The Last Star (The 5th Wave, #3)(85)

That’s my name. Cassie for Cassiopeia. Alone as the stars and lonely as the stars.

Now I discover myself in him and I am not the person I expected to find. His Cassie sears the darkness with the brightness of a billion suns. He’s as baffled by this as I am, as humanity is, as the Others are. He can’t say why. There’s no reason, no neat explanation. It’s impossible to understand and impossibly irrelevant, like asking why anything exists in the first place.

He had the answer, all right. It just wasn’t the answer I was looking for.

I’m sorry, Evan; I was wrong. It wasn’t the idea of me that you loved, I know that now. The stars outside the window fade, overtaken by that nauseating green glow, and after a minute the hull of the mothership slides into view.

Oh, you bitch. For a year, I’ve hated your green guts. I’ve watched you, filled with hate and fear, and now here we are, just the two of us, Other and humanity.

That’s my name. Not Cassie for Cassandra. Or Cassie for Cassidy. And it’s not Cassie for Cassiopeia. Not anymore. I am more than her now.

I am all of them, Evan and Ben and Marika and Megan and Sam. I am Dumbo and Poundcake and Teacup. I am all the ones you emptied, the ones you corrupted, the ones you discarded, the thousands you thought you had killed, but who live on in me.

But I am even more than this. I am all those they remember, the ones they loved, everyone they knew, and everyone they only heard about. How many are contained in me? Count the stars. Go on, number the grains of sand. That’s me.

I am humanity.


ZOMBIE

WE MOVE TO the cover of the trees. If what I suspect has actually happened—that someone inside the base has zapped everyone else—there’s not much risk in bringing them with me, but there’s some risk, and somebody who should know once told me it’s all about the risk.

Nugget is furious. Megan seems relieved.

“Who’s gonna watch her if you come with me?” I ask him.

“I don’t care!”

“Well, one of us does. And that person happens to be in charge.”

Through the woods and into the no-man’s-land boundary that runs the perimeter of the base, toward the closest entrance and the watchtower beside it. I have no weapon, no means to defend myself. An easy target. No choice, though. I keep walking.

I’m soaked to my bones, and the temperature hovers in the midforties, but I am not cold. I feel great; even my leg doesn’t hurt anymore.


CASSIOPEIA

THE GLISTENING GREEN SKIN of the ship fills the window, blotting out the stars. It’s all I can see now, and the light from the sun sparks off its featureless surface. How big did they say it was? Twenty-five miles from tip to tip, roughly the size of Manhattan. I’m seeing only a tiny slice of an enormous whole. My heart pounds. My breath shortens, exploding from my mouth in roiling plumes of white. It’s freezing in here. I don’t remember ever feeling so cold.

With shaking fingers, I reach into my pocket and fish out the capsule. It slips from my grasp and spins like a lure through water toward the top of the pod. I catch it after a couple of tries, closing my fist tightly around it.

Damn, I’m cold. My teeth are chattering. I can’t keep my thoughts still. What else? Is there anything else? What have I left undone? There isn’t much—I am more than the sum of my own experience now. I’ve got ten thousand times my fair share.

Because here’s the thing: Seeing yourself through another’s eyes shifts your center of gravity. It doesn’t change the way you look at yourself. It changes the way you look at the world. Not the you. The everything-but-you.

I don’t hate you anymore, I tell the mothership. And I’m not afraid of you anymore. I don’t hate anything. I’m not afraid of anything.

At the center, right in the middle of my view, a black hole grows, reminding me of a mouth slowly opening. I’m headed right for it.

I slip the capsule between my lips.

No, the answer is not hate.

The black hole expands. I’m falling into a lightless pit, a void, the universe before the universe was the universe.

And the answer is not fear.

Somewhere in the mothership’s belly, thousands of bombs twenty times the size of the one in my mouth are rolling down chutes into launching bays. I hope they’re still in there. I hope they haven’t started to fall. I hope I’m in time.

The pod crosses the threshold into the mothership and jerks to a stop. The window’s frosted over, but there’s light outside; it glimmers in the ice. The hatch behind me hisses. I must wait until it opens. Then I must rise from this chair. Then I must turn and face what waits for me out there.

We’re here, and then we’re gone, he said to me, and it’s not about the time we’re here.

There’s no unraveling us, no place where I end and he begins.

There’s no unraveling any of it. I am entwined with everything, from mayflies to the farthest star. I have no boundaries, I am limitless, and I open to creation like a flower to the rain.

I’m not cold anymore. The arms of the seven billion enfold me.

I rise.

Now I lay me down to sleep . . .

I draw in deep my final breath.

When in the morning light I wake . . .

I bite down hard. The seal breaks.

Teach me the path of love to take.

I step into the out there, and breathe.