Ruth, of course, was right. We did find what we were looking for.

“The Lao Babies weren’t my work, friends. They were the work of God. God wished to create a superior form of humanity to show us the way. He has done that, for here is proof.”

They were standing the Sheep’s Meadow of Central Park. A petite, dark woman with the smallest of baby bumps stood next to the silver-haired man who spoke. Nell. And Gerald Lindstrom.

“That’s him?” Harrigan couldn’t hide a trace of surprise in his voice — surprise I shared. It was something of a shock to see that the man Harrigan had been hired to find and kill, the most wanted human being in the world, was an old man testifying like a religious fanatic.

I glanced around the field, noting the Wileyans standing closely together, though at a respectful distance from Nell and Lindstrom. Apart from them was an equal sized cluster of people sitting or lying down. Victims of the virus, I guessed; some were being tended to by people in masks who must have carried them here, while others looked as though they’d crawled here on all the strength left in their bodies. Somewhere hidden among them were Jo and Mina. Nell would recognize them, and in her unstable state of mind there was no telling how she would react. Since she didn’t know Harrigan or me, we positioned ourselves closer to her.

“The world is suffering now, yes, but as has always been the case, it’s a suffering of our own making. God isn’t doing this to us; we are. But if we let Him help us, He will.”

I had to admit I could see what Ruth meant when she said that this man was charismatic and persuasive. The words may have been borrowed from every Bible-toting charlatan who came before him, but Lindstrom breathed new life into them. He managed to be calming and thrilling at once, without ever veering into creepy or crazed. He also had a webcam pointed at himself. Apparently he had found Nell around the same time the Wileyans did and, just as Ruth had predicted, decided to use the moment to his advantage. That was how we found them, and only because we were meant to find them. When Time magazine named Lindstrom “Man of the Year” a decade ago, the cover simply featured a man’s silhouette with a question mark over the face. Now the world, and not just the Wileyans, would finally get to see Gerald Lindstrom.

A murmur of what could have been “amen” or “praise God” went around. Gerald Lindstrom bowed as though humbled by the presence of such a miracle, even though he did seem to have made sure the crowd’s attention focused on him and not the miracle itself. The miracle — Nell — seemed fine with that. This was not a defiant Hester Prynne or a serene Virgin Mary. This was not even someone who looked borderline unhinged, as she had been described. Nell looked stunned, stricken, her face that of someone who clearly wishes she could disappear. I knew that feeling well.

“Do not fear this woman. She is the future.”

One voice raised itself above the murmurings. “She is a mutant freak. She isn’t one of us. The world is best rid of her.”

People shifted, craned necks. I felt like something cold and dark and very, very heavy was pressing on me, pushing me down into the earth.

The voice again: “You are not doing God’s work, Doctor. I am.”

And then he stepped forward. Nondescript, average looking in every way, though you could clearly see traces of his father, made easy by the fact that the two were now facing each other, Baxter and Gerald Lindstrom.

I could sense Harrigan tensing immediately, sizing up the situation, calculating whether he could get the shot — the shot to take out Baxter, not Lindstrom. Too risky, it seemed; there was too much chance of hitting a bystander, and unless Harrigan got incredibly lucky — fatal shots are a lot tougher to pull off than you’d think, even for an expert — a slightly or even moderately wounded Baxter could still pull the pin on the grenade he almost certainly had in his possession.

“I am doing the world a great service, one that you are incapable of,” the younger man said. “You — and her.”

He didn’t have to point at Ruth or even look at her for Gerald Lindstrom to know who her would be. Lindstrom kept his eyes fixed on Baxter, but I knew he was wondering where in the crowd she was.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out. “You are not doing the world a service, Baxter,” Ruth said quietly. “You are serving yourself. The world is not cheering you on.”

As the crowd’s attention shifted to Ruth, so did Baxter’s and Lindstrom’s. “The world supports me, Dr. Baxter, whether you like it or not. You and he and all the other madmen in that lab created something that has ruined everyone’s lives. You created these monstrosities and in doing so you devalue what it means to be alive.”

