I found absolutely nothing. Only a cold, clinical, profound indifference. He wasn’t a monster anymore. He was just a sad, irrelevant man.
“I’m sorry, Thomas,” I said softly. My voice was calm, steady, and utterly devoid of empathy. I purposefully used his first name, drawing an immediate, unbreakable boundary between us.
His face crumbled at the sound of his name on my lips.
“But as you once told me,” I continued, tilting my head slightly, “when you’re in the presence of greatness, you have to get out of the way. You have to let the real achievers have their moment.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I didn’t need to see his tears. I simply turned my back on him. I walked away, my white coat billowing slightly, passing through the secure glass doors of my laboratory, leaving him standing completely alone in the cold, unforgiving lobby of the empire I had built without him.
