Secret Value of Zero, The (23 page)

“It worked on Cecil, for a bit anyway.”

Doctor Ball wrinkled his forehead, creating deep crevasses. “Cecil?” His hand went to his forehead as he scowled. “Ah yes, subject 323. He survived?”

Meke swallowed, trying to ease the burn in her eyes. “He did for a while, but he’s dead now.”

Doctor Ball nodded. “Ah, I see. Maybe his genetic makeup was stronger. But nobody seems to have thrived like you.”

The word felt like a blow. She may be the sole survivor of this mad experiment. Meke looked at her hands. They looked like they always did, firm and calloused. Something under her skin, something deep in her genetic makeup made her…she wasn’t even sure what it made her. Impervious wasn’t the right word. Adaptive was a better word. Her body somehow accommodated the deadly toxin and made it hers.
 

Meke smiled, but it was a joyless smile. This proved one area where she wasn’t a Zero. She had beaten everyone, even Fivers and Stars. That realization brought her no pleasure, only pain.
 

Meke jerked her head up when the guard opened the door. The large, nameless man pointed at his watch. Time was up. Meke raised her hand palm out, fingers spread. She mouthed,
five more minute
s. The man gave her a curt nod and closed the door.

Meke bent forward, her head a couple of inches closer to Doctor Ball. “Do you know about the exposé?” she asked.

“You mean the farce? Oh yes, I know all about it.” Scorn appeared on his face, distorting it into something that Meke didn’t recognize. “The great man himself explained about the exposé. How I’d get my say.”

“What’s wrong with that? Aren’t they being charitable, giving you the chance to say something?”

“They will hardly let me say anything. It’s all rigged. Do you truly expect me to be able to say whatever I want? No, I’ll be surprised if they record it at all. They may even edit it to make me look worse.”

Doctor Ball laid back into his pillow. All anger and scorn gone, replaced by weariness etched deep into his wrinkles. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. I was dead either way.”

Meke closed her eyes. He was right, of course. His life had ended already. For Stars, posterity was everything. Meke wondered if being a Star wasn’t as wonderful as she had thought. Stars carried the heaviest burden of contributions. Doctor Ball had told her once that he had meant to have children, but his studies proved too demanding.

“I’m testifying,” Meke said.
 

Doctor Ball flinched. “Yes, I expected that.”

The guard opened the door and cocked his head toward the hallway. Meke rose from her chair. Doctor Ball remained on the bed, looking up to the ceiling. Meke put her hand on his forearm. His eyes jerked toward her.
 

“Goodbye,” Meke said.

Without looking back, she walked out of the room, up the elevator and entered her room.
 

She had made her decision. Now she needed to live with it.
 

Meke closed her eyes, allowing the silhouettes in the room fill her mind. It was easier to just feel the shapes and edges of the room reveling in the room’s smallness and sparseness. Her sense explored every nook, cranny, corner and bump around her. It felt simple and straightforward. Nothing like what she would have to do in a few days.
 

Meke laughed. She would be throwing away almost everything she worked for in a short few days. Now she only thought of shapes and feelings. She would be something, and supposed it no longer mattered what her parents would have thought. Only what
she
thought mattered.
 

Rather than think about the consequences, Meke rolled over and went to sleep.
 

MEKE BEHELD the bare half of the room. They had turned the Nerve Center into a television studio. She had never seen the Nerve Center so empty of people. It felt unsettling, almost wrong. Half of the room was bare, with screens and dark walls surrounding the room. The screens shone with numbers, pictures and data. One screen showed a close-up photograph of the dead bodies in the mountains, their hands hidden.

Meke looked away from that picture, focusing on the stark neatness of the room. The other half teemed with moving, murmuring and jostling bodies. Meke squeezed herself between two people in the front so she could see everything. Several people held small black devices in their hands. Camerapeople. They would broadcast the exposé over the Webs live. All of them leaned against the wall, waiting for the production to start.
 

Sterling was nowhere to be seen. For some reason, Meke had expected Sterling to supervise the exposé. Before Meke could explore this thought further, her eyes met Trove’s. All moisture left her mouth, destination unknown. With effort, Meke forced the corners of her mouth upward. Trove returned the smile with a bit more force.

