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Hours later, Major stood in front of the guillotine—the guillotine he had decommissioned, the one he had sworn he wouldn't use—and watched his men put it back together, oiling it and preparing it. Two of his men would appear to die on it tonight, sacrificed for the greater good. It was the last thing Major wanted, and the only thing that could prevent a human-zombie war from erupting. The city of New Seattle was simmering, ready to boil, and it was his job to keep the heat down as long as he could, by whatever means necessary.

That didn't mean he had to like it.

He had the men brought in and placed, one by one, with their heads on the block. Their fellow soldiers didn't like it, but they did it, because they took orders well. Or, Major hoped, because they understood, at least in part, what he was trying to do.

Major had personally arranged the hidden video camera to record the footage, and later, he personally arranged the "leak" of the footage to the news. He also made sure to be somewhere that the news vans could happen upon him and chase him down to ask questions. When KGMQ's reporter asked him why they were using the guillotine after he had promised to get rid of it, Major turned to give his carefully crafted answer to the camera.

"I promised that Fillmore Graves would police itself. When my soldiers break the law, they pay a price. Every human and zombie in the city would be wise to understand that," he added, directly to the camera. Then he got into the car.

When added to the confessions the police had gotten from the three people who had set up the fake zombie attack, hopefully this would be enough of a bone tossed to each side of this mess to keep them quiet for a while.

But it was a band-aid on a mortal wound, nothing more. There would be more attacks, both by and on humans and zombies, and it would take everything Major and the others could muster to keep tamping down the outrage and unrest that followed each incident. And eventually, the city would blow. The question was how long until it happened, and how many people they could preserve from the fallout.

He watched the news at Liv's hideout. She turned to him after his onscreen image had gotten back into the car and driven off. "Hell of a performance."

"You think it'll work?"

"You think they'll keep quiet?" She looked over her shoulder at the three humans "arrested" for the crime of faking the zombie attack. They would be quietly smuggled out of Seattle, as promised. Meanwhile, the two Fillmore Graves soldiers "executed" on the leaked video had been quietly sedated and put into the deep freeze, dummies put in their places for the city to see. Only a few, carefully picked people knew that they weren't currently being buried on the Fillmore Graves property.

"They're getting what they want: passage out of the city," he answered Liv, watching as the three humans conferred with the coyote. "They're incredibly grateful. Thanks for getting them out."

She smiled. "It's what I do."

It's also what she had told Major she wasn't going to do any longer. They had never talked about why she had taken up Renegade's mantle, but now he wanted to know. "Why'd you change your mind?"

She turned and looked at the three kids one of her other coyotes had smuggled into the city. He had died bringing them in, and Liv felt responsible for the whole situation. "I was already living in your world," she said softly. "I just didn't know it yet."

He was tempted to reach out and put an arm around her, but they weren't quite back to that yet. She moved off to help her coyote with the escape plans, anyway, so Major followed her.

Major would have liked to have stayed longer, but he could tell that his presence was making the coyote nervous, and the soon-to-be-smuggled humans weren't any too happy to have him around, either. He supposed he had no choice but to go back to work, to face the mountain of paperwork and the army of people asking him questions at his office.

He looked around with a sigh. It was quiet here. The kids were playing some kind of game in the back room, the coyote murmuring to the humans, Liv with them, reassuring them. There were bedrooms upstairs; he wondered if he snuck off to one of those, if he could just lie down and take a nap and wake up when it was all over and Ravi had found a cure. Or New Seattle had been blown up, which was more likely, especially if Major took a Rip Van Winkle snooze.

Catching Liv's eye, he gestured toward the secret door. She waved, half-heartedly, already thinking about something else, and he took himself off.

If anyone at Fillmore Graves knew that he knew the secret entrance to Renegade's headquarters—even Justin—it wouldn't be good for anyone. Fortunately, he'd had half a lifetime of keeping Liv's secrets to make her trust that this one would be safe with him.

He came out the other end into a sunshiny day, breathing the air in deeply. So, he was a zombie, and he was in charge of keeping the peace in this powder keg of a city, and he had no idea if the woman he loved would ever fully forgive him, much less love him again—but he was alive. And while there was life, there was hope.

Nodding briskly to himself, Major made his way to his car, ready to take up the reins of Fillmore Graves again.