“It would seem to me that ending a life devalues what it means to be alive,” said Ruth Baxter. “And as far as that goes, there are so many lives ending in violence right now, your actions are barely making a ripple. The world has too many problems to deal with to care what you do, and you know that. This isn’t about what you’re doing for others. It’s about what was done to you.”

“Ruth,” Lindstrom said. I couldn’t tell whether his voice was a warning or simple recognition.

“She has a point, Dr. Lindstrom,” Baxter continued. Each time he said “doctor” his voice went shrill with sarcasm. “This is about what was done to me. I was given life by the two of you, just as she was,” he pointed suddenly at Nell, who had remained still and quiet as though trying to shrink into the shadows and now appeared to be trying even harder at that. “And she was.”

He swung around and pointed at me.

“You gave us all life, yes — but you also gave me death. Only me. Not them. I figure this is simply a way to make up for what you neglected. I am giving them what I have, what they are missing.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Ruth, cool as ever. “Everyone dies. You will, I will, they will. The difference is I’ve lived a full life. You won’t, because of what you’re doing right now.”

Harrigan and I exchanged a glance. It was easy to see who had been in charge of the lab all along. Gerald Lindstrom could get a crowd’s attention with a terrific song-and-dance routine, but when it came down to what really mattered, he was a nonentity, as he was now, helplessly watching Baxter and Ruth just as the rest of us did.

Baxter stared at her in silence. What could he say? If he imagined finally reducing his mother to tearful apologies and desperate pleas, it wasn’t going to happen.

“You are running out of time, Baxter. Depending on what you have planned this time, if you’re quick and lucky you can take her out,” and Ruth nodded her head in the direction of Nell, “and perhaps your father in the bargain. But you won’t get the other one,” and now she nodded at me. “And you won’t get me, though perhaps you would rather watch me watch my children die. That’s what this whole serial killing business was about, wasn’t it — to spite me? Well, go ahead, then. No one lives a life without grief. We are all going to watch people we love die, again and again. After a while that’s how you start to mark the passing of time.”

“Ah, so you did me a favor, then, did you?” Baxter sneered. “You kept me from having to deal with grief by shortening my life? I’m eternally grateful, Mother.”

“There were a lot of babies buried outside that lab, Baxter. I didn’t want you to be one of them. The lab of eternal life,” she said with a mocking glance at Gerald Lindstrom, “was a necropolis. I didn’t do what I did as a favor to you, Baxter. I did it as a favor to me. I wasn’t ready to start grieving just then. If I had, I would have joined the dead. I could not have survived that kind of loss. Now, however, I am prepared.”

A shiver seemed to run through the entire crowd. I felt that chill shudder through Harrigan beside me. I felt it myself in every cell of my body.

Ruth walked slowly toward Baxter, never taking her eyes off his. “Ruth,” I whispered. Harrigan gripped my arms as though to restrain me, even though I didn’t move a muscle.

Ruth was walking at an angle away from me and she didn’t turn, didn’t even hesitate. I saw the corner of her mouth twitch up into a very small smile. That was all.

Ruth stood face to face with her son. He didn’t move. His face was a blank equal to hers. Suddenly she embraced him, not a gentle, affection embrace but one that seemed at once meant to crush the life out of him and, oddly, to protect him from harm. In Ruth’s iron-tough hold, Baxter couldn’t move. Held in her arms, he looked in my direction. His face looked naked, like a newborn only without that soft innocence, another old baby, another person who had been around long enough to feel old and weary, regardless of his years, and yet still reduceable to shocking vulnerability.

Then Ruth pulled back away from him. With the same calm efficiency as she might use while administering a vaccine or presenting a bottle of formula to a baby in a lab, Ruth Baxter held his right hand in hers, and with her left hand she pulled the pin on the grenade they both held.

People began running and screaming even though this made death by trampling far more likely than by explosion, especially for those who were immobile and simply gazed in silent horror. For one frozen moment I was as immobile as they were. Then I ran. I ran, Harrigan just behind me, to where Nell stood wide-eyed and petrified. The two of us dragged her to safety. I didn’t look back.

No one knew which of them released the clip to set off the grenade — perhaps both of them. No one would ever know what happened in the moment before Ruth Baxter and her son died.