The Infinite Sea (The Fifth Wave #2)(49)

She was too quick and he was too hurt. She’d get there before him. So he picked up the gun that he had dropped and shot her in the back.

Then he got up for the last time. He tossed the gun away. He stepped over her writhing body, and that’s as far as he got before falling for the last time.

He crawled toward the bag. She crawled after him. She couldn’t stand up. The bullet had shattered her spinal cord. She was paralyzed from the waist down. But she was stronger than him and hadn’t lost as much blood.

He scooped the plastic bag from the floor. Her hand fell on his arm and yanked him toward her as if he weighed nothing at all. She would finish him with a single punch to his dying heart.

But all he had to do was breathe.

He slapped the opening of the bag over his mouth.

And breathed.

BOOK TWO

50

I’M SITTING ALONE in a windowless classroom. Blue carpet, white walls, long white tables. White computer monitors with white keyboards. I’m wearing the white jumpsuit of new recruits. Different camp, same drill, down to the implant in my neck and a trip to Wonderland. I’m still paying for that trip. You don’t feel empty after they drain your memories. You’re sore as hell all over. Muscles retain memory, too. That’s why they have to strap you down for the ride.

The door opens and Commander Alexander Vosch steps into the room. He carries a wooden box that he sets down on the table in front of me.

“You’re looking well, Marika,” he says. “Much better than I expected.”

“My name is Ringer.”

He nods. He understands exactly what I mean. More than once I’ve wondered if the information gathered by Wonderland flows both ways. If you can download human experience, why couldn’t you upload it? It’s possible the person who is smiling at me now contains the memories of every single human being who’s been through the program. He may not be human—and I have my doubts about that—but he may also be the sum of all humans who have passed through Wonderland’s gates.

“Yes. Marika is dead.” He sits down across from me. “And now here you are, rising phoenixlike from her ashes.”

He knows what I’m going to say. I can tell by the twinkling in his baby-blue eyes. Why can’t he just tell me? Why do I have to ask?

“Is Teacup alive?”

“Which answer are you more likely to trust? Yes or no?”

Think before you respond. Chess teaches that. “No.”

“Why?”

“Yes could be a lie to manipulate me.”

He’s nodding appreciatively. “To give you false hope.”

“To gain leverage.”

He cocked his head and looked down his narrow nose at me. “Why would someone like me need leverage over someone like you?”

“I don’t know. There must be something you want.”

“Otherwise . . . ?”

“Otherwise I’d be dead.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. His stare pierces down to my bones. He gestures at the wooden box.

“I brought you something. Open it.”

I look at the box. Look back at him. “I’m not going to do it.”

“It’s just a box.”

“Whatever you want me to do, I won’t. You’re wasting your time.”

“And time is the only currency we have left, isn’t it? Time—and promises.” Tapping the lid of the box. “I spent a great deal of that first precious commodity to find one of these.” He nudges the box toward me. “Open it.”

I open it. He goes on. “Ben wouldn’t play with you. Or little Allison—I mean Teacup; Allison is dead, too. You haven’t played a game of chess since your father died.”

I shake my head. Not in answer to his question. I shake my head because I don’t get it. The chief architect of the genocide wants to play chess with me?

I’m shivering in the paper-thin jumpsuit. The room is very cold. Smiling, Vosch is watching me. No. Not just watching. This isn’t like Wonderland. It isn’t just your memories he knows. He knows what you’re thinking, too. Wonderland is a device. It records, but Vosch reads.

“They’re gone,” I blurt out. “They’re not at the hotel. And you don’t know where they are.” That has to be it. I can think of no other reason why he hasn’t killed me.

A crappy reason, though. In this weather and with his resources, how hard could it be to find them? I clamp my cold hands between my knees and force myself to breathe slowly and deeply.

He opens the lid, removes the board, and takes out the white queen. “White? You prefer white.”

Long, nimble fingers set up the board. The fingers of a musician, a sculptor, a painter. He rests his elbows on the table and laces those fingers to make a shelf for his chin, like my father did every time he played.

“What do you want?” I ask.

He raises an eyebrow. “I want to play a game of chess.”

Staring at me silently. Five seconds becomes ten. Ten becomes twenty. After thirty seconds, an eternity has passed. I think I know what he’s doing: playing a game within a game. I just don’t understand why.

I open with the Ruy Lopez. Not the most original opening in the history of the game; I’m a little stressed. As we play, he hums softly, tunelessly, and now I know he’s deliberately mocking my father. My stomach rolls with revulsion. To survive I built walls, an emotional fortress that protected me and kept me sane in a world gone dangerously insane, but even the most open person has a private, sacred place where no one else may go.