96

RINGER

I’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE, lying helplessly beneath the constant sterile glow.

Razor would come to me while my body fought the losing battle against the forty thousand invaders the enemy injected into it. Razor would come to me, and his coming would sustain me, the hope he offered the tether that kept me from hurtling endlessly through the void.

He died to save me, and now his child will die with me.

The stairway door slams. Boots echo on the stone floor. I know the sound. I recognize the rhythm of his stride.

That’s why the Silencer didn’t kill you. It was saving you for him.

“Marika.”

Vosch towers over me. He is ten thousand feet tall, fashioned from solid rock, an impregnable battlement that cannot be broken, that cannot fall. His azure eyes shine as he looks down on me from unscalable heights.

“You’ve forgotten something,” he tells me. “And now it’s too late. What have you forgotten, Marika?”

A child bursts through the brittle stalks of winter-killed wheat, carrying a capsule-sized bomb within its mouth. Human breath enfolds the child and everything is engulfed in green fire, and afterward nothing remains.

The pill. His parting gift in the breast pocket of my jacket. I will my hand to rise and my hand won’t move.

“I knew you would come back,” Vosch says. “Who else would have the final answer but the one who created you?”

The words die on my lips. I can still speak, but what’s the point? He already knows what I want to ask. It’s the only question I have left.

“Yes, I have been inside their ship. And it’s as remarkable as you’ve imagined. I have seen them—our saviors—and, yes, they are also as remarkable as you’ve imagined. They aren’t physically there, of course, but you’ve already guessed that. They are not here, Marika. They never were.”

His eyes glow with the transcendental joy of a prophet who has seen heaven.

“They are carbon-based like us, and that is where all similarities end. It took them a very long time to understand us, to accept what was happening here and devise the only viable solution to the problem. Likewise, it took me a very long time to understand and accept their solution. It’s difficult to ignore your own humanity, to step outside yourself and see through the eyes of a wholly other species. That’s been your particular problem from the beginning, Marika. I had hopes that one day you would conquer it. You are the closest I’ve ever come to seeing myself in another human being.”

He notices something about my face and kneels beside me. His finger presses against my cheek, and my tear rolls over his knuckle.

“I am going away, Marika. You must have guessed that. My consciousness will be preserved for all time aboard the mothership, eternally free, eternally safe from whatever may happen here. That was my price. And they agreed to pay it.” He smiles. The smile is kind, a father to his beloved child. “Are you satisfied now? Have I answered all your questions?”

“No,” I whisper. “You haven’t told me why.”

He doesn’t scold about having just told me why. He knows I’m not asking about his motivation.

“Because the universe has no limits, but life does. Life is rare, Marika, and therefore precious; it must be preserved. If they may be said to have anything resembling human faith, it is that. All life is worthy of existence. The Earth is not the first planet they have saved.”

He cups my cheek in his hand. “I don’t want to lose you,” he says. “Virtues have become vices, and you’ve said it yourself: This particular vice follows no rules, even its own. I have committed a mortal sin, Marika, and only you can absolve me.”

He slips his hand beneath my head and lifts it gently from the floor. He kneels beside me, creator, father, cradling my head in his hands.

“We found it, Marika. The anomaly in Walker’s programming. The flaw in the system is that there isn’t one.

“Do you understand? It’s important that you understand. The singularity beyond space and time, the undefinable constant that transcends all understanding—they had no answer for it, so they gave none. How could they? How could love be contained in any algorithm?”

His eyes still sparkle, though now with tears. “Come with me, Marika. Let us go together, to a place where there is no more pain, no more sorrow. All of this will be gone in an instant.” He waves his hand to indicate the base, the planet, the past. “They’ll take away any memory that troubles you. You will be immortal, forever young, forever free. They will give me that. Grant me the grace to give you that.”

I whisper, “Too late.”

“No! This broken body, it’s nothing. Worthless. It’s not too late.”

“It is for you,” I tell him.

Behind him, Cassie Sullivan takes the cue. She presses the gun to the back of my creator’s head and pulls the trigger.