“He loved you. Razor . . . Alex. He couldn’t admit it to anyone. He couldn’t even admit it to himself. He knew before he did it that he would die for you.”
“Walker,” I say hoarsely. “What about Walker?”
She ignores me or she doesn’t hear the question. She is here and she is not. She is Cassie Sullivan and she is everyone else.
She has become the sum of us.
“Rainbow fingers,” she gasps, and I stop breathing. She’s seeing my father’s hand holding mine. She remembers the way that felt, the way it made me feel, my father’s hand in mine.
“We’re out of time,” I say, to pull her out of my memories. “Cassie, listen to me. Is Walker there?”
She nods. She starts to cry again. “He was telling the truth. There was music. And the music was beautiful . . . I see it, Marika. His planet. The ship. What he looked like . . . oh my God, that’s disgusting.” She shakes her head to clear the image. “Marika, he was telling the truth. It’s real . . . it’s real . . .”
“No, Cassie. Listen to me. Those memo
ries aren’t real.”
She screams. She thrashes against the restraints. Thank God I haven’t untied her yet or she might tear out her own eyes.
I don’t have a choice now. I’ll have to risk it.
I grab her shoulders and force her back into the chair. A cacophonous blast of emotions explodes in my mind and for a second I’m afraid I’ll black out. How does she endure it? How can one mind bear the weight of ten thousand others? It defies comprehension. It’s like trying to define God.
Inside Cassie Sullivan is a horror so profound, there are no words. The people downloaded into Wonderland lost every person who mattered to them, and most of those downloaded people were children. Their pain is hers now. Their confusion and sorrow, their anger and hopelessness and fear. It’s too much. I can’t stay within her. I stumble backward until I smack against the counter.
“I know where he is,” she says, catching her breath. “Or at least where he might be, if they brought him back to the same place. Untie me, Marika.”
I pick up the rifle leaning against the wall.
“Marika.”
I walk to the door.
“Marika.”
“I’ll be back,” I manage to choke out.
She screams my name again and now I don’t have a choice. If he hasn’t heard us before, he’s certain to have heard her now.
Because I have heard him.
Someone is descending the stairs at the other end of the mile-long corridor. I’m not sure who it is, but I know what it is.
And I know why it’s coming.
“You’ll be safe here,” I lie. The hopeful kind of lie you tell children. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I open the door and stagger from light into darkness.
94
EVEN WITH MY ENHANCED SPEED, I won’t be able to reach the stairway door before he does. But with a little luck, I can get within the firing range of an M16.
I’m certain it’s Vosch. Who else could it be? He knows I’m here. He knows why I’m here. Creator to his creation, creature to her creator, that’s our bond. Only one way for me to break it. Only one way to be free.
I explode down the hallway, a human missile. I hear him coming. He must hear me coming.
The range of an M16 is 550 meters, one-third of a mile. The hub calculates my speed and the distance to the stairwell. Not going to happen. I ignore the math and keep running. Nine hundred meters—eight—seven. The processor embedded in my cerebral cortex goes berserk, running the numbers over and over, coming up short, and sending me messages of escalating urgency. Run back. Find cover. No time. No time, no time, notimenotimenotimenotime.