The Infinite Sea (The Fifth Wave #2)(51)

He nods approvingly. “Now you’re very close to the answer. But it is not your implant linked to this transmitter. Do you still want me to push it?”

Teacup. I look down at the board. One move from mate. The match was over before it began. When the game is fixed, how do you avoid losing?

A seven-year-old knew the answer to that question. I slide my hand beneath the board and hurl it toward his head. I guess that’s checkmate, bitch!

He sees it coming and ducks easily out of the way. Pieces clatter on the table, roll lazily on the tabletop before falling off the edge. He shouldn’t have told me that the device is linked to Teacup: If he pushes the button, he loses his leverage over me.

Vosch pushes the button.

51

MY REACTION IS months in the making. And instantaneous.

I leap across the table, drive my knee hard into his chest, and knock him straight back onto the floor. I land on top of him and smash the heel of my bloody hand into his aristocratic nose, rotating my shoulders into the blow to maximize the impact, textbook perfect, just like my trainers at Camp Haven taught me. Drill after drill after drill until there’s no need to think: Muscles retain memory, too. His nose breaks with a satisfying crunch. This is the point, the instructors told me, when a wise soldier withdraws. Hand-to-hand is unpredictable and every second you remain engaged increases the risk. Getting off the X was the expression. Vincit qui patitur.

But there’s no getting off this particular X. The clock’s down to the final tick; I’m out of time. The door flies open and soldiers pour into the room. I’m taken down quick and hard, yanked off Vosch and thrown face-first onto the floor, a shin pressed against my neck. I smell blood. Not mine, his.

“You disappoint me,” he whispers in my ear. “I told you rage wasn’t the answer.”

They pull me to my feet. The lower half of Vosch’s face is covered in blood. It smears his cheeks like war paint. His eyes are already swelling, giving him a weird, piglike appearance.

He turns to the squad leader standing beside him, a slender, fair-skinned recruit with blond hair and soulful dark eyes.

“Prep her.”

52

HALLWAY: LOW CEILINGS, flickering fluorescents, cinder-block walls. The press of bodies around me, one in front, one behind, two on either side holding my arms. The squeak of rubber-soled shoes against the gray concrete floor and the faint odor of sweat and the bittersweet smell of recycled air. Stairwell: metal rails painted gray like the floors, cobwebs fluttering in corners, dusty yellow lightbulbs in wire cages, descending into warmer, mustier air. Another hall: unmarked doors and large red stripes running down each gray wall and signs that read NO ACCESS and AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Room: small, windowless. Cabinets on one wall, a hospital bed in the middle, vital signs monitor beside it, screen dark. On either side of the bed, two people wearing white coats. A middle-aged man, a younger woman, forcing smiles.

The door clangs shut. I’m alone with the White Coats, except for the blond recruit standing at the door behind me.

“Easy or hard,” the man in the white coat says. “Your choice.”

“Hard,” I say. I whip around and drop the recruit with a punch to the throat. His sidearm clatters onto the tile. I scoop it up and turn back to the White Coats.

“There’s no escape,” the man says calmly. “You know that.”

I do know that. But escaping isn’t the reason I need the gun. Not escaping in the sense he means it. I’m not taking hostages and I’m not killing anyone. Killing human beings is the enemy’s goal. Behind me, the kid writhes on the floor, making hiccupping, gurgling sounds. I may have fractured his larynx.

I glance up at the camera mounted in the far corner of the room. Is he watching? Thanks to Wonderland, he knows me better than anyone on Earth. He must know why I took the gun:

I’m mated. And it’s too late to resign the game.

I press the cold muzzle against my temple. The woman’s mouth comes open. She takes a step toward me.

“Marika.” Kind eyes. Soft voice. “She’s alive because you are. If you aren’t, she won’t be.”

It clicks then. He told me rage isn’t the answer, and rage is the only explanation for him hitting the kill switch when I upended the board. That’s what I thought when it happened. It never occurred to me that he might be bluffing.

And it should have. There’s no way he’d give up his leverage. Why didn’t I see that? I’m the one blinded by rage, not him.

I’m dizzy; the room won’t stay still. Bluffs inside bluffs, feints within counterfeints. I’m in a game in which I don’t know the rules or even the object. Teacup is alive because I am. I’m alive because she is.

“Take me to her,” I say to the woman. I want proof that that one fundamental assumption is true.

“Not going to happen,” the man says. “So now what?”

Good question. But the issue has to be pressed and pressed hard, as hard as I press the gun against my temple. “Take me to her or I swear to God I’ll do it.”

“You can’t,” the young woman says. Soft voice. Kind eyes. Hand outstretched.

She’s right. I can’t. It could be a lie; Teacup could be dead. But a chance remains that she’s alive, and if I’m gone, there’s no reason to keep her that way. The risk is unacceptable.