The Infinite Sea(74)

            “They’re gone,” I blurt out. “They’re not at the hotel. And you don’t know where they are.” That has to be it. I can think of no other reason why he hasn’t killed me.

            A crappy reason, though. In this weather and with his resources, how hard could it be to find them? I clamp my cold hands between my knees and force myself to breathe slowly and deeply.

            He opens the lid, removes the board, and takes out the white queen. “White? You prefer white.”

            Long, nimble fingers set up the board. The fingers of a musician, a sculptor, a painter. He rests his elbows on the table and laces those fingers to make a shelf for his chin, like my father did every time he played.

            “What do you want?” I ask.

            He raises an eyebrow. “I want to play a game of chess.”

            Staring at me silently. Five seconds becomes ten. Ten becomes twenty. After thirty seconds, an eternity has passed. I think I know what he’s doing: playing a game within a game. I just don’t understand why.

            I open with the Ruy Lopez. Not the most original opening in the history of the game; I’m a little stressed. As we play, he hums softly, tunelessly, and now I know he’s deliberately mocking my father. My stomach rolls with revulsion. To survive I built walls, an emotional fortress that protected me and kept me sane in a world gone dangerously insane, but even the most open person has a private, sacred place where no one else may go.

            I understand the game within the game now: There is nothing private, nothing sacred. There is no part of me hidden from him. My stomach churns with revulsion. He’s violated more than my memories. He’s molesting my soul.

            The mouse and keyboard to my right are wireless. But the monitor beside him isn’t. A lunge across the table, a wallop upside his head, and a wrap of the cord around his neck. Executed in four seconds, over in four minutes. Unless we’re being watched, and we probably are. Vosch will live, Teacup and I will die. And even if I manage to take him out first, the victory will be Pyrrhic, assuming Evan Walker’s claim is true. At the hotel, I pointed this out to Sullivan when she said Evan had sacrificed himself to blow up the base: If they can download themselves into human bodies, they can also make copies of themselves. The set of “Evans” and “Voschs” would be infinite. Evan could kill himself. I could kill Vosch. Wouldn’t matter. By definition, the entities inside them are immortal.

            You need to pay close attention to what I’m telling you, Sullivan said with exaggerated patience. There’s a human Evan who merged with the alien consciousness. He’s not one or the other; he’s both. So he can die.

            Not the important part.

            Right, she snapped. Just the insignificant human part.

            Vosch is leaning over the board. His breath smells like apples. I press my hands into my lap. He raises an eyebrow. Problem?

            “I’m going to lose,” I tell him.

            He feigns surprise. “What makes you think so?”

            “You know my moves before I make them.”

            “You’re referring to the Wonderland program. But you’re forgetting that we are more than the sum of our experiences. Human beings can be marvelously unpredictable. Your rescue of Ben Parish during the fall of Camp Haven, for example, defied logic and ignored the first prerogative of all living things: to continue living. Or your decision yesterday to give yourself up when you realized capture was the little girl’s only chance to survive.”

            “Did she?”

            “You already know the answer to that question.” Impatiently, like a harsh teacher to a promising student. He gestures at the board: Play.