Artificial Willpower

Desperate

Art by the amazing _sleepy.moth_! This looks like a to be continued meme tbh and I'm living for it.

No

Nonononono.

After every precaution she had tried to put in place. After every reassurance she gave herself everything would be fine.

The one time she messed up, when she let herself be sloppy. She should have expected it honestly, with how eager Pitch had seemed to find any flaw with her. Of course he would be digging through her stuff, he had probably been doing that ever since Kathrine said she wouldn't help anymore.

"Xander, it's not too late to get on the right side of this. You don't have to be the villain here. What these facilities are doing is wrong." Kathrine tried.

Pitch laughed under his breath, walking into the office and shutting the door "I knew you'd fallen to Illinois' plot but I didn't realize you were this far gone. I'm almost thankful, I wasn't expecting to get evidence this good, to be honest. I was beginning to wonder if I would have to fabricate something"

"Listen to me, Pitch. You are self-destructing. You've become obsessed with catching them and you're losing yourself in the process. I don't think anyone is just... naturally as heartless as you are. And I don't think anyone is a lost cause. You don't have to do this-"

"I've always believed you were too soft for this job... This is how it's going to go, Kathrine. Depending on what you do next, I'm either going to go give these papers to Director Wilson right now, or I'm going to give you a twenty-four hour head start before giving them to her"

It was over. It was all over. There was no getting out of this. Pitch seemed to take her silence as a cue to continue "I need you to use your Clarence card to release the surviving members of that group. One of them didn't survive the surgery, so you only have to release three. From that point, you will have twenty-four hours before I let the director know you've been working with Illinois and Daniel to overthrow the labs."

"You're only making a bigger mess! Every. Single. Plan you've made to try to catch them has ended in failure that I had to clean up! What's going to happen when this one fails, Pitch? When you've played all your cards and I'm not there to cover for you?"

"You weren't going to help me anymore anyhow, Kathrine. You're disposable now"

The truth of the matter. The center of all of this. Disposable. The answer to her question. How long could you see criminals as disposable before you begin to see everyone else as disposable?

"I'll do it. But only because I know this won't help you win, Pitch. Your obsession is clouding your judgment. I want these facilities to collapse, Xander. I think they suck the humanity out of everyone who works in these walls. And even if you're a huge part of the problem, you're not what I want to hurt... You're doing that well enough to yourself anyhow. You will fail. Not even because you're in the wrong, but because you refuse to see outside of yourself"

"You don't know nearly as much as you think you do. Get it done tonight. No stalling" He said, before leaving.

Kathrine wished she could be surprised that Pitch would stab her in the back like this after everything she had done for him. She wished she could say she had no way to see this coming.

But it would all be a lie. She should have expected this, she should have been more careful. She had to get out of there, call Illinois, but she had no clue Ptich was watching like a hawk. Probably had the security feed pulled up on his computer or something right now.

She wasn't certain about his 24-hour head start promise, she wouldn't put it past him to not follow through with it. But it was her best bet. As long as she had enough time to get to Illinios, she would be fine, right? Not to mention she was the head of security. When Yancy originally got out she was the one who organized the search teams and sent them out. Without her, there would be a disrupt in the system. Maybe not a huge amount, there were plenty of capable security personnel at the lab, but enough to give her an advantage.

Everything would be fine, she told herself.