The Infinite Sea

Ringer leaps on top of Vosch, driving him to the ground, punching him in the face, and breaking his nose. Several soldiers come into the room and restrain her. As blood runs down Vosch’s face, he tells her that she “disappoints” him, as “rage [isn’t] the answer” (198).

Ringer is taken by several soldiers to a nearby room with several doctors. When the soldiers leave, she disarms a young recruit and takes his gun. She points it at herself. One doctor calmly tells her that she can’t kill herself or they will kill Teacup. Ringer realizes that Vosch is bluffing. She thought he pushed the button out of rage; in reality, she was the one that couldn’t see the bluff because she was “blinded” by her own rage. The thought of all the lies, bluffs, and strategy overwhelms her.

The doctor instructs Ringer to put down the gun. She considers whether Teacup is actually alive, then decides that the “risk” is too big. She acknowledges that it is ignorant to hold the “antiquated belief” that the “life of a seven-year-old kid still matters” (200) but she lowers the gun anyway.

Ringer is sedated. She then hears Vosch’s voice talking to her about rats. She is floating above the Earth looking down. The sensation makes her panic; she realizes that she is sedated because, otherwise, the visions would overwhelm her.

As her consciousness floats toward Earth, Vosch tells her that she is looking at Earth before humanity. Everything started with a “rock,” which destroyed life on Earth and made way for humans. As he speaks, Ringer sees the asteroid crash into the planet. Dust, debris, and waves rise around her. Vosch tells her that the “central” question is: Why are the Others killing humanity in stages when “all [they] need is a very, very big rock?” (203).

Millions of years pass before Ringer in minutes, as she sees creatures begin to inhabit the planet. One creature begins as a rodent, then grows into her father. She sits beside his chair as he is hooked up to monitors and an IV. He speaks to her as Ringer assures herself that what she’s experiencing isn’t real.

Ringer’s father tells her that he forgives her. He was abusive toward her and had an alcohol addiction. After the Waves hit, she left him to find alcohol. When she returned, he was dead. Now, he assures her that he would have died either way. As Ringer struggles to resist his voice, insisting that he isn’t real, her father tells her that she “belongs” to the Others now.

When Ringer returns to the room, she is alone. The young recruit that she disarmed comes into the room with a tray of food and a glass of juice. She tries to get information from him, but he insists that he is not allowed to talk to her. The recruit acts annoyed, insisting that Ringer needs to drink her juice so that he can leave. She agrees to do it but, in return, asks his name. He hesitates, then tells her it’s “Razor.”

After Razor leaves, a doctor comes to Ringer’s room and introduces herself as Dr. Claire. She takes Ringer a couple doors down to another room with a shower. She instructs Ringer to clean herself. Ringer finds a toothbrush as well as shampoo and soap. She spends a long time in the shower. Overcome with rage, she repeatedly punches the wall until her hand bleeds.

Back in the hospital room, Vosch is waiting for Ringer. As Claire bandages Ringer’s hand, Ringer tells them that she needed to harm herself to be sure that what was happening was real.

Vosch shows Ringer a video of a child running through a field. He approaches a farmhouse where a man waits with a gun. A woman comes out and takes the child inside. A few minutes later, the farmhouse explodes. Vosch explains that he is showing Ringer what they do with the youngest children, then tells her about the CO2-activated incinerator.

Ringer responds by asking why they would go through the effort when they could blow up the farmhouse more easily. Vosch “impatiently” answers that it “isn’t about the dead” (214).

Dr. Claire, Vosch, Razor, and another doctor stand around Ringer. The doctor holds a stopwatch while Claire injects something she calls “the hub” into Claire’s arm. As Ringer’s temperature rises and she is filled with pain, Vosch explains to her that they are injecting a version of a “CPU” into her body. It will allow her to control the 40,000 nanobots that will inhabit her body. As the doctor warns Vosch that Ringer is on the verge of dying, Vosch insists that she is strong enough to survive.

Over the next several days, Ringer continues to struggle with the injection. She learns that the nanobots are designed to improve each of her body’s systems. When Dr. Claire removes the bandages on her hand, Ringer is shocked to find that there is no trace of damage there. She thinks of Evan surviving the explosion at Camp Haven or Vosch returning with no bruises after she broke his nose. She realizes that they are upgrading her system to match the Others.

