I'm a failed man. I don't even know if any of them lived. Hell, the car might've puttered out moments after I got here... [He presses his hand against the rag, breathing more steady.] The NBCs could've torched them, too. Scarlet couldn't have outran those flamethrowers. Those kids would have been on their own in an infected hellhole, if they weren't already dead.

And I wouldn't have been there to help them.

[He looks at her, eyebrows furrowed, throat dry, searching for his own personal answer.]

... What if I made their deaths just more painful?

[And there you have it, Adele. A huge chunk of his inner turmoil, a drunken desire to know everything was justifiable. A bitter hope that he didn't go in vain, that he didn't give them hope only to crash and burn.

It's really fucked up, he thinks. But he can't get it all off his mind. He's had a lot of nights like this, where he wonders if he did the right thing on a mission, if he was good enough.

But this was a thousand times worse than one or two dead men.]