He almost fell coming out of the chair. Vosch caught him and gently pulled him upright.
“What has happened to you?” he asked Evan. “Why are you so weak?”
“Ask them.” With a nod toward the monitors.
“The 12th System crashed? When did it crash?”
He’d made a promise. He had to find her before Grace did. Running down the highway, running until the gift within him collapsed. Because nothing mattered but the promise, nothing mattered but her.
Evan looked into Vosch’s bright blue, birdlike eyes and said, “What are you going to show me?”
Vosch smiled. “Come and see.”
66
TURNING LEFT off the stairs brought you down the mile-long hallway to Wonderland’s green door. Turning right brought you to a dead end, a blank wall.
Vosch pressed his thumb against the wall. Gears whined, a seam appeared, and the wall split down the middle, the two halves pulling back to reveal a narrow corridor that faded past the sterile glow of fluorescents into utter black.
A recording sprang from a hidden speaker: “Warning! You are entering an area restricted to authorized personnel pursuant to Special Order Eleven. All unauthorized persons found in this area will be subject to immediate disciplinary action. Warning! You are entering an area restricted to authorized personnel . . .”
The voice followed them into the dark. Warning! A smudge of sickly green light bathed the end of the narrow corridor. They stopped there, at a door with no handle. Vosch pressed his thumb against the middle of the door and it swung silently open. He turned to Evan.
“We call this Area 51,” Vosch informed him without a trace of irony.
Lights flickered on as they crossed the threshold. The first thing that caught Evan’s eye was the egg-shaped pod, identical to the pod in which he escaped Camp Haven, except for its size: This pod was twice as large. It dominated half the chamber. Above it, he could see the concrete-reinforced launch shaft that led to the surface.
“This is what you wanted to show me?” He didn’t understand. He knew Vosch would have a pod on base to return to their vessel after the 5th Wave was unleashed. In a matter of hours, identical pods would be dispatched from the mothership to retrieve the rest of their embedded people. Why did Vosch want him to see his?
“It’s unique,” Vosch said. “There are only twelve others like it in the world. One for each of us.”
“Why are you doing this?” He was losing his temper. “Why do you speak in riddles and lies as if I am one of your human victims? There are more than twelve. There are tens of thousands.”
“No. Only twelve.” He gestured toward their right. “Come over here. I think you’re going to find this very interesting.”
Hanging at eye level from the ceiling, its skin a glistening greenish gray, a twenty-foot-long cigar-shaped object. After the 3rd Wave, drones like this one filled the sky. Vosch’s eyes, he had told Cassie. It’s how he sees you.
“An important component of the war,” Vosch said. “Important, but not critical. Their loss demanded a bit of improvisation in our hunt for you—you have wondered why it was necessary to enhance an ordinary human, yes?”
He was referring to Ringer. But Evan didn’t see the connection. “Why did you?”
“The purpose of the drones was not to pinpoint the location of survivors—it was to track you. You and the thousands like you who will abandon your assigned territories in the days ahead as the 5th Wave is launched and you realize that there will be no rescue, no escape to the mothership.”
Evan shook his head. For the first time it occurred to him that Vosch may have gone mad. It was their greatest fear when designing the purification of the Earth. Sharing the body with a human consciousness might prove to be an overwhelming burden, a strain that could not be borne.
“Now you are wondering if I am not altogether in my right mind,” Vosch said with a small smile. “I don’t sound like the person you’ve known most of your ten-thousand-year-old life. The truth is we have never met, Evan. Until today, I did not even know what you looked like.” Vosch took him by the elbow, gently, and guided him toward the back of the chamber.
Evan’s unease deepened. There was something profoundly disturbing about this. He didn’t understand why Vosch had brought him here, why he simply hadn’t killed him—what did it matter if his human body died? His consciousness still existed on the mothership. What was the point of this bizarre show-and-tell?
