The Infinite Sea (The Fifth Wave #2)(39)

I handed Evan the washcloth reeking of pine. He pressed the cloth over Megan’s nose and mouth. Her body jerked, her eyelids fluttered open, her eyes rolled to the back of her head. Her hands, folded primly in her lap, twitched, became still. Evan dropped the cloth onto her chest.

“If she wakes up while I’m in there . . .” I said around the flashlight, sounding like a very bad ventriloquist: Eh chee wecks uh . . .

Evan nodded. “A hundred ways it can go wrong, Cassie.”

He tilted her head back and forced her mouth open. I stared down a glistening red tunnel the width of a razor and a mile deep. Tweezers in my left hand. Scissors in my right. Both hands the size of footballs.

“Can you open it any wider?” I asked.

“If I open it any wider, I’ll dislocate her jaw.”

Well, in the grand scheme of things, a dislocated jaw was better than being able to pick up our pieces with this pair of tweezers. But whatever.

“This one?” Touching the tonsil gently with the end of the tweezers.

“I can’t see.”

“When you said right tonsil, you meant her right, not my right, right?”

“Her right. Your left.”

“Okay,” I breathed. “Just wanted to make sure.”

I couldn’t see what I was doing. I had the tweezers down her throat but not the scissors, and I didn’t know how I was going to stuff both in the tiny mouth of this little girl.

“Hook the wire with the end of the tweezers,” Evan suggested. “Then very slowly lift it up so you can see what you’re doing. Don’t yank. If the wire disconnects from the capsule—”

“Dear Jesus Christ, Walker, you don’t have to warn me every two minutes what happens if the freaking wire disconnects from the freaking capsule!” I felt the tip of the tweezers catch on something. “Okay, I think I’ve got it.”

“It’s very thin. Black. Shiny. Your light should reflect—”

“Please be quiet.” Or, in penlight speak: Pweez be qwiwet.

My whole body was shaking but my hands, miraculously, had become rock steady. I forced my right hand into her mouth by pushing against the inside of her cheek, maneuvering the tips of the scissors into position. Was that it? Did I actually have it? The wire, if that was the wire shining in my light, was as thin as a strand of human hair.

“Slowly, Cassie.”

“Shut. Up.”

“If she swallows it—”

“I am going to kill you, Evan. Seriously.” I had the wire now, pinched between the tines of the tweezers. I could see the tiny hook embedded in her enflamed flesh as I tugged. Slow, slow, slow. Make sure you cut on the right end of the wire. The claw end.

“You’re too close,” he warned me. “Stop talking and don’t breathe directly into her mouth . . .”

Right. So instead, I think I’m going to punch you directly in yours.

A hundred ways it could go wrong, he said. But there’s wrong ways, really wrong ways, and really really wrong ways. When Megan’s eyes flipped open and her body bucked beneath mine, we went down a really really one.

“She’s awake!” I yelled unnecessarily.

“Don’t let go of the wire!” he shouted back, necessarily.

Her teeth clamped down hard on my hand. Her head whipped from side to side. My fingers were trapped inside her mouth. I tried to hold the tweezers still, but one hard tug and the capsule would pull free . . .

“Evan, do something!”

He fumbled for the rag soaked in air freshener.

I shouted, “No, hold her head still, moron! Don’t let her—”

“Let go of the wire,” he gasped.

“What? You just said don’t let go of the . . .”

He pinched her nose shut. Let go? Don’t let go? If I let go, the wire might twist around the tweezers and pull free. If I don’t let go, all the turning and twisting and whipping around might yank it free. Megan’s eyes rolled in her head. Pain and terror and confusion, the constant mix the Others never failed to deliver. Her mouth flew open and I jammed the scissors down her throat.

“I hate you right now,” I breathed at him. “I hate you more than I hate anyone else in the world.” I felt like he needed to know that before I snapped the scissors closed. In case we were vaporized.

“Do you have it?” he asked.

“I have no freaking clue if I have it!”

“Do it.” Then he smiled. Smiled! “Cut the wire, Mayfly,” he said.

I cut the wire.

41

“IT’S A TEST,” Evan said.

The green liquid-gelcap-looking thing lay on the desk, safely—we hoped—sealed inside a clear plastic baggie, the kind your mom used in the long-gone good old days to keep your sandwich and chips fresh for lunch period.

“What, like human IEDs are still in the R-and-D phase?” Ben asked. He was leaning on the sill of the busted-out window, shivering, but someone had to watch the parking lot, and he wasn’t letting anyone else take the risk. At least he had changed out of the blood-soaked, hideous (it was hideous before it was blood-soaked) yellow hoodie and into a black sweatshirt that almost brought him back to his pre-Arrival, buffed-out period.

From the bed, Sam giggled hesitantly, unsure if his beloved Zombie leader was making a joke. I’m no shrink, but I guessed Sams had undergone some transference due to seriously unresolved daddy issues.