The three-and-a-half-hour drive from Portland Jetport to the former site of Baxter State Park reminded Zayna of her midnight scrambles through the Jammu and Kashmir territory while embedded with the Indian light infantry. Just with fewer IEDs and more abandoned pawn shops. She flipped through her frustratingly thin research file on Parker Rodion as the white rental van cruised north past Bangor. There was essentially zero record of his existence before he became synonymous with kill therapy, and to make the research even more confusing, his aesthetic was so consistent it looked as if all the images of him from the last 10 years were taken on the same day. A cream cable-knit sweater, a sharply defined beard that evoked a slab of sequoia bark, square glasses with black frames on his rugged oval face, a thick brown faux hawk that somehow always maintained a windswept naturalism.

“This is a shit assignment.”

Lincoln, her producer on the back half of his career, pitched himself forward from the backseat.

“You’re going to a luxury lodge for a piece that people will actually want to watch. Try to enjoy it,” he sniped. “But, no, you’re right. Risking your life to cover a war nobody cares about is much more fun than documenting the guy who found the cheat code to life.”

“It’s aggro vomit wrapped in a pseudo-psychology puff pastry. Excuse me for not eating it up,” she groaned.

From behind the wheel, her cameraman Dimitri bashfully cleared his throat. “I kinda like him.”

“Oh no. Not you too,” Zayna said with a deflated sigh.

In the decade since Parker Rodion opened the Triple B Trophy Lodge as an exclusive wellness retreat for his kill therapy patients, every news outlet had vied for the chance to cover it from the inside. He resisted, choosing instead to control the narrative by creating a social media presence that gave the public a window into the practice and philosophy behind kill therapy. Sure, most people would never occupy one of Triple B’s 12 reclaimed barnwood patient-guest rooms, however they could apply the nonlethal aspects to their own lives. But 10 days ago, for reasons Zayna suspected had to do with a PR blitz ahead of hearings in DC to renew his Special Innovative Research Zone designation, On The Record Tonight got word from Parker that he was ready to talk exclusively to Zayna. And that’s when she found herself flying back stateside from covering the phosphate wars in China.

The van passed a simple private property placard on the edge of the park around noon. Ahead of it, a collection of small granite mountains under a blanket of conifers poked into the foggy horizon.

“The government just privatized 200,000 acres for him,” Zayna said. “I thought Special Innovative Research Zones were supposed to be for moonshots. Ag breakthroughs. Cold fusion. Geoengineering Mars. Not a murder sleepaway camp.”

It took another half hour to reach the sprawling lodge with the hand-carved sign for Triple B Trophy Lodge hanging above its wraparound porch. A 2,400-square-foot repurposed hangar surrounded by a 13-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire sat 15 yards away. The van pulled into an unmarked spot alongside a row of several small helicopters and ATVs. As soon as the crew got out, they heard a cloud of raucous stomps and loud whoops emanating from the lodge. It took a second to make out the signature power chant of kill therapy: “Begin! Become! Break! Begin! Become! Break! Begin! Become! Break!”

Just as the crew realized what they were hearing, the front door swung open and Virginia McPherson, the all-time leader in PGA Tour wins, rocketed out. A pump-action 12-gauge shotgun on a sling bounced against her back as she blew past Zayna, jumped onto one of the ATVs emblazoned with the Triple B logo, and let loose a war cry as the vehicle roared into the Maine wilderness.

“Hello there! You made it!” said the voice of a consummate host.

Zayna turned back toward the lodge. On the porch stood the great thought leader. The keeper of the cheat code to life. The creator of kill therapy. Parker Rodion. Lincoln eagerly began the introductions.

“Hi, Parker, Lincoln Hendrie. On The Record Tonight. We spoke on the—”

“—phone, yes! Lincoln Hendrie, welcome.”

“Hey, I’m Dimitri. Just the camera guy.”

Parker gave Dimitri a warm smile and placed a hand on his shoulder. “No, Dimitri. You are so much more,” he said, finally turning to Zayna. “Zayna Rafael. I watched your piece on Yunnan and Guizhou. Brilliant reporting. So moving. What a tragic situation. I hope this week we can lift the weight you must surely carry.”

She looked at Lincoln, who silently begged her to play nice, and mustered every ounce of her professional charm.

“Thank you so much. I look forward to exploring what you’ve built here. Love all this,” she said, waving her hand across the expanse like a real estate agent pointing out crown molding. The pantomime made her feel like her insides were liquifying. This could be a long week.

Parker embraced her hand with both of his and studied her face.

“I can see you trying. Swallowing your bias, perhaps even revulsion? And I appreciate that. Truly. But while you’re here, I have one request. Let us be honest with each other.”