In the corner was a wooden stand, and on the stand perched a large bird of prey, its head tilted forward, its eyes closed, apparently asleep. Evan’s stomach fluttered. The years collapsed and he was a boy again, lying in his bed in that hazy space between dreaming and waking, watching the owl on the windowsill watching him, bright round eyes shining in the dark, and his body feeling as if it had been frozen in amber, unable to move, unable to look away.
Behind him, Vosch murmured, “Bubo virginianus. The great horned owl. Magnificent, isn’t he? A fearsome predator, nocturnal, solitary—his prey rarely know he’s coming until it’s too late. He is your demon, your spirit animal in a sense. You were designed to be his human equivalent.”
The wings stirred. The thick chest heaved. The head lifted, the eyes came open, and their eyes met.
“Of course, it isn’t real,” Vosch went on. “It is a delivery device. A machine. One came to your mother while you were still in her womb, bearing the program that was transmitted into your developing brain. Another visited you after that program booted up. Your awakening, I think it’s called, to endow you with the 12th System.”
He could not turn away. The owl’s eyes filled his vision, engulfed him.
“There is no alien entity inside you,” Vosch said. “None inside any of us and none aboard the mothership. It is completely automated, like your old friend here, designed by its makers after centuries of careful study and deliberation and sent to this planet to wean the human population to a sustainable level. And, of course, to keep it there indefinitely by changing human nature itself.”
Evan found his voice, and said, “I don’t believe you.” The eyes. He could not look away.
“A flawless, self-sustaining loop, an immaculate system in which trust and cooperation can never take root. Progress becomes impossible, for all strangers are potential enemies, the ‘other’ who must be hunted down until the last bullet is spent. You were never meant to be an agent of destruction, Evan. You are part of Earth’s salvation—or you were until something in your programming went wrong. That is why I’ve brought you here. Not to torture you or kill you. I have brought you here to save you.”
He placed a consoling hand on Evan’s shoulder, and his touch broke the hold of the owl’s eyes. Evan whirled upon his captor. He would kill him. He would choke the life out of him with his bare hands.
His fist punched empty air. The momentum nearly carried him off his feet.
Vosch had vanished.
67
THOUGH HE REMAINED UPRIGHT, he had the sensation of falling from a great height. The room spun, the walls faded in and out of focus. Across the chamber, a figure stood in the doorway, a visual anchor that steadied him. He took a hesitant step forward and stopped.
“What do you remember?” Vosch called from the threshold. “Was I standing right beside you? Did I place my hand upon your shoulder? What are our memories but the ultimate proof that we exist? What if I were to tell you that everything you remember since we stepped into this room, all of it, is a lie, a false memory transmitted into your brain by that ‘owl’ behind you?”
“I know it’s a lie,” Evan answered. “I know who I am.” He was shaking. He was colder than he’d been in the white room beneath the icy spray.
“Oh, what you ‘heard’ was the truth. It’s the memory that’s false.” Vosch sighed. “You are a stubborn one, aren’t you?”
“Why should I b
elieve you?” Evan cried. “Who are you that I should believe?”
“Because I am one of the chosen. I have been entrusted with the greatest mission in human history: the salvation of our species. Like you, I’ve known since I was a boy what was coming. Unlike you, I knew the truth.”
Vosch’s eyes strayed to the pod. His tone shifted from stern to wistful. “It’s impossible to express how lonely I have been. Only a handful of us know the truth. In a blind world, only we had eyes to see. We were not given a choice—you must understand—there was no choice. I am not responsible. I am a victim as much as they are, as much as you!” His voice rose in fury. “This is the cost! This is the price! And I have paid. I have done everything that was demanded of me. I have fulfilled my promise, and now my work is done.”
He held out his hand.
“Come with me. Allow me to grant you one last gift. Come with me, Evan Walker, and lay down your burden.”
68
HE FOLLOWED VOSCH—what choice did he have?—back down the long corridor to the green door. The technician rose when they entered and said, “I’ve run the test three times, Commander, and I still can’t find any anomalies in the program. Do you want me to run it again?”
