“I’m sorry, Cassie.”
“For which part?”
“All the parts.” His words are slurring: the pain pills kicking in.
I’m gripping the gun hard now with both hands. Shaking like him, but not from the cold.
“Evan, I killed that soldier because I didn’t have a choice—I didn’t go looking for people to kill every day. I didn’t hide in the woods by the side of the road and take out every person who came along because they might be one of them.” I’m nodding to myself. It really is simple. “You can’t be who you say you are because who you say you are could not have done what you did!”
I don’t care about anything but the truth now. And not being an idiot. And not feeling anything for him, because feeling something for him will make what I have to do that much harder, maybe impossible, and if I want to save my brother, nothing can be impossible.
“What’s next?” I say.
“In the morning, we’ll have to get the shrapnel out.”
“I mean after this wave. Or are you the last wave, Evan?”
He’s looking up at me with that one exposed eye and wiggling his head back and forth. “I don’t know how I can convince you—”
I press the muzzle of the gun against his temple, right beside the big chocolaty eye staring up at me, and snarl, “1st Wave: lights out. 2nd Wave: surf’s up. 3rd Wave: pestilence. 4th Wave: Silencer. What’s next, Evan? What is the 5th Wave?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s passed out.
AT DAWN he’s still out cold, so I grab my rifle and hike out of the woods to assess his handiwork. Probably not the smartest thing to do. What if our midnight raiders called for backup? I’d be the prize in a turkey shoot. I’m not a bad shot, but I’m no Evan Walker.
Well, even Evan Walker is no Evan Walker.
I don’t know what he is. He says he’s human, and he looks like a human, talks like a human, bleeds like a human and, okay, kisses like a human. And a rose by any other name, blah, blah, blah. He says the right things, too, like the reason he was sniping people is the same reason I shot the Crucifix Soldier.
The problem is, I don’t buy it. And now I can’t decide which is better, a dead Evan or a live Evan. Dead Evan can’t help me keep my promise. Live Evan can.
Why did he shoot me, then save me? What did he mean when he said that I’d saved him?
It’s weird. When he held me in his arms, I felt safe. When he kissed me, I was lost in him. It’s like there are two Evans. There is the Evan I know and the Evan I don’t. Evan the farm boy with the soft hands who strokes me till I’m purring like a cat. Evan the pretender who is the cold-blooded killer who shot me.
I’m going to assume he’s human—at least biologically. Maybe he’s a clone grown on board the mothership from harvested DNA. Or maybe something less Star Warsy and more despicable: a traitor to his species. Maybe that’s what the Silencers are: human mercenaries.
The Others are giving him something to kill us. Or they threatened him—like kidnapping someone he loves (Lauren? I never actually saw her grave) and offering him a deal. Kill twenty humans and you get them back.
The last possibility? That he is what he says he is. Alone, scared, killing before someone can kill him, a firm adherent to the first rule, until he broke it by letting me go and then bringing me back.
It explains what happened as well as the first two possibilities. Everything fits. It could be the truth. Except for one niggling little problem.
The soldiers.
That’s why I don’t leave him in the woods. I want to see what he did for myself.
Since Camp Ashpit is now more featureless than a salt flat, I have no trouble finding Evan’s kills. One by the lip of the ravine. Two more side by side a few hundred yards away. All three head shots. In the dark. While they were shooting at him. The last one is lying near where the barracks used to be, maybe even the exact spot where Vosch murdered my father.
None of them are older than fourteen. All of them are wearing these weird silver eye patches. Some kind of night vision technology? If so, it makes Evan’s accomplishment all the more impressive, in a sickening sort of way.
Evan’s awake when I get back. Sitting up against the fallen tree. Pale, shivering, eyes sunk back in his head.
“They were kids,” I tell him. “They were just kids.”
I kick my way into the dead brush behind him and empty out my stomach.
Then I feel better.
I go back to him. I’ve decided not to kill him. Yet. He’s still worth more to me alive. If he is a Silencer, he may know what happened to my brother. So I grab the first aid kit and kneel between his spread legs.
“Okay, time to operate.”
I find a pack of sterile wipes in the kit. Silently, he watches me clean his victim’s blood off the knife.
I swallow hard, tasting the fresh vomit. “I’ve never done this before,” I say. Kind of obvious thing to say, but it feels like I’m talking to a stranger.
He nods, rolls onto his stomach. I pull the shirt away, exposing his bottom half.
I’ve never seen a naked guy before. Now here I am kneeling between his legs, though I can’t see his total nakedness. Just the back half. Strange, I never thought my first time with a naked guy would be like this. Well, I guess that isn’t so strange.
“You want another pain pill?” I ask. “It’s cold and my hands are shaking…”
“No pill,” he grunts, face tucked into the crook of his arm.
I work slowly at first, gingerly poking into the wounds with the tip of the knife, but I quickly learn that isn’t the best way to dig metal out of human—or maybe nonhuman—flesh: You just prolong the agony.
His butt takes the longest. Not because I’m lingering. There’s just so much shrapnel. He doesn’t squirm. He barely flinches. Sometimes he goes, “Oooh!” Sometimes he sighs.
I lift the jacket off his back. Not too many wounds here, and mostly concentrated along the lower part. Stiff fingers, sore wrists, I force myself to be quick—quick but careful.
“Hang in there,” I murmur. “Almost done.”
“Me too.”
“We don’t have enough bandages.”
“Just get the worst.”
“Infection…?”
“There’s some penicillin tablets in the kit.”
He rolls back over as I dig out the pills. He takes two with a sip of water. I sit back, sweating, though it isn’t much above freezing.
“Why kids?” I ask.
“I didn’t know they were kids.”
“Maybe not, but they were heavily armed and knew what they were doing. Their problem was, so did you. You must have forgotten to mention your commando training.”
“Cassie, if we can’t trust each other—”
“Evan, we can’t trust each other.” I want to crack him in the head and burst into tears at the same time. I’ve reached the point of being tired of being tired. “That’s the whole problem.”
Overhead, the sun has broken free from the clouds, exposing us to a bright blue sky.
“Alien clone children?” I guess. “America scraping the bottom of the conscription barrel? Seriously, why are kids running around with automatic weapons and grenades?”
He shakes his head. Sips some water. Winces. “Maybe I will take another one of those pain pills.”
“Vosch said just the kids. They’re snatching children to turn them into an army?”
“Maybe Vosch isn’t one of them. Maybe the army took the kids.”
“Then why did he kill everybody else? Why did he put a bullet in my dad’s head? And if he isn’t one of them, where’d he get the Eye? Something’s wrong here, Evan. And you know what’s going on. We both know you do. Why can’t you just tell me? You’ll trust me with a gun and to pull shrapnel out of your ass, but you won’t trust me with the truth?”
He stares at me for a long moment. Then he says, “I wish you hadn’t cut your hair.”