The most puzzling thing is the risk. Wonderland is a vital piece of machinery, an important component in the winnowing of the 5th Wave, key to picking out the bad apples, including Evan Walker, the most rotten apple in the barrel.
The room is dry. No sprinklers came on in here. So where’s the power? The power might be out in every other part of the complex, but it should be on in this room. The risk is too great.
“Ringer?” Being unable to see me has unnerved her. I see her hand reaching out in my direction. “What are you thinking about now?”
“They can’t risk losing power to Wonderland.”
“Which is why I asked about backup batteries or—”
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I hope Sullivan is right. I hope I can get used to feeling stupid. I step around her and hit the light switch.
Wonderland comes to life.
91
CASSIE SITS. The white chair whines. She rotates back to face the white ceiling. I fastened her in.
“I’ve never done this,” she confesses. “Almost, back at Camp Haven.”
“What happened?”
“I strangled Dr. Pam with one of these straps.”
“Good for you,” I say sincerely. “I’m impressed.”
I step over to the keyboard. I’m certain I’ll be asked for a password. I’m not. I touch a random key and the launch page pops up on the central monitor.
“What’s going on?” she asks. She can’t see anything from the chair except the white ceiling.
Data bank. “Found it.” I click the button.
“Now what?” she demands.
Everything is in code. Thousands of numerical combinations, which I guess represent the individuals whose memories have been captured by the program. Impossible to know which sequence is Walker’s. We could try the first one, and if that isn’t him, work our way down the list, but— “Ringer, you’re not talking.”
“I’m thinking.”
She sighs loudly. She wants to say something like I thought you said you were good at that, but she doesn’t.
“You can’t figure out which one is Evan’s,” she says finally.
“We’ve gone over this,” I remind her. “Even if I could locate his data, you don’t know that his memories will lead you to him. After he was downloaded, Vosch probably—”
She lifts her head as far as she can from the chair and snaps, “He’s in there somewhere. Give me all of them.”
At first I’m sure I didn’t hear her correctly. “Sullivan, there are thousands of them.”
“I don’t care. I’ll go through every goddamned one till I find him.”
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.”
“Oh, what the hell do you know, huh? How much do you really know, Ringer, and how much of what you ‘know’ is shit that Vosch wants you to know? The truth is you don’t know shit. I don’t know shit. Nobody knows shit.”
Her head flops back. Her hands clutch the straps. Maybe she’s thinking of strangling me with one.
“You said Vosch downloaded them all,” she goes on. “And that’s how he knew the way to manipulate you. He carries all those memories inside him, so it must be safe. Perfectly safe.”
I’m ready to execute the command, if for nothing else but to shut her up.
“Why are you afraid?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Why aren’t you?”
I hit the execute button, sending tens of millions of unfiltered memories into Cassie Sullivan’s brain.
92
HER BODY JERKS against the restraints. The fabric starts to tear; it may rip apart. Then she stiffens like someone suffering a seizure. Her eyes roll back in her head. Her jaw clenches. One of her fingernails snaps off and flies across the room.
On the monitors the sequences race by in a blur, too fast even for my enhanced vision to follow. How much data is contained in the minds of ten thousand people? What’s happening to Sullivan is like trying to stuff the solar system into a walnut. It will kill her. Her mind will blow apart like the singularity at the moment of creation.
I’ve no doubt Vosch used Wonderland to download individuals’ experiences—I’m certain he downloaded mine—I also have little doubt those experiences were purged somehow after they served their purpose. No single human being can contain the sum of all that human experience. At the least, it would shatter your personality. How can you hold on to the core of your reality in the midst of so many alternatives?
Sullivan moans. Her cries are soft, coming from deep in her gut. She’s weak. You knew better. You should have taken her place. The technology they’ve infected you with could handle this; the 12th System would have protected you. Why did you let her do it?
But I know the answer to that question. The 12th System can only enhance the human body—it is helpless against fear. It cannot give me the one thing that Cassie Sullivan has in abundance.