“Yes,” Vosch answered. “But not now.” He turned to Evan. “Please sit.”
He nodded to the tech, who strapped Evan back into the reclining chair. The hydraulics whined; he rotated back, his face toward the featureless white ceiling. He heard the door open. The same woman who had examined him in the white room entered, wheeling before her a gleaming stainless-steel cart. On it, laid out in a neat row, were thirteen syringes filled with an amber-colored fluid.
“You know what this is,” Vosch said.
Evan nodded. The 12th System. The gift. But why return it?
“Because I’m an optimist, an incurable romantic, like you,” Vosch said, as if he had read Evan’s mind. “I believe where there is life, there is hope.” He smiled. “But mostly because five young men are dead, which means she may still be alive. And if she lives, there is only one option left for her.”
“Ringer?”
Vosch nodded. “She is what I have made her; and she is coming to demand that I answer for what I’ve done.”
He leaned over Evan’s face, and his eyes burned with iridescent fire, and the blue flames seared him down to his bones.
“You will be my answer.”
He turned to the tech, who flinched under the intensity of his glare. “She may be right: Love may be the singularity, the inexplicable, ungovernable, ineffable mystery, impossible to predict or control, the virus that crashed a program designed by beings next to which we are no more evolved than a cockroach.” Then back to Evan: “So I will do my duty; I will burn down the village in order to save it.”
He stepped back. “Download him again. Then erase it.”
“Erase it, sir?”
“Erase the human. Leave the rest.” The commander’s voice filled the tiny room. “We cannot love what we do not remember.”
69
IN THE AUTUMN WOODS there was a tent, and in that tent there was a girl who slept with a rifle in one hand and a teddy bear in the other. And while she slept, a hunter kept vigil over her, an unseen companion who retreated when she woke. He had come to end her life; she was there to save his.
And the endless arguments with himself, the vanity of his own reason posing the unanswerable question, Why must one live while the world itself perished? The more he reached for that answer, the farther the answer retreated from his grasp.
He was a finisher who could not finish. His was the heart of a hunter who lacked the heart to kill.
In her journal she had written I am humanity, and something in those three words splintered him in two.
She was the mayfly, here for a day, then gone. She was the last star, burning bright in a sea of limitless black.
Erase the human.
In a burst of blinding light, the star Cassiopeia exploded, and the world went black.
Evan Walker had been undone.
70
CASSIE
NOT TEN MINUTES into it and I’m starting to think this whole mission-impossible, killing-Vosch-and-rescuing-Evan thingy was a very bad idea.
Bob the one-eyed pilot shouts, “Ten seconds!” Ringer closes her eyes, and in an awful, sickening instant, I’m convinced we’ve been set up. This has been her plan all along. Leave Ben and the kids defenseless, then get the two of us killed kamikaze style at five thousand feet, because who gives a shit? There’s a copy of her that lives in Wonderland. She’ll just be downloaded into a new body once we’re all dead.
Now’s your chance, Cass. Take out your knife and cut out her treacherous heart . . . if you can find it. If she has one.
“They’re breaking formation!” Bob announces.
Ringer’s eyes snap open. My chance slips away. “Hold our course, Bob,” she says evenly.
The choppers bear down on us, spreading out so everybody gets a fair shot, so no one feels left out or cheated of the chance to blow us into a gazillion pieces.
Bob holds our course but hedges our bets, locking a missile on the lead copter. His thumb hovers over the button. The thing that blows my mind about Bob is how quickly he switched sides. When he opened his eyes this morning, both of them, he was pretty certain which team he was batting for. Then, in the batting of an eye (ha! sorry, Bob), he’s locked and loaded, ready to annihilate his fellow brothers and sisters-in-arms.
So there you go. You can love the good in us and hate the bad, but the bad is in us, too. Without it, we wouldn’t be us.
All I want to do in this moment is give Bob a big hug.
“They’re going to ram us!” Bob screams. “We gotta dive, we gotta dive!”
“No,” Ringer says. “Trust me, Bob.”
