Chapter 674

If someone stopped seeing people as people, could they still call themselves human?

And if someone no longer considered other human beings their own kind, wasn’t that person a monster?

Claire didn’t care that Evenson killed people. If those people were already considered evil, their deaths bothered her even less.

What she cared about was Evenson himself.

She couldn’t believe that the man she loved could truly be this kind of monster.

Claire’s gaze snapped toward the Eredar twins, fury blazing in her eyes.

She had always believed Evenson wasn’t truly this cold and ruthless. At least, that was the person he had always shown her.

So someone must have taught him to think this way.

Who else could it have been?

The Eredar twins.

They were demons, creatures whose very existence embodied chaos and evil.

"You."

Claire’s voice shook with anger.

"It was you, wasn’t it? You taught Evenson to think like this. You pushed him down this path, little by little, until he became a monster!"

Her emotions surged.

So did the power inside her.

Pure black energy erupted from her body, wrapping around her in layers. Tendrils made entirely of shadow writhed around the dark cloak that formed over her body, twisting through the air like living things.

"Relax. Relax."

The Eredar twins merely smiled at her.

Their expressions were almost absurdly cheerful in the face of her terrifying transformation.

"Forget everyone else. If you keep this up, you’ll turn into a monster yourself."

"Don’t get worked up, Claire."

Evenson wasn’t nearly as casual.

He knew better than to dismiss what was happening to her.

"You still haven’t learned to control this power. If you keep letting it run wild, you’re going to lose yourself."

"Hmph!"

Claire drew in a deep breath.

Her eyes had turned completely black.

She stared at Evenson for a long moment before finally dispersing the shadow surrounding her and returning to normal.

Evenson waited until she had regained control.

"There are some things I need to make clear."

He hesitated, then continued.

"Like I told you before, I didn’t tell you everything because I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to accept it. But now..."

He clenched his jaw, as though finally forcing himself to say what he had been avoiding.

"Most warlocks are cold-blooded. They don’t have much in the way of ordinary human emotion."

"And I’m not much better."

"Some of the thoughts you find horrifying and evil?"

He gave a small shrug.

"I don’t need anyone to tempt me into having them. I can arrive at those conclusions all by myself."

Claire stared at him.

"So you’re saying all of this... was your idea?"

She was breathing heavily.

Part of it came from the strain of unleashing and then forcibly suppressing her new power.

The rest came from trying to process Evenson’s confession.

"Exactly."

Evenson nodded.

Then he spread his hands.

"But what’s so terrible about it?"

"Are the things I’ve done really that evil?"

He spoke with maddening calm.

"We’re facing a terrifying war. There are countless threats hiding around us. Whether we’re trying to defeat them or simply survive them, sacrifices are inevitable."

He actually smiled.

"To put it in the most overused way possible, I simply made the correct choice."

"And I did everything I could to keep the number of sacrifices as low as possible."

"Besides, these people died without pain, without awareness, and without fear."

He considered that for a moment.

"Honestly, I think I’ve been almost excessively merciful."

Claire’s expression became complicated.

"There you go again."

She knew this kind of twisted reasoning all too well.

"Necessary sacrifice isn’t an excuse for treating lives as worthless."

She looked at him.

"No matter how painless their deaths were, that doesn’t change the fact that you never regarded them as human beings."

Claire stepped forward and tightly clasped one of Evenson’s hands between both of hers.

"You need to understand something, Evenson."

"No matter how brutal a war becomes, you can’t reduce human lives to numbers."

"You can’t turn someone’s life into an equation of addition and subtraction."

"Human life isn’t addition and subtraction..."

Evenson lowered his gaze.

His thumb idly brushed across the back of Claire’s hand.

Then he looked up again, apparently puzzled.

"So what kind of math is it?"

He paused.

"Multiplication and division?"

"Pfft."

Evenson gently released her hand with a quiet laugh.

"I know what you’re trying to say."

"Every person’s life is sacred. Unique. Precious beyond measure."

He shook his head.

"But that’s only true from that person’s perspective."

"If someone has nothing to do with you, what does their death actually mean to you?"

People died every second of every day.

Outside their families and friends, how many people mourned them for even another second?

Even when someone died in some spectacular, bizarre, or infamous way that made headlines around the world, what happened afterward?

For most people, it became something to discuss over dinner.

A story.

A piece of conversation.

Some might even force out a few tears, not because they were truly grieving, but because they wanted everyone to see how compassionate they were.

"And some people are worse."

Evenson’s expression twisted strangely.

"They’ll say cruel things about the dead simply because they want to appear clever or different. They won’t even offer the deceased the basic respect of silence."

He looked directly at Claire.

"You accuse me of being cold. You say I’m a monster because I don’t treat people as people."

"But the truth is that most people aren’t much better than I am."

"And besides..."

Evenson frowned as though the thought genuinely troubled him.

"Yes, I treat people as numbers."

"But at least I agonize over the value of every number."

"I have to carefully consider exactly how much that person can contribute."

"And if I treat lives as addition and subtraction, that means I have to spend all my time solving the equation."

His expression grew serious.

"I have to figure out how to squeeze one more life back from a fate that wants to take everything."

Then his face suddenly brightened.

"Wait."

He slapped a hand lightly against his forehead.

"If you put it that way..."

He looked at Claire.

"When it comes to the death of someone who has nothing to do with me, perhaps this supposedly heartless monster is actually the person who cares the most."

Claire stared at him.

"...What?"

Her mouth opened, then closed.

She knew his argument was twisted.

She knew there was something fundamentally wrong with it.

And yet she couldn’t immediately find a way to refute him.

Worse, part of her almost understood what he meant.

Because Claire knew there were very few people in the world who would go to such lengths to worry about the death of someone completely unrelated to them.

But...

Something still felt wrong.

The feeling sat like a knot in her chest, leaving her with nowhere to direct her frustration.

"But..."

She struggled to put the thought into words.

"Are we really supposed to give up on our humanity?"

"Because most people are willing to sacrifice it, we’re supposed to abandon it completely?"

"Because there are threats capable of destroying humanity, we’re supposed to stop being human before those threats even arrive?"

"Humanity?"

A strange voice rang through the room.

The tone carried open disdain for the very concept.

It wasn’t Evenson.

It was Peggy Carter.

Claire turned toward her in surprise.

"You fought to defend the dignity and freedom of humanity."

She stared at Peggy.

"Don’t you remember that, Ms. Carter?"

"Did I?"

Peggy curled one corner of her mouth.

"How strange. I don’t remember that at all."

Her expression was cold.

"Defending the dignity and freedom of humanity..."

She gave a quiet scoff.

"That was just a halo other people put around us afterward."

"I..."

"And everyone who stood beside me on the battlefield knew the truth."

Peggy’s eyes hardened.

"War has no humanity."