Meke turned and watched Doctor Ball as he sat at his table. His shoulders curved over his belly as he looked down at the desk. His eyes didn’t focus on anything in particular, making him seem very far away even though he only sat a few meters away from Meke.
 

Arya stood with two people—one man and one woman—all in black. Arya pointed at a large handheld as the other two nodded. They didn’t glance up from their handhelds, transfixed.

Meke wondered why they bothered having Doctor Ball there. Prosperon’s trials operated very differently. The accused, usually Equis and Zeroes, didn’t even appear for their trials. Prosperon would run their DNA samples and assess their genetic predisposition to criminal behavior. If the accused were in any way predisposed, she or he would be sent to a penitentiary, never to be seen again.
 

Meke didn’t have to testify for another few hours, but she wanted to see how this proceeded. Arya and Sterling made sure that she would get some real-time transcription of the trial.
 

A woman walked to the middle of the empty space and started speaking. Meke’s handheld flashed with the words of the speakers. “Citizens of Prosperon, we address you today to tell you about a great injustice that has occurred. Life has now become meaningless. Prosperon has started a program that massacred hundreds of innocents. We must rise up and cry out against this injustice.”

“We are all human. We all feel pain. We all live and die on this planet. We are all citizens. We all share the bond of humanity and emotions.”

“We’re not separate because of some arbitrary signs on our hands. We are all human.”

“Prosperon cannot and won't take these things away from us. Efficiency is dead. Efficiency is killing us. Efficiency means that we no longer stay human. We must take back what we’ve lost. We must remember those who have lost their lives in a misguided, misjudged quest for inhumanity. We are not machines. We are more than this.”

“We all live and breathe.”

The woman pointed a long finger at the stooped man. Meke felt the air in the room vibrate as everyone around her clapped and cheered. She clenched her teeth; the tumultuous movements reverberated through her brain. She closed her eyes, but it didn’t help.

“This man, this sorry excuse of a man, Aster Ball, threw away lives as if they amounted to nothing. We will show you how he used and abused human life to the point of criminality.”

“He forgot that we are all human. But we remember.”

The two continued railing against Prosperon’s infamy. They displayed photographs of the dead bodies. Meke’s throat tightened at the sight of these bodies again. She couldn’t excise the memory of their clammy skins. Meke frowned at the words in front of her. They looked all nice and fancy. Inspiring, even. Her own heart beat faster as she read the words. Some people may even cry out and join into the call for a more just, more equal society. Not enough people, Meke thought. Too many people saw only the Zero on the hands. Yesterday nobody cared about the Zeroes dying in the streets, why would they care today?

When the two sat down, Meke exhaled a long sigh of relief. The camerapeople walked over to Doctor Ball, who blinked slowly at them. Meke could feel him trembling. He exhaled in such a way that his body seemed to deflate into a withered version of its old self.
 

“I didn’t do this. I was just trying to do the right thing. I just—” he furrowed his brow. “I was trying to help people, improve them. Why wouldn’t anyone want that? It was for the greater good. Sometimes, you need to sacrifice for progress.”

The room stilled; the only thing that moved was the faintest breeze from people breathing. Then people started shaking their heads, almost in unison.
 

Doctor Ball hunched over, his head in his hands. As his body slackened, only the faint rise and fall of his back betrayed his still-living status. It was almost like the short burst of speech proved too much for him.

Meke held out her hands in front of her, staring at the empty Zeroes in front of her. This time, they looked like placid eyes looking aback at her, instead of an angry accusation. It felt odd, both believing and disbelieving in this cause. She wanted the world that her parents had dreamed of. A world of blank hands and choice. Still, she didn’t think this would lead them to that world.
 

Meke still winced as she got up and walked to the chair.

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The chair’s hardness pressed on Meke’s backside, making her want to fidget. The cameras focused on her, so Meke stayed still. She kept her eyes on a point above everyone’s heads. Her stomach seemed to move, first up and then down. Meke closed her eyes for a brief moment, trying to focus on the task at hand. It was more difficult than she had thought. The slight vibrations in the room felt bad enough, but the idea of a nation that she didn’t know watching her was the worst. The faceless people beyond the camera loomed unseen.
 