Bob laughs hysterically. We barrel toward the lead chopper as it barrels toward us, both at full throttle. “Oh, sure! Why wouldn’t I trust you?” White-knuckled on the stick, thumb caressing the button, in a few seconds it won’t matter what Ringer tells him, he’s going to fire. Ultimately, Bob is on nobody’s side but Bob’s.
“Break,” Ringer whispers at the big black fist rocketing toward our face. “Break now.”
Too late. Bob jams the button, the Black Hawk shudders like some gigantic foot kicked it, and a Hellfire missile explodes from its mount. The cockpit lights up like the noonday sun. Somebody screams (I think it might be me). A maelstrom of fire engulfs us for half a second—debris popping and smacking against our hull—and then we burst through the fireball to the other side.
“Hoooooooolyyyyy Mother of God!” Bob yells.
Ringer doesn’t say anything at first. She’s looking at his scope and the five remaining white dots. Four break off, two right and two left, and the third continues on, edging toward the bottom of the screen. Oh no. Where is he going?
“Hail them,” Ringer tells Bob. “Tell them we’re surrendering.”
“We are?” Bob and I say at the same time.
“Then hold course. They’re not going to force us down or fire on us.”
“How do you know?” Bob asks.
“Because if they were, they would have done it by now.”
“What about the other one?” I demand. “It’s gone. It’s not following us.”
Ringer gives me a look. “Where do you think it’s going?” Then she turns away. “It’ll be all right, Sullivan. Zombie will know what to do.”
Like I said, a very bad idea.
71
I SINK BACK into my seat and fight to get air into my lungs. I think I forgot to breathe back there. My mouth is bone-dry. I sip some water, but just enough to wet my mouth, because I’m a little concerned about having to pee during the operation. Ringer’s described the base to me in some detail, including the location of the Wonderland room, but I
never asked where the bathrooms were.
Ringer’s voice crackles annoyingly in my ear. “Get some rest, Sullivan. We’re in the air for another couple of hours.”
And sunrise won’t be far behind. We’re cutting this too close. I’m no expert on covert ops, but I’m guessing they’re a wee bit easier in the dark. Plus, if Evan was right, today is Green Day, the day the fireballs of hell rain from the sky.
I hunt around in my pockets until I locate one of Ben Parish’s magical power bars. The alternative is bursting into tears. I’m determined not to cry until I see Sam again. He’s the only thing left that’s worthy of my tears.
And what the hell did she mean, Zombie will know what to do?
That’s good, Sullivan, he’d better know, because you sure as hell don’t. If you knew what to do, you wouldn’t be on this damn chopper. You’d be with your little brother. Wise up. You know the real reason you’re here. You can tell yourself it’s for Sam, but you’re not fooling anybody.
Oh God, I’m a horrible person. I’m worse than One-Eyed Bob. I abandoned my blood for a guy. And that’s so wrong, it makes every other wrong thing I’ve ever done seem right. Ben told me Evan was lying or crazy or both, because who destroys their entire civilization for a girl? Oh, I don’t know, Ben. Maybe the same kind of person who would sacrifice her only flesh and blood to repay a debt she didn’t owe.
I mean, it isn’t as if I asked him to save me all those times. Any more than I asked him to shoot me in the leg. I never asked him for anything. He just gave. Gave past the point where giving is sane. Is that what love is? And is that why it makes no sense to me, because I’ve never felt it, not for him, not for Ben Parish, not for anyone?
No, no, no, please, brain, don’t. Don’t serve up Vermont and that damned dog again. I promise I’ll stop thinking so much. Thinking too much has been my problem for a very long time. I’ve overthought everything, from why the Others came to what Evan was to the very weird fact that I lived while practically all of humanity died. Down to why that girl in front of me has the silkiest, most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen, and why I don’t, and why she has perfect porcelain skin, which I don’t. And the nose. Good Christ, how stupid. What a waste of time. It’s just genes with a little alien technology thrown in, big whoop.