"I'm impressed."
"Stop talking."
Slipping from beneath him, she guided him onto his back beside her with the gun barrel. Careful to hold his eyes, she settled her weight over his hips, pinning him to the lavish bed.
"Put your hands above your head and interlace your fingers."
He did as he was told, moving cautiously. His intense resolve pressed heavy at her nerves as she fought a silent battle to keep her eyes on his.
"Listen, we both know you have more reason to kill me than most, but remember that I have answers to the questions that you have been desperate for. If you go through with this the answers die with me, and you'll spend the rest of your life tormented by the same doubt that brought you here."
There was no shortage of suffering in her tight lipped smile as she adjusted her grip on the pistol butt and her composure.
"You'll have no one to blame but yourself, because you willingly killed your one chance at knowing."
"Do you really think I'm looking for an explanation? You think that if you let me in on some insider information about decisions that were made back then, it would undo the misery you sent me to Oslo with?"
She felt her throat tightening with each word, and the tears beginning to well.
"I don't care what your reason was for sending me away. All that matters is that I believed you. I believed what you told me about the island and why you were on it. You convinced me that Charles had to be exiled. I trusted you blindly when you asked it of me."
She saw the gun barrel beginning to quiver through the brimming tears that threatened to spill to her cheeks.
"You strung me along until I served my purpose, and once I did, you disposed of me. I was too naive to listen when the others tried to warn me about you. They said you were a cunning and ruthless liar, that you would sacrifice anything or anyone to attain a goal."
With the last of her words, she saw a change in his eyes; as though the reasonable concern for safety was transforming into something less rational, something buried and sore.
"I have never lied to you."
His voice unyielding, she felt control of their situation beginning to sway in his favor. Perched on his hips, armed with a means to end his life, she struggled to remain at par with his easy authority.
"How can you say that? You lied about everything! You lied until you didn't need-"
"You were pregnant!"
The crushing weight of his words muted her pounding heart and left no room for breath. Silence fell between them as she searched his eyes, desperate to find some trace of deceit there.
"You would say anything to sav-"
"No. I know it feels impossible. You were pregnant and would have died before the second trimester if you stayed. I know this because three women died in the months prior to your conception. We didn't broadcast the developments for the sake of preventing a panic. After the third mother died…I…I couldn't risk your life."
"That's why you had us giving blood samples? You said it was for a medical experiment."
He looked away as remorse began taking hold of his expression.
"It was…of sorts. We disposed of the male samples and began testing for pregnancy amongst the females."
"Seven weeks later, you tested positive, and we were no closer to understanding the pathogen."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I knew you would never agree to the measures had to be taken. In the time it would take to explain myself and convince you of the danger, you would have already been dead."
When his eyes found hers she felt the sincerity of his guilt and the torment it must have sown. She saw the loneliness that years of leadership had created. She saw a man plagued by a misplaced destiny, an empathetic man driven to apathy. The burden of maintaining that duality had taken its toll.
"We had to force your body to reject the pregnancy and get you as far away from the island as possible. I don't expect to earn your forgiveness, but you have to understand…I did what had to be done to save your life."
She sat above him, broken and reeling while the gun between them seemed a mockery of its original duty. Closing his hand gently around the barrel, he drew it aside and out of her grip. Sliding from him she stood from the bed and paced to the window. Breathing in the heavy desert air, she fought to restore gravity to her frantic mind as he spoke.
"You have to know, I devoted my every resource to finding a cure. I even brought a leading fertility expert to the island and refused to let her leave until she solved our problem. I thought if we could identify the pathogen, there would be a chance to bring you safely back."
Sitting up, he perched himself at the edge of the bed, his voice heavy and strained.
"She reminded me so much of you. After a time, I wasn't sure if I was keeping her there to continue her research, or because she was the closest thing I had to you."
A fresh tear found its way onto the plain of her cheek.
"It was me."
"What do you mean?"
"It's my fault those women got sick."
Standing, he cautiously approached. Reaching out a hand, he took hers and turned her slowly to him.
"No, you don't understand, you didn't do-"
"Yes, Ben. I did. When Charles first brought me to the island, I was stationed at the Orchid, doing botanical research. I was there to analyze all these bizarre undiscovered plant species. Most of my work was just taxonomy, but I was told to make special note if any species had poisionous properties. I thought it was for safety's sake."
Raking her fingers through her hair, she wrapped her shaking arms around herself as the picture grew steadily clearer.
"Eventually, I found one flowering vine that turned out to be particularly dangerous. The seed pods inside the berries contained a powerful neurotoxin that killed several of my female lab mice. When I took the results to my research group supervisor he immediately gathered all my data and removed them from my lab station. A week later I was put in charge of a field station. I thought I had earned a promotion."
She could see the weight of her revelation settling on his shoulders.
"I didn't have time to autopsy the mice for a cause of death…they must have been pregnant."
She paused for a moment, her eyes at the floor, working out the sequence of events. The man before her stood silently in overt disbelief.
"I provided him a contingency plan. If Charles were ever sent off the island, he would be sure its remaining population would suffer. When you deposed him, he must have put his plan into effect. Every house in that village drew from a single fresh water supply, and the toxin was water soluble. We all consumed liters of it. There must have been some cases of cancer, but no one knew to look for it. "
She wasn't sure what crossed his face when she mentioned cancer, but whatever it was, it left him a shade paler. He held her eyes for a solemn moment before speaking.
"If what you said is true, then moving you off the island would have done nothing to spare your life. Clearly you survived, so what saved you?"
Leaning back against the broad, tiled window sill, she folded her arms over her chest. Squeezing tightly she subconsciously sought security; a security she was desperate to seek in his embrace.
"When I woke up in Oslo, two days had passed that I couldn't account for. Charles must have intervened. He contacted me about a month after I returned and offered me an absurd sum of money if I could find and quietly assassinate you. He didn't have to ask me twice."
A forgiveness was beginning to creep over her raw nerves as she watched him return to the bed and sit. While he absently rubbed his bandaged arm she began to recognize the man she had loved and trusted a lifetime ago.