They had no answer for love.

They thought they could crush it out of us, burn it from our brains, replace love with its opposite-not hate, indifference. They thought they could turn men into sharks.

But they couldn't account for that one little thing. They had no answer for it because it wasn't answerable. It wasn't even a question.

The problem of that damned bear.

RINGER.

AFTER CASSIE LEAVES, I drop the gun.

I don't need it. I have Vosch's gift in my pocket.

I am the child in the wheat.

The slap of boots on pavement, on polished concrete floors, on metal risers, from the airstrip to the command center, the sound of thousands of feet running like the scratch-scratch of the rats behind the walls of the old hotel.

I'm surrounded.

I'll give her the only thing I can, I think, reaching for the green capsule in my pocket. The only thing I've got left.

My fingers dig into the jacket pocket.

The empty jacket pocket.

I pat my other pockets. No. Not my pockets. They're Cassie's pockets: I switched clothes with her in the supply shed before we entered the command center.

I don't have the green capsule. Cassie does.

The slap of boots on pavement, on polished concrete floors, on metal risers. I push myself from the wall and crawl toward the door.

He isn't far. Just across this room, through that door, a few feet down the hall. If I can get to him before they reach this level, I may still have a chance-they won't, but I will.

Cassie will.

Door. I yank the handle down, swing it halfway open, then quickly slide into the space between to prop it open with my body. I can see him, the faceless murderer of seven billion who should have killed me when he had the chance-and he had several-but couldn't. He couldn't, because even he was confounded by love's unpredictable trajectory.

Hall. He must still have the device. He carried it everywhere he went. Lightweight and no larger than a cell phone, it tracked every implanted recruit on the base. And with a swipe of the thumb, it can send a signal to the implants inside their necks, killing each one of them.

Vosch. Lying on my stomach, I reach for him, grab the back of his uniform, and roll him over. The bloody crater that was his face is turned to the sterile glow of the ceiling. I hear them on the stairs, boots on metal risers, growing louder. Where is it? Give it up, you son of a bitch.

Breast pocket. Right where he always kept it. The display screen swarms with green dots, a three-squad cluster's worth heading straight toward me. I highlight all of them-every recruit on the base, over five thousand people, and the green button beneath my thumb flashes, and this is why I didn't want to come back. I knew what would happen. I knew: I'll kill until I lose count. I'll kill until counting doesn't matter.

I'm staring at the screen lit up with five thousand tiny pulsing lights, each a hapless victim, each a human being.

Telling myself I don't have a choice.

Telling myself I'm not his creation. I'm not what he has made me.

ZOMBIE.

ON OUR SEVENTEENTH PASS around the perimeter-or maybe the eighteenth; I've lost count-the lights of the air base abruptly blaze back on, and across from me, Sergeant Sprinter barks into her headset, "Status?"

We've been circling for over an hour and our fuel must be low. We'll have to set down soon; the only question is where, inside the base or out. Right now we're approaching the river again. I expect the pilot to change course, bring us over some land, but she doesn't.

Megan is nestled under my arm, her head tucked beneath my chin. Nugget presses against the other arm, watching the base below. His sister is down there somewhere. Possibly alive, probably dead. The restoration of the lights is a bad sign.

We bank over the river, keeping the base on our left, and I can see other choppers circling over it, too, waiting for the all clear to land. Their spotlights cut through the predawn mist, pillars of glistening white. We're over the river now, swollen from an early spring thaw.

Above us, the sky lightens to gray and the stars begin to fade.

This is it. Green Day. The day the bombs fall. I look for the mothership but can't spot it in the brightening sky.

Conversation with the ground over, the sergeant pulls off her headset. Her eyes on my face, her hand resting on the butt of her sidearm. Nugget stiffens beside me; he knows what's coming before I do; his hands claw at his harness, though there's nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

The orders have changed. She draws her weapon and levels it at his head.

I throw myself in front of him. Finally the circle comes round. Time to pay the debt.

CASSIE.

THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR behind me, soldiers flood into the room. They quickly spread out shoulder to shoulder from wall to wall, in two rows, the closest one kneeling, two dozen rifles aimed at a single curly-headed, crooked-nosed target. I turn and face them. They don't know me, but I know them. I recognize each and every face of the ones who have come to kill me.

I know what they remember and what they can't. I hold them inside me. It's like I'm about to be murdered by a human mosaic of myself. Makes you wonder: Is this murder? Or suicide?

I close my eyes. I'm sorry, Sams. I tried.

He is with me now, my brother; I feel him.

And that's good. At least when I die, I will not be alone.

RINGER.

THE STAIRWAY DOOR slams open and they pound into the hall, weapons drawn. Fingers tighten on triggers.

Too late for them.

Too late for me.

I press the button.

ZOMBIE.

ACROSS THE AISLE, the sergeant jerks in her seat; her beautiful dark eyes roll back; her skull pops against the bulkhead; and then she slumps against her harness. Megan bolts upright with a startled cry. Every recruit in the hold has followed the sergeant's lead.

Including the pilot.

