"A savior. Is that what I am?" He turns to face me. "Refine your answer. Must it be all or nothing? If the goal is to save the village from the villagers, a smaller rock would have achieved the same result. Why a series of attacks? Why the ruses and deceit? Why engineer-enhanced, delusional puppets like Evan Walker? A rock is so much more simple and direct."
"I'm not sure," I confess. "But I think it has something to do with luck."
He stares at me for a long moment. Then he nods. He seems pleased. "What happens now, Marika?"
"You're taking me to his last known location," I answer. "You're dropping me in to track him down. He is an anomaly, a flaw in the system that can't be tolerated."
"Really? And how could one poor human pawn pose any danger whatsoever?"
"He fell in love, and love is the only weakness."
"Why?"
Beside me, Razor's breath. Before me, Teacup's uplifted face.
"Because love is irrational," I tell Vosch. "It doesn't follow rules. Not even its own rules. Love is the one thing in the universe that's unpredictable."
"I would have to respectfully disagree with you on that point," Vosch says. He looks at Teacup. "Love's trajectory is entirely predictable."
He steps close, looming over me, a colossus cut from flesh and bone with eyes clear as a mountain lake boring all the way down to the bottom of my soul.
"Why would I need you to track him or anyone down?"
"You lost the drones that monitor him and all the others like him. He's off the grid. He doesn't know the truth, but he knows enough to cause serious damage if he isn't stopped."
Vosch raises his hand. I flinch, but his hand comes down on my shoulder, which he squeezes hard, his face glowing with satisfaction. "Very good, Marika. Very, very good."
And beside me, Razor whispers, "Run."
His sidearm explodes beside my ear. Vosch backpedals toward the window, but he isn't hit. The big recruit goes down to his knees, ramming the recoil pad of his rifle against his shoulder, but he isn't hit, either.
Razor's target was the smallest thing that is the sum of all things, his bullet the sword that severs the chain that bound me.
The impact hurls Teacup backward. Her head smacks into the counter behind her; her stick-thin arms fly into the air. I whip to my right, toward Razor, in time to see his chest blown apart by the kneeling recruit's round.
He pitches forward and my arms come up instinctively, but he falls too fast. I can't catch him.
And his soft, soulful eyes lift up to mine, at the end of a trajectory that even Vosch failed to predict.
"You're free," Alex whispers. "Run."
The recruit swings the rifle toward me. Vosch steps between us with an enraged, guttural cry.
The hub lights up the muscular array as I sprint straight for the windows overlooking the landing field, leaping from six feet away and rotating my right shoulder toward the glass.
And then I'm in the open air, falling, falling, falling.
You're free.
Falling.
84.
COVERED IN ASH and dust, five gray ghosts occupying the woods at dawn.
Megan and Sam finally drifting off to sleep, though more of a passing out than a drifting off. She was clutching Bear to her chest. Wherever there is someone in need, Bear said to me, I will go.
Ben watching the sun rise with his rifle across his lap, silent, wrapped tight with anger and grief, but mostly grief. Dumbo, the practical one, digging in his rucksack for something to eat. And me, wrapped tight, too, with anger and grief, but mostly anger. Hello, good-bye. Hello, good-bye. How many times do I have to relive this cycle? What happened wasn't hard to figure out; it was just impossible to understand. Evan found the baggie that Sam dropped and blew (literally) both Grace and himself to lime-green oblivion. Which had been Evan's plan from the beginning, the self-sacrificing, idealistic, alien-human hybrid asshole.
Dumbo came over and asked if I wanted him to take a look at my nose. I asked him how he could miss it. He laughed. "Take care of Ben," I told him.
"He won't let me," he said.
"Well," I said, "the real wound your medical mojo can't touch, Dumbo."
He heard it first (the big ears maybe?), head coming up, looking over my shoulder into the trees: the snap and crackle of the frozen ground breaking and dead leaves crunching. I stood up and swung my rifle toward the sound. In the deep shadows, a lighter shadow moved. A survivor of the crash who followed us here? Another Evan or Grace, a Silencer finding us in his territory? No. Couldn't be. No Silencer would be caught dead tramping through the woods with all the stealth of a bull in a china shop-or they would be caught dead doing it.
The shadow raised its arms high in the air and I knew-knew before I heard my name-that he'd found me again, keeper of the promise he couldn't make, the one I had marked with my blood and who had marked me with his tears, a Silencer all right, my Silencer, stumbling toward me in the impossibly pure light of a late winter's sunrise promising spring.
I handed my rifle to Dumbo. I left him. The golden light and the dark trees glistening with ice and the way the air smells on cold mornings. The things we leave behind and the things that never leave us. The world ended once. It will end again. The world ends, then the world comes back. The world always comes back.
I stopped a few steps from him. He stopped, too, and we regarded each other across an expanse wider than the universe, within a space thinner than a razor's edge.
"My nose is broken," I said. Damn that Dumbo. Made me self-conscious.
"My ankle's broken," he said.
"Then I'll come to you."
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
Going in, I didn't fully appreciate the toll this project might take. One of my flaws as a writer (one of many, God knows) is that I tend to dive too deeply into the inner lives of my characters. I ignore the sage advice to remain above the fray, to be as indifferent as the gods to the suffering within my creation. When you're writing a long story spanning three volumes about the end of the world as we know it, you're probably better off not taking it too seriously. Otherwise, you're in for some dark nights of the soul, as well as fatigue, malaise, untoward mood swings, hypochondria, crying jags, and puerile hissy fits. You tell yourself (and the people around you) that acting like a four-year-old who cries because he didn't get what he wanted for Christmas is a perfectly normal way to behave, but deep down you know you're being disingenuous. Deep down you know that, when the clock has wound down and the time is up, there will be more than acknowledgments owed; there will be apologies, too.
To the good people at Putnam, particularly Don Weisberg, Jennifer Besser, and Ari Lewin: Forgive me for getting lost in the thickets, for taking myself and my books too seriously, for blaming others for my own shortcomings, for getting bogged down in the muddy trenches of the impossible dilemmas of my own making. You have been generous and patient and incredibly supportive.
To my agent, Brian DeFiore: Ten years ago, you had no idea what you were getting into. To be fair, neither did I, but thanks for hanging in there. It's nice to know that there's someone I can call anytime and yell at for no reason at all.
To my son, Jake: Thank you for always answering my texts and not freaking out when I was. Thanks for reading my moods and forgiving them even when you didn't understand them. Thanks for inspiring me and pushing me and always defending me against mean people. And thanks for not minding too much your father's annoying habit of peppering his speech with obscure quotes from books you haven't read and movies you haven't seen.
Finally, to Sandy, my wife of nearly twenty years, who recognized in her husband a dream unfulfilled and who understood better than he did how to make that dream real: My darling, you taught me courage in the face of overwhelming odds and incalculable loss. You showed me faith in the face of despair, courage in the hours of lightless confusion, patience in the shadow of looming panic over lost time and wasted effort. Forgive me for the hours of silence you endured, the inarticulate anger and hopelessness, the inexplicable swings from euphoria ("I'm a genius!") to angst ("I suck!"). The only fool I've ever seen you suffer gladly is me. Ruined holidays, forgotten obligations, unheard questions. Nothing is more painful than the loneliness of being with someone who is never completely there. I've incurred a debt that is hopeless for me to repay, though I promise to try. Because, in the end, without love all our effort is wasted, all we do is in vain.
Vincit qui patitur.
end.