She smiled. “Of course.”

He released her hand. “Wonderful. Well, let’s see, if you’re hungry, I believe there’s still a few exceptionally tasty venison pastrami sandwiches in the dining room. But, if you still have some pep in your step after your long drive, I was just about to leave for a session and you’re more than welcome to join me.”

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After a 20-minute ride, the ATVs rumbled to a stop at the base of North Brother Peak. Parker lowered his mud-splattered vintage motorcycle goggles and signaled the group to wait as a single shotgun blast rang out overhead. Lincoln and Dimitri hit the ground, while Zayna looked up as several thrushes took flight.

“It’s happening,” Parker said. “Up there, by the cairn.”

Zayna squinted to see a stocky man in a golf visor and polo cowering behind a large stack of rocks. On the other side, Virginia McPherson discharged a shotgun shell and prepared to fire again. Zayna gestured to Dimitri to get up and start filming.

“Please! Please! I don’t know why I’m here!” cried the man in the golf visor.

“You ruined my putt!” screamed Virginia.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

“Sorry won’t heal me!”

From below, Parker cupped up hands around his mouth and yelled. “Virginia, can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now, to leave Triple B Trophy Lodge you must achieve all three Bs. The first is …”

“Begin!” she yelled.

“And that you did. Congratulations. It’s no small feat. For most, the road to self-empowerment never begins. Now for your second B. Become. Have you become the version of you who will do whatever it takes in order to heal?”

Virginia trained her weapon on the man’s golf visor. “I have become!”

“Excellent! Two Bs! Now, achieve your third B, Virginia. Break. Break through. Break in order to heal. Break what must be broken. Break!”

“Please! No!” begged the man behind the rocks.

Virginia squeezed the trigger.

The combination of the bullet and the rock shards launched the man backwards and sent him tumbling down the peak for what seemed like hours until his battered corpse smashed into a lichen-covered slab of granite about a dozen feet from Zayna.

“I got my triple B!” Virginia yelled, her triumphant cry echoing across the green landscape. “I got my triple B!”

The ride back was quiet except for the arrhythmic thump of a body bag tied to the back of Parker’s ATV. It bounced over the terrain like a sprinting dolphin popping out of the ocean. When they pulled into the lodge, Parker excused himself and dragged the bag into the fortified hangar. Zayna, Lincoln, and Dimitri stood outside, waiting as metallic smacks and hydraulic squeezes emanated from inside. Finally, Parker emerged, locking the door and wiping his hands against his sweater.

“Okay. We agreed to three sit-downs during the week, yes? Let’s find a quiet place and knock out the first one now.”

Zayna nodded.

Dimitri framed his shot as Parker took a seat across from Zayna in the lodge’s parlor. The room was curated to the hilt. A wall lined with vintage editions of the classics, a large antique globe, oil paintings of hunting, an ever-roaring stone fireplace. Like any trophy lodge, mounted heads of game watched with unblinking eyes over the room, but the faces were those of an absent mother, a predatory coach, a CEO who reneged on a deal, an arsonist who burned down a nursing home, and even a baker who screwed up a seven-year-old’s birthday cake.

“I’m so thrilled that you’re here. You all do such exceptional work,” said Parker as he lit his hawkbill pipe.

Dimitri gave Zayna the nod that he was ready and she began. “We have all seen the carefully curated testimonials of your guests who leave here euphoric at having killed off their demons, but what is your response to those people who say what you’re doing here is unhealthy, irresponsible, and morally bankrupt?”

“‘Those people.’” Parker smiled and slowly puffed on his pipe, slightly shaking his head at having to respond to rhetorical straw-men conjured up by this critic. “Okay then,” he said after a sigh, “let’s begin there. First, I would say this world has an epidemic of revenge, of resentment, of unfulfilled dreams that metastasize into cancerous rage. This epidemic stops us from achieving our best selves. The Triple B Trophy Lodge is here to help. Nothing more.”

“By being a fantasyland for murder,” said Zayna.

“By being a safe, healing environment—for murder. Yes. Of therapeutic clonal re-creations.”

“They have blood. Bone. Memory,” she countered.

“Yes,” said Parker.

“They’re humans.”

“They’re organisms. The question of their humanity is subjective. This has all been litigated. Not humans. Therapeutic clonal re-creations,” insisted Parker.

“But you’re not a therapist.”

