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standing patiently throughout the meal, but now he pulled out a chair and sat on it cowboy style. He placed his elbows on the table, but didn’t turn towards me. “If you want to kill yourself, why don’t you let us do it for you?”
    I confess I’d expected a little more effort.
    “That’s your pitch? That’s the best you can do?”
    Mr. Pink shrugged, minutely. “I didn’t think I had to say any more than that. You want to kill yourself. If you come work for us, you’ll probably die, but at least you’ll die for something other than your own sense of guilt.”
    I felt the blood begin to boil beneath my skin.
    “At least your death will mean something.”
    My hands clenched until my knuckles burned white.
    “At least you’ll be able to ameliorate your own broken pride.”
    A thousand epithets begged to be spoken, but I didn’t trust my mouth to work around the ball of anger lodged in it. I barely managed to ask, “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “You know.”
    I closed my eyes and flexed as every muscle in my body came alive, screaming to be set free, well aware that the goons in the room could see me and would most likely try and stop me. I almost didn’t care; my anger needed a release. I said as evenly as I could, “There’s nothing I could have done that I didn’t try to do to save those who died.”
    “Except die with them,” Mr. Pink said simply. Then he stood and straightened the front of his suit coat. He began walking away. “I’ll be outside when you’re ready,” he said over his shoulder. “Please note, Mr. Mason, that we have a flight in two hours.”
    I stared at his departing back, twin death rays scorching him. If only. What did he know, anyway? I’d been to the requisite counseling sessions. I’d learned about survivor’s guilt. I’d spoken with chaplains and social consultants and my chain of command. I’d checked all the boxes and was deemed no danger to myself or others. Was it such a bad thing if I’d reconsidered and decided to just fucking end it all?
    What’s so wrong about a little bit of suicide as long as I keep it to myself?
    What’s so bad about me dying with a little peace and privacy in the dark of a Los Angeles night?
    But Mr. Pink had known what he was doing. He’d struck a chord, which once heard, I wanted to hear again. I wanted to know more.
    “Get him back,” I said to one of the men.
    When Mr. Pink eventually returned, he sat and we talked and he told me about OMBRA Enterprises LLC. When I asked what they wanted me to do, he told me help save the world . When I asked him from what,he saidthat it was on a need-to-know basis. Now I was back in recognizable territory. After all, I was just a grunt. They’d tell me what I needed to know when I needed to know it. In the meantime, I was in it for as long as it held my interest.
    Which was good enough for Mr. Pink.

 
    I’m not insane, sir. I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.
    John Scalzi, Old Man’s War
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    C HEYENNE A IRPORT WASN’T exactly in the middle of nowhere, but it was in the same zip code. Flat land surrounded us on three sides. The Rockies rose into the clouds to the West. I could see where the city of Cheyenne started, but not where it ended. The city was so flat that there wasn’t enough terrain to see it all.
    A cowboy wearing a denim shirt, pants, and weathered silver-tipped boots met me at baggage claim, with a cardboard sign that read simply TF OMBRA , in an uneven scrawl. His face wore the seasons like an almanac. Somewhere between forty and seventy, he had a stare that promised he’d seen it all, and if he hadn’t, what was left to be seen wasn’t important enough to matter.
    I approached him. “That’s me,” I said, pointing to the sign.
    “Waiting on one more,” he said.
    I raised my eyebrows. Another? On my flight? I turned around and stood beside him, watching the passengers come down the gangway. Eventually, a slim