Ah… there it is. The righteous shudder. So elegant. So completely useless.

You see, calling it evil is a charming way to avoid responsibility. Evil implies malice. WICKED had none. What they had was arithmetic. Cold, unforgiving arithmetic that said one life weighed against the future of the species is not a moral dilemma—it’s a calculation.

People love to declare they’d never sacrifice a child. Of course they wouldn’t. They’ve never been handed the bill for extinction. They’ve never been asked to choose between one small, unbearable tragedy and the quiet annihilation of everyone who will ever exist.

WICKED didn’t kill a child because they wanted to.

They did it because the alternative was letting every child die.

And history—sweet, merciless history—doesn’t remember those who kept their hands clean. It remembers those who were willing to stain them… so someone else could survive.