“No. But I am filling a gap. The American Psychological Association–approved bot therapists brought us all accessible and cheap mental health care, sure, but what have they really cured? Nanomedicine wipes out pancreatic cancer in three months. Need a new lung? Give a pharma-pig a year and he’ll grow you a custom one. Broken femur? A shot of osteo stem serum and you’re good as new. Given our biotechnical capabilities, why don’t we demand the same results from our mental health care? Why can’t we replace years of psychological exploration with one swift cathartic physical act? That is kill therapy. So, no, I’m not a therapist. I get results.”

“Only for those rich enough to stay here.”

“No, I have to stop you right there. Are some patient-guests wealthy? Yes. I have bills like anyone else. But I offer generous financial aid on a case-by-case basis. Look, you can’t paint this healing sanctuary as some twisted playground for the elite.”

“No?”

“No. Don’t fall prey to stereotypes. Don’t be glib. Triple B exists for health. Not entertainment. Or politics. Or sport. Or betting. We’re not hiding on a secret island. We have a robust online wellness community where I distribute content free of charge. If the basis for a therapeutic clonal re-creation is alive, they are adequately compensated. We pay our taxes.”

“Some would contend indulging in murderous desires is not healthy,” said Zayna.

“Again with these imaginary critics. Do you masturbate?”

Zayna blushed. “I’m not going to—”

“Fine. Fine. Let me put it this way: Should people be allowed to masturbate?”

“When and where it’s appropriate.”

“Yes. Good. I agree. People should have a safe, healthy outlet to express their sexual needs,” said Parker.

“That is not the same as—”

“Their anger needs? Why? Sex and death are the twin pillars of humanity. Why is self-pleasure acceptable, but not the responsible exercise of lethal pleasure? Kill therapy is not about bloodlust. Patient-guests are screened. They have trauma to confront and resolve through the killing of specific individuals.”

“Virginia McPherson killed a ‘therapeutic clonal re-creation’ of her caddy because she said he ruined her putt. That’s trauma?” asked Zayna.

Parker grinned. “You’re not a psychologist. And as you insist on pointing out, neither am I. So, I guess neither of us can make a diagnosis. What I do know is tomorrow an 82-year-old will find relief he’s sought nearly his whole life. You would deny him that?” Parker took another puff and slowly leaned forward. “I wonder, would you deny yourself that?” he asked, adopting a more consoling tone.

Zayna froze. Was that a hypothetical question? Or had Parker been researching her while she was researching him? “Let’s cut.”

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That night the dozen patient-guests gathered in the great room of the lodge for a Triple B breaker ceremony to toast the completion of Virginia’s kill therapy. In the morning her helicopter would take her away, a changed woman. Parker live streamed these soirees to Triple B’s online community, insisting that the worldwide show of support would cement the therapeutic results. To Zayna it just looked like marketing. Parker served as part-emcee, part-sensei, regaling the crowd with the patient-guest’s journey to wellness, praising them for breaking what must be broken, and leading chants of “Begin! Become! Break!” with its accompanying gesture, a balled-up right hand punching three times into the palm of a vertical left hand, meant to evoke a lowercase b-shape. The motion of his punch was so forceful that Zayna saw it nudge the cuff of his sweater, revealing the edge of a tattoo of a face.

“I know it looks like some cult bullshit but I gotta admit it puts me in the fighting spirit,” said an elderly patient-guest who stood by Zayna along the wall of the great room as he sipped on Oban 14 and bit begrudgingly into a venison bao bun. “I am getting sick of deer meat though. Nathan Boyle.” She figured this was the 82-year-old Parker said would be going out tomorrow.

 “Zayna Rafael.”

“I know who you are,” he said with a wry smile. “I still watch the news.”

“So you believe in Parker’s methods? Despite the—your words—‘cult bullshit’?”

The old man sighed. “I’m coming up on three decades of sitting in rooms with throw pillows and tissue boxes. I don’t feel better. Eventually you get tired of processing the problem.” He took another sip. “I just want to kill it.”

“You think killing it will work?”

“Don’t know. But at least this all feels …” He searched his head for the satisfactory word.

“Productive. Guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

“Would you mind if we tagged along to see?” she asked.

“Don’t know if all my nonsense is as worthy of your attention as a war, but sure. I’d be honored.”

Zayna’s eyes opened at 4 a.m. to the sound of knocking. Despite knowing a trophy head of a nun was mounted over her bed, waking up to the frozen screaming expression still startled her.

Lincoln and Dimitri waited outside as she got dressed, and then they headed over to the converted hangar where Parker was already preparing for the hunt. Upon opening the chain-link gate, he took one look at Dimitri holding the camera and shook his head.

“This is proprietary technology in here. No filming.”

“What do you care? Don’t you have temporary monopoly status as part of your Special Innovative Research deal?” asked Zayna, making no attempt to hide how dubious she considered the designation.

