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“Ringer?” Duh, Sullivan, who else? “Ringer.”
He nods. Then glances again topside. That’s when I stand up. Sam, too. I tell him to stay. He tells me no. Ben holds up a hand.
“There’s an explanation, Cassie.”
“I’m sure there is.”
“You need to hear her out.”
“Or what? She snaps my neck with her super-ninja powers? Ben, what’s the matter with you? She brought them to us.”
“You gotta trust me on this.”
“No, you need to trust me. I told you before she left—there’s something not right about her. Now she’s back and there’s something really not right. What else do you need, Ben? What does she have to do for you to accept the fact she isn’t on your side?”
“Cassie . . .” Trying very hard to keep it together. “I want you to put down that weapon . . .”
“That’s not going to happen.”
Trying very hard to be patient. “I won’t let you hurt her, Cassie.”
And Sam goes, “Zombie’s the sarge. You have to do what he says.”
The stairs creak again. Ringer stops halfway down. She’s not looking at me; she’s looking at Ben. For a horrible second, I think about shooting them both, grabbing Sam and Megan, and running until we run out of land to run on. Picking sides, deciding who you can trust, deciding what’s truth and what’s not, you reach a point where chucking it all seems like the least intolerable option. Like people who commit suicide, you just get sick of the hassle.
“It’s all right,” Ben says to her or maybe to me or maybe to both of us. “It’s going to be fine.”
“She leaves the gun on the stairs,” I call over.
Ringer drops her rifle right away. Why am I not comforted? Then she descends to the last step and sits.
47
THERE’S BEEN A SHITLOAD of huh? moments since the Others came, but this one has gotta be the huh-est of them all.
After the first go-around, I figure I must be missing something, so I ask Ringer to explain herself again, slower this time, with a little more detail and a lot more evidence.
“They aren’t here,” she says. “I’m not even sure they’re there.” With a nod toward the basement ceiling—and the unseen sky beyond.
“How could they not be there?” Ben wonders. There he goes again, deferring to her like the mealymouthiest courtier in Queen Ringer’s court. I’m starting to wonder about Ben’s ability to judge character. Since this war began, he’s been shot twice—both times by the person who claimed to be on his side.
“The mothership could be completely automated,” Ringer explains. “Obviously some form of sentient life built it, but the builders themselves could be light-years from here—or nowhere.”
“Nowhere?” Ben echoes.
“Dead. Extinct.”
“Sure, why not?” I’m fiddling with the bolt catch of my M16. Ben might still trust her after she lied about Teacup and where she was and what happened while she was there, plus her delivering an assassin to our doorstep, plus being shot by her, twice; I’m not so gobsmacked by her feminine charm, which, by the way, you could fit on the head of a pin and still leave room for angels to dance. “A couple thousand years ago, their probes find us. They watch. They wait. At some point they figure out we’re no good for the Earth or ourselves, so they build the mothership and load it down with bombs and drones and viral plague and proceed to wipe out ninety-nine point nine percent of the population with the help of human thralls who’ve been brainwashed since birth . . . because that’s our medicine, that’s what good for us—”
“Cassie,” Ben says. “Take a breath.”
“That’s one scenario,” Ringer says calmly. “Actually, it’s the best-case scenario.”
I shake my head and look over at Sam and Megan huddled under a big blanket in the corner. Incredibly, both have fallen asleep, their heads pressed together, Bear tucked beneath their chins, in a tableau that would be cute beyond words if it wasn’t so heartbreakingly symbolic of something. Well, of everything.
“Just like your Silencer theory,” I snap at her. “A computer program downloaded into fetuses that boots up when the kid hits puberty. A scenario.”
“No, that’s a fact. Vosch confirmed it.”