One day, Razor brings Ringer food. He warns her that if she doesn’t eat, they will consider the experiment a failure and likely kill her. He refers to the injection as “The 12th System” and calls it “technology” from the Others (220). Ringer tries to convince him that she is not an Other, pointing out that it would make no sense to inject her with it if she was. However, Razor ignores her, insisting that she is lying to try to trick him. She tells him the parable of the blind men and the elephant, insisting that they are all blind to the Others because they can’t see the whole picture.

Ringer begins to measure the days by counting the meals that Razor brings. She never eats them, partially because she is too sick to do so and partially in defiance. On the tenth day, Razor comes in and dumps her food directly into the trash without even offering it to her. He then sits down and takes out the chessboard. He tells Ringer to teach him how to play. She is initially hesitant, believing it is a trick from Vosch. Razor admits that he got permission to play but insists that it was his idea. Ringer teaches him to play and beats him in several games.

The next day, Razor returns. He sets up the board differently and tells her that he made a new game: chaseball, which is a combination of chess and baseball. Razor produces a quarter and explains that they will take turns flipping the coin to decide what the pitch is, whether it was hit, and whether the batter gets on base or not. Although Ringer starts out annoyed, she is moved by Razor’s excitement and enthusiasm for the rudimentary game. He begins imitating an announcer and calling out plays.

In the third inning, Ringer is too tired to continue. She tells Razor that they can play again tomorrow, but he responds with anger. He yells at her for not caring about his game—even after he tried to play chess for her. He puts the game away and leaves, confusing Ringer.

That night, a new recruit brings Ringer’s food. She wonders if Razor is mad at her still or got reassigned by Vosch. She struggles to sleep, having nightmares about Razor’s anger and her father’s death. When she thinks of Razor, she relives his commentary and the way that he moved the coin across the board to mimic the outfielders’ movements. It was often redundant, repeating the same lines and maneuvers. She begins to see that his movements spelled out the word “Hi.”

The next morning, Ringer waits for someone to bring her food, hoping it is Razor. She realizes that she is either imagining things, Vosch is trying to trick her, or Razor was actually trying to communicate with her. She is relieved when Razor comes to her room with her food. She greets him with the word “Hi.”

Ringer asks about chaseball, but Razor tells her that he left the game in his room. He offers to bring it back again someday. He and Ringer then talk about their pasts.

Razor brings back the chessboard. They play chaseball, with Ringer doing her own movement in the field with her pieces. She asks Razor for help, and he signs back that he has a plan. It takes them over an hour just to sign a few words to each other.

The next morning, Vosch returns with Claire. He asks how Ringer is doing. Claire explains that she is fighting an infection, has high blood pressure, and has lost a significant amount of weight. Vosch then turns to Ringer and asks her why she wants to live. She tells him it’s so that she can kill him one day.

Vosch instructs Claire to take Ringer off all her medication. He then asks Ringer what, if not rage, is the thing that will help humanity? She rattles off several emotions like detachment, despair, and love. Vosch tells her that her answers are “better” but still not right.

That night, Ringer tries to play chaseball with Razor, but she struggles without her medication. When she vomits, Razor calls for help. Claire comes in and checks Ringer. She asks if Ringer was telling the truth about wanting to kill Vosch. She admits that she knows she will never get the chance; however, she warns Claire that she will one day kill her. Claire laughs in response and insists that Ringer won’t live through the night.

Over the next month, Ringer begins to improve. Razor comes each day and cares for her, bringing her food, helping her bathe, and changing her bedpan. She also begins to eat more.

One night, Ringer intentionally defecates in her bed. She yells for help, and Claire shows up with a guard. Claire angrily curses Ringer as she helps her from the bed then down the hall to the shower. As Claire thrusts her under the water, Ringer pretends to be too weak to hold herself up. She then grabs ahold of the showerhead and snaps the metal pipe off. She shoves it into Claire’s neck.

Ringer realizes just how much her body has been enhanced. She fights with Claire, who is also enhanced. Ringer pulls the support rod from the shower and uses it as a weapon, eventually subduing Claire and choking her on the ground.

The guard comes into the bathroom with his gun raised. Ringer throws the rod at him, disarming him, then hits him with the cover to the toilet tank. She then tosses the cover at Claire, knocking the termination button that would kill Ringer from her hand. When Claire goes for it, Ringer steps on her hand, the gun now pointed at Claire. Ringer thinks of how her humanity and her old name, “Marika,” are gone as she shoots Claire.