Parker let that go, merely replying: “I don’t think the Chinese or the Brazilians care about honoring US legal protections, do you?”

Dimitri put down the camera and they entered the facility.

Inside, the therapeutic clonal re-creation lab was sparse and underwhelming. Industrial LED warehouse lighting beamed down on a long lab table with a DNA analyzer and a desktop computer. Utility shelves housing hardcopies of patient-guest files lined the walls. A few large steel tanks that looked like they belonged in a beer brewery were connected via two large aluminum tubes to a morgue-like containment unit.

They had barely stepped foot inside before Parker stopped them. “We agreed this is all on background, yes?”

Lincoln jumped in before giving Zayna a chance to renegotiate. “Absolutely. Absolutely, Parker.” Zayna reluctantly nodded her agreement.

Satisfied, Parker gave them a tour of the facility, rattling off the process of birthing a therapeutic clonal re-creation as if it were the recipe for a blueberry muffin. Using his access to the National Gene Registry afforded to Special Innovative Research Zone projects, Parker would input the genetic code of the individual he determined his patient-guest must “break” for their kill therapy. Then, the proprietary synthetic biological soup in the development tanks would be calibrated to create a therapeutic clonal re-creation matching the age and appearance of the quarry at the time of his patient-guest’s trauma.

“Honestly, pumping out the bodies bores me,” Parker said. “It’s rote science. It’s not hard. It never was. It just required the will to do it. But crafting the behavioral profile? Using a person’s digital trail and personal accounts combined with genetic psychological predispositions to mold an accurate, holistic personality re-creation? That is art. Believe me, if my patients see their TCRs as some kind of pale AI imitation, the only thing that dies is their motivation to kill. It completely castrates the therapy. Anyone who thinks this can be accomplished with robots or holograms or dressing up death-row inmates as stand-ins has a truly sad estimation of human emotional intelligence. As if the patient’s mind wouldn’t know the difference.”

A ding from the containment unit interrupted Parker’s speech. He opened one of the square unit doors and slid out a metal slab that housed what looked like a cocoon of spray-foam insulation. Piece by piece, he broke off sections until all that remained was the slimy, naked body of a man in his mid-50s. Parker injected the buttocks with a syringe containing proximity poison so the TCR would die if it left the perimeter of the Triple B grounds.

“Who is he?” Zayna asked.

“Dr. Oliver Salva. Circa 2029. Nathan’s son found him at one of those VC-backed concierge clinics. Gave him a prescription for anything he asked for. Then just before the kid’s 19th birthday, he gave him more than he could handle.” Parker looked at Zayna. “This isn’t a gimmick, Miss Rafael. Kill therapy accepts what traditional therapy does not.”

“And what’s that?”

“Consequences are necessary. It astounds me whenever people who claim to understand the human mind don’t accept this simple fact. You cannot heal without consequences. They are scar tissue for our psychological wounds. And there is no more powerful consequence than death.”

Zayna stared at the custom-aged body of the TCR, studying the curve of its potbelly; the patches of graying body hair on its chest; the bald, freckled crown and pockmarked face. It was real.

“Would you like me to create one for you?” asked Parker. “Of the man who killed your mother? I would do that for you, Zayna.”

“Oh my god, your mom was killed? I’m so sorry,” said Dimitri.

Lincoln looked rattled. He and Zayna had always maintained an unspoken, mutually understood distance, but he still couldn’t believe this had never come up before. “You never mentioned … If you need to take time or …”

“It was a trillion years ago. I never think about it. It’s fine,” said Zayna, waving off their expressions of sympathy. She had more pressing concerns. How did Parker have access to a sealed case that she had never spoken about? Did he actually know who killed her mother or was it a general offer?But, to her own surprise, the most perplexing question that came to mind was: Did she need kill therapy?

She shook her head. “No thanks.”

Parker gave her a moment to reconsider, then nodded. He packed up the unconscious TCR, got on an ATV, and drove into the park to rouse and release it.

An hour later, Nathan and Zayna were trekking up Hamlin Ridge Trail as lightning cracked around them. The ridge would have been challenging for any 82-year-old, but with torrential rain pounding the granite, it was dangerous for all ages. Behind them, Dimitri kept slipping as he filmed, even as Lincoln tried to steady him. Parker trailed behind, observing like a coach on the sidelines. Zayna was about to suggest to Nathan that they turn back, but the mere look in his fixed eyes told her it would be useless. He was locked in, muttering “begin, become, break” as his hands tightened around the forestock of his rifle. 

Zayna could barely make out her own outstretched hand through the rain as they reached the peak.

