Nothing. He doesn’t even blink.

She is not pleased with this outcome.

“Phil,” she says.

“Jane,” he replies.

“You’re not the ant in this ant farm, are you?”

“No.”

“I am.”

“Yes.”

“Well, fuck,” she says, and tosses the useless gun on the table.

There’s a knock at the door. Phil steps aside, and Dixon enters the room. She greets him with a sour look.

“How long have you known?” she asks.

“That you are a deep-cover agent, working for the Troop? From the beginning,” Dixon says. He gestures to Phil. “We were warned about you.”

“Then why recruit me?”

“As an experiment. We’d been aware for some time that the Troop was attempting to infiltrate the organization. We’d enacted countermeasures, but were uncertain how effective they were. Recruiting you offered us an opportunity to test them.”

“So the idea was to see how long it would take to catch me if you didn’t already know?”

“Yes.”

“It was a lot harder than you thought, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Dixon says. “Of course I expected you to be a good actress, well practiced in passing yourself off as a charming misfit rather than the monster that you really are, but your ability to fool shibboleth devices came as a shock. Your emotional control was remarkable, especially in someone who seemed so impulsive. For a while I almost despaired of catching you out.”

“So what finally tipped it?” She glances at Phil. “Him?”

Dixon nods. “Even the most self-controlled person is subject to temptation. You were able to conceal your enthusiasm for more mundane acts of evil, but I thought your composure might crack if you were presented with a chance to commit a truly extraordinary sin.”

“So you sent me to hunt down my own brother.”

“To kill him, on the pretense of saving him.”

“How’d you know I’d go for it, though? I mean, if he’s really Troop, then we’re technically on the same side.”

“Technically,” Dixon says. “But it is true, isn’t it, that your brother’s abduction by the Troop was no coincidence?”

“Of course it wasn’t a coincidence,” she says. “He was my ticket in. They wanted a sacrifice to prove that I was serious. But they didn’t tell me they were going to adopt him.”

“I assumed as much. I thought the discovery that your brother was not only alive, but occupying a position of importance in an organization to which you were little more than a peon, would undermine whatever loyalty you had.”

“So this whole thing…” She waves a hand at the room. “This…play…It was all so you could read my heart the moment I pulled the trigger?”

“Yes,” Dixon says. “And the results, I’m happy to report, are conclusive. You’re evil.”

“Yes I am,” she says, unable to resist a smile. “But you know, you didn’t have to go to so much trouble. You could have just asked my mother.”

“Perhaps I would have, if she were still alive.”

“Yeah, it’s a shame about that. You know they never found the truck that hit her?” She sees Phil bristle and her smile broadens. “So what happens now? You turn me? Make me a double agent?”

Dixon shakes his head. “You’re a bad monkey. Now that that’s out in the open, the organization has no further use for you.”

“Right.” She nods, then shrugs, accepting the inevitable. “Oh well, I had a nice run. Did some good damage along the way.”

“Some,” Dixon agrees. “But less than you believe…The beginning was real,” he explains. “But after the Arlo Dexter mission, Cost-Benefits became concerned that it was too dangerous to leave you running around loose, even under close surveillance. True began pressuring me to kill you and be done with it. Ultimately I convinced him to accept an alternative. We gave you to the Scary Clowns. Everything that has happened to you since you met Robert Wise has been simulated.”

“Simulated,” she says. “You mean the Ozymandias facility…The diner…Vegas…?”

“Dreamscapes and ant farms, all of it.”

“No way! That…They can’t do that!”

“Love will be pleased his illusions were so effective. It turns out I owe him an apology. When I first saw the script his people had prepared, there were a number of plot twists that I was sure would give the game away. But the Clowns’ understanding of human gullibility is greater than mine.”

She thinks about it. “X-drugs don’t exist?”

“Drugs that allow you to stop time and fly around like a martial-arts superhero? No, they don’t exist.”

“Well, that’s embarrassing…So if the scene at the diner never happened, that means—”

“True and Wise are both still alive,” he says. “Oh, and Love didn’t have a heart attack.”

“What about John Doyle?”

“Bad Monkeys killed him twenty years ago.”

“And the bad Jane?”

“Roberta, actually. Roberta Grace. My protégée. She’s already back at Malfeasance, preparing to use what we’ve learned from you to weed out the Troop’s other moles.”

“And what about him?” she asks. “Is he really my brother?”

“Yes. And he really does work for the Troop. But really, he works for the organization.”

“How? He was ten when they took him. Don’t tell me you recruited him before that.”

“No, and we didn’t recruit him afterwards, either. He came to us. The Troop’s indoctrination specialists had done their best, but your brother proved to be something they never planned on. Incorruptible.”

“Incorruptible!” She snorts. “The little shit just didn’t have what it takes to be a bad monkey, that’s all!”

“You asked on the day we met, what it is that I want,” Dixon says, ignoring her outburst. “The answer is: to demonstrate the futility of evil. You and your brother, each in your own way, have helped me do that. But your part of the demonstration is over now.”

He opens his coat to reveal another NC gun. This one does not resemble a toy. It’s black, and its dial has only two active settings. Dixon draws it from its holster, then turns to Phil and asks with uncharacteristic deference: “May I?”

“No,” Phil says. “She’s mine.”

“Of course.” Dixon hands off the pistol, and brushes his palms together as if wiping away dust. “Good-bye, Jane Charlotte,” he says. “We won’t meet again in this life—or in the next, I hope.” He leaves the room.

“Prick,” she says, as the door shuts behind him. Then she looks at Phil and her demeanor softens. “So, little brother. I guess congratulations are in order.”

“Are they?”

“Don’t be a sore winner, Phil.”

“You think this is winning for me, Jane?”

“Bad monkey dies, good monkey lives to fight another day…”

“That’s Dixon’s victory,” he tells her. “Dixon took for granted that you passed the shibboleth tests by hiding your true self. I was hoping that there might be another explanation.”

“Oh my God,” she says. “You actually thought I might be good?”

“Conflicted, let’s say.”

“Oh my God…You wanted to redeem me.” She shakes her head in wonder. “How has the Troop not seen through you yet?”

“The answer to that is simple enough. Evil people are easy to fool.”

She laughs. “Guess I can’t argue with that. Still, I don’t know what the hell you were thinking. After what I did to you…”

“About that,” he says. “I know I probably can’t trust your answer on this, but I have to ask: When you gave me to them, was that…Did you hate me?”

“Was it personal, you mean? Eh, not so much…Mom was personal,” she says. “Definitely. But with you, well, it was a little personal maybe—you were my brother, after all—but mostly it was just, what did Dixon call it, ‘a truly extraordinary sin’? Yeah. I guess I do have a weakness for those.” She looks over at the door, not too hopefully. “So listen, I know you can’t let me get away clean, but is there any chance I can talk you into giving me a thirty-second head start?”

“Sorry, Jane.”

“Fifteen seconds, then. Come on, Phil, you said you wanted to save me. I could still have a change of heart.”