The planning started up again, but it didn't feel the same as when Chen was killed. Morgan was more upset now and more aware of the costs and effects.
He also feels more desperate because Murphy was there. And more aware that Claire was being set up to spy on him, even if she didn't know it.
The fact that he had already killed once made the second one feel both easier and harder. It was easier because he knew he could do it and harder because he knew how much it would cost him mentally.
His notes showed what Margaret did every day. She worked at the library three days a week, went to church every day for morning prayers, and lived alone in a small apartment with little security. Her devotion made her easy to read, which would make her weak.
"But how can I set it up differently than Chen?"
"Another robbery would make a pattern..."
"Maybe it was an accident instead, like a fall down the stairs or a leak in the gas."
"Something that couldn't be linked right away to being a member of the Council or Murphy's group."
Morgan's hands shook a little as he wrote, and the shaking came back even though he tried to stop it. His mental state was getting worse, and each plan he made felt more hopeless than the last.
"Two weeks until Margaret," he whispered to himself. "Then who?"
"How can I make eleven murders seem unrelated?"
"How do I kill everyone close to Murphy without him knowing it's me?"
The more time that passed, the more clear it became that his situation was strategically impossible. Murphy was already on guard, and Claire was spying on him.
Rachel's article had been turned into a weapon. Every move made his father stronger instead of weaker.
"What if the only way to stop Murphy is to kill him?" The thought came to him without wanting it to, and it was awful in its logic. "But if I do that now, the Council will live and carry out his plan..."
"He'll put new converts in place of the Council if I get rid of them first."
Morgan was stuck in a strategic catch-22. He couldn't kill Murphy without talking to the Council first.
He couldn't get rid of the Council without Murphy noticing. He couldn't stop killing because if he did, hundreds of thousands of people would die. He couldn't keep killing without eventually getting caught.
He got up from his desk and walked around his small room like a trapped animal. The walls were too close, the air was too thin, and the weight of his impossible choices was pressing down on him from all sides.
He could hear Murphy moving around in his own room through the thin wall. Murphy was probably planning tomorrow's sermon or thinking about how to make the most of Chen's death.
Morgan went back to his desk and took out the picture he had hidden under other papers. It was the one from before the outbreak in his old timeline.
The person in that picture seemed so far away now, like someone who had believed in clear moral lines and knew the difference between right and wrong. That version of himself had died somewhere between watching the world end and going back in time to stop it.
What was left was a murderer preparing for his second kill, even though he knew it might not matter and that Murphy might already be winning. Rachel sent him another message, and his phone lit up.
"Thanks for the tip about geographic correlation, Morgan."
"The response has been too much. People really want to know what's going on."
"Can we meet again soon? I have more information to give you."
Morgan typed back to say yes and set up another meeting. Rachel needed to stay alive, her research needed to be safe, and her investigations needed to lead to useful conclusions.
She was a valuable resource to keep, not a person to save. The difference mattered to him now that he was using cold logic to figure everything out.
He saw a face that looked haunted and older than its years when he looked at himself in the darkened window. No matter how hard he scrubbed, Chen's blood stayed under his fingernails.
He saw the same emptiness in his eyes that he had seen on the worst days of his previous timeline. The emptiness that came from doing bad things for what he thought were good reasons.
He said to himself, "Two weeks."
"Two weeks to get ready for that second kill. I have two weeks to figure out how to do this without hurting what's left of me."
Morgan knew the truth, though, even as he said it. There was nothing else to break.
He had already crossed every line that mattered and turned into the monster he was afraid of. The only question now was whether that sacrifice would really save anyone or if he was just making more horrors while Murphy built his nightmare empire without anyone stopping him.
Murphy was probably in his office somewhere in the city, looking at pictures of his council members and figuring out the best way to use each one. A man who saw divine purpose in every setback, who knew how to use tragedy as a weapon, and who was always three moves ahead in a game Morgan had just realized he was playing.
Claire was stuck in the middle of them, not knowing what her role was. Being drawn to Murphy's vision while still caring about Morgan, she became both a spy and a victim, and her future is now unclear in ways that it wasn't in the original timeline. Morgan had tried to save her by keeping her close, but instead he had sentenced her to something worse than death.
There were eleven names on the list in his desk. They were all going to die to save hundreds of thousands of others.
The math said so, and the reasoning was reasonable. Morgan couldn't shake the awful feeling that he was losing this war, even though he was sitting in the dark, planning his second murder while his father planned sermons and Claire slept, not knowing how he was using her.
He was becoming a killer again, but this time he knew exactly what he was doing and why. He wasn't fighting for his life or out of instinct. Just cold calculation and the math of sacrifice of twelve lives for two hundred and fifty thousand, a formula that kept asking for blood.
Morgan took up his pen one last time and wrote a last note on his planning papers. "If Murphy wins anyway, then all of this killing will have been for nothing."
"I'll have become a monster for nothing."
"But if I don't try, I'll have to watch hundreds of thousands die knowing I could have stopped it."
The noose was getting tighter around all of them. Murphy was pulling the strings, Morgan was trying to cut them, Claire was in the middle of it all, and the next murder was coming with terrible certainty.
Two weeks until Sister Margaret arrives, and to learn how to kill without getting caught. The butcher had to do his math again two weeks later and weigh one life against thousands of possible futures.
Morgan was left alone in the dark with his plans, his guilt, and the growing feeling that no matter how many people he killed, Murphy would always find a way to win.