“Where are you?” screamed Nathan. He fired a shot into the air. “I have become! I have become and now I will break! I need to break what must be broken. I have to. Please. I have to …”

Even with the rain soaking his face, Zayna could see the old man begin to cry. The psychological whipsaw of kill therapy was on full display, all at once beset with rage and vengeance, sadness and regret, driven by a clear mission of annihilation, born out of aimless despair.

Through the gray wall of rain, a flash of a white lab coat burst through, and suddenly Nathan and the therapeutic clonal re-creation of Dr. Oliver Salva were wrestling on the jagged ground. Parker had outfitted Salva in his work attire, and now the TCR was strangling Nathan with a stethoscope as Nathan struggled to maintain control of his weapon. For some reason it had not occurred to Zayna until now that despite being unarmed, the TCRs could fight back.

“Do not intervene!” yelled Parker at Zayna. “This is Nathan’s journey!”

Zayna would have defied the instruction but through the chokehold Nathan shook his head to let her know he agreed.

“I didn’t make your kid swallow a bottle of hydrocodone,” said the doctor. “It’s not my fault you were a weak fuck of a father.”

Nathan’s face twisted up as his legs flailed against the granite boulders that covered the peak. He tried to pivot to position his rifle as the chaotic struggle inched toward a precipitous drop-off, but he couldn’t overcome the strength of a TCR that was biologically 25 years his junior. Finally, Nathan secured a foothold on a rock. He couldn’t create enough leverage to turn, but he realized he could do something else. He looked at Zayna and smiled. The look of serenity was so infectious that for a moment Zayna thought she could feel every individual drop of rain hit her skin in slow motion. In that fleeting second, Nathan pushed his legs against the boulder and sent both tangled bodies hurtling down 1,800 rocky, fatal feet.

Zayna spent the next day walking the grounds of Triple B, getting footage with Dimitri and Lincoln for the segment, and trying to make sense of how Nathan, in his final violent moment, could look so at peace.

She stopped at the rifle range where patient-guests were completing their required firearms training. They rarely came to the Triple B Trophy Lodge with much hunting experience and Parker insisted he screened for anyone simply seeking to bag the Most Dangerous Game. Recent arrivals often fumbled with their guns, but with targeting tech and a few hours of practice they always became proficient enough to kill their unarmed prey. Inside the meditation room, two patient-guests sat on the floor while rubbing smooth stones between their fingers and chanting the name of their trophy TCRs. “Judge Raina Svec. Judge Raina Svec. Judge Raina Svec.” “Hen-ry Vin-cent. Hen-ry Vin-cent.  Hen-ry Vin-cent.” Zayna moved on to an outdoor talking circle with wide tree-stump seats where Parker held nighttime group sessions under the light of torches. Finally, she returned to the parlor where she first interviewed Parker. Dimitri framed his shot and counted her in.

“The methods are unorthodox and, in the eyes of the medical community, unsound. But ask any patient-guest here and you will hear a familiar refrain: What does it matter? After all, it’s not killing a legal person. And kill therapy, they say, has provided a shortcut to overcoming trauma and finding emotional and psychological peace. To see the transformational change patient-guests experience at Triple B Trophy Lodge, it can be hard to argue with them.” She signaled for Dimitri to cut and sighed.

Dimitri checked the playback. “You wanna change spots and do that again? It looks kinda weird with like 30 copies of Crime and Punishment behind you.”

Zayna turned and saw the collection. Dimitri wasn’t exaggerating. Behind her was a wall of the Dostoevsky novel in dozens of languages. She flipped through a copy, stopping one page in. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” she said, looking up at Lincoln. “When’s the next interview?”

“Tomorrow. Why? What’s up?” asked Lincoln—but Zayna was already running to her room.

The next morning, Zayna and Parker rowed a two-seater boat to the middle of Wassataquoik Lake. Dimitri and Lincoln rowed beside them to record. One of the park’s many moose, undeterred by the humans, lapped up water nearby.

“Maybe we can keep this interview a little less feisty,” Parker said.

“Oh yeah! Yeah, we’re just having fun here,” assured Zayna. The recording light on Dimitri’s camera turned red. “It’s very pretty here, by the way.”

“Isn’t it? The Penobscot tribe believed that in the highest peak over there, Mount Katahdin, lived the thunder god Pamola. Head of a moose. Wings of an eagle. The name translates to ‘he who curses on the mountain.’ An angry, awful, vengeful lord. Detested the men who lived below,” Parker said.

“A creature with a god complex and a dim view of humanity. This place has a type.”

