“Rats do not know hope. Or faith. Or love. You were right about those things, Private Ringer. They will not deliver humanity through the storm. You were wrong, however, about rage. Rage isn’t the answer, either.”
“What’s the answer?” I don’t want to ask, don’t want to give him the satisfaction, but I can’t help it.
“You’re close to it,” he says. “I think you might be surprised how close you are.”
“Close to what?” My voice sounds as small as a rat’s.
He shakes his head, impatient again. “Play.”
“It’s pointless.”
“A world in which chess does not matter is not a world in which I wish to live.”
“Stop doing that. Stop mocking my father.”
“Your father was a good man in thrall to a terrible disease. You shouldn’t judge him harshly. Nor yourself for abandoning him.”
Please don’t go. Don’t leave me, Marika.
Long, nimble fingers clawing at my shirt, the fingers of an artist. Face sculpted by the merciless knife of hunger, the infuriated artist with the helpless clay, and red eyes rimmed in black.
I’ll come back. I promise. You’re going to die without it. I promise. I’ll come back.
Vosch is smiling soullessly, a shark’s smile or a skull’s sneer, and if rage is not the answer, what is? I’m squeezing my fist hard enough to force my nails into my palm. Here’s how Evan described it, Sullivan said, wrapping her fist in her hand. This is Evan. This is the being inside. My hand is the rage, but what is my fist? What is the thing wrapped up in rage?
“One move from mate,” Vosch says softly. “Why won’t you make it?”
My lips barely move. “I don’t like to lose.”
He pulls a silver device the size of a cell phone from his breast pocket. I’ve seen one before. I know what it does. The skin around the tiny patch of adhesive sealing the insertion point on my neck begins to itch.
“We’re a little beyond that stage,” he says.
Blood inside the fist that’s within the hand clenching the fist. “Push the button. I don’t give a shit.”
He nods approvingly. “Now you’re very close to the answer. But it is not your implant linked to this transmitter. Do you still want me to push it?”
Teacup. I look down at the board. One move from mate. The match was over before it began. When the game is fixed, how do you avoid losing?
A seven-year-old knew the answer to that question. I slide my hand beneath the board and hurl it toward his head. I guess that’s checkmate, bitch!
He sees it coming and ducks easily out of the way. Pieces clatter on the table, roll lazily on the tabletop before falling off the edge. He shouldn’t have told me that the device is linked to Teacup: If he pushes the button, he loses his leverage over me.
Vosch pushes the button.
51
MY REACTION IS months in the making. And instantaneous.
I leap across the table, drive my knee hard into his chest, and knock him straight back onto the floor. I land on top of him and smash the heel of my bloody hand into his aristocratic nose, rotating my shoulders into the blow to maximize the impact, textbook perfect, just like my trainers at Camp Haven taught me. Drill after drill after drill until there’s no need to think: Muscles retain memory, too. His nose breaks with a satisfying crunch. This is the point, the instructors told me, when a wise soldier withdraws. Hand-to-hand is unpredictable and every second you remain engaged increases the risk. Getting off the X was the expression. Vincit qui patitur.
But there’s no getting off this particular X. The clock’s down to the final tick; I’m out of time. The door flies open and soldiers pour into the room. I’m taken down quick and hard, yanked off Vosch and thrown face-first onto the floor, a shin pressed against my neck. I smell blood. Not mine, his.
“You disappoint me,” he whispers in my ear. “I told you rage wasn’t the answer.”
They pull me to my feet. The lower half of Vosch’s face is covered in blood. It smears his cheeks like war paint. His eyes are already swelling, giving him a weird, piglike appearance.
He turns to the squad leader standing beside him, a slender, fair-skinned recruit with blond hair and soulful dark eyes.
“Prep her.”
52
HALLWAY: LOW CEILINGS, flickering fluorescents, cinder-block walls. The press of bodies around me, one in front, one behind, two on either side holding my arms. The squeak of rubber-soled shoes against the gray concrete floor and the faint odor of sweat and the bittersweet smell of recycled air. Stairwell: metal rails painted gray like the floors, cobwebs fluttering in corners, dusty yellow lightbulbs in wire cages, descending into warmer, mustier air. Another hall: unmarked doors and large red stripes running down each gray wall and signs that read NO ACCESS and AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Room: small, windowless. Cabinets on one wall, a hospital bed in the middle, vital signs monitor beside it, screen dark. On either side of the bed, two people wearing white coats. A middle-aged man, a younger woman, forcing smiles.
The door clangs shut. I’m alone with the White Coats, except for the blond recruit standing at the door behind me.
“Easy or hard,” the man in the white coat says. “Your choice.”
“Hard,” I say. I whip around and drop the recruit with a punch to the throat. His sidearm clatters onto the tile. I scoop it up and turn back to the White Coats.
“There’s no escape,” the man says calmly. “You know that.”
I do know that. But escaping isn’t the reason I need the gun. Not escaping in the sense he means it. I’m not taking hostages and I’m not killing anyone. Killing human beings is the enemy’s goal. Behind me, the kid writhes on the floor, making hiccupping, gurgling sounds. I may have fractured his larynx.