The Last Star (31 page)

81

RINGER LEANS BACK
in the seat and closes her eyes like she’s going to grab a quick power nap before the big final exam. Bag in one hand, detonator in the other. I’ve got a rifle, a handgun, a very large knife, a couple of grenades, a half-full (think positive!) bottle of water, two high-energy bars, and a full bladder. Bob throttles the chopper down and now you can really hear those sirens blasting. Ringer’s eyes pop open and she stares at me like she’s memorizing my face—I decide that so I don’t obsess about my crooked nose.

Then she says so softly I can barely hear her: “See you at the checkpoint, Sullivan.”

One-Eyed Bob throws off his harness. He whips around and screams in Ringer’s face, “He
wanted
you to come back, you stupid bitch! Why do you think you’re still alive?” Then he flies out of the cockpit, his legs pumping cartoon-fast before his feet even touch the ground, waving his hands over his head and screaming loud enough to be heard over the sirens.

“
Pull back! Pull back! She’s gonna blow! SHE’S GONNA BLOW!
”

Ringer goes right, and I go left toward a terraced garden of fatigues identical to the ones I’m wearing, rifles pointed at my head, the front row kneeling, back row standing, and then Ringer hits the detonator and the chopper hops five feet in the air with an emphatic
whuuu-uuump.
The concussion shoves me right into the line of soldiers, the heat from the blast singeing their faces and burning away the hairs on the back of my neck. I bowl into the pack while the pack reverts to its instincts, just like Ringer said it would, everybody flattening on the tarmac and covering their heads with their hands.

You’ll want to run but you gotta hold,
Ringer told me back at the cave.
Once the chopper blows, they’ll lose you, so you have to wait for me.

So here I am, just another recruit lying on her belly like the hundred others around her, hands over her head, her cheek pressed against the freezing concrete. Dress just like ’em, look just like ’em, act just like ’em: It’s Vosch’s own game turned against him.

People are screaming orders but nobody can hear them over the sirens. I wait until somebody taps me on the shoulder, but I’m no higher than hands-and-knees when Ringer sets off the IED somewhere in the vicinity of the hangar fifty yards away. That sets off full-panic mode. Any semblance of order breaks down
as troops run for the nearest cover. I take off toward the control tower and the cluster of white buildings beyond it.

A hand grabs my shoulder, whips me around, and then I’m face-to-face with some random teenager who, as bad luck would have it, I’m going to kill.

“Who the fuck are you?” he screams in my face.

His body stiffens, welcoming the bullet. Not my bullet. I don’t even have the gun out of the holster. The kill belongs to Ringer, Vosch’s inhuman human firing from half a football field away. The kid’s dead before he hits the ground. I take off again.

I turn back once, at the base of the control tower. Searchlights crisscrossing the field, the chopper burning, squads running willy-nilly, Humvees screeching in every direction. Chaos is what Ringer promised and chaos is what we got.

I sling the rifle into my hands and sprint toward the white buildings, heading for the command center located in the middle of the complex. There I’ll find (I hope) the key that will open the lock that bars the door that leads to the room that will keep my baby brother safe.

As I fall in behind a cluster of recruits crowding the door into the first building, Ringer sets off the second bomb. Somebody yells
Jesus Christ!
and the logjam breaks. We all tumble inside like clowns bursting from the car at the circus.

There’s a part of me that hopes I find him first. Not Evan. Ringer’s creator. I’ve invested a lot of time imagining what I’d do to him—how I’d pay him back for the blood of the seven billion. Most of it’s too gross to talk about.

I’m moving through the lobby of the main administration building. Huge banners hang from the ceiling:
WE ARE HUMANITY
and
WE
ARE ONE
. A sign that says
UNITY
and another that screams
COURAG
E
. The largest spans the length of an entire wall,
VINCIT QUI PATITUR
. I run beneath it.

A red light spins in the corridor on the other side of the lobby. I jump when a voice booms from the ceiling: “GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. REPEAT: GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO REPORT TO YOUR DESIGNATED SECURITY AREA. REPEAT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO REPORT . . .”

Through the door at the end of the hall. Up the stairs straight ahead to the next door. Which is locked. With a keypad. I press my back against the wall beside the pad and wait. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three . . . While I’m counting, the third bomb detonates outside, a muffled
pop!
like someone coughing in another room. Then I hear the
pop-pop, pop-pop-pop
of small-arms fire. At one thousand eight, the door bursts open and a squad lumbers through. Right past me, not even a backward glance. Now, that’s too easy; I’m using up my quota of good luck way too soon.

