The 5th Wave

Walker’s under-the-Buick moment, when you can’t run, can’t hide, and your only option is to turn and face?

“Is he alive?” I ask. I lean forward; the rough tree bark is cutting into my spine.

He hesitates for a half breath, then: “He probably is.”

“Why did they…why did you bring him there?”

“To prepare him.”

“To prepare him for what?”

Waits a full breath this time. Then: “The 5th Wave.”

I close my eyes. For the first time, looking at that beautiful face is too much to endure. God, I’m tired. So frigging tired, I could sleep for a thousand years. If I slept for a thousand years, maybe I’d wake up and the Others would be gone and there’d be happy children frolicking in these woods. I am Other and I am you. What the hell does that mean? I’m too tired to chase the thought.

I open my eyes and force myself to look at him. “You can get us in.”

He’s shaking his head.

“Why not?” I ask. “You’re one of them. You can say you captured me.”

“Wright-Patterson isn’t a prison camp, Cassie.”

“Then what is it?”

“For you?” Leaning toward me; his breath warms my face. “A death trap. You won’t last five seconds. Why do you think I’ve been trying everything I can think of to keep you from going there?”

“Everything? Really? How about telling me the truth? How about something like, ‘Hey, Cass, about this rescue thingy of yours. I’m an alien like the guys who took Sam, so I know what you’re doing is absolutely hopeless’?”

“Would it have made a difference if I had?”

“That isn’t the point.”

“No, the point is your brother is being held at the most important base we—I mean, the Others—have established since the purge began—”

“Since the what? What did you call it? The purge?”

“Or the cleansing.” He can’t meet my eyes. “Sometimes it’s called that.”

“Oh, that’s what you’re doing? Cleaning up the human mess?”

“That’s not my word for it, and purging or cleansing or whatever you want to call it wasn’t my decision,” he protests. “If it makes you feel any better, I never thought we should—”

“I don’t want to feel better! The hatred I’m feeling at this moment is all I need, Evan. All I need.” Okay, that was honest, but don’t go too far. He’s the guy with the keys. Keep him talking. “Never thought you should do what?”

He takes a long drink from the water flask, offers it to me. I shake my head. “Wright-Patterson isn’t just any base—it’s the base,” he says, weighing each word carefully. “And Vosch isn’t just any commander—he’s the commander, the leader of all field operations and the architect of the cleans—the one who designed the attacks.”

“Vosch murdered seven billion people.” The number sounds weirdly hollow in my ears. After the Arrival, one of Dad’s favorite themes was how advanced the Others must be, how high they must have climbed on the evolutionary ladder to reach the stage of intergalactic travel. And this is their solution to the human “problem”?

“There were some of us who didn’t think annihilation was the answer,” Evan says. “I was one of them, Cassie. My side lost the argument.”

“No, Evan, that would be my side that lost.”

It’s more than I can take. I stand up, expecting him to stand, too, but he stays where he is, looking up at me.

“He doesn’t see you as some of us do…as I do,” he says. “To him, you’re a disease that will kill its host unless it’s wiped out.”

“I’m a disease. That’s what I am to you.”

I can’t look at him anymore. If I look at Evan Walker for one more second, I’m going to be sick.

Behind me, his voice is soft, level, almost sad. “Cassie, you’re up against something that is way beyond your capacity to fight. Wright-Patterson isn’t just another cleansing camp. The complex underneath it is the central coordinating hub for every drone in this hemisphere. It’s Vosch’s eyes, Cassie; it’s how he sees you. Breaking in to rescue Sammy isn’t just risky—it’s suicidal. For both of us.”

“Both of us?” I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He hasn’t moved.

“I can’t pretend to take you prisoner. My assignment isn’t to capture people—it’s to kill them. If I try to walk in with you as my prisoner, they’ll kill you. And then they’ll kill me for not killing you. And I can’t sneak you in. The base is patrolled by drones, protected by a twenty-foot-high electric fence, watchtowers, infrared cameras, motion detectors…and a hundred people just like me, and you know what I can do.”

“Then I sneak in without you.”

He nods. “It’s the only possible way—but just because something is possible doesn’t mean it isn’t suicidal. Everyone they bring in—I mean the people they don’t kill right away—is put through a screening program that maps their entire psyche, including their memories. They’ll know who you are and why you’re there…and then they’ll kill you.”

“There’s got to be a scenario that doesn’t end with them killing me,” I insist.

“There is,” he says. “The scenario where we find a safe spot to hide and wait for Sammy to come to us.”

My mouth drops open, and I think, Huh? Then I say it: “Huh?”

“It might take a couple of years. How old is he, five? The youngest allowed is seven.”

“The youngest allowed to do what?”

He looks away. “You saw.”

The little kid whose throat he cut at Camp Ashpit, wearing fatigues, toting a rifle almost as big as he was. Now I do want a drink. I walk over to him, and he gets very still while I bend over and pick up the flask. After four big swallows, my mouth is still dry.

“Sam is the 5th Wave,” I say. The words taste bad. I take another long drink.

Evan nods. “If he passed his screening, he’s alive and being…” He searches for the word. “Processed.”

“Brainwashed, you mean.”

“More like indoctrinated. In the idea that the aliens have been using human bodies, and we—I mean humans—have figured out a way to detect them. And if you can detect them, you can—”

“That isn’t fiction,” I interrupt. “You are using human bodies.”

He shakes his head. “Not the way Sammy thinks we are.”

“What does that mean? Either you are or you aren’t.”

“Sammy thinks we look like some kind of infestation attached to human brains, but—”

“Funny, that’s exactly the way I picture you, Evan. An infestation.” I can’t help myself.

His hand comes up. When I don’t slap it away or take off running into the woods, he slowly wraps his fingers around my wrist and gently pulls me to the ground beside him. I’m sweating slightly, though it’s bitingly cold. What now?

“There was a boy, a real human boy, named Evan Walker,” he says, looking deeply into my eyes. “Just like any kid, with a mom and a dad and brothers and sisters, completely human. Before he was born, I was inserted into him while his mother slept. While we both slept. For thirteen years I slept inside Evan Walker, while he learned to sit up, to eat solid food, to walk and talk and run and ride a bike, I was there, waiting to wake up. Like thousands of Others in thousands of other Evan Walkers around the world. Some of us were already awake, setting up our lives to be where we needed to be when the time came.”

I’m nodding, but why am I nodding? He came to a human body? What the hell does that mean?

“The 4th Wave,” he says, trying to be helpful. “Silencers. It’s a good name for us. We were silent, hiding inside human bodies, hiding inside human lives. We didn’t have to pretend to be you. We were you. Human and Other. Evan didn’t die when I awakened. He was…absorbed.”

Ever the noticer, Evan notices I’m totally creeped out by this. He reaches out to touch me and flinches when I pull away.