And I am there with him—I am already there. Within the singularity, I am already there.
“That can’t be true,” I whisper. Within the center of everything, where nothing is, I found him holding me.
“I don’t believe all of your bullshit,” he murmurs. “But you’re right about this: Some things, down to the smallest of things, are worth the sum of all things.”
Outside, the bitter harvest burns. Inside, he slips the sheets down, and these are the hands that held me, the hands that bathed and fed and lifted me when I could not lift myself. He brought me to death; he brings me to life. That’s why he removed the dead from the upper tier. He banished them, consigned them to the fire, not to desecrate them but to sanctify us.
The shadow that wrestles with light. The cold that contends with fire. It’s a war, he told me once, and we are the conquerors of the undiscovered country, an island of life centered in a boundless sea of blood.
The piercing cold. The searing heat. His lips sliding over my neck and my fingers feeling his shattered cheek, the wound I gave him, and the wounds on his arm—VQP—that he gave himself, then my hands sliding down his back. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. The smell of bubble gum and the smell of smoke and the smell of his blood, and the way his body slides over mine and the way his soul slices into mine: Razor. The beat of our hearts and the rhythm of our breath and the spinning stars we could not see, marking the time, measuring the shrinking intervals until the end of us, him and me and everything else.
The world is a clock and the clock winds down, and their coming had nothing to do with that. The world has always been a clock. Even the stars will wink out one by one and there will be no light or heat, and this is the war, the endless, futile war against the lightless, heatless void rushing toward us.
He entwines his fingers behind my back and pulls me tightly against him. No space between us anymore. No spot where he ends and I begin. The emptiness filled. The void defied.
HE LINGERS BESIDE ME until our breath evens and our hearts slow, running his fingers through my hair, staring at my face intently as if he cannot leave until he’s memorized every aspect. He touches my lips, my cheeks, my eyelids. Runs the tip of his finger along the length of my nose, around the curve of my ear. His face more in shadow, mine more in light.
“Run,” he whispers.
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
He rises from the cot, but I have the sensation of falling as he remains still. He pulls on his clothes quickly. I can’t read his expression. Razor has closed himself off to me. I am bound inside the emptiness again. I can’t bear it. It will crush me, the absence I lived with for so long that I hardly noticed. Unnoticed until this moment: He showed me how enormous the emptiness was by filling it.
“They won’t catch you,” he presses. “How could they ever catch you?”
“He knows I won’t run as long as he has her.”
“Oh Christ. What is she to you, anyway? Is she worth your life? How can one person be worth your whole life?” It’s a question he already knows the answer to. “Fine. Do what you want. Like I care. Like it matters.”
“That’s the lesson they taught us, Razor. What matters and what doesn’t. The one truth at the center of all the lies.”
He picks up his rifle and slings it over his shoulder. He kisses me on the forehead. A blessing. A benediction. Then he picks up the lamp and walks unsteadily to the doorway, the watchman, the caretaker, the one who does not rest or grow weary or falter. He leans against the open door, facing the night, and the sky above him burns with the cold light of ten thousand pyres marking the time ticking down.
“Run,” I hear him say. I don’t think he’s speaking to me. “Run.”
ON THE EIGHTH DAY, the chopper returns for us. I let Razor help with my clothes, but besides a couple of sore ribs and a pair of weak legs, the twelve arrays collectively known as Ringer are fully operational. My face has completely healed; not even a scar remains. On the ride back to the base, Razor sits across from me, studying the floor, looking up at me only once. Run, he mouths. Run.
White land, dark river, the helicopter banks hard, swooping around the control tower at the airfield, close enough for me to see a tall, solitary figure behind the tinted windows. We set down in the same spot from which we took off, another circle complete, and Razor puts his hand on my elbow to guide me into the tower. On the ride to the top, his hand wraps briefly around mine.
“I know what matters,” he says.
Vosch stands at the other end of the room with his back toward us, but I can see his face reflected dimly in the glass. Beside him stands a burly recruit gripping a rifle to his chest with the desperation of someone hanging over a ten-mile-deep gorge by a shoestring. Sitting next to the recruit, wearing the standard-issue white jumpsuit, is the reason I’m here, my victim, my cross, my charge.
Teacup starts to get up when she sees me. The big recruit puts his hand on her shoulder and pushes her back down. I shake my head and mouth to her, No.
The room is quiet. Razor is on my right side, standing slightly behind me. I can’t see him, but he’s close enough that I can hear him breathing.
“So.” Vosch draws out the word, a prelude. “Have you solved the riddle of the rocks?”
“Yes.”
I see him smile tightly in the dark glass. “And?”
“Throwing a very big rock would defeat the purpose.”
“And what is the purpose?”
“For some to live.”
“That begs the question. You’re better than that.”
“You could have killed all of us. But you didn’t. You’re burning the village in order to save it.”
“A savior. Is that what I am?” He turns to face me. “Refine your answer. Must it be all or nothing? If the goal is to save the village from the villagers, a smaller rock would have achieved the same result. Why a series of attacks? Why the ruses and deceit? Why engineer-enhanced, delusional puppets like Evan Walker? A rock is so much more simple and direct.”
“I’m not sure,” I confess. “But I think it has something to do with luck.”
He stares at me for a long moment. Then he nods. He seems pleased. “What happens now, Marika?”
“You’re taking me to his last known location,” I answer. “You’re dropping me in to track him down. He is an anomaly, a flaw in the system that can’t be tolerated.”
“Really? And how could one poor human pawn pose any danger whatsoever?”
“He fell in love, and love is the only weakness.”
“Why?”
Beside me, Razor’s breath. Before me, Teacup’s uplifted face.
“Because love is irrational,” I tell Vosch. “It doesn’t follow rules. Not even its own rules. Love is the one thing in the universe that’s unpredictable.”
“I would have to respectfully disagree with you on that point,” Vosch says. He looks at Teacup. “Love’s trajectory is entirely predictable.”
He steps close, looming over me, a colossus cut from flesh and bone with eyes clear as a mountain lake boring all the way down to the bottom of my soul.