Ringer takes out the guard’s tracking device and puts it in her mouth, then takes out her own device and puts it into the guard. She then grabs the kill device from Claire and pulls up the map of the base. She can see hundreds of dots on the base. She knows that she can kill them all with the push of a button and make it out of the base easily. However, she realizes that she is not capable of killing the innocent children. Instead, she maps a route out.

Ringer thinks back to a day during her recovery when Razor told her a story about his grandma’s prayer circle. He always wondered if prayer actually worked. One day, he broke one of his mother’s teacups. He hid it in the cabinet then prayed for a month that it would be fixed. When it was magically fixed one day, he realized that God must have answered his prayers, only to find out later that his mother bought a new one. He stares at Ringer when he finishes the story, then puts his hand on her knee, signaling her with a “tap.”

In the bathroom, Ringer waits for the water to stop running, the signal from Razor. When it finally does, she follows his directions into the hospital ward. She is stopped by a nurse who threatens her with a gun, but Ringer uses a knife to kill her. She then finds Teacup’s room.

Ringer knocks Teacup unconscious, using just enough strength with her augmented system. She then jumps out the window as, thanks to Razor, the armory explodes before her. She finds a vehicle nearby that Razor left, then drives to the airstrip. Razor is waiting with a pilot he has kidnapped.

In the helicopter, Razor threatens the pilot, but he refuses to take off. Ringer breaks his finger. As they can see people approaching in vehicles, Ringer tries to convince the pilot that she is human and the commanders at the base are not. She instinctively reaches out and touches him. She realizes that she can take his pain and soothe him. He finally listens and starts the helicopter.

Ringer instructs the pilot to fly south. As they do so, Ringer asks why Razor finally decided to trust her about being human. He tells her that Vosch hooked him up to Wonderland, then started demanding to know what Ringer was talking about. He realized that they were afraid of what Ringer would say to him. As he thought about it, he realized that it made no sense for Vosch to have technology from the Others, like Wonderland, if he was human.

The pilot tells them that they are being followed by planes. As they approach, Ringer gives a parachute to the pilot and to Razor. She then straps Teacup to Razor. She makes him promise to keep Teacup safe. Razor then kisses Ringer. She scolds him, then sends him out of the helicopter.

Back in the cockpit, the pilot is gone. Ringer continues to fly the helicopter. She can feel her system preparing for her to crash.

Ringer cuts the engines to the helicopter. It causes her to fly about the cockpit, then into the back of the helicopter, her body smashing even though she feels no pain. As the helicopter continues to drop, she leaps from it.

As Ringer falls, she thinks of Vosch’s question, “What is the answer?,” as well as the correct response, “Nothing. Nothing is the answer.” (271). She gives herself over to the 12th System, allowing it to replace her humanity. In that moment, she realizes how Evan feels; they are both human and not at the same time. She lands in a lake.

Ringer travels to the wreckage from the helicopter, reaching it at dawn. Eventually, she sees Razor approaching. She asks about Teacup, and he tells her that he left her nearby. Ringer wonders why no one is hunting them or showing up at the wreckage.

As Ringer and Razor walk to Teacup, Razor asks where they are going next. Ringer tells him that they have to go back to Ohio for her friends. When Razor points out that it is over 200 miles away and that her friends are likely dead, she tells him that she made a promise to a boy that she would come back. Razor asks if he is her boyfriend; in response, Ringer kisses him.

Razor leads Ringer to a concrete plant nearby. As they enter the gates, Ringer demands that Razor give her his rifle. Razor hesitates, then relents. Ringer then hits him in the head and knocks him unconscious.

When Ringer kissed Razor, she was able to see part of his mind thanks to her enhanced system. She could see that he was hiding something. She knows that Teacup is probably long gone but she forces herself to enter the plant, knowing that there is a reason Razor wanted her there. She is deeply upset, realizing that her augmented system can’t do anything for her “broken heart” (278).

The inside of the concrete plant is a makeshift field hospital. Ringer ascends to the third floor, which is littered with bodies. In the middle is a chessboard, set up in the endgame that she and Vosch reached when they played. Ringer hears Vosch’s voice telling her to make her last move. She topples her king, then turns and finds him standing at the top of the stairs.