Parker smiled. “Very good, if a bit feisty. But wrong, I’m afraid. What I do here uplifts humanity. I make us better. And I believe we can do so much more. Currently at Triple B, we aim to resolve trauma, yes? To heal psychological wounds.”

“Because consequences are necessary.”

“Yes! You’ve been paying attention! But imagine—imagine—if this place could be an arena for crises once thought too intractable, too existential, to resolve. You’ve seen the horrors of war firsthand. What if all those convulsions of violence were played out here? Against battalions of therapeutic clonal re-creations?” Parker pontificated.

“Like a battlefield of healing,” Zayna said.

“Oh I like that. I might steal that.”

“So if a country wants to commit genocide, or a terrorist group wants to murder civilians—”

“Do it here, yes! Get it out of their system—in a safe space.”

“And you think expressing that violence would lead to peace.”

“The most peaceful people on earth are those who achieve Triple B,” said Parker, smiling.

Zayna paused. “Let’s talk about that. You have a maxim: ‘Break what must be broken.’”

“Break what must be broken, yes.”

“Beautiful. But not original, right?

“… No.”

“Guess you had plenty of time to read Dostoevsky at Meridian Juvenile Correctional Complex,” Zayna said.

“You know about Meridian. You’ve done some digging. Well done.”

“Mhm. Yeah, you left a bread crumb about the size of a hoagie roll. Warden make all the kids read Crime and Punishment?”

“He believed it would help us reflect on our misdeeds. Ground us.”

“You must’ve loved it. Naming yourself after Raskolnikov. Rodion Raskolnikov.”

“I guess you caught me being clever.”

“So were you a part of the Dioscuri Project at Meridian? I did some crash reporting last night, enough to get the gist of it. Sounds like it wrecked a lot of kids. Is there a clone of you running around?”

“The knowledge I gained from participating in the project led to this sanctuary, so I am thankful for it. And no. No clone. Dioscuri was shut down prematurely by Meridian and its private partners. ‘Too many gray areas.’”

“I guess you had fewer moral hangups,” she scoffed.

“No. Just more imagination.”

“I see. What were you in there for, Parker?”

“I want to help you, Zayna. Let me set up a session for you. Let me show you that kill therapy works.”

“What were you in there for?”

“I can find the DNA of your mother’s killer in the gene registry. I can give you peace.”

“I’m good. It was an accident. What were you in there for?”

“Yes, you are good. So good. It didn’t affect you one bit, did it? Other than the fact that you’ve devoted your career to being in war zones. Never settling in one place. Only being in relationships with people who could be bombed out of existence at any moment.”

“Anyone can be bombed out of existence at any moment.”

“Ah! Yes! There’s a psychologically healthy worldview! You’re clearly doing great!” Parker exclaimed with a clap.

“Whoever killed my mom—their identity was sealed,” she said quietly.

“I have no shortage of powerful patients who can unseal it.”

She looked down the barrel of the camera.

“It’d make the segment more credible! A firsthand understanding of the process!” Lincoln chimed in from the other rowboat.

“If I do this, we’re not filming it. I’m not the story. I’m not sensationalizing this.”

“Fine,” moaned Lincoln. “Kill the guy on background.”

“This is why I selected you, Zayna. You have an ethical heart,” said Parker, inching closer as if to share a secret. “I understand your skepticism. In fact, I commend it. But if you won’t challenge your skepticism, is it any less foolish than blind belief?”

Zayna watched the moose. It had stopped drinking and stood still with its head tilted up like it was listening to the wind. Water dripped off its muzzle. A wet, placid face. It reminded her of Nathan before he went over the side of the mountain.

She nodded her consent. “Okay. One session.”

“That’s all it takes.”

“We’re still gonna do one more interview though, right?” asked Lincoln.

“Of course,” Parker said. “To be conducted by a reborn Zayna Rafael, fresh off achieving triple B. Give me one day and then you will begin. You will become. You will break what must be broken.”

At dinner, Lincoln and Dimitri watched as Zayna pushed a cube of venison around her plate, leaving a white trail bisecting a slick of cherry demi-glace.

“Think word got out that you’re up next,” said Lincoln.

She looked around the dining room. It was quieter than usual. No swapping stories of the day’s target practice or discussing where they would mount their TCR’s head back home. The patient-guests ate, hunched over their plates, stealing glances at Zayna when they couldn’t resist.

“So, are you, like, worried killing this guy, or I guess the TCR of the—you know, whatever—are you worried it might mess you up?” asked Dimitri.

She pierced the cube and took a bite.

“No. I’m worried it won’t.”

Zayna had just hit her pillow when three patient-guests began banging on her door.

