, leaving him there wounded but alive?"

"Because I can't fight and protect you at the same time," he answers.

"Exactly. So back to square one. It's not your duty to protect me. It's my duty to protect you."

He seems a bit offended, but it's a point that was necessary to be made.

Duke's team is waiting for us impatiently in the pub. We brief them on the incident. I avoid Frank's questions regarding the shooting, but I can't avoid Nicole's hugs.

"You saved one-third of my team," she squeals. "That's 33 percent, but it means so much more than that to me."

"Not exactly," I inform her, but seeing Duke's annoyed grimace, I postpone our much-needed mathematics lesson.

"Did you know that Mr. Toe and Pavlov were the same person before we went there?" Duke asks.

"No. But I knew that something was off about them. That's why we had to go and see him."

"Again, you could have told me."

"I told you, Duke."

"You didn't. Not in a way I could understand."

That's not my fault, I think.

"I'm sorry," I say.

I'm definitely getting better at taking people's feelings into account.

"I thought you could calculate anything," Duke says, still sulking.

"I'm not a magician. And not an angel, either. I need data to do the trick, and I haven't had enough. You had it, and Mint. Separately. Never at the same place and time."

"Regarding Mint," he goes on hesitantly, with a mild dread in his voice that betrays what he's about to ask, "do you think that Mr. Toe told the truth?"

"No, he didn't."

"Then we must find Mint as soon as possible."

"We don't need to," I answer. "He'll be here soon. If he's not..."

Now I detect the same dread in my voice as in Duke's a minute ago. If he's not coming, it means that I messed up my calculations. And I'm a failure. And—

The door opens, and Mint falls in.

Nicole screams. Duke pulls his gun. I lean against the wall to provide me with some support. I'm afraid my knees would give in otherwise.

"What's wrong with your legs, man?" Duke asks, then helps Mint to get up and sit on a chair.

"It's a long story," Mint answers. "But first thing first. About Mr. Toe—"

"We know. We barely escaped."

Mint finally turns to me. I pray silently for my brain to restart, but all I can think about is that my calculations were correct. I didn't fail. I'm not a failure. I didn't allow my lamb to get lost.

It's on a loop.

I can't break it. Mint can. When he stands up and stumbles up to me, I forget everything, even repeating things.

He wants to hug me. I turn away. My fucking percentages command me to do that. There's a 68% chance that it's the safest way to go.

This might be the first time I seriously hate my skills.

"There are other things we need to take care of," I explain.

He accepts it without arguing.

"So, what's next?"

Mint and Duke look at me, like in the old times, waiting for directions.

"First, let me see the documentation. My calculations, I don't know how to put it, always ricocheted on that fucking formula."

"I'm not sure that bringing it forth is a clever idea," Duke disputes. "Mr. Toe still wants it."

"If he wanted it so badly, he'd have us killed without talking."

"Pavlov told me that the vaccine was already under mass production," Mint cuts in. "Well, it's not the vaccine, really, because they changed a sequence, and now all it does is help the virus to be even more lethal."

"Wonderful," I huff. "And when did you plan to share this information with us?"

"I thought you knew it already!"

"We didn't. We were kinda running for our lives."

"Well, you know now." Mint shrugs. "In fact, he said nothing else. Nothing else of public interest, anyway, except for some deranged megalomaniac rambling to convince me to join him."

"You did join him, Mint," Duke lashes out. "You joined him, fuck you! So if we're doing this, I must be one hundred percent sure that you won't stab me in the back."

"That's your style, bro. Excuse me, who wanted to kill me, just to save face?"

"It was fucking self-defense! You put my life in danger by coming back! And you worked for a lunatic mass murderer!"

"You worked for the same person, asshole! Don't you think this 'good guys versus bad guys' argument is a tad outdated? And it didn't age well."

"Still," Duke says, breathing in deeply, "if we're going to do this, I must be sure that we're a team. That you're not going to quit again and disappear."

"And I," Mint sighs, "I must be sure that you don't come at me ever again. Because, honestly, I'd rather let you shoot me right here, right now."

They are facing each other as if they are about to fight, but I know better. Mint's about to fall to his knees because his legs are still too weak to stand, and Duke's about to say something that he'd regret later. And they both are going to tear up if they keep bringing out the hurt they caused to one another like that.

"You never stopped being a team, dumbasses," I tell them, rolling my eyes a little, in a decidedly non-judgmental way. "How come you never noticed? Now kiss each other, and let's proceed."

They stare at me as if I murdered their puppy. Very good. Now they are a team, indeed.

"The formula," I remind them.

"It's not that easy," Duke says. "It's implanted under my skin."

"Like in that movie, bro." Mint grins. "Cool."

"Hey, watch your tongue!"

"I didn't say which movie."

Okay. They're just as annoying as ever.

"We need a scalpel," Frank interjects. "But I don't have any. And the last time I operated was at the uni."

"Your sharpest knife will do," Duke answers.

"I don't think I can work with that. I might faint."

"Don't watch, then," Duke says gently, handing the knife to Mint.

Splendid. He just expressed his concerns a few minutes ago about Mint stabbing him in the back. And now he turns his back on him after giving him a knife so that he can, in fact, stick it in his back. Not too deeply, but still.

Never mind. I've never liked my lambs for their brains.

I watch Mint cutting the microchip out while I'm running calculations, based on the new data Mint provided. The new piece of information fits into the model perfectly. Finally, the equation is correct. No more tricky variables. No more shady elements. Everything is ready to be executed just as planned.

I only join them again after they discussed how to extract the data on Frank's old notebook. It's a single document. Its content doesn't surprise me very much, either.

"Busted, dear Duke!

You've been guarding the big fat nothing perfectly, giving me enough time to carry out my plan.

Don't be offended, son. If you're reading this, there are two possible scenarios. One, you're sitting by my side, and we're reading it together because you killed Mint. Two—oh, my bad, there isn't another choice for you. In the other scenario, you're not reading anything. You're already dead because Mint turned out to be the best, and I'm reading this with him.

It's so exciting! I can't wait to see which one of you wins the right to join me and take part in the new creation.

You asked me once about the origin of my codename, remember? To show you how much I trust you, I'll answer your question here, no matter how ridiculous the truth is. I lost four of my toes in a mission. We all have our scars, don't we?

Now we don't have any more secrets between us. Unconditional trust only.

Oh, and if it's Mint reading this... the same to you, darling Mint.

I have one of you. And I'm thankful to God for that."

Duke and Mint are staring at the monitor with a troubled expression. Mint breaks the silence first.

"I think I threw up a little in my mouth," he says. "I understand he turned the Agency. But into what? What have you been doing together, Duke?"

"Let me remind you of my favorite sentence, bro: the same to you, darling Mint."

"Ew."

"Yeah."

"That's not the most important part," I inform them.

"Which is it, then?" Duke asks.

"He guessed almost everything right. Except for one thing. He doesn't have any of you by his side."

"Does that make a difference?"

I smile at them. They have no idea, my silly little lambs, how real life works. I told them, but they still don't take it seriously. Everything is an equation. Everything.

"He messed up his calculations," I tell them.

They still understand nothing.

"I've always thought he'd be a good tactical controller," I go on.

They furrow their brows in a very similar, preoccupied way. So I finish the sentence.

"But not as good as I am."