The Infinite Sea

Ringer wakes up in the hotel room with Teacup, Cassie, and the other surviving members of Squad 53. She knows that their situation in the hotel is precarious, as it’s only a matter of time before they are discovered. After hearing rumors about an underground cave system, she decides to investigate to find other humans. As she leaves, Teacup pleads with Ringer to take her along, but Ringer refuses.

In the hallway, Ringer runs into Zombie. He tries to get her to take someone with her, but she refuses, insisting that she will travel alone, scope out the caves, and return. As they say goodbye, she briefly considers kissing Zombie, then turns away, not wanting to make a “promise” she can’t keep.

Ringer looks back at the hotel one last time. They named it Walker Hotel, in honor of Evan Walker, who they believe died in the destruction of Camp Haven four miles away. Cassie is determined to stay there, as she is hopeful that Evan somehow survived the blast. Ringer is still not convinced that they can trust Evan, if he is alive. She wonders why the Others need a “physical planet” when they can survive as disembodied consciousnesses, as the Other has done inside Evan’s body.

Ringer arrives near the city of Urbana, still 20 miles from the caverns. She hears a moan of pain nearby and finds a dead child soldier slumped against a tree. Thinking of the situation like a game of “chess,” Ringer does her best to minimize the risk. She considers whether the rest of his squad, or the Silencer who likely shot him, is nearby.

Using the eye piece given to her by the leaders at Camp Haven, Ringer can see that the boy does not glow green. This means that he still has a tracker implant in him. The tracker prevents him from glowing as other humans do. The soldiers are trained to shoot anyone who glows. In the end, she decides to take the boy’s tracker out of his neck and put it into her mouth, believing that the biggest threat to her safety is that his squad might spot her and see her glow.

Ringer sits throughout the night, feeling an overwhelming sense of paranoia that someone is watching her. There are dozens of crows around her that sit and watch from the trees, reminding her of the plague that killed most of humanity in the 3rd Wave. Just as morning arrives, she spots a green glow in the distance, marking a person without a tracker. She briefly wonders if it could be a human survivor—neither a Silencer nor a child soldier. In the end, she decides it isn’t worth the risk to find out, so she lines up her shot.

Ringer shoots the green glow. After waiting to ensure that it doesn’t get up, she goes out into the open to check. To her horror, she realizes that she has shot Teacup. She desperately checks her wound and tries to stop the bleeding. As she does so, Teacup screams. Ringer thinks of the Crucifix Soldier, a soldier Cassie shot in a gas station thinking that he was reaching for a gun; in reality, he was reaching for his cross.

Ringer assesses her options: She can return to the hotel with Teacup, try to find help in Urbana, or leave her there. She realizes that Teacup will not survive without immediate help. Even though she knows that the best choice is to leave Teacup behind and go back into hiding, she can’t make herself do it.

As Ringer sits with Teacup, she hears helicopters approaching overhead. She knows that if Teacup is taken alive, the ones who trained the child soldiers will hook Teacup up to Wonderland, a program that will track Teacup’s memories and allow the Others to see what happened at Camp Haven and that the survivors are in the hotel. Knowing that she is out of time, she pulls out her handgun to kill Teacup.

Ringer spots movement in the trees beside her. She spots a person, glowing green, watching her. She instinctively knows that this person killed the boy by the tree and the rest of his squad. She thinks back to the rats in the hotel.

At the hotel, Teacup constantly complained about the sound of rats in the walls. She was adamant that they would one day chew through the entire hotel and destroy it. To distract her, Ringer decided to teach her chess. She remembered learning from her father, who emphasized the importance of planning and thinking ahead. However, when she tried to teach Teacup, she responded with anger and impatience, throwing the makeshift board.

That night, Ringer could not stop thinking about the rats. While the Others largely killed them directly, dropping a massive rod into the ocean in the 2nd Wave and releasing a disease in the 3rd Wave, things already on Earth—like the cold, terrestrial diseases, and rats—did immense damage to the survivors. She knew that it meant something significant but couldn’t figure out exactly what.

Back in the present, Ringer tries to will herself to kill Teacup. She is overwhelmed with “rage,” the emotion that she knows is most effective in stopping the Others. With this in mind, she puts the sidearm back into its holster as the helicopters descend.

Ringer picks up Teacup and flees into the trees. When she comes out the other side, one of the helicopters comes down in front of them. Ringer knows that because of the implant in her mouth, she does not glow.

In the hotel, Cassie watches out the window. Behind her, she hears Sammy speak the words, “Daddy’s dead” (33). It shocks her that he doesn’t ask the question but instead inherently knows it. Cassie goes to him and tries to console him, but Sammy responds by punching her. In the bed next to his, Teacup encourages him. However, Sammy responds by turning on Teacup, and the two fight. To Cassie’s annoyance, they stop when Ben comes into the room and orders them to stop. He takes Teacup back to his room.

In the hallway, Ben asks Cassie what happened. She explains that she never told Sammy about their father’s death. Ben insists that Sammy will be fine, and his callousness shocks Cassie.

Back in the room, Cassie tells Sammy about their father’s death. She explains that he made it possible for her to escape Ashpit by fending off Commander Vosch. Sammy insists that he is going to kill Vosch one day. As Cassie watches out the window, she sees Ringer disappear into the trees.

Cassie spots Teacup slipping into the trees. She then goes to Ben’s room and tells him that Teacup is gone. Ben sends Poundcake out to bring her back, then puts Dumbo on watch duty. He tries to go himself, but Cassie realizes just how much he is suffering from his gunshot wound. She makes him sit down.

Ben talks about being with Vosch. He admits that he trusted him and actually felt “hope” for the first time; now he is overwhelmed by hate for him.

The conversation makes Cassie wonder why the Others would go through the effort of destroying humanity in waves. Vosch claimed that the Others had been watching earth for thousands of years, which seems strange to Cassie because they would’ve had a much easier time taking over Earth before modern human technology developed. It occurs to her that the Others must “hate” humanity. She tells Ben that their plans were not “about ripping the planet away from us” but “about ripping us” (57).

After several moments without Poundcake returning, Cassie checks the hall. Both Dumbo and Poundcake are gone. Ben insists that he needs to go after them, though Cassie protests that he is too injured. In the end, she decides to go with him. She gives Sammy her handgun and instructs him to lock the door behind them.

In the hallway, Cassie and Ben quickly check all the rooms on the floor. At the end of the hall, Ben pries open the elevator. Cassie jumps into the shaft and onto the top of the elevator, then drops down through the top. Ben takes the stairs, instructing Cassie to wait for him to come out on the floor below.

In the elevator, Cassie waits several moments without hearing from Ben. In the silence, she becomes enraged at herself for believing that Evan would return. She is overwhelmed by what she will do next, then decides that she needs to take things one step at a time. She slowly pries open the elevator doors onto the lobby below.

Cassie steps out into the lobby, finding it littered with debris and destruction. When she doesn’t find Ben, she opens the door to the stairwell. She starts up the stairs, then hears gunshots above. Running up the last flight of stairs, she spots Ben nearby, lying on the ground and bleeding. Then, she sees the door to Sam’s room blown off and a man entering. She runs to his room, shooting at the “shadow” inside. When the man falls to the floor, she puts her boot onto his neck and points her rifle at his head.