I lifted the lid. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Maybe a travelsized chess set—a reminder of all the good times we had together. Inside the box, nestled in a foam cushion, was a green capsule encased in clear plastic. “The world is a clock,” he said softly. “And the time is coming when the choice between life and death will not be a difficult one, Marika.” “What is it?” “The child in the wheat carried a modified version of this inside his throat, except this model is six times as powerful—everything within a five-mile radius is instantaneously vaporized. Place the capsule in your mouth, bite down to break the seal, and all you have to do is breathe.” I shook my head. “I don’t want it.” He nodded. His eyes sparkled. He’d expected me to refuse. “In four days, our benefactors will release bombs from the mothership that will destroy every remaining city on Earth. Do you understand, Marika? The human footprint is about to be wiped clean. What we built over ten millennia will be gone in a day. Then the soldiers of the 5th Wave will be unleashed upon the survivors, and the war will begin. The last war, Marika. The endless war. The war that will go on and on until the final bullet is spent, and then it will be fought with sticks and rocks.” My puzzled expression must have tried his patience; his voice went hard. “What is the lesson of the child in the wheat?” “No outsider can be trusted,” I answered, staring at the green capsule in its bed of foam. “Not even a child.” “And what happens when no one can be trusted? What beS
comes of us when every stranger could be an ‘other’?”
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