Rick Yancey - The 5th Wave

“Cassie,” Ben says softly. “He’s going to kill him anyway.”

“You shouldn’t listen to him, young lady,” Vosch says. “He’s weak. He’s always been weak. You’ve shown more pluck and determination in a few hours than he has in his miserable lifetime.”

He nods to the Silencer, who yanks me back into the chair.

“I am going to ‘download’ you,” Vosch tells me. “And I am going to kill Sergeant Parish. But you can save the child. If you tell me who helped you infiltrate this base.”

“Won’t downloading me tell you that?” I ask. While I’m thinking, Evan is alive! And then I think, No, maybe he isn’t. He could have been killed in the bombing, vaporized like everything else on the surface. It could be that Vosch, like me, doesn’t know whether Evan’s alive or dead.

“Because someone helped you,” Vosch says, ignoring my question. “And I suspect that someone is not someone like Mr. Parish here. He—or they—would be someone more like…well, me. Someone who would know how to defeat the Wonderland program by hiding your true memories, the same method we have used for centuries to hide ourselves from you.”

I’m shaking my head. I have no idea what he’s talking about. True memories?

“Birds are the most common,” Vosch says. He’s absently running his finger over the button marked EXECUTE. “Owls. During the initial phase, when we were inserting ourselves into you, we often used the screen memory of an owl to hide the fact from the expectant mother.”

“I hate birds,” I whisper.

Vosch smiles. “The most useful of this planet’s indigenous fauna. Diverse. Considered benign, for the most part. So ubiquitous they’re practically invisible. Did you know they’re descended from the dinosaurs? There’s a very satisfying irony in that. The dinosaurs made way for you, and now, with the help of their descendants, you will make way for us.”

“No one helped me!” I screech, cutting off the lecture. “I did it all myself!”

“Really? Then how is it, at the precise moment you were killing Dr. Pam in Hangar One, two of our sentries were shot, another eviscerated, and a fourth hurled a hundred feet down from his post on the south watchtower?”

“I don’t know anything about that. I just came to find my brother.”

His face darkens. “There really is no hope, you know. All your daydreams and childish fantasies about defeating us—useless.”

I open my mouth and the words come out. They just come out.

“Fuck you.”

And his finger comes down hard on the button, like he hates it, like the button has a face and its face is a human face, the face of the sentient cockroach, and his finger the boot, stomping down.

I DON’T KNOW what I did first. I think I screamed. I know I also ripped free from the Silencer’s grip and lunged at Vosch with the intention of tearing his eyeballs out. But I don’t remember which came first, the scream or the lunge. Ben throwing his arms around me to hold me back, I know that came after the scream and the lunge. He threw his arms around me and pulled me back because I was focused on Vosch, on my hate. I didn’t even look through the mirror at my brother, but Ben had been looking at the monitor and the word that popped up when Vosch hit the execute button:

OOPS.

I whip around to the mirror. Sammy is still alive—crying buckets, but alive. Beside me, Vosch stands up so fast, the chair flies across the room and smacks against the wall.

“He’s hacked into the mainframe and overwritten the program,” he snarls at the Silencer. “He’ll cut the power next. Hold them here.” He yells at the man standing beside Sammy. “Secure that door! No one leaves until I get back.”

He slams out of the room. The lock clicks. No way out now. Or there is a way, the way I took the first time I was trapped in this room. I glance up at the grating. Forget it, Cassie. It’s you and Ben against two Silencers, and Ben’s hurt. Don’t even think about it.

No. It’s me and Ben and Evan against the Silencers. Evan is alive. And if Evan’s alive, we haven’t reached the end—the bottom of the human cup. The boot hasn’t crushed the roach. Not yet.

And that’s when I see it drop between the slats and tumble onto the floor, the body of a real cockroach, freshly squashed. I watch it fall in slow motion, so slow I can see the tiny bounce when it hits the floor.

You want to compare yourself to an insect, Cassie?

My eyes fly back to the grate, where a shadow flickers, like the flurry of a mayfly’s wings.

And I whisper to Ben Parish, “The one with Sammy—he’s mine.”

Startled, Ben whispers back to me, “What?”

I drive my shoulder into our Silencer’s gut, catching him off guard, and he stumbles backward beneath the grate, his arms flailing for balance, and Evan’s bullet tears into his fully human brain, killing him instantly. I have his gun before he hits the floor, and I have one chance, one shot through the hole I had made earlier. If I miss, Sammy is dead—his Silencer is turning on him even as I turn on him.

But I had an excellent instructor. One of the best marksmen in the world—even when there were seven billion people in it.

It isn’t exactly like shooting a can from a fence post.

It’s actually a lot easier: His head is closer and a heck of a lot bigger.

Sammy is halfway to me before the guy’s body hits the floor. I pull him through the hole. Ben is looking at us, at the dead Silencer, at the other dead Silencer, at the gun in my hand. He doesn’t know what to look at. I’m looking up at the grate.

“We’re clear!” I call up to him.

He knocks once against the side. I don’t get it at first, and then I laugh.

Let’s establish a code for when you want to go all creeper on me. One knock means you’d like to come in.

“Yes, Evan.” I’m laughing so hard, it’s starting to hurt. “You can come in.” I’m about to pee myself with relief that we’re all alive, but mostly because he is.

He drops into the room, landing on the balls of his feet like a cat. I’m in his arms in the time it takes to say “I love you,” which he does, stroking my hair, whispering my name and the words, “My mayfly.”

“How did you find us?” I ask him. He’s so completely with me, so there, it’s like I’m seeing his yummy chocolate eyes for the first time, feeling his strong arms and his soft lips for the first time.

“Easy. Somebody was up there ahead of me and left a blood trail.”

“Cassie?”

It’s Sammy, holding on to Ben, because he’s feeling the Ben thing a little more than he is the Cassie one at the moment. Who’s this guy falling from the ductwork, and what’s he doing with my sister?

“This must be Sammy,” Evan says.

“This is Sammy,” I say. “Oh! And this is—”

“Ben Parish,” Ben says.

“Ben Parish?” Evan looks at me. That Ben Parish?

“Ben,” I say, my face on fire. I want to laugh and crawl under the counter at the same time. “This is Evan Walker.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” Sammy asks.

I don’t know what to say. Ben looks totally lost, Evan completely amused, and Sammy just damned curious. It’s my first truly awkward moment in the alien lair, and I’d been through my share of moments.

“He’s a friend from high school,” I mutter.

And Evan corrects me, since it’s clear I’ve lost my mind. “Actually, Sam, Ben is Cassie’s friend from high school.”