The Last Star (The 5th Wave, #3)(46)

“Evan is human,” Ringer insists. “His purpose is obvious. What isn’t so obvious—and why Vosch needs to deconstruct his programming—is what triggered Evan’s mind to rebel. He didn’t just betray his ‘people.’ He betrayed himself.”

“Well,” Ben sighs, “that’s f*cked up.” He shifts his weight against the wall, trying to find a more comfortable position. That’s not possible with a bullet in your leg. Believe me, I’ve tried. “So there are no escape pods coming to evac the Silencers,” Ben says slowly. “No pods, so no way to the mothership. No way to the mothership, so no way to blow it up. Shoots that plan all to hell. What about bombing the cities? Or is that a lie his programming told him, too?”

Ringer doesn’t answer for a long time. I have no clue what she’s thinking. Then I start thinking maybe this whole deal is a trick—of Vosch’s. Something happened to Ringer after she checked out of the Walker Hotel. Somebody implanted her with bionics that turned her into a part-human, part-machine weapon of mass destruction. How do we know she hasn’t flipped to the other side? A certain Brawny-paper-towel-looking guy did. How do we know she wasn’t always on the other side?

My thumb’s working that bolt catch again.

“I think they are going to bomb the cities,” she finally says.

“Why?” I demand. “What’s the point?”

“A lot of reasons. For one, it evens the playing field before the launch of the 5th Wave—urban combat gives the Silencers every advantage, and you can’t tip favor too far to one side. But the most important reason is cities hold our memories.”

Whaaaaa? Then I get it, and getting it makes my stomach hurt. My father and that damned wagon and those damned books. Libraries, museums, universities, everything we designed and built over six thousand years. Cities are more than the sum of their infrastructure. They transcend brick and mortar, concrete and steel. They’re the vessels into which human knowledge is poured. Blowing them up will be the final reset of the clock back to the Neolithic.

“Not enough to reduce the population to a sustainable level,” Ringer says softly. “Not enough to level what we built. We’ll repopulate. We’ll rebuild. To save the planet, to save our species, they have to change us.” She touches her chest. “Here. If the Others can take away trust, they take away cooperation. Take away cooperation, and civilization is impossible.”





48


“OKAY,” BEN SAYS. Time to get down to the gnarly nub of it. “No on the pods but yes on the bombs. Which means we can’t stay here—too close to Urbana. That’s fine with me, because I really f*cking hate Urbana. So where? South? My vote is south. Find a source of fresh water, miles from anywhere, as in the middle of nowhere.”

“And?” Ringer asks.

“And what?”

“And what then?”

“What then?”

“Yes. After we get to nowhere, then what?”

Ben lifts a hand. Lets it fall. His mouth curls into a smile. He looks so boyishly cute in this moment that I feel like bursting into tears. “There’s five of us. I say we form a band.”

I laugh out loud. Sometimes Ben’s like a bracing mountain stream I dip my toe into.

“Anyway,” Ben says after two seconds of Ringer staring blankly at him. “What the hell else are we going to do?”

He looks at her. He looks at me.

“Oh Christ, Sullivan,” he moans, tapping the back of his head against the wall. “Don’t even go there.”

“He came for me,” I tell him. He knows I’m thinking it, so I might as well say it. We’re both a little surprised that I’ve gone there. “He saved your life—twice. He saved mine three times.”

“Ben’s right,” Ringer butts in. “It’s suicide, Sullivan.”

I roll my eyes. I’ve heard this shit before—from Evan Walker himself, when he realized I was bulling my way into a death camp to find my baby brother. Why must I always be the isle of crazy alone in an ocean of sensibility? The should to everybody else’s shouldn’t? The I-will to their better-nots?

“Staying here is suicide, too,” I argue. “So is running to nowhere. Anything we do now is suicide. We’re at the point in the story where we have to choose, Ringer—a meaningful death, or a senseless one. Besides,” I add, “he’d do it for us.”

“No,” Ben says quietly. “He would do it for you.”

“The base they’re taking him to is over a hundred miles away,” Ringer says. “Even if you reached it, you won’t reach it in time. Vosch will be finished with him and Evan will be dead.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that.”

“No, you say you know that, but you don’t really know that, just like you don’t know everything else you say you know, but we’re just supposed to believe it because, hell, you’re just brilliant little you.”

And Ben goes, “Huh?”

“Whatever we do,” Ringer says coolly to Ben, as if nothing I just said wasn’t a major-league smackdown, “staying is not an option. As soon as that chopper delivers its cargo, it’s coming back.”