The wooden stairs creak. I stay put. Cassiopeia's last stand. I have a full magazine and a heart full of hate; you don't need much of anything else.

Beside me, Sam hisses, "Cassie, it's Zombie."

Sure enough. Clumping awkwardly and badly off balance, too, like a real zombie. He's out of breath by the time he reaches the bottom. He leans against the wall, lips parted, face drained of color.

"Well?" I call across the room at him. "Did you find him?"

He shakes his head. He glances up the stairs. He looks back at me.

"Chopper," he says.

"What about the chopper? Evan blew it up?" Stupid question. I would have heard it.

"He got on it."

Ben needs to sit. A wound like his hurts like a mother; I should know. Why won't he sit? Why is he hanging there by the stairs?

"What do you mean, he got on it?"

"I mean he got on it. They took him, Cassie." Another look up the stairs, so I ask him why he keeps looking up the stairs. He goes, "There was a strike team . . ."

"There's a strike team?"

"There was a strike team." He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. "Not anymore." His voice shakes-and I don't think it's from the pain or the cold. Ben Parish appears to be scared shitless.

"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."

"Right. The maniac who orchestrated the murder of seven billion people. Well, sure, if he said it, then it must be true."

"Why else would he want Walker so badly?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because Evan betrayed his entire civilization and is the one person on the planet who can stop them?"

Ringer is looking at me like I'm something disgusting she found growing on her toothbrush. "If that's all there is to it, your boyfriend would be dead right now."

"He could be dead right now. It kills me how you claim to know so much despite the fact that you don't know much at all. Theories, scenarios, possibilities, odds, whatever. And for your information, just so you know, and this is no supposition based on the theory that I-am-Ringer-ergo-I-know-all, he isn't my boyfriend."

My face is hot. I'm thinking of the night I landed on the shores of Evanland and planted my flag upon that sculpted beach. Ben says something at that point, which I totally miss, because my mind has a way of scolding its own thoughts. Like, how could I be the flag-planter? Shouldn't that be Evan?

"Evan is human," Ringer insists. "His purpose is obvious. What isn't so obvious-and why Vosch needs to deconstruct his programming-is what triggered Evan's mind to rebel. He didn't just betray his 'people.' He betrayed himself."

"Well," Ben sighs, "that's fucked up." He shifts his weight against the wall, trying to find a more comfortable position. That's not possible with a bullet in your leg. Believe me, I've tried. "So there are no escape pods coming to evac the Silencers," Ben says slowly. "No pods, so no way to the mothership. No way to the mothership, so no way to blow it up. Shoots that plan all to hell. What about bombing the cities? Or is that a lie his programming told him, too?"

Ringer doesn't answer for a long time. I have no clue what she's thinking. Then I start thinking maybe this whole deal is a trick-of Vosch's. Something happened to Ringer after she checked out of the Walker Hotel. Somebody implanted her with bionics that turned her into a part-human, part-machine weapon of mass destruction. How do we know she hasn't flipped to the other side? A certain Brawny-paper-towel-looking guy did. How do we know she wasn't always on the other side?

My thumb's working that bolt catch again.

"I think they are going to bomb the cities," she finally says.

"Why?" I demand. "What's the point?"

"A lot of reasons. For one, it evens the playing field before the launch of the 5th Wave-urban combat gives the Silencers every advantage, and you can't tip favor too far to one side. But the most important reason is cities hold our memories."

Whaaaaa? Then I get it, and getting it makes my stomach hurt. My father and that damned wagon and those damned books. Libraries, museums, universities, everything we designed and built over six thousand years. Cities are more than the sum of their infrastructure. They transcend brick and mortar, concrete and steel. They're the vessels into which human knowledge is poured. Blowing them up will be the final reset of the clock back to the Neolithic.

"Not enough to reduce the population to a sustainable level," Ringer says softly. "Not enough to level what we built. We'll repopulate. We'll rebuild. To save the planet, to save our species, they have to change us." She touches her chest. "Here. If the Others can take away trust, they take away cooperation. Take away cooperation, and civilization is impossible."

48.

"OKAY," BEN SAYS. Time to get down to the gnarly nub of it. "No on the pods but yes on the bombs. Which means we can't stay here-too close to Urbana. That's fine with me, because I really fucking hate Urbana. So where? South? My vote is south. Find a source of fresh water, miles from anywhere, as in the middle of nowhere."

"And?" Ringer asks.

"And what?"

"And what then?"

"What then?"

"Yes. After we get to nowhere, then what?"

Ben lifts a hand. Lets it fall. His mouth curls into a smile. He looks so boyishly cute in this moment that I feel like bursting into tears. "There's five of us. I say we form a band."

I laugh out loud. Sometimes Ben's like a bracing mountain stream I dip my toe into.

"Anyway," Ben says after two seconds of Ringer staring blankly at him. "What the hell else are we going to do?"

He looks at her. He looks at me.

"Oh Christ, Sullivan," he moans, tapping the back of his head against the wall. "Don't even go there."

"He came for me," I tell him. He knows I'm thinking it, so I might as well say it. We're both a little surprised that I've gone there. "He saved your life-twice. He saved mine three times."

"Ben's right," Ringer butts in. "It's suicide, Sullivan."

I roll my eyes. I've heard this shit before-from Evan Walker himself, when he realized I was bulling my way into a death camp to find my baby brother. Why must I always be the isle of crazy alone in an ocean of sensibility? The should to everybody else's shouldn't? The I-will to their better-nots?

"Staying here is suicide, too," I argue. "So is running to nowhere. Anything we do now is suicide. We're at the point in the story where we have to choose, Ringer-a meaningful death, or a senseless one. Besides," I add, "he'd do it for us."

"No," Ben says quietly. "He would do it for you."

"The base they're taking him to is over a hundred miles away," Ringer says. "Even if you reached it, you won't reach it in time. Vosch will be finished with him and Evan will be dead."

"You don't know that."

"I do know that."

"No, you say you know that, but you don't really know that, just like you don't know everything else you say you know, but we're just supposed to believe it because, hell, you're just brilliant little you."

And Ben goes, "Huh?"

"Whatever we do," Ringer says coolly to Ben, as if nothing I just said wasn't a major-league smackdown, "staying is not an option. As soon as that chopper delivers its cargo, it's coming back."

"Cargo?" Ben asks.

"She means Evan," I translate.

"Why would it . . . ?" Then he gets it. Ringer's victims buried down the road. The chopper's coming back to extract the strike team. "Oh." He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. "Crap."

And I'm thinking, Hey. Chopper! and Ringer is watching me and thinking she knows what I'm thinking, which she does, but that doesn't prove she's always right.

"Forget it, Sullivan."

"Forget what?" And right away I acknowledge my coyness: "You did it. Or at least you said you did it."

"Did what?" Ben asks.

"That was different," Ringer says.

"Different how?"

"Different in that the pilot was in on it. My 'escape' from Vosch wasn't an escape; it was a test of the 12th System."

"Well, we can pretend this is a test, too, if that helps."