Damn, I’m cold. My teeth are chattering. I can’t keep my thoughts still. What else? Is there anything else? What have I left undone? There isn’t much—I am more than the sum of my own experience now. I’ve got ten thousand times my fair share.
Because here’s the thing: Seeing yourself through another’s eyes shifts your center of gravity. It doesn’t change the way you look at yourself. It changes the way you look at the world. Not the you. The everything-but-you.
I don’t hate you anymore, I tell the mothership. And I’m not afraid of you anymore. I don’t hate anything. I’m not afraid of anything.
At the center, right in the middle of my view, a black hole grows, reminding me of a mouth slowly opening. I’m headed right for it.
I slip the capsule between my lips.
No, the answer is not hate.
The black hole expands. I’m falling into a lightless pit, a void, t
he universe before the universe was the universe.
And the answer is not fear.
Somewhere in the mothership’s belly, thousands of bombs twenty times the size of the one in my mouth are rolling down chutes into launching bays. I hope they’re still in there. I hope they haven’t started to fall. I hope I’m in time.
The pod crosses the threshold into the mothership and jerks to a stop. The window’s frosted over, but there’s light outside; it glimmers in the ice. The hatch behind me hisses. I must wait until it opens. Then I must rise from this chair. Then I must turn and face what waits for me out there.
We’re here, and then we’re gone, he said to me, and it’s not about the time we’re here.
There’s no unraveling us, no place where I end and he begins.
There’s no unraveling any of it. I am entwined with everything, from mayflies to the farthest star. I have no boundaries, I am limitless, and I open to creation like a flower to the rain.
I’m not cold anymore. The arms of the seven billion enfold me.
I rise.
Now I lay me down to sleep . . .
I draw in deep my final breath.
When in the morning light I wake . . .
I bite down hard. The seal breaks.
Teach me the path of love to take.
I step into the out there, and breathe.
ZOMBIE
I’VE REACHED THE GRAVEL PATH that borders the security fence when the sun breaks the horizon—no, not the sun, it can’t be, unless the sun’s decided to rise in the north and has swapped its gold for green. I whip to my right and see the stars winking out one by one, obliterated by a massive burst of light on the edge of the northern horizon, an explosion in the upper atmosphere that washes over the landscape in a flood of blinding green.
My first thought is for the kids. I don’t know what the hell is happening and I haven’t connected the projectile hurtling from the base to the enormous northern flare. It doesn’t occur to me that for the first time in a very long time, something might have actually gone our way. Honestly, when I saw the light, I thought the bombardment had begun and I was witnessing the first salvo in the destruction of every city on Earth. The idea that the mothership could actually be gone didn’t even cross my radar. How could it be gone? That ship’s unassailable as the moon.
I hesitate, trying to decide whether to keep going or turn back. But the green light fades, the sky glows rosy again, and no terrified children burst from the woods seeking rescue. I decide to maintain my heading. I’ve got faith in Nugget. He’ll know to stay put till I return.
Ten minutes inside the base and I find the first of many bodies. The place is a tomb. I walk through fields of the dead. They lie in piles, groups of six to ten, their bodies contorted into portraits of silent agony. I stop to examine every gruesome stack, looking for two familiar faces; I’m not going to rush, though a voice screams in my head with each passing minute to hurry, hurry. And in the back of my mind I’m remembering what happened at Camp Haven—how Vosch was willing to sacrifice the village in order to save it.
This might not be Ringer’s doing—it may be the result of Vosch exercising the final option.
It takes me hours to reach the last level, the bottom of this death pit.
She barely lifts her head when I open the stairwell door. I may have shouted her name; I don’t remember.