Ringer says that the entire escape was a test of the 12th System. Vosch admits that she is right but that the test isn’t over yet. Ringer tries to shoot him, but the rifle is empty. She then tackles him. The two fight briefly, with Vosch eventually throwing Ringer to the side. He spreads his arms to her and tells her that this is her opportunity to kill him.

Ringer and Vosch fight. Through it all, she feels like it is the same as their chess game: he constantly knows her moves. He exploits her injuries from the fall from the helicopter. The third time he knocks her down, he implores her to stay there so that she doesn’t “overload” her system. When Ringer gets up anyway, Vosch throws her onto the concrete floor below.

Vosch then asks Ringer what the answer to his question is. She realizes for the first time that he is not asking for humanity’s answer to the problem of the Others; rather, he’s asking for the Others’ answer to the problem of humanity. She tells him that the answer is “nothing” because the Others were never on planet Earth. They didn’t implant themselves into certain humans during childhood; instead, they just gave children like Evan and Grace the belief that they were implanted. In reality, they were simply enhanced humans like Ringer, never Others at all.

Vosch praises Ringer for her answer. He then asks what he is. Ringer tells him that she doesn’t know, but if he is human, then “there is no hope” (283).

Vosch picks up Ringer and carries her to one of the hospital beds. He tells her to stay in the factory and rest to allow her system to repair. He tells her that he is leaving Razor to care for her, and Ringer begs him not to.

A while later, after Ringer hears Vosch leave on a helicopter, Razor returns. He silently bandages her wounds and hooks her up to an IV, then goes and sits by the open door with his rifle.

That night, Razor comes back and lights a lamp. Ringer asks him where Teacup is, but he doesn’t answer. Ringer then tells him what she has learned about the Others. She compares humanity to “rats,” with the Silencers bringing “poison” back to kill them all. She points out that her theory still has flaws, though, as it doesn’t answer the bigger question: why not just wipe out humanity all at once?

Eventually, Razor responds, telling Ringer to stop talking. She asks why he lied to her, and he responds that, as a soldier, he was just doing what he was told.

Ringer thinks of the explosion at Camp Haven. In particular, there were dozens of drones that they had to destroy. She realizes that the drones were not intended to find humans but instead to track the Silencers. She guesses that Vosch is going to use her to find Evan, as his betrayal risks the truth about the Silencers being discovered.

Over the next week, Razor continues to care for Ringer. One day, he moves all the bodies out of the warehouse and into the yard, then burns them. When he returns, Ringer asks him about Teacup again. He insists that it doesn’t matter. She then asks how he can still trust Vosch and not believe the truth about the Others. Razor points out that he has no other choice if he wants to survive.

Ringer asks if Razor’s real name is actually “Alex.” He tells her that he didn’t lie about anything that he told her about his life. He then kisses Ringer. She uses her senses to reach into his mind. She finds that she can see everything and, at the center of it, she finds herself. The two then have sex.

After, Razor tells Ringer that she should run. When she insists that she can’t leave without Teacup, Razor argues that one girl is not worth risking her life. He puts on his clothes, kisses Ringer on the forehead, and returns to the door to stand guard.

The helicopter returns and takes Razor and Ringer back to the base. Razor leads her into a room where Vosch waits with a guard and Teacup. Vosch asks Ringer if she has figured out the answer to the other question: why not kill all of humanity at once? Razor admits that she hasn’t fully figured it out but she knows that the Others want survivors. She believes it has something to do with “luck.” Vosch seems pleased by her answer.

Vosch then asks what Ringer is going to do now. She explains that she has to find Evan because he is a “flaw” in their plan. He has fallen in love, which is the only thing that is unpredictable and can’t be controlled. Vosch puts his hand on her shoulder and praises her.

Next to Ringer, Razor whispers the word “run.” He then shoots his gun. Ringer thinks that he shot Vosch or the guard; however, she then sees that his bullet killed Teacup. The guard responds by shooting Razor. Razor falls to the ground. Looking up at Ringer, he tells her that she is “free.” As Vosch yells out in anger, Ringer flees to the window and jumps through it, falling to the ground below.

At dawn, Ben stands guard as Sam and Megan sleep. As Dumbo looks for food, Cassie still tries to make sense of what happened back at the hotel. She hears footsteps nearby and raises her rifle. As the shadow comes out of the trees with his arms raised, she realizes that it is Evan and runs to him.