I duck through the doorway and jog down another corridor, which is disconcertingly identical to the first corridor. Same spinning red light, same high-pitched
UUUH-UHHH
of the siren, same annoying Siri-on-dope voice, “GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. YOU HAVE THREE MINUTES TO REPORT TO YOUR DESIGNATED SECURITY AREA . . .” It’s like a dream from which you can’t wake up. At the end of this hall is an identical door with an identical keypad. The only difference is the window right beside this door.

I open up with the M16 at full stride. The glass explodes and I dive through the blasted-out opening without missing a step. And
Defiance
shall be my name! Back outside in the fresh, clean Canadian air, running across the narrow strip of land that separates the buildings. A voice springs from the dark, hollering, “
Halt!
” I fire in the voice’s general direction. I don’t even look. Then, off to my left, in the vicinity of the newly repaired armory, the fourth bomb detonates. A chopper roars right over my head, sweeping its lights back and forth, and I slam into the side of the building and press my body flat against the steel-reinforced concrete.

The chopper moves off and I move on, around the side of the building to the sliver of a path that cuts down its length, wall on one side, a ten-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire on the other. There should be a padlocked gate at the far end.

So the lock—I shoot it off,
I said to Ringer back in the caves.

That only works in the movies, Sullivan.

Yeah, you’re right: It’s good this isn’t a movie, or the hectoring, self-important, annoying secondary character would definitely be dead by now.

“THIS IS NOT A DRILL. GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES TO REPORT . . .”

All right already, I get it. General Order Four is in effect.
What the hell is General Order Four? Ringer never mentioned anything about general orders, four or otherwise. It must mean a lockdown of the base, all hands to battle stations, that kind of thing. That’s what I decide. Anyway, what
they
do doesn’t change what I have to do.

I jam a grenade into the diamond-shaped hole in the chain link, right above the lock, pull the pin, then hustle back the way I came, far enough not to get killed by the shrapnel, but not far enough to escape being peppered by a thousand tiny needles. If I hadn’t turned away at the last second, my face would have been
shredded. The largest piece hits right in the middle of my back, wasp-sting sharp times ten. My left hand got a taste, too. I look down and see a wet glove of blood glistening in the starlight.

The grenade didn’t just take out the lock; it blew the entire gate from its hinges. It’s halfway across the courtyard, right next to the statue of some war hero from the days when wars had heroes. You know, the good ol’ days when we slaughtered each other for all the
right
reasons.

I trot toward the building on the other side of the courtyard. There are three doors evenly spaced along the wall facing me, and out of one, two, or all of them I can expect a welcoming committee, according to Ringer. I’m not disappointed. The middle door flies open right before my second grenade flies toward it and, predictively, somebody yells, “
Grenade!
” They slam the door closed—
with the grenade inside.

The blast hurls the entire door toward my head. I dive out of the way.
This is where it gets hard,
Ringer said.
There’s gonna be blood.

How much blood?

How much can you take?

What are you, my sensei or something? How many 5th Wavers am I going to have to kill?

As it turns out, at least three. I count that many semiautomatic rifles lying on the other side of the missing door, but it’s an educated guess. Hard to tell when the troops have been blown to pieces. I slip through the mess and sprint down the hall, leaving bloody boot prints in my wake.

Red light. Siren. Voice. “GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO REPORT . . .” Somewhere on the base, the next bomb goes off, meaning two things:
Ringer’s still at large, and she’s got one bomb left. I’m a building away from the command center, beneath which is the bunker that houses the Wonderland room. It’s also, as Ringer pointed out numerous times, a dead end. If we get trapped or cornered, there won’t be any
vinciting
to our
patituring.

Little Red Ridinghood Lost Her Way.
The clever mnemonic device I came up with to navigate this next-to-last building. I hang a left at the first juncture, then a right, then another right, then a left.
Her
stands for
high,
meaning I hit the first stairwell after
Lost.
Of course, I could have just used the word
high,
but that would ruin the mnemonics.
Little Red Ridinghood’s Lost Highway?
Come on.

I don’t see anyone, don’t hear anyone except the eerie General Order Four voice echoing down the empty halls—“YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS”—and now I’m starting to get a very bad feeling about this General Order Four business, and I’m cursing Ringer, because obviously General Order Four must be an important piece of intel she either should have known about or chose not to mention for reasons only clear to her.

