Zero's Return (55 page)

Immediately, Six
Five Five dropped to his knees, reached into the cage, grabbed the hamster in a
big, meaty fist, and squeezed until Six Six Five heard Kung Fu’s tiny
shriek—cut short when his ribcage snapped.  Six Five Five threw the lifeless
body on top of the cage and stood, once more locking his hands behind him as he
faced Colonel Codgson.

“How did it feel
to kill your batchmate, Five Five?” Codgson asked.

“I didn’t feel
anything, sir,” Six Five Five said, staring straight ahead.

“Excellent.  Go
back to formation,” Codgson said.

Six Five Five
did as he was told.

To the
formation, Codgson said, “Six Seven Nine was weak.  She couldn’t even kill an
animal
. 
How could we expect her to kill
aliens
?  If you can’t kill, you are
not
a soldier
.  You are worthless.  Soldiers kill.  Soldiers are like Six Five
Five.  They don’t feel.  They don’t
care
.  They do what they’re
told
.” 
He shoved the body with his foot, rolling it across the floor.  “Lieutenant,
get this disgusting thing out of my sight.”  As three techs raced up to grab
the body and the cage, Codgson calmly reached into his little jar and pulled
out another name.  Reading it, he said, “Six Eight Three, get up here.”

This time, no
one stepped out of line for several long breaths.

Codgson cocked
his head, then read the slip again.  “Six Eight Three?”  When still no one
responded, his curious black eyes searched the ranks, stopping on a red-faced
boy who was sweating.  He smiled.  “There you are.  Get up here, Eight Three.”

Very
reluctantly, Six Eight Three went to the front of the formation and hesitated,
tears in his eyes.  His hands were shaking.

“Go get your
hamster, Six Eight Three,” Colonel Codgson said gently.

Though he didn’t
say a word, Six Eight Three stumbled towards the cages, tears streaming down
his face.  He picked up a cage, then came back, though he continued to hold the
cage in his arms, hyperventilating.

“Put the cage
down,” the colonel said.

Very slowly,
more out of training to do as he was told than any visible willingness on his
part, Six Eight Three set the cage at his feet.

“What’s your
hamster’s name, Six Eight Three?” Codgson asked.

“Peanut,” the
boy whispered.

“Do you like
Peanut?” Colonel Codgson asked, oozing concern.

“Yes,” the boy
choked.

“I’ll offer you
the same choice,” Colonel Codgson said.  “You can kill Peanut, or you can kill
a batchmate.”

“Hamster,” Six
Eight Three croaked.

The colonel
cocked his head.  “I’m sorry,” Codgson said.  “What was that?”

“I’ll kill
Peanut,” Six Eight Three managed.

The smile that
spread across Codgson’s face set fire to the hatred within Six Six Five’s
being.  “Then what are you waiting for?”  He gestured behind him.  “Six Five
Five was able to kill a hamster with his bare hands, but there’s a bucket over
there, if you would rather drown him.  Unfortunately, that will take longer.”

Six Eight
Three’s fingers shook so badly that when he took Peanut from his cage and
carried him over to the bucket, as soon as he shoved the hamster under the
water, he jerked his hand back out and dropped him.  Six Six Five wasn’t sure
if it was intentional or not, but as soon as he did, Colonel Codgson’s eyes
darkened.  “Six Five Five—”

“I’ll get him!”
Six Eight Three gasped.  “I’ll get him!”  He got on his knees and scooped up
the soggy hamster, whose little pink legs were flailing.  Six Eight Three drove
him under the water, crying.  “He’s biting me!” he whimpered.  “He’s
biting
me!”

“They’ll do
that,” Codgson said, watching with that eerie smile.  “Don’t bring him back up
until he stops struggling, or you’ll just have to do it all over again.”

Six Eight Three
remained with his arm in the bucket for what seemed like minutes before he
pulled his dead hamster from within.  Sobbing, now, he gently laid the hamster
on the concrete beside the bucket and started stroking its sodden fur.

“Excellent,”
Codgson said.  “Return to formation.  Next!”  As Six Eight Three numbly got
back to his feet and moved back toward formation, the colonel stuck his hand
into the jar and pulled another name.

Six Six Five
closed her eyes as he read off the name, willing it not to be her.

Six Six Five
didn’t actually hear the name that was called—she just knew it wasn’t her
because a girl sobbed and stepped out of line at Codgson’s gentle urging.

