→ my name is lana snyder and this is my story on what happened at the end of the world. we were invaded and it was a mass instinctive event. but somehow i was one of the survivors.
- the 5th wave
→ started : 12/22/22 - finished : 3/17/23
Rất tiếc! Hình ảnh này không tuân theo hướng dẫn nội dung. Để tiếp tục đăng tải, vui lòng xóa hoặc tải lên một hình ảnh khác.
i lose amélie for a second time. a silencer-soldier takes her away, he also took sammy back to the safe room to be evacuated with the other kids, i guess. another silencer brings zombie, cassie and i to the execution room. the room with the mirror and the button. the room where innocent people are wired up and electrocuted. the room of blood and lies. seems fitting.
"do you know why we will win this war?" vosch asks us after we're locked inside. "why we cannot lose? because we know how you think. we've been watching you for six thousand years. when the pyramids rose in the egyptian desert, we were watching you. when caecer burned the library at alexandria, we were watching you. when you crucified that first-century jewish peasant, we were watching. when columbus set foot in the new world, when you fought a war to free millions of your fellow humans from bondage, when you learned how to split the atom, when you first ventured beyond your atmosphere. what were we doing?"
zombie isn't looking at him. none of us are. we're all sitting in front of the mirror, looking straight ahead at our distorted reflections in the broken glass. the room on the other side is dark.
"you were watching us," cassie says. vosch is sitting in front of the monitor, about a foot away from her. on her other side, zombie, beside zombie, me and behind us, a very well-built silencer.
"we were learning how you think. that's the secret to victory, as sergeants parish here already knows: understanding how your enemy thinks. the arrival of the mothership was not the beginning, but the beginning of the end. and now here you are, in a front-row seat for the finale, a special sneak peek into the future. would you like to see the future? your future? would you like to stare all the way down to the bottom of the human cup?"
vosch presses a button on the keyboard. the lights in the room on the other side of the mirror flicker on.
there are two chairs, a silencer standing beside them, and strapped to one chairs is, sammy, thick wires attached to his head. in the other amélie like tommy. i inhale slowly. tears prick my eyes as anger flushed through my veins.
"this is the future," vosch whispers. "the human animal bound, its death at our fingertips. and when you have finished the work that we've given you, we will press the execute button and your deplorable stewardship of this planet will come to an end."
"you don't have to do this!" cassie shouts. the silencer behind her puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes hard. but not hard enough to keep cassie from jumping out of the chair. "all you have to do is implant us and download us into wonderland. won't that tell you everything you want to know? you don't have to kill him."
"cassie," zombie says softly. "he's going to kill him anyway."
"you shouldn't listen to him, young lady," vosch says. "he's weak. he's always been weak. you've shown more pluck and determination in a few hours than he has in his miserable lifetime."
he nods to the silencer, who yanks cassie back into the chair.
"i am going to 'download' you," vosch tells me. "and i am going to kill sergeant parish, and i'll decide about private snyder. but you can save the child. only the boy. the girls going to die in other way. if you tell me who helped you infiltrate this base."
"won't downloading me tell you that?" cassie asks.
"because someone helped you," vosch says, ignoring her question. "and i suspect that someone is not someone like mr. parish or miss. snyder here. he—or they—would be someone more like, well, me. someone who would know how to defeat the wonderland program by hiding your true memories, the same method we have used for centuries to hide ourselves from you."
she's shaking her head.
"birds are the most common," vosch says. he's absently running his finger over the button marked execute. "owls. during the initial phase, when we were inserting ourselves into you, we often used the screen memory of an owl to hide the fact from the expectant mother."
"i hate birds," cassie whispers.
vosch smiles. "the most useful of this planet's indigenous fauna. diverse. considered benign, for the most part. so ubiquitous they're practically invisible. did you know they're descended from the dinosaurs? there's a very satisfying irony in that. the dinosaurs made way for you, and now, with the help of their descendants, you will make way for us."
"no one helped me!" cassie screeches, cutting off the lecture. "i did it all myself!"
"really? then how is it, at the precise moment you were killing dr. pam in hanger one, two of our sentries were shot, another eviscerated, and a fourth hurled a hundred feet down from his post on the south watchtower?"
"i don't know anything about that. i just came to find my brother."
his face darkens. "there really is no hope, you know. all your daydreams and childish fantasies about defeating us—useless."
she opens her mouth and the words come out. they just come out.
"fuck you."
and his finger comes down hard on the button, like he hates it, like the button has a face and its face is a human face, the face of the sentient cockroach, and his finger the boot, stomping down.
