Zero's Return (48 page)

The doctors
locked it every night, to keep the aliens from getting them and ruining Earth’s
hope at fighting back.

…but the aliens
were outside their bunker, fighting Humanity on the surface.  In order to get
to their doors, the aliens would have to get through all the other soldiers
that walked the halls with guns.  And, from what Six Six Five had seen of the
instructional videos, the aliens could carve through interstellar spaceships
and solid stone, much less a
door
.  How was a thin sheet of metal going
to keep an alien out?

Frowning, Six
Six Five went to the door and turned the handle.  It stopped halfway, locked. 
She frowned down at it for some time, then slowly released the latch. 

If the door
wasn’t to keep aliens out, the doctors were lying to them.

Six Six Five
pushed the latch again, and again, it thunked to a stop halfway down, keeping
her locked inside.

Why would the
doctors be lying to them?

She released the
handle again, letting it slide back up into place.

If the door
wasn’t to keep aliens out, it had to be to keep her and her batchmates
in
.

She pushed the
latch down again, listening to it hit the barrier once more, remaining shut.

Why would the
doctors be locking their batches
in
?  They needed them to fight the
aliens.  The aliens were outside.

“What are you
doing?” Six Two One asked from the bed.  She had sat up again, and was watching
her from atop the bunk, a little frown on her face.

Six Six Five
released the handle, letting it thunk back into place.  “Nothing,” she said,
still staring at it.  She turned to face the room again, putting her back to
the door.  On her desk, Charlie sat in his cage, happily nibbling from his food
dish, just as content inside his enclosure as he was outside of it. 

Six Six Five
frowned, watching him eat.  Sometimes, it seemed like he didn’t even realize he
was inside a cage…

“You need to
pee?” Six Two One insisted.  “It’s two minutes to lights-out and I’m not gonna
let you sleep with me if you need to pee.”

Six Six Five
blinked, the question so far from where her mind was at the time that she could
only stare at her friend in confusion before shifting her attention to Pizza’s
tiny cage.  Pizza was curled up in a tube in a corner.  Hamsters.  Colonel
Codgson looked at them like
hamsters
.

Six Two One
pointed to the tiny privy set into the wall, much smaller than the one in the
showers.  “If you need to pee, go do it.  Quick.”

More because she
didn’t want to answer any questions about why she had been prying at the door
than because she needed to pee, Six Six Five went to the privy and used it. 
Then, still disturbed, she went to her bed and crawled under the covers. 
Lights-out came immediately afterward, but Six Six Five could only stare
through the darkness at the mattress above her, unable to sleep.

One of her
batchmates’ hamsters had died in the night a few months before, and the next
morning, they’d replaced it with another hamster of identical color.  She’d
heard one of the soldiers laugh and call it a ‘failure to thrive’ as he swung
the dead hamster back and forth by a limp leg before tossing it into the
closest wastebasket, to the chuckling of two other soldiers.

Soldiers that,
as far as Six Six Five could tell, spent more time facing
them
with
guns, rather than watching for aliens.

What if they
were
the aliens?

“Two One?” Six
Six Five asked softly, into the darkness. 

Her friend gave
no sound.

“You awake?” Six
Six Five insisted.

Six Two One
grunted and the bed above her creaked.  “I said you could sleep up here if you
peed first.”  She sounded more than a little irritated.

“Don’t lose
tomorrow,” Six Six Five said.  “You don’t want to be culled.”

“I’m trying to
sleep
,”
Six Two One muttered.  She yawned.

“Promise me,”
Six Six Five said.  “It’s really important.”

Six Two One
groaned.  “Fiiine.  I won’t get culled.”

Yet, listening
to the exasperated way she said it, Six Six Five felt a horrible welling of
dread knot her intestines as she thought of what would happen to her friend in
the morning.  Six Two One wasn’t very good at fighting.  She turned over on her
bunk and looked at Pizza, who was grooming his fuzzy round ears with his tiny
feet, only barely visible in the dim light.  On her own nightstand, Charlie
stretched out on his side, asleep.

Then she froze. 
What would happen to Charlie if Six Six Five got culled?