The girl, too,
chose her hamster.  And the next.  And the next.

Then Codgson
read a name that made Six Six Five’s heart stop.  She glanced down at her
hands, unable to stop them from shaking.  She looked at Charlie.

“Six Six Five,”
Codgson said, his voice oozing pleasure.  “The
prodigy
.  Come up here,
please.”

Six Six Five’s
feet felt wooden as she stepped out of line and went to the front of
formation.  She stood there looking at Charlie, wondering if he knew what was
happening to him.  He was leaning back on his hind feet and sniffing at the top
of his cage, his little pink eyes curious as they scanned the room.

“I
said
,”
Codgson snapped, “what is your hamster’s name?”

Six Six Five
tore her eyes from Charlie and looked up at the colonel.  He knew she had a
rabbit, not a hamster.  He had tried to take it from her as soon as he found
out hers was different than everybody else’s, but Doctor Molotov had overrode
him.  Indeed, the colonel was watching her with that coldly smug smile, daring
her to contradict him.

Anger flared
again within her.  “My rabbit’s name is Charlie,” Six Six Five said softly,
barely able to form the words.

“I’m sorry,”
Colonel Codgson said.  “What was your
hamster’s
name, soldier?”

Seeing how much
he enjoyed himself, seeing his pleasure at her pain, something snapped in the
back of Six Six Five’s head.  Her fear had become something more, something a
thousand times stronger, something that burned like a floodlight within the
darkness.  Six Six Five gave him a long look, her emotions draining away like
water through a sieve.  “My hamster’s name is Charlie,” she said, the tremor
completely gone from her voice.

Codgson smiled,
not catching the difference in her demeanor.  “And do you like your hamster,
Six Six Five?”

“Yes,” Six Six
Five said.  “That’s why I’m not going to kill him.”

Colonel
Codgson’s face shifted in an instant of uncertainty before his smooth
confidence was back.  “Then, instead of killing your hamster, you’re going to
kill a batchmate?”

Six Six Five
glanced over her shoulder at Six Five Five, who was even then starting to grin
with anticipation.  “Yes,” she said, turning back to look up at the colonel. 
And
then I’m going to kill you.

Again, the
colonel’s confidence slipped for just an instant.  He regarded her for much too
long, an odd curiousness on his face.  Six Six Five returned his gaze
fearlessly, her terror having been dissolved by the greenish fog that was even
then filling her vision, giving her a 360-degree view of the room around her. 
With it, she felt every molecule, every movement all around her, the ebb and
flow, the swaying of particles in all directions, the flakes and hairs and
rotating mountains carried on breezes or breaths or evaporating sweat.

“Do you hear
that, Six Five Five?” Colonel Codgson finally demanded.  “Six Six Five wants to
kill you over a
hamster
.”

In formation,
Six Five Five chuckled.

“Come up here
and neutralize this piece of shit for me, will you?” Colonel Codgson said,
still holding Six Six Five’s gaze.

Happily, Six
Five Five stepped out of formation.  He took three steps before his head
imploded.  Along with his chest.  And his pelvis.  And his legs.  And his
larynx.  And his arms.  And his feet.  The sound he made as he died was a lot
like the hamster he had killed with his fist.  The body that hit the floor was
smaller than it had been before, and it slid into a pool of its own
liquids—brown, yellow, and red.

There was a
moment of total surprise on Colonel Codgson’s face before he snapped, “Ice
her!  Ice her
now
!”

Still in a world
beyond fear, Six Six Five turned to face him.  She wrapped her mind around Colonel
Codgson’s greenish fog and began to squeeze…

The soldiers
that were constantly watching for aliens while
facing
them raised their
guns and Six Six Five heard little popping sounds.  A sharp prick in her back
made her flinch, then another in her arm.  Another came in the flesh of her
neck.  Even as she started to squeeze the fog and make Codgson scream, her hold
weakened, and the green fog of his head began to slide through her mental
grip. 

No
, she
thought, watching Codgson straighten and drop his hands from his head, his smug
smile sliding back into place. 
No!
  Then her grasp on her war-mind
slipped completely, and her world lost the depth, the extra dimension that had
allowed her to feel the very essence of Codgson’s screaming face.

Codgson took two
steps toward her and backhanded her with a gloved fist.  Then, when her head
jerked back and she fell, he kicked her in the face.