As I race up the stairs, the final countdown begins: “TEN SECONDS . . . NINE . . . EIGHT . . . SEVEN . . . SIX . . .”

Landing. One more flight. Then straight ahead to the walkway that connects this building with the command center.
Almost there, Cassie. You’ve got this.

“THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE.”

I shove open the door.

Total darkness smashes down.

82

NO LIGHT. NO SIREN
. No voice so soothing, it’s unnerving. Total dark, utter silence. My first thought is that Ringer must have cut the power. My next thought is how odd that would be, since we never discussed cutting the power. My third thought? Same as the one on the chopper: Ringer’s a plant, a double agent, working with Vosch to accomplish his nefarious scheme for total world domination. Probably a power-sharing arrangement:
Very well, it’s decided. You will control all territory west of the Mississippi . . .

I dig into my pockets for the penlight. I know I grabbed one. I specifically remember checking the batteries before tucking it away. In my panic—okay, not
panic, haste,
I am in haste—I pull out a power bar and thumb the switch that is not there.
Damn you and your damn bars, Ben Parish!
I hurl the bar into the void.

I’m not disoriented. I know where I am. Straight ahead is the walkway to the command center. I can hunt for the light as I go. No biggie. Once I’m in the center, there’re a couple of heavily manned checkpoints to pass, several steel doors with electronic locks to breach, four flights of stairs, a mile-long hallway terminating at a green door, which I won’t be able to tell is green
unless I can find my fucking penlight.

I shuffle forward, one hand sweeping the air in front of me, the other patting, digging, fumbling, and clawing at my fatigues. Too many pockets. Too many damn
pockets.
My breath a tornado ripping across the prairie. My heart a freight train rumbling down
the tracks. Should I stop and empty all my pockets? Wouldn’t I end up saving time? I keep moving, part of me marveling at the fact that something like losing a penlight could throw me.

Chill, Cassie. In situations like this, darkness is your friend.

Unless they’ve got IR, which of course they do. They’ve blinded me; they’re sure as hell not blind.

I keep moving. In haste. Not panic.

Halfway across the walkway now. I know I’m halfway across because I find the light and click on the damned elusive thing. The beam hits the frosted glass doors straight ahead, a blurry blob of shininess. I draw my sidearm. On the other side of those doors is the first checkpoint. I know this for a fact—or a Ringer-supplied fact. It’s also our rendezvous spot, basically because this is as far as I was going to get as a non-enhanced, ordinary mortal.

The command center is the most heavily fortified building on base, manned by elite troops and protected by state-of-the-art surveillance technology. After she set off her last diversionary IED, Ringer was hitting the center from the opposite end (
penetrating
was the word she used, which made me feel all icky) and meeting me here, after Ringer did what Ringer does best: kill people.

Are you killing Vosch before meeting me?
I asked.

If I find him first.

Well, don’t go out of your way. The quicker we can get to Wonderland . . .

And she gave me a look like,
Don’t tell me.
So I responded with a look that said,
I’m telling you.

Nothing to do now but wait. I sidestep to the wall. Switch out the handgun for the rifle. Try not to worry about where she is,
if
she is, and what’s taking her so long. Also, I need to pee.

So when I hear you set off the fifth bomb . . .

Fourth. I’m holding the fifth in reserve.

Reserve for what?

I’m going to stuff it in his mouth and light it.

She said it with no emotion. No hate or satisfaction or anticipation or anything. Sure, she says most things unemotionally, but this was one of those things where you expect a little passion to permeate.

You must really hate him.

Hate isn’t the answer.

I didn’t ask a question.

It isn’t hate and it isn’t rage, Sullivan.

Okay, then. What is the answer?
Feeling like I’ve been manipulated into asking the question.

She turned away.

I wait beside the frosted glass doors. The minutes crawl. Dear God, how long could it take a superhuman WMD to overcome a few guards and foil a high-tech security system? After the furious rush to reach this spot, nothing. I’d be bored out of my mind if I wasn’t already scared out of it.
Where the hell is Ringer?

Click.
I turn off the light to save the batteries. The unfortunate by-product of my thriftiness is that darkness returns.
Click.
On.
Click.
Off.
Click, click, click, click.

Hissssss.
I hear the sound before I feel the water.

It’s raining.