He doesn’t scold about having just told me why. He knows I’m not asking about his motivation.
“Because the universe has no limits, but life does. Life is rare, Marika, and therefore precious; it must be preserved. If they may be said to have anything resembling human faith, it is that. All life is worthy of existence. The Earth is not the first planet they have saved.”
He cups my cheek in his hand. “I don’t want to lose you,” he says. “Virtues have become vices, and you’ve said it yourself: This particular vice follows no rules, even its own. I have committed a mortal sin, Marika, and only you can absolve me.”
He slips his hand beneath my head and lifts it gently from the floor. He kneels beside me, creator, father, cradling my head in his hands.
“We found it, Marika. The anomaly in Walker’s programming. The flaw in the system is that there isn’t one.
“Do you understand? It’s important that you understand. The singularity beyond space and time, the undefinable constant that transcends all understanding—they had no answer for it, so they gave none. How could they? How could love be contained in any algorithm?”
His eyes still sparkle, though now with tears. “Come with me, Marika. Let us go together, to a place where there is no more pain, no more sorrow. All of this will be gone in an instant.” He waves his hand to indicate the base, the planet, the past. “They’ll take away any memory that troubles you. You will be immortal, forever young, forever free. They will give me that. Grant me the grace to give you that.”
I whisper, “Too late.”
“No! This broken body, it’s nothing. Worthless. It’s not too late.”
“It is for you,” I tell him.
Behind him, Cassie Sullivan takes the cue. She presses the gun to the back of my creator’s head and pulls the trigger.
97
THE GUN FALLS from her hand. She sways on her feet, staring down at Vosch’s body and the semicircle of blood that slowly expands beneath his head, creating an obscene mockery of a halo. She’s found herself in a moment she’s dreamed of for a very long time, but she doesn’t feel what she thought she would feel. It isn’t the moment of triumph and revenge she thought it would be. What she feels, I can’t tell; her face is expressionless, her gaze turned inward.
“Evan’s gone,” she says in a dead voice.
“I know,” I tell her. “He’s the one who did this to me.”
Her eyes slide from Vosch to me. “Did what?”
“Broke my back. I can’t move my legs, Cassie.”
She shakes her head. Evan. Vosch. Me. Too much to process.
“What happened?” I ask.
She glances down the hallway. “The electrical room. I knew exactly where it was. And the code to the door, I knew that, too.” She turns back to me. “I know practically everything about this base.”
Her eyes are dry but she’s about to break; I can hear it in her voice, filled with sick wonder. “I killed him, Ringer. I killed Evan Walker.”
“No, Cassie. Whatever attacked me wasn’t human. I think Vosch erased his memory—his human memory and—”
“I know that,” she snaps. “It’s the last thing he heard before they took it from him: ‘Erase the human.’” She catches her breath. His experiences are hers now. She shares the horror of that moment, the last moment of Evan Walker’s life.
“And you’re sure he’s dead?” I ask.
She waves her hand helplessly in the air. “Pretty damn sure.” She frowns. “You left me tied to that fucking chair.”
“I thought I had time . . .”
“Well, you didn’t.”
The overhead speakers pop. “GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW RESCINDED. ALL ACTIVE-DUTY PERSONNEL TO REPORT IMMEDIATELY TO BATTLE STATIONS . . .”
I can hear the squads exiting their bunkers around the base. Any moment the thunder of boots and the glint of steel and the rain of bullets. Cassie cocks her head as if she, too, can hear them with her unenhanced ears. But she has been enhanced in another, more profound way, a way I can only pretend to understand.
“I have to go,” she says. She isn’t looking at me. It’s like she isn’t even speaking to me. I can only watch as she yanks the knife from the sheath strapped to my thigh, steps over to Vosch, flattens his hand against the floor, and, with two hard whacks, chops off his right thumb.
She drops the bloody digit into the pocket of her fatigues. “It wouldn’t be right to leave you here, Marika.”
She slides her hands beneath my shoulders and drags me to the nearest door.
“No, forget about me, Cassie. I’m done.”
“Oh, be quiet,” she mutters. She punches the code into the keypad and pulls me into the room. “Am I hurting you?”
“No. Nothing hurts.”
She props me up against the far wall facing the door and presses the gun into my hand. I shake my head. Hiding in this room, having the gun, it only delays the inevitable.
There is another way, though: I carry it in my breast pocket.