We step into the room. Sullivan closes the door behind us. Her fingertips brush over the dead keypad for a second before dropping to her side. After everything, her capacity to hope has not died.
“What now?” she asks after I’ve pressed several buttons on the console with no result.
I don’t know, Sullivan. You’re the one who demanded we come here when you knew they killed the power.
“There’s no backup?” she asks. “You’d think it’d have batteries or something, in case they accidentally lost power.”
Then she says, more to fill the silence than anything else, “I’ll stay here. You go find the power station or whatever and get the lights back on.”
“Sullivan. I’m thinking.”
“You’re thinking.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what you’re doing. Thinking.”
“It’s what I do best.”
“And all this time I thought killing people was what you did best.”
“Well, if I had to pick two things to be really good at . . .”
“Don’t joke,” she says.
“I never do.”
“See? That’s fundamental. That’s a critical flaw.”
“So is talking too much.”
“You’re right. I should kill more and talk less.”
I’m running my hands along the tabletop. Nothing. I drop to the floor and crawl beneath the counter. A tangle of wires, couplings, extension cords. I stand up. On the wall, flat-screen monitors—no cords, probably wirelessly connected to the system. Nothing else to Wonderland except the keyboard, but there has to be something else. Where is the data stored? Where’s the processor? Of course, this is alien technology. Vosch could be carrying the processor in his pocket. It could be on a chip the size of a single grain of sand embedded in his brain.
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.