The 5th Wave | The Aftermath | ✔️

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Marika

I GAVE UP. I went back to the base with Cassie. She discovered the dark secrets and small details of every recruit in the base who's been through Wonderland.
I imagined the result of that to be a lot different. My scenario included Cassie's brain exploding. But I was wrong. Like a lot of other things.
Another thing I was wrong about: Evan Walker was alive. But he wasn't the affectionate-Evan I knew, or Cassie knew him as. I saw him look at Cassie, and his eyes didn't fill with happiness like they always did. They were filled with pure nothingness. Which scared me.
He broke my back. Without The Hub, I would've died the moment he smashed me against his leg. But while listening to Cassie struggle in the Wonderland room, regretting not untying her from the leg and arm restraints, she silenced the Silencer who saved her.
He survived. Cassie didn't. Every single time Evan left her to save human civilisation, he ended up being alive, and to my disappointment. And the one time Cassie didn't say any goodbyes before leaving, she died.
Laying there in the constant sterile glow, I could picture Cassie Sullivan, cornered, nowhere to go. Trapped. The feeling that individual survivors felt when the 4th wave begun.
Then, the creator, the artist, the sculptor, the blacksmith, strode down the hall and stopped in front of me.
"Marika."
Vosch towered over me, his bright blue, bird like eyes, glistening.
"You've forgotten something," he told me. "And now it's too late. What have you forgotten, Marika?"
I didn't reply. I was thinking about the parting gift he gave me. The pill.
"I knew you would come back,"Vosch said. "Who else would have the final answer but the one who created you?"
     I could speak. But I didn't. He knew what I was going to say before I could say it.
"Yes, I have been inside their ship. And it's remarkable as you've imagined. I have seen them—our saviours—and, yes, they are also as remarkable as you've imagined. They aren't physically there, of course, but you've already guessed that. They are not here, Marika. They never were."
     Blue, bird like eyes, glowing in the constant sterile glow.
"They are carbon-based like us, and that is where all the similarities end. It took them a very long time to understand us, to accept what was happening here and devise the only viable solution to the problem. Likewise, it took me a very long time to understand and accept their solution. It's difficult to ignore your own humanity, to step outside yourself and see through the eyes of a wholly other species. That's been you're particular problem from the beginning, Marika. I had hopes that one day you would conquer it. You are the closest I've ever come to seeing myself in another human being."
He knelt beside me and pressed his finger against my cheek, and my tear rolled over his knuckle.
"I am going away, Marika. You must have guessed that. My consciousness will be preserved for all time aboard the mothership, eternally free, eternally safe from whatever may happen here. That was my price. And they agreed to pay it." Then he smiled a kind father's smile to a beloved child. "Are you satisfied now? Have I answered all your questions?"
"No." I whispered. "You haven't told me why."
"Because the universe has no limits, but life does. Life is rare, Marika, and therefore precious; it must be preserved. If they may be said to have anything resembling human faith, it is that. All life is worthy of existence. The Earth is not the first planet they've saved."
He cupped my cheek in his hand. "I don't want to lose you," he said. "Virtues have become vices, and you've said it yourself: This particular vice follows no rules, even its own. I have committed a mortal sin, Marika, and only you can absolve me."
He slipped his hand beneath my head and cradled me.
"We found it, Marika. The anomaly in Walker's programming. The flaw in the system is that there isn't one . . .
"Do you understand? It's important that you understand. The singularity beyond space and time, the undefinable constant that transcends all understanding—they had no answer for it, so they gave none. How could they? How can lose be contained in any algorithm?"
His eyes sparkled, though, with tears. "Come with me, Marika. Let us go together, to a place where there is no more pain, no more sorrow. All of this will be gone in an instant." He waved his hand to indicate the base, the planet, the past. "They'll take away any memory that troubles you. You will be immortal, forever young, forever free. They will give me that. Grant me the grace to give you that."
I whispered, "Too late."
"No! This broken body, it's nothing. Worthless. It's not too late."
"It is for you," I told him.
Cassie promised me, coming with her to this base, I would accomplish the task of killing Vosch, but I didn't; she did; killing Vosch. She shot him in the back of the head, I could see the infinite satisfaction in her eyes. I killed Vosch! I killed Vosch! But I saw a dead part of her, in her eyes, that wasn't there before.

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BTW: Part of this chapter has been copied from the third book of 'The 5th Wave', just to give a bit of a flashback to the previous book!
Enjoy! :)

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