“Someone get
this worthless piece of shit to the sleep room,” was the last thing Six Six
Five heard before the Void absorbed her, swallowing her awareness in a wash of
pain and darkness.

#

“Soot, she’s
dreaming again.  Any chance you could give her a shot of mind-numbing
goodness?”

She’s had
enough people play with her mind.  I’m not going to make it worse.

“Mother’s
talons
,
furg, she could kill us all!”

So could I.

“Yeah, but
she’s burning
insane
.”

No.  She’s
just remembering…

#

Six Six Five
came to awareness on her back, her arms and legs strapped to the cold metal
beneath her.  When she tried to sit up, she saw a clear plastic bag hanging
from a rack above her, and a little plastic tube trailed down from the bottom
of the bag to the top of her wrist, where it was secured there with thick
tape.  The room around her was cool, like the inside of Doctor Molotov’s
refrigerator.  When Six Six Five looked at the door, she saw that it was blue. 
Immediately, a whine of terror began building in her throat as she tried
ineffectually to jerk free of the frigid steel table.

“Yeah, I know,”
a young male voice said boredly, “this just isn’t your day.  Well, I’m right
there with ya, sister.  They called me off
vacation
for this shit. 
Don’t see why they couldn’t just have a thug pound your cute little head in or
something.  They got more than enough grunts with ego problems running around
to do it.  Don’t know why they gotta go waste
my
time for just
one
lousy cull.”

When Six Six
Five turned to look up at the speaker, she saw that the blue-clad doctor was
holding a syringe.  He was tapping it and squeezing the plunger, getting the
air bubble out.

“I mean,” the
man continued, concentrating on the tip of the needle, “it’s not like it’s
rocket science.  There’s a drawer with syringes right over there.  There’s
vials of kill-juice on the shelf above the alcohol wipes.  The saline’s just a
formality the desk-jockey bureaucrats insist on.  Something to make me feel
like I didn’t actually do the deed, ‘cause it takes longer, ya know?”  He gave
a derisive snort.  “I don’t fucking care about killing kids.  Kids, chimps,
rabbits…  All the same to me.  Give me the choice, kids are easier, ‘cause
someone else cleans up the mess afterwards.  Besides.  Why wait an hour when
you can just find a vein, deliver the payload, and go home to dinner?  Not that
my lazy bitch of a wife would actually make me dinner, but still…  It’s all
such a waste of
time
.”

“Please don’t
kill me,” Six Six Five whispered, staring up at him in terror.

The man with the
syringe froze, peering down at her over the needle.  For a long moment, the
just looked at each other.  Then he gave a little frown and went back to
tapping the plastic.  “I mean,” he said, making one final squirt of the syringe
and then walking over to the bag, “I charge fifteen hundred credits an hour. 
Fifteen
hundred.
  Talk about government waste.  All it takes is a hammer and a
strong arm.  Like clubbing a baby harp seal, sans the designer hat afterwards.”

“Please don’t
kill me, sir,” Six Six Five repeated, cringing away from the tube plugging the
back of her wrist.

He smiled and
reached up to touch the needle to the little plug on the bag.  “I’m not gonna
kill you, kid.”  His voice was soothing.  “Now lie there and close your eyes
and shut up.  That’s an order.”  He went back to what he was doing and started
to whistle.

“Yes you
are
!”
Six Six Five shrieked, panicking as the needle found its target.  “I
saw
you.  You killed all the rest!  You’re an
ailo
!  Just like Colonel
Codgson.”  Her last accusation came out on a sob.

The doctor
froze, the tip of the needle against the plastic of the bag.  Then, slowly, his
brown brows drew together and he lowered the needle from the plug.  Instead of
releasing her, however, he said, “I’m not at
all
like that pompous
shit.  I have a triple doctorate from Harvard. 
He’s
got a B.S. from a
crap public school and convinced his friend’s dad to fake his IQ test.”  The
doctor cocked his head.  “But I totally agree with you on the ailo part.  He’s
one psychotic monkey. 
Just
the sort of sicko they need running this
joint.  If I didn’t need the money, I would’ve slipped him something fun
years
ago.”  The man lowered the needle to a table behind him and jumped up to sit on
it, facing her, a curious look on his face.  “So is it true you almost killed
the arrogant prick?  Made him scream?  I would’ve
paid
to see Codgson
scream.”