Helena had seen multiple continents, and so many wars. big and small. Her country had invaded so many others, virtually enslaved so many people. She had seen children die, her Christina first of all; she had seen what cruelty men were capable of, what she was capable of. She had wanted to raise a child in this world, once. How silly she had been!
She had always been a believer in progress, and she thought a better world would wait for her when she was debronzed. Warehouses moved and archives were lost, and no-one woke her when it was time, but she could still hear and see, and the echoes she had from the bronze sector, the rare times another agent came in, were of other wars, other destructions, millions of people dying in her home country, and in others. When she came back, a monster had woken her up, and she knew. There was nothing left here for her. She discovered the world that she left a century ago, covered in the smog of the industrial revolution, was only the beginning of a much bigger war, a war of money and energy, that was destroying everything and killing everyone.
This was not a world to bring Christina back to. This was not a world to rebuild her life in. Her plan had failed, and what else could she do? Could she just go back to working in the Warehouse like before? Collecting artifacts and pretending it was enough? Acting like she had not lost her dear child, acting like life was worth living? No, the more she caught up with this new world she lived in, the more she thought there was only one thing she could do for it. It would mean sacrificing herself, and so many others, but life was not worth living anyway, not for the destruction it caused. She learned long ago she could be the bearer of death, and she was not proud of it, but if it would bring this earth some peace...
... As the world trembled beneath her feet, she thought of all the wars, all the innocents that were killed every day. There was nothing left to save the human race, they had been killing each other for centuries, for millennia. Each artifact was another weapon of mass destruction, a tool to inflict more pain; and in the time she had been bronzed men had found new ways to kill each other, bombs and gases and who knows what. They were beyond saving. She was putting an end to that mess, she told herself. Killing everyone once and for all, as they had wanted to do for so long, so they wouldn't destroy everything doing so.
But when Myka confronted her, she knew if anyone would convince her to stop, it would be her. That's why she had to do it, to get on with the plan, before it was too late. Because Myka had slipped through the armour she had built for herself throughout the years, and had given her hope again, hope that the world was not filled with only terrible people.
And it was true, wars were waged everywhere, and humans would always keep killing everyone. But she could not kill one innocent, she could not kill someone she loved - and she could not kill all these other people she'd never met. It would be like killing her Christina again. It would be taking innocent children from mothers who loved them, and she had been the bringer of death before, but she would not become like the killers of children who took the only person she'd ever truly loved away from her. Whatever that made her, whatever would happen to her, she would take it, as her deserved punishment and penance for all these people she'd wanted to hurt. Because was she, really, better than that? Or did her actions not prove the opposite? Had she become the monsters she despised? She felt an eternity of confinement would not be enough to answer that.