She was small,
Six Six Five realized, terror beginning to worm her way into her guts, mingling
with the dread.  And the wrong batch.  Even if she tried her best, Colonel
Codgson was going to try and cull her…

“Sleeping on the
job, Welu?” an irritating voice demanded.  “It’s almost
noon
.  I would
have thought you would have had to, oh, I dunno, patrol the perimeter or
something.  You sick?”  A booted toe nudged Shael in his scaleless side,
grating against his unprotected ribs.  “You eat too much last night?  Got a
headache?  Come off your drugs?  What?”

“The Sisters
fuck you with the rotted tendon of a Huouyt shit-capsule,” Shael growled,
rolling over to go back to sleep.  The dreams concerned him, though he could
tell no one.  Why were they so vivid?  Why was he dreaming of this Human girl? 
Why did she haunt him so?  Had he met her somewhere?  Affronted her ancestors
somehow?  Accidentally crushed a fellow warrior in his passing and his lack of
respect had earned the wrath of her soul?

Then Shael
realized what the Voran had said and he sat up in a scale-tightening blast of
horror. 
Noon
?  When it was his duty and custom to be up at
dawn
?

Above him, the
Voran prince gave him a smug look and crossed his shamefully black-clad arms
over his black-clad chest.  “We’re moving out in six tics.  If you want
something to eat, you should probably go visit the pit before Twelve-A gets
them moving.  I think there might be something left for you.”  His grin
widened.  “Maybe.”  Then, with another superior look, the infuriating Voran
turned and moved off, leaving Shael’s mouth open in horror at the insult.  All
around him, the drooling furgs that were their traveling companions were
watching with unabashed curiosity.  Even Eleven-C seemed interested.

The
humiliation.  The
shame
.  Shael hung his head to avoid the accusatory
looks, the quiet disapproval from those lesser creatures he had sworn to
protect.  Unable to withstand their amusement, he fled.  Instead of going to
the food pit as instructed, however, he hurried to a boulder at the edge of
camp and hunkered down on the other side, his back against the stone, a wall of
rock between him and the mockery in the Voran’s eyes.

By not
fulfilling the duties required of him, he had failed.

He couldn’t
fail.  The weak failed.  The weak were culled.

Shael’s heart
began to pound, harder and harder, until it felt like it was pounding at his
temples, streaking acid through his limbs and chest.

He had to be
strong.  He had to fight.

His heart,
already pounding out of control, started to thump oddly in his chest.  His
breath started to come in ragged gasps.  Seemingly oozing into him from the
grasses, the trees, the pebbles themselves, he felt terror assaulting him from
all sides, so much terror…

Shael screamed
and wrapped himself in his war mind, shoving everything around him backwards by
two body-lengths, giving himself space to breathe.

The strong
survived.  The weak were culled.

He’d failed.  He
was going to be culled.  Shael’s breath was coming in whining pants, now, the
ache in his throat dragging spontaneous wetness from his eyes.  The rocks,
plants, and trees around him started to splinter, crack, and ooze fluids.  He
was going to be culled, he had failed, he had killed Codgson’s favorite, and he
was going to be culled…

You will not
be culled,
a gentle voice told him.

The voice was
like a war-horn, calling him from the groggy slumber of the night.  Shael
flinched and looked up.

Twelve-A stood
just out of reach of the ring of destruction, watching him from amongst the
trees with blue eyes so full of compassion it made Shael forget some of his
shame.

You will not
be culled,
Twelve-A said again, taking a tentative step towards him,
settling a naked foot inside the ring of destruction. 
You have nothing to
fear, Shael.  Not anymore.

Shael’s heart
continued to pound an odd, unrhythmic beat in his chest.  Pains continued to
shoot through his arms and legs, and he was having trouble seeing.

You are
strong.  Stronger than the rest.  That’s why they gave you to Doctor Philip. 

Shael flinched,
a brief image of an empty cage flashing through his head before it passed
again, replaced with the minder’s face.  He had knelt in front of him and was
putting both his slender hands against Shael’s head. 
You are safe now,
he said softly, his cerulean eyes only ninths from Shael’s own. 
I will not
let anyone cull you.  Neither will Joe.

Shael twitched
at ‘cull’, once again feeling the odd image of an empty cage, an empty bed. 
The top bunk.  Where had he seen a top bunk?

