The 5th Wave

the mirror right in the nose.

I yank up the chair again, breathing deep. I forgot one thing I learned in karate: your eich! The war cry. Laugh at it all you want; it does concentrate your power.

The third and final blow shatters the glass. My momentum slams me into the waist-high counter, and my feet come off the floor as the chair tumbles into the adjoining room. I can see another dentist chair, a bank of processors, wires running across the floor, and another door. Please, God, don’t let it be locked.

I pick up Bear and climb through the hole. I imagine Vosch returning and the look on his face when he sees the busted mirror. The door on the other side isn’t locked. It opens into another white cinder-block corridor lined with unmarked doors. Ah, the possibilities. But I don’t step into that corridor. I hover in the doorway. Before me, the unmarked path. Behind me, the one I’ve marked: They’ll see the hole. They’ll know which direction I’ve taken. How long can I stay ahead of them? My mouth has filled with blood again, and I force myself to swallow it. Can’t make it too easy for them to track me.

Too easy: I forgot to jam the chair under the door handle in the first room. It won’t stop them from getting in, but it would drop some precious seconds into my piggy bank.

If something goes wrong, don’t overthink, Cassie. You have good instincts; trust them. Thinking through every step is fine if you’re playing chess, but this isn’t chess.

I run back through the killing room and dive through the hole. I misjudge the width of the counter and flip off the edge, somersaulting onto my back, smacking my head hard against the floor. I lie there for a fuzzy second, bright red stars burning in my vision. I’m looking at the ceiling and the metal ductwork running beneath it. I saw the same setup in the corridors: the bomb shelter’s ventilation system.

And I think, Cassie, that’s the bomb shelter’s freaking ventilation system.

77

SCUTTLING FORWARD on my stomach, worrying that I’m too heavy for the supports and that at any second the entire section of pipe will collapse, I scoot along the shaft, pausing at each juncture to listen. Listen for what, I’m not really sure. The crying of frightened children? The laughter of happy children? The air in the shaft is cold, brought in from the outside and funneled underground, sort of like me.

The air belongs here; I don’t. What did Evan say?

Your best bet is the barracks that ring the parade grounds.

That’s it, Evan. That’s the new plan. I’ll find the nearest air shaft and climb up to the surface. I won’t know where I am or how far I am from the parade grounds, and of course the entire base is going to be in full lockdown, crawling with Silencers and their brainwashed child-soldiers looking for the girl in the white jumpsuit. And don’t forget the teddy bear. Talk about a dead giveaway! Why did I insist on bringing this damn bear? Sam would understand if I left Bear behind. My promise wasn’t to bring Bear to him. My promise was to bring me to him.

What is the deal with this bear?

Every few feet a choice: turn right, turn left, or keep going straight? And every few feet a pause to listen and to clear the blood from my mouth. Not worried about my blood dripping in here: It’s the bread crumbs that mark my way back. My tongue is swelling, though, and throbs horribly with each beat of my heart, the human clock ticking down, measuring out the minutes I have left before they find me, take me to Vosch, and he finishes me the way he finished my father.

Something brown and small is scurrying toward me, very fast, like he’s on an important errand. A roach. I’ve encountered cobwebs and loads of dust and some mysterious slimy substance that might be toxic mold, but this is the first truly gross thing I’ve seen. Give me a spider or a snake over a cockroach any day. And now he’s heading right toward my face. With very vivid mental images of the thing crawling inside my jumpsuit, I use the only thing available to squash it. My bare hand. Yuck.

I keep moving. There’s a glow up ahead, sort of greenish gray; in my head I call it mothership green. I inch toward the grate from which the glow emanates. Peek through the slats into the room below—only calling it a room doesn’t do it justice. It’s huge, easily the size of a football stadium, shaped like a bowl, with rows and rows of computer stations at the bottom, manned by over a hundred people—only to call them people is doing real people an injustice. They’re them, Vosch’s inhuman humans, and I have no clue what they’re up to, but I’m thinking this must be it, the heart of the operation, ground zero of the “cleansing.” A massive screen takes up an entire wall, projecting a map of the Earth that’s dotted with bright green spots—the source of the sickly green light. Cities, I’m thinking, and then I realize the green dots must represent pockets of survivors.

Vosch doesn’t need to hunt us down. Vosch knows exactly where we are.

I wiggle on, forcing myself to go slowly until the green glow is as small as the dots on the map in the control room. Four junctures down I hear voices. Men’s voices. And the clang of metal on metal, the squeak of rubber soles on hard concrete.

Keep moving, Cassie. No more stopping. Sammy’s not down there and Sammy is the objective.

Then one of the guys says, “How many did he say?”

And the other one goes, “At least two. The girl and whoever took out Walters and Pierce and Jackson.”

Whoever took out Walters, Pierce, and Jackson?

Evan. It has to be.

What the…? For a whole minute or two, I’m really furious at him. Our only hope was in my going alone, sliding past their defenses unnoticed and snatching Sam before they realized what was going on. Of course, it hadn’t quite worked out that way, but Evan had no way of knowing that.

Still. The fact that Evan had ignored our carefully thought-out plan and infiltrated the base also means that Evan is here.

And Evan does what he has the heart to do.

I edge closer to their voices, passing right over their heads until I reach the grating. I peer through the metal slats and see two Silencer soldiers loading eye-shaped globes into a large handcart. I recognize what they are right away. I’ve seen one before.

The Eye will take care of her.

I watch them until the cart is loaded and they wheel it slowly out of sight.

A point will come when the cover isn’t sustainable. When that happens, they’ll shut down the base—or the part of the base that’s expendable.

Oh boy. Vosch is going all Ashpit on Camp Haven.

And the minute that realization hits me, the siren goes off.

X: A THOUSAND WAYS

78

TWO HOURS.

The minute Vosch leaves, a clock inside my head begins to tick. No, not a clock. More like a timer ticking down to Armageddon. I’m going to need every second, so where is the orderly? Right when I’m about to pull out the drip myself, he shows up. A tall, skinny kid named Kistner; we met the last time I was laid up. He has a nervous habit of picking at the front of his scrubs, like the material irritates his skin.

“Did he tell you?” Kistner asks, keeping his voice down as he leans over the bed. “We’ve gone Code