“Parker says it’s time,” said Karolina, an attorney originally from Putingrad who had come to Triple B to kill the eighth-grade classmate who outed her over her school’s loudspeaker. She dangled an assault rifle by its sling.

“Now? Where is he? He’s not taking me out?”

“Parker said he will be with you when you break through, but that you need to begin your journey alone.”

“It’s almost midnight,” said Zayna.

“Parker does not work doctors’ hours.”

“Right. He’d have to be a doctor to do that.”

Karolina ignored the comment, handed over the weapon, and punched her right fist into her left palm three times. The other two patient-guests did the same.

“Begin. Become. Break,” they chanted in unison.

Karolina pointed out a window behind Zayna to Mount Katahdin, barely outlined by moonlight, and left with her compatriots.

Crunching across the park trails in the darkness proved strangely meditative. Even with the large weapon in her hands, Zayna kept forgetting she was on a hunt. The star-pierced blackness and gentle night wind allowed her mind to drift to places it hadn’t gone for a long time. The face of the white Maine moon, beaming like the one working headlight of the truck that slammed into the car her mother drove. The memory had been hazy since the moment it happened. Zayna was six, concussed, and hanging upside-down in her booster seat. Images would flash in her head on occasion. Her mother turning her lacerated face toward her, gasping to ask if Zayna was okay. Crumpled sheet metal and sagging airbags. Looking through a spiderweb of shattered windshield glass at brown hiking boots running to the car. She had always considered the memory malformed, rather than repressed. She never actively avoided thinking about it. She just didn’t trust it. And there were other things going on. A succession of schools and foster homes of varying degrees of shittiness. Discovering her passions. Navigating her way to a career with no legs up and no guidance. Maybe her life would’ve been drastically different if that night had never happened, though the journalist in her set an impossibly high bar for proving a negative. She had, of course, wondered about who drove that truck, but it wasn’t until this moment, while hunting them on the vast grounds of the Triple B Trophy Lodge, that she mined her thoughts for deeper meaning. Arriving at the foot of Mount Katahdin, a question clawed at her brain.

Fuck, she thought. Is this shit working?

The all-night hike up Katahdin had the feel of a sadistic prank. She lost count of the number of times she nearly broke her ankles on uneven mossy granite slabs or slipped to her death on aptly named paths like Knife Edge Trail. After her time at Triple B, she could hear Parker in her head preaching some belief that the arduous journey would add to the psychological benefits of her kill therapy. Alone in the bracing quietude of nature, he might’ve been right, but she still loathed him for it. It was around 4:30 a.m. when the eerie sounds of great horned owls and nighthawks making fresh kills gave Zayna a jolting reminder that she needed to watch her back. She didn’t know where or when she’d find her quarry, but with the peak coming into view, she had the sense that the encounter could come at any moment. And as she had seen, the therapeutic clonal re-creation might not want to go down without a fight.

A thin band of blood orange appeared on the horizon as Zayna hiked past the 5,000-foot mark and approached the summit. Up ahead, she could see a human silhouette sitting still on a boulder pile. She raised her weapon, confident in her form, and moved cautiously. Over the course of her many embeds she had picked up a few tricks from the special ops guys who got a kick out of teaching the little lady reporter how to fire the big bad assault rifle.  

She edged closer. She knew she should take the shot from a safe distance but the temptation to engage with her mother’s killer was strong. The debate in her head was interrupted by an outside voice.

“Hello, Zayna. I’m glad you made it,” said the silhouette. She knew the voice.

“Parker? What the fuck?” Zayna said, lowering her weapon in disappointment.

She trudged up the last few feet to the summit as Parker stood and clasped his hands to greet her.

“Where is my therapeutic clonal re-creation, or—what?—you just felt like fucking with me for making you look bad in the interviews?”

“I don’t think I looked bad in the interviews,” said Parker.

“You did.” She sighed and plopped down on a boulder, shaking her head. “You had me convinced I was going to see the guy though. I’ll give you that. I was ready to pull the trigger. Fuck.”

Parker sat down next to her and smiled. She looked at him. “What?”

He outstretched his arms and pointed to himself. “I’m ‘the guy.’ Let’s do that last interview, shall we?”

She could feel a rush of blood to her head as she jumped up, the assault rifle slapping against her torso.

“No! No!”

“Yes, Zayna.”

Parker stood, vibrating with excitement. He gripped the cuff of his cable knit sleeve, slowly pushing it up as if he had rehearsed the timing. Zayna watched as the sliver of the tattoo she had noticed before revealed itself to be the face of a woman. Long black curly hair. A straight nose with a slightly elongated tip. Dark lashes framing deep, caring eyes. Open wounds and impact bruises. The face that turned to Zayna in the car that night.