Then Shael
realized the minder was holding him,
comforting
him, and he threw the
weakling off of him in disgust.  “What do you think you’re doing, touching a
prince of Welu?!” he demanded, lunging away in outrage.  “I should have you
staked for that!”  As the minder, who had slid several feet through the dirt
from the blow, started to right himself, Shael backed away, furious, his heart
pounding in indignation that a lesser creature had
dared
to touch him. 
All his instincts were screaming at him to obliterate the imbecile.  Not even
Doctorphilip, in his examinations of his superior body, had dared touch him. 

At that moment,
Joedobbs strode within hearing range and came to an abrupt halt at the edge of
the destruction, a cautious look on his face.  He glanced from the minder, who
was still on the ground, to Shael, who was standing, ready to drive the
telepath’s meddling blond head into the cracked stone boulder for the insult. 
For a moment, he seemed to just take it in like a Takki took in the dealings of
Dhasha.  Then, warily, the Voran said, “What’s going on here?”

“The minder
shoves his tek in places it doesn’t belong,” Shael snarled, holding Twelve-A’s
blue gaze.  “He will tend to his own coils or he will lose his right to breathe
my air.”

Both Joedobbs’
eyebrows went up.  “I…see.”  He continued to watch them both with caution, like
he expected them to cross spears at any minute.  Almost tentatively, he said to
the minder, “What’d you do to piss in her nuajan?”

It took Shael a
moment to realize Joedobbs had used the language of the Earthlings, not the
language of the crimson worms.  He frowned.  When Joedobbs continued to
question the minder, however, the words seemed to slip away the more he
concentrated, remaining fuzzy and just out of reach, almost like a distant
memory.  As he fumbled for them, Twelve-A cocked his head slightly and his brow
crinkled the way it always did when he was communicating.

Then Shael
realized that the two of them were discussing
him
and he wrapped his
mental fist around the boulder and squeezed.

The deafening
sound of pulverizing rock stopped them both cold.  Very slowly, both the minder
and the Voran turned to look at the powder that was even then settling to the
ground where the great stone had once been, billowing dust spreading outward in
a wave.

“You will tell
him
nothing
,” Shael informed the minder in the silence that followed,
“or you even now gaze upon your own demise.”

Twelve-A swallowed,
cerulean eyes slowly lifting from the pile of stone powder to Shael’s face. 
Appearing pleasingly spooked, the weakling’s mind babbled,
I only told him
you were ashamed of sleeping late.

“No more,” Shael
growled, making a cutting gesture with his hand.  “Our bargain holds.  Now and
forever.  My dreams.  Your weakness.  Violate it, and meet my wrath.”  And, at
that, he turned and walked off, putting his back to the Voran and the blue-eyed
meddler.

Behind him, he
heard Joedobbs ask another question in the Earthling tongue, but when Shael
glanced behind himself to look, instead of responding, Twelve-A simply shook
his head and walked the other direction.  Joedobbs frowned and called after him
in clear confusion, obviously not understanding what had just transpired. 

Grunting in
satisfaction, Shael went to find somewhere to sit and think about what cruel
joke of the Sisters had just befallen him, and why his hands were shaking so
badly…

#

“The rules are
simple,” Colonel Codgson said, as they stood spaced out in two lines in a weird
room filled with electronic stations and big dishes, faced off against the
opponent that the doctors had chosen for them.  Unlike the big bully Six Six
Five had wanted, she had gotten a scrawny boy barely bigger than herself, who
was lazy in class and couldn’t even throw a proper snap-kick.  He cried
whenever someone slipped past his defenses and hit him, even if it was a little
tap.  Fighting him would be…ridiculously easy.

Colonel Codgson
stopped, regarding them all with his casual hamster smile.  “The two of you
will fight until someone surrenders or someone breaks free from their
position.  Whoever surrenders will be culled.  If you break free, you
automatically pass.”

Break free?
 Six
Six Five didn’t see a fighting circle…  She frowned at the wiry, thin-faced boy
that Codgson had chosen for her, unable to understand why he had picked
him
to be her opponent.  He was lazy, slow, and a horrible fighter.  It was almost
like Codgson had gotten over his weird grudge against her and actually wanted
her to
win
.