“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 . . .