Meke opened her eyes and smiled. Maybe it was a charming smile, maybe not. Meke didn’t really care at this point. It took all of her strength not to fidget and frown.
 

Arya stood off the camera’s side, carefully out of view. The woman who had spoken these fiery words—a woman in her thirties with sharp cheekbones and chin-length black hair—stood only a few steps away. Her eyes looked at Meke expectantly, waiting for a signal of Meke’s readiness.
 

She wasn’t ready even though she knew what she needed to do. This was happening, whether she was ready or not. Meke nodded her readiness.

They had already gone over the logistics. The woman would ask the questions, and Arya would translate. The process would cycle backward—Meke would sign her answer and then Arya would translate for everyone.
 

“What’s your name?”
 

That was easy. Meke could do that. The subsequent questions proved almost as simple. The only sticking point was when Meke had to describe the experiments that she had endured. The side effects. The reason why she had willingly returned to Doctor Ball for treatment of an imaginary sickness.
 

“What kind of man is Doctor Ball?”

The question made Meke flinch. She still thought it was an unfair question. What did her opinion matter? It did matter. Despite everything, her testimony was her mark on the world. Training and exercising wouldn’t earn her respect. If she followed what everyone told her, they may look upon her with acceptance rather than suspicion. Maybe. Knowing what she had to do to earn everyone’s admiration and respect made her not want it anymore. She needed respect from someone far more important, herself.

“I think…” her hands paused mid-air, still unsure of their user’s intent, “the man is a coward.”

The woman’s forehead creased. This wasn’t in the script. Then she stood there, waiting for more damning words.
 

Sucking in air, Meke’s eyes traveled over the audience. Nobody noticed the friction, except for one pair of eyes. Trove’s eyes fixed upon hers. Instead of the fear that everyone else inspired, Trove’s gaze steeled Meke’s insides. She imagined herself outside under the trees, just talking to Trove.
 

“I think that he’s a coward because he didn’t look up and see what was happening. He’s not a bad man. He thought he was helping, but he was being used. The man who we should blame is Lucio Donner. Not only did he start this all, but he killed Equis, Squares, Fivers and even some Stars with his experiments. He won’t stop at Zeroes. He’ll kill anyone to get what he wants. Are you really prepared to have a man like that rule you?”

 
Meke realized that Arya’s lips had stopped moving. The small caramel-skinned woman stood, frozen, by the cameras. The black-haired woman looked toward Arya, waiting for her words. “Please, Arya,” Meke said, willing the woman to choose her, not the revolution.

Arya’s eyes shifted between Meke and Doctor Ball. She opened her mouth, closed it and shook her head. “I can’t. I’m sorry,” Arya signed and then looked away.
 

Arya had made her choice and Meke wasn’t it. Meke closed her eyes. It had all been for nothing. Her words meant nothing now that nobody could hear them.
 

People started to fidget, their eyes shifting between Meke and the black-haired woman. Meke pushed herself from the chair, ready to leave. She hovered halfway out of the chair as someone stood up in the audience. It took Meke a few moments to process what was happening. Everyone leaned back and looked up at Trove. He gave Meke a small smile as his lips started moving.

Meke only needed to see a few words to understand what he was doing. He said everything that she had said. Word for word.

Then he sat down, becoming one in a sea of faces. Meke remained half in and out of her chair, caught between the desire to run and hug Trove and the need to sit. For a few moments, nothing moved. Meke could only feel a few soft breaths spread in the air. Once Meke collapsed back into the chair, unable to keep hovering, everything happened at once.

The woman twirled around to Arya, who was pointing at the cameras. The cameras all turned away and the operators stood, confused, waiting for directions. The audience erupted into motion. Some stood. Others ran out of the room. Still others remained seated, shaking their heads. The air rippled with their movements, overwhelming Meke. She closed her eyes, knowing it would do nothing. The sensations washed over her.