“I’m so glad I finally got you here, Zayna. I wasn’t sure if you’d recognize me. I’ve, well, rebranded,” said Parker, gesturing to himself.

Zayna stared at him as memories of the night, longer and more vivid than ever before, flooded her mind. The brown hiking boots approached. A teen boy crouched down to peer into the wreckage. He stripped off his camo hunting jacket, as if to use it to wrap a wound, but he stopped upon seeing Zayna’s mother’s face and broken body and ran back to his truck.

“What the fuck is this?” she screamed as the sunrise encroached upon the night sky.

“This is kill therapy, Zayna. Pure kill therapy. No clonal re-creations. No artistic liberties or AI-assisted approximations of personalities. And I want it to heal you. I want you to break what must be broken. I want you to see that it is real and it is powerful and I want you to share the truth with the world.”

Parker puffed his chest and put a hand on his heart, directing Zayna where to put the bullet.

“You are the only patient I would make this sacrifice for. Without you, without your mother, none of my work would exist.”

Zayna shook her head. “I’m not your patient. And you were a kid. You made a mistake. It was an accident. And maybe it ruined my life, but revenge won’t change that.”

Parker looked at her cockeyed. He took a step closer.

“Is that what you were told? That it was just a car accident? Is that how you remember it? Lift the gun, Zayna. Point it at me.”

Zayna defiantly kept her weapon by her side. Rage filled Parker’s eyes and he lunged at her, grabbing the barrel-end of the rifle and pressing it into his forehead.

“Let me tell you what happened,” he shouted. “Because I remember. I remember everything. I remember heading home after hunting with a friend. Whitetails. Came up empty. Just an excuse for two 16-year-olds to drink—”

Zayna shrieked and writhed to free herself as Parker continued.

“I saw your mother. Broken. Bloody. She was in so much pain, Zayna,” said Parker, grabbing her hand and forcing it on her trigger as spit washed over his face. “People think they know what they’d do in that situation. They don’t. Something overtakes you. It blinds you. It convinced me that there was only one thing I could do.”

Parker’s body sunk down, brushing against her along the way. He went to his knees, keeping the barrel tip on his head, and looked up at her with a suppliant’s eyes. That’s when she remembered the brown hiking boots running back to the truck and returning seconds later. That’s when she remembered the sound of ammo dropping into a chamber and a shotgun blast.

Her grip tightened on the trigger. It was now Zayna pressing the barrel into his skin.

“When the cops found me an hour later, they told me you were in the backseat. I hadn’t even seen you. She could have lived, Zayna. But I killed her. I did. Not the crash. Me.”

Zayna lost her words. She could only release a rattling wail from atop the mountain that spread over the park.

Parker released his grip on the weapon, opened his arms again, and smacked his chest. “Now, break me, Zayna. I want this for you. I want you to heal. Do it. Achieve triple B.”

Zayna took aim as Parker leaned back and closed his eyes. A small, tranquil smile formed.

“Achieve triple B, Zayna. Achieve triple B,” he repeated.

“Achieve triple B,” she whispered to herself, letting the words linger. She lowered the weapon. “That is so dumb.”

Parker’s eyes shot open. “What?”

“All of this is, objectively speaking, fucking dumb. ‘Achieve triple B’? ‘Break what must be broken’? You’re just making stuff up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And you don’t want this for me. This is for you.”

“No! I’m sacrificing myself for your kill thera—”

“So why aren’t I killing the 16-year-old therapeutic clonal whatever-the-fuck of you? You said it’s best for kill therapy, right?”

Parker staggered to his feet. “I—no, no. No, you have to kill me. I need to die. I need you to kill me!”

“Guilt got you twisted up real tight, huh? Using every neuron in that junk science brain of yours just to prove a theory you pulled completely out of your ass? My god, you convinced all these people that a revenge killing getaway is the cheat code to life when you can’t even live with yourself.”

“You’re wrong! I’ve seen it. Kill therapy works! Shoot me and you’ll see!” he pleaded as tears began to form.

“It’s not going to make us even. It’s not going to make me happy. It’s not going to make you any less full of shit,” Zayna said calmly.

She took off the rifle sling and hurled the weapon off the side of the mountain.

“No!” roared Parker as he stumbled backward and collapsed into a rock pile. “Why won’t you kill me? I need you to make it right. It has to be you.”

Zayna let him sob it out. His glasses askew, his faux hawk fallen, his cable-knit sweater stretched. Even for her, pitying him was impossible to resist.  She walked to him and stood over his splayed body.

“Maybe,” she said gently, “you should talk to someone.”