The chopper's nose dips, whipping hard to the right and slamming me into Nugget, who's not wasting any time unbuckling himself. The damn kid gets everything before I do. I play a fast, desperate game of slappies with Megan, struggling to free her first. Nugget's hurled from his seat-I catch hold of his sleeve and yank him into my chest. Then Megan's loose but I'm not, holding on to her with one hand and Nugget with the other.

"The river!" I scream at him.

He nods. He's the coolest one among us. His little fingers fly over the buckles to set me free.

The chopper barrels toward the water. "Hang on to me!" I shout. "Don't let go!"

We're falling sideways. The river is a featureless black wall rushing toward the open hatch on Nugget's side.

"ONE!".

Nugget closes his eyes.

"TWO!".

Megan screams.

"THREE!".

I swivel out of the seat, a kid under each arm, and drop feetfirst toward the opening.

CASSIE.

THE SOLDIERS FALL to the ground. One second they're up, the next they're down. Somebody's fried their brains. I'm not sure how, but I'm pretty sure who.

I turn away. I've seen enough bodies to last my ten thousand lifetimes, from my mother drowning in her own blood to my father writhing gut-shot in the dirt, from the ones before and the ones after and the ones in between, my dead and their dead, our dead.

Yeah, I've seen enough.

Plus, those kids who just fell, they're my bodies, too, in a way. It's like looking down at your own corpse. Times twelve.

I step inside the pod. I lower myself into the chair. I buckle myself in, pulling tight the straps that cross my chest. In my hand a dead man's thumb. In my pocket a green capsule encased in plastic. In my head ten thousand voices that strangely sing as one. And in my heart, a stillness, a quiet place untouched by anything, beyond space, unbounded by time.

Cassie, do you want to fly?

The green pill fell out when I ripped myself from the Wonderland chair, and I picked it up without thinking about it, without even looking at it. Then I saw Ringer lying in that hallway and I remembered we'd swapped jackets. She'd been carrying around the bomb the whole time and didn't tell anyone. I think I know why. I know her as well as she knows herself. Better, even, because I can remember what she's forgotten.

I press Vosch's severed thumb against the launch button. The hatch door closes, the locking mechanism hums. The ventilation system kicks on; cool air brushes against my cheek.

The pod shivers. I feel like raising my hands.

Yes, Daddy, I want to fly.

ZOMBIE.

I LOSE THE KIDS when we hit the water. The force of our landing snatches them away. The chopper tumbles into the river several hundred yards upstream and the fireball paints the surface a dusky orange. I see Megan first, her face breaking the surface enough to allow her a gurgling scream. I grab her wrist and yank her toward me.

"Captain!" she yells.

Huh?

"I lost Captain!"

She kicks against my legs, reaching with her free hand toward the teddy bear that spins lazily away from us. Oh Christ. That damned bear.

I look over my shoulder. Nugget, where are you? Then I see him at the shoreline, half in, half out, back arching as he coughs up a gallon of river water. The kid is truly indestructible.

"Okay, Megan. Climb aboard; I'll get him."

She hitches herself onto my back, wrapping her thin arms around my neck and her stick legs around my torso. I kick over to the bear. Gotcha. Then the long swim to shore, which isn't that far, but the water's freezing and Megan on my back bears me down. Bears me down. That's a good one.

We collapse on the shore beside Nugget. Nobody speaks for a few minutes. Then Nugget goes, "Zombie?"

"Somebody hit the kill switch. Only thing that makes sense, Private."

"Corporal," he corrects me. Then he says, "Ringer?"

I nod. "Ringer."

He processes for a second. Then, his voice shaking because he's afraid to ask: "Cassie?"

CASSIE.

THE HAND OF GOD slams down as the pod explodes up the launch shaft, a massive fist flattens my body into the chair, and then the fist closes around me, squeezing. Some wiseass has dropped a two-ton rock on my chest and I'm finding it very difficult to breathe. Also, somebody with no regard whatsoever for my comfort and safety has turned off all the lights-I can't even see the eerie green glow that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Either that or my eyes have been shoved to the back of my skull.

ZOMBIE.

NO, NUGGET. She probably didn't make it. Before I can say the words, Megan slaps my chest and points toward the base. A shining ball of green light shoots over the treetops into the rose-colored sky. The afterimage lingers in our eyes long after it's lost in the atmosphere.

"It's a shooting star!" she says.

I shake my head. "Wrong direction."

I guess, in the end, I was wrong.

CASSIE.

THE FEELING OF being slowly crushed to death in total darkness lasts for several minutes. In other words, forever. Okay, forever is one word.

A word we throw around like we can even grasp it, like forever is something the human mind can comprehend.

The straps across my chest loosen. The two-ton boulder dissolves. I take a huge, shuddering breath and open my eyes. The pod is dark-gone is the green light and good riddance; I always hated Other-green, not my shade at all. I look out the window and gasp.

Hello, Earth.

So this is how God sees you, sparkling blue against the dullest black. No wonder he made you. No wonder he made the sun and the stars so he could see you.

Beautiful is another word we tossed around too casually, slopping it over everything from cars to nail polish until the word collapsed under the weight of all the banality. But the world is beautiful. I hope they never forget that. The world is beautiful.

A water droplet bobs before my eyes. Floating free, the oddest tear I've ever brushed away.