Part 14

Grace didn't know what to do… how to react. This just couldn't be…

But then again, it was so obvious. She had been having dreams about it… her subconscious had figured it out before she was even consciously aware. She had seen all the signs, seen all the clues. The machine, the person standing before it in her dream, all of Adrian's panic attacks and nightmares. But she had refused to put them together. She refused to believe that one man could do this. It was somewhat acceptable when she believed that Dr. Manhattan had done it, but that was because he wasn't a man, was he? He was something more…

But Adrian? She could see the motives, all the ways he rationalized it. In his speech to New York the day after his return from Antarctica, he had rationalized Dr. Manhattan's actions. He was trying to get the people to see that what happened was a means of coercion to the peace. He wanted them to understand, not because he still felt kinship with Dr. Manhattan, but because he himself had done it. He wanted them to understand his motives, without having to blatantly tell them that it was him.

She had to be sure. This might be a massive overreaction; perhaps this was all just a string of unrelated events that she pulled her own meaning from. Perhaps there was no connection. But she had to be sure.

So she returned to his apartment and waited. She watched him sleep for the longest time, just trying to wrap her head around what she had discovered. Just yesterday she had cared for him so much, wanted desperately to help him. But after this? Even if she didn't loose anyone close in the attacks, it was still unforgivable. You cannot play God. But of course, Adrian doubted the existence of God, so it wasn't playing God, was it? It was using your intellect to find a solution to a problem.

But society is not an equation that can be solved. They were living, breathing people, and they deserved the right to live. And no one, not even the world's smartest man, had the right to take that away from them. In a way, he was just like Dr. Manhattan.

Dr. Manhattan knew he was different from the human race… superior. He understood how everything worked except the nature of human beings. He knew it, but tried his hardest to not distance himself from them. And in that attempt, he had only alienated himself more. Adrian had done the same. He knew he was smarter than them, so he took the liberty of making decisions for them. But this just wasn't a decision she could accept.

So she waited. Four hours, six, eight. She waited. She would wait for him to wake up, and she would get the only answer she had left to be answered. How could you?

When he began to wake, she decided to get her facts in order; make sure she had a valid argument. The carriers, the deaths of the drivers of those carriers, the survival of the big machine (she didn't know what to call it) because it was with him. She went into the kitchen and got herself a glass of water; her throat would need to be extra lubricated for all the talking… yelling that she was planning on doing.

When she rounded the corner, he was standing, holding himself like a scared child, staring blankly out the glass doors. She stared, all her arguments gone. She was just so angry… yet so sad at the same time. It was obvious he felt bad about what he had done. But it was still wrong.

"Adrian," she said, and the conviction in her voice made him turn to look at her. When he saw her face, he smiled.

"Just a matter of time, I suppose," he said, and laughed at an irony that Grace wasn't aware of.

"Adrian," she said again. "I know. I know what you did."

He didn't seem in the least bit surprised. "I knew you would," he said, his eyes lowering as he looked down at the floor. "Although I must admit, I thought you would have figured it out sooner. It's ironic, really."

"What is?" she said angrily, making sure the fire she felt in her eyes was adequately scorching him.

"The only way you found out that I perpetrated the attacks was because of the attacks. I made sure to keep all records separate, to avoid anyone making a connection. I made sure one person was in charge of flight plans and records, another for financials, and another for my personal schedule. But they were all killed in the attacks, so all the information got lumped together in your hands. I even put it under a different name in the databases in case that happened. But no… you saw right past it, didn't you?" he said smoothly, taking a step toward her.

She stepped back as if disgusted.

"I'm not a monster," he said, and his voice faltered. "You must understand, it was done with the best intentions."

"Yeah, and I bet Hitler's intentions were pure," she said sarcastically. "And if you knew I would figure it out, why didn't you just dispose of me like you did your drivers?"

"Ah, you figured that out too, did you? Good girl," he said, smiling a new smile. This new one was something frightening… way too confident. "Well, you see, I was still trying to recover from what I'd done. I physically couldn't take another life. The damage that does on your psyche…" he paused, thinking. "It's intolerable."

"Then why did you do it!" she yelled, her face flushing hot.

"It had to be done," he said, not raising his voice in the slightest. "Don't you see Grace? Had the nuclear warheads been fired, not only would the majority of the human race be wiped out, but fallout from the explosions would kill the survivors. It would have wiped out life as we know it on this planet. It had to be done, for the sake of all living things, not just humans."

"But you can't do that! You played monopoly with these people's lives, and you didn't play fair. If we were meant to become extinct, so be it," she said, her voice still rising.

"But you can't prove the existence of a God in the first place. Who says we're meant to do anything? What if our lives are random patterns, illogical sequences? What if we evolved to the intelligence we are today for no reason at all? What if it was just human evolutionary imperative? Then all of this war, all of our conflicts are left to us in the end, and us alone. We solve our own problems, we are in charge of our own destinies. Do you see? We are alone, in the end. Each person is alone to figure out their own path. I chose to save my race."

"Oh don't feed me your philanthropic bullshit!" she yelled again. "You yourself said that you believed in the existence of a higher being, something that is responsible for the unexplained! So what if there is a God? You think you can just take his job from him?"

"If he does exist, he creates us all in his own image. If that is true, then he bestowed me with my intelligence. To have the ingenuity to see the world's problems, and solve them in a way that he just would not. You think God would have just reached out a hand and grabbed the warheads out of the sky? No. He gives us our lives, gives our situation, and bids us do what we will with it. Some chose wrong, so I used my life, my situation, and eradicated them," he said.

"There you go again, playing God!" she said, backing further away from him. "I won't be part of this anymore," she said, and whipped around to head to the elevator.

Before she knew what happened, she had been slammed against the hallway wall, hands held firmly above her head.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that," he said, and his voice was deep and terrifying.