23

RINGER

AT THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND FEET, it’s hard to tell which seems smaller: the Earth below or the person above it, looking down.

Due north and a couple of miles from the caverns, Constance unbuckles her harness and grabs her chute assembly from the overhead. One last check-through before the jump. We’ll be inserted from this altitude to reduce the chance of being spotted from the ground. It’s called a HALO insertion. High Altitude—Low Opening. Risky as hell, but no more risky than jumping from five thousand feet with no parachute at all.

Constance must know about my jump from the doomed chopper, because she says, “Gonna be a lot easier than last time, huh?”

I tell her to fuck off, and she grins at me. I’m glad. I want to find nothing sympathetic or likable about her. Those things might make killing her hard.

Well, harder. I’m still going to kill her.

“Thirty seconds!” the pilot’s voice squawks in our ears. Constance checks my assembly. I check hers. We toss our headsets onto the seats as the rear bay door opens. Sliding our gloved fingers over the guide cable, we shuffle toward the screaming maw, the subzero wind like a fist pummeling our faces. My stomach tightens as the C-160 rocks side to side, buffeted by turbulence. I’ve been fighting the urge to throw up for nearly the entire flight. Better to do it now than in freefall. If I position myself correctly, the vomit will land directly in Constance’s face.

I wonder why the hub doesn’t subdue my digestive system; weird, but I feel let down by a trusted friend.

I follow Constance into the black gullet of a moonless night. We won’t deploy the chutes until well after we’ve reached terminal velocity. I can see her clearly with my enhanced vision, fifty feet farther down and off to my left. Time slows as my speed picks up; I’m not sure if that’s the hub’s doing or a natural reaction to falling at 120 miles per hour. I don’t hear the plane. The world is wind.

Twenty thousand feet. Fifteen. Ten. I can make out a highway, rolling fields, clusters of bare-limbed trees. The closer I get, the faster they seem to rush toward me. Five thousand feet. Four. Minimum distance to ground for a safe deployment is eight hundred feet, but that’s pushing the envelope.

Constance pulls her cord at eight-fifty. I’m a little below that, and the ground roars toward me like the face of a runaway locomotive.

I bend my knees on impact and duck my shoulder toward the ground, rolling twice before stopping flat on my back, tangled in cords. Constance is there before I can take my next breath, slicing me free with her combat knife. She yanks me to my feet, gives me a thumbs-up, and then takes off across the field toward a couple of silos that stand next to the ubiquitous red barn and, a stone’s throw away, the white farmhouse.

White house, red barn, a narrow country lane: We couldn’t have fallen into a more quintessential slice of Americana. The name of the hamlet where the caverns are? West Liberty.

I join her at the base of a silo, where she’s busy stripping off her jumpsuit. Beneath it, she’s wearing mom jeans and a hoodie. She has no weapon except the knife, which she tucks into a sheath strapped to her leg.

“Half a click south and west of our position,” she breathes. The entrance to the caverns. “We’re a couple of hours ahead of them.” Zombie and whoever was crazy enough to come with him to look for me and Teacup. Poundcake, probably. My gut tightens at the thought of telling Zombie about Teacup. “You hang here and wait for my signal.”

I shake my head. “I’m coming with you.”

She flashes that goddamned stupid smile. “Honey, you don’t want to do that.”

“Why?”

“Our cover story won’t fly if there’s anyone around to contradict it.”

The vise around my stomach tightens another turn. Survivors. Constance is going to kill everyone she finds hiding in those caves, and that’s probably a lot of people. Dozens, maybe hundreds. It will be tough work. They’ll be well-armed and wary of strangers—it’s hard to imagine that anyone’s unaware of the 4th Wave this late in the game. Which means I might not have to kill Constance after all. Maybe they’ll do it for me.

It’s a pleasant thought. Unrealistic, but pleasant. My next thought is not pleasant at all, so I blurt out the first thing that pops into my head.

“We don’t need to take the caverns. We can intercept Zombie before he gets there.”

Constance shakes her head. “Not our orders.”

“Our orders are to rendezvous with Zombie,” I argue. I’m not letting this go. If I let it go, innocent people will die. I’m not totally against people dying—I am planning to kill her and Evan Walker—but this is avoidable.

“I know it bothers you, Marika,” she says kindly. “That’s why I’m going in solo.”

“It’s a stupid risk.”

“You’ve reached a conclusion without knowing all the facts,” she scolds me.

That’s been a problem from the beginning—as in the beginning of human history.

My hand drops to the butt of my sidearm. She doesn’t miss it. Her answering smile lights up the night.

“You know what happens if you do that,” she says gently, a kindly aunt, a caring big sister. “Your friends—the ones you’ve come back for—how many lives are their lives worth? If a hundred had to die so they could live, or a thousand, or ten thousand, or ten million . . . When would you say enough?”

I know this argument. It’s Vosch’s. It’s theirs. What are seven billion lives when existence itself is at stake? My throat burns. I can taste stomach acid in my mouth.

“It’s a false choice,” I answer. One last try, a plea: “You don’t have to kill anyone to get Walker.”

She shrugs. Apparently, I’m just not getting it. “If I don’t, neither of us is going to live long enough to have that chance.” She lifts her chin and turns her face slightly away. “Hit me.” Taps her right cheek. “Here.”

Why not? The blow rocks her back on her heels. She shakes her head impatiently, turns the other cheek. “Again. Harder this time, Marika. Hard.”

I hit her harder. Hard enough to break bone. Her left eye immediately begins to swell. She feels no pain from the punch. Neither do I.

“Thanks,” she says brightly.

“No problem. Anything else you need busted, let me know.”

She laughs softly. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she likes me, finds me charming. Then she’s gone so quickly that only enhanced vision like mine could follow her, zipping across the field to the road that leads to the caverns, then cutting into the woods on the northwest side.

As soon as she’s out of sight, I sink to the ground, shaky, light-headed, my gut churning. I’m beginning to wonder if something is wrong with the 12th System. I feel like shit.

I lean against the cold metal of the silo and close my eyes. The darkness behind my lids spins around an invisible center, the singularity before the universe was born. Teacup is there, falling away from me; the blast from Razor’s weapon resounds in timeless space. She falls away, but she will always be mine.

Razor is there, too, in the absolute center of absolute nothing, the blood still fresh on his arm from the self-inflicted wound, VQP, and he knew the cost of sacrificing Teacup would be his own life. I’m certain by the time we spent the night together, he’d already decided to kill her—because killing her was the only way to set me free.

Free me to do what, Razor? Endure so I can conquer what?

With my eyes still closed, I pull the combat knife from the sheath strapped to my calf. I can imagine Razor lingering in the doorway to the warehouse; the golden light from the pyre outside washing over his lean features; his eyes lost in shadow as he rolls up his sleeve. The knife in his hand then. The knife in my hand now. He probably winced when the tip broke the skin. I do not.

I feel nothing. I am cocooned in nothingness, the answer, after all, to Vosch’s riddle of why? I can smell Razor’s blood. I can’t smell mine, because none breaks the surface of the wound; thousands of microscopic drones stanch the flow.

V: How do you conquer the unconquerable?

Q: Who can win when no one can endure?

P: What endures when all hope is gone?

Out of the singularity, a voice cries out. “My dear child, why do you cry?”

I open my eyes.

It’s a priest.