Zero's Return (60 page)

Selfish
,
Twelve-A thought, tears coming to his eyes again, the physical heat of them
sliding down his cheeks almost distracting enough to wrench him back to his
body. 
They are so selfish.
  From birth, he had read their wisps of
thoughts as they drifted in the vat of the Void.  They wanted him to kill their
enemies in vast swaths.  They wanted him to tear down everything.  They wanted
him to create a new regime, a new system, a new government, a new order, one in
which the Humans ruled.

But Humans, he
had seen, were no better than the rest.  They were just as vile, just as
corrupt, just as emotionally hideous, just as abusive, just as selfish.

And they were
killing this girl because they thought
he
would do what
she
couldn’t.  They thought
she
had less right to live because
she
didn’t want to kill.  She was a defect, an anomaly, a cull, and it was his
fault she was dying in terror. 

The little
robot didn’t even twitch.
  “Might as well be a bot.”
 
I hope she
takes a while to die.  I still need a few minutes for a full hour.

In that moment,
Twelve-A felt the deepest pang of empathy he’d ever felt for another creature,
and, like an electric current, he made his first mental connection to another
being in months.  He slipped deeper into her mind, allowing himself to feel it
all, to
become
the terror, the pull of the cold metal shackles against
his arms and legs, the uncontrollable shivering, the petrifying knowledge he
was going to die.  At the same time, he reached out to Doctor Molotov, who
cried softly in her office, staring at an empty cage, and instilled in her the
deep, painful need to find out what happened to Six Six Five.

I hate
him.  He’s just going to play games while I die and I hate him.

Six Six Five’s
thought rang around Twelve-A’s consciousness, reverberating through it in a
powerful wash of vibration, and he gently nudged her mind out of its stunned
terror, offering it a thread to follow, one of mortgages and vengeful wives and
secret lives, one that he knew Doctor Shaw feared.  She snatched it like a
starving creature offered sustenance, dragging herself out of her despair. 
Instead of taking the threat he subtly suggested, however, her mind hardened
around him, and something
deep
began to bubble up from within, borne on
void-black, star-speckled fire that flared to life around him, invigorating
him, leaving him in awe as her lighthouse became a galactic core.

“When you
meet with the obscure, honorless death you deserve, and you take your shameful
existence to taint the next realm, I hope your ancestors find you, skin you,
use your diseased leather to clothe Takki, bury your tek in the bowels of its
master, and send your hideless corpse through the ninety hells alone.”

Shit…shit! 
That sounded alien…  Is this bitch a
spy
?  Oshit oshit did the Congies
find us?  I’m
dead
.  We’re all
dead
.  
“
What
did you
just say?”

Twelve-A
hesitated, realizing the curse he had given Six Six Five regarding Doctor
Shaw’s wife finding out his duplicity, his wayward penis shriveling from
disease, and losing his home in a divorce had not come out at all as planned. 
It had almost felt like, for a split second, something else had taken over.

“I said I
hope you die.”

But that
wasn’t
what she had said.  Twelve-A had felt it, just as he even then felt that
overpowering presence retreating back into the recesses of her being, the
towering columns of black flame going out as if they’d never been.  He
considered following it, trying to figure out where it came from, but even
then, Doctor Charles Shaw was about to commit murder, and Twelve-A had to let
the last voidlike tendrils slip away in order to deal with the problem at hand.

“No.”
 
Oh
shit, what if she’s a Huouyt?  What if this place got infiltrated by the
Huouyt?  There were rumors they’d found us.  Something about that dumbass Ghost
getting caught, blowing our cover.  What if she’s a Huouyt?  What if Codgson’s
a Huouyt?  Fuck!  I gotta get outta here.  Florida.  Or the Bahamas.  I could
go to the Bahamas.
 
“What you just said.  Before that.  What
language was that?”

I’m
dying.  I can feel it in my limbs.  I’m going to die. 
Twelve-A felt it
with her, and it was all he could do to keep his terror from rising with hers. 
Instead, he tried to send soothing thoughts, to keep her calm and prevent the
poisons from circulating as quickly. 
“Let me go!”

“Goddammit,
kid!  Who taught you to talk like that?  Is there a spy down here?  One of the
techs?!” 
Man, we’re so fucked if it’s a Huouyt.

My heart
won’t stop hammering,
Six Six Five’s thought boomed around him,
permeating Twelve-A’s very essence. 
It’s not supposed to hammer like
that.
 
“Help!”
Six Six Five screamed. 
“
Heelllllp!
”

She’s
going to get someone’s attention.  Maybe she’s calling for her Huouyt friends. 
I should kill her now…

As repulsive as
it was, Twelve-A made a tiny connection to Doctor Charles Shaw and fueled his
paranoia.  To the patterns twisting through the doctor’s consciousness,
Twelve-A added,
But if I kill her, I’ll never know the truth of what’s
happening down here…
 
Nothing traceable, but enough to keep him from
killing her until Doctor Molotov could arrive.

“Listen, you
little bitch.  What you just said.  What language was that?  Who taught you? 
You been talking to Huouyt?  There a fucking Huouyt in this installation?”

“Help!”  
I’m
so scared.
  “Please help me.  Somebody.”
 
I’m getting culled and
my body won’t stop shaking.  Codgson said I was a cull, I just don’t know it
yet.
 
With the thought, Twelve-A got the painful mental image of
Codgson holding him by the throat, leaning in to whisper in his ear.  Aching
inside, he gently touched her soul, comforting it with his presence, but
stopping short of alerting her to his intervention.

She’s
avoiding the question.
 
“Answer me!” 
At another rush of
contemplations of murder, Twelve-A gently pushed those thoughts aside and
added,
I can’t kill her yet—I need to keep her alive long enough to get
answers.

“No.”
My
eyeballs are jerking.  My body is spasming just like Six Two One.  I’m gonna
die just like her, twitching with foam oozing from my mouth. 
“Please no.”

“Please no
what
?”
 
The drug’s already taking effect.  Shit.  Damn, I gotta do something
fast.
 
“I swear to God, if there’s a damned Huouyt down here…”
 
There. 
Kinking the line should hold it off long enough to figure out what the hell is
going on.  If she’s a spy, I’m outta here. 
So
fucking out of here.
 
“Which one is he?  It’s that creep Codgson, isn’t it?  I knew that ailo
creep was too psycho even for
this
project.  He a plant?  Which side he
working for?  That why he keeps killing the clones?  Is he a Congie?”

He’s…not
killing me?  Why isn’t he killing me?  What is a White?
 
“I…”

But Doctor
Molotov arrived before Six Six Five had to struggle any further with that. 
Powered by the panic Twelve-A had infused in her, the head medical officer
slammed the door open, took immediate stock of the situation, and rushed inside
to yank the tube from Six Six Five’s arm.

Twelve-A watched
as the two adults then proceeded to argue over Six Six Five’s life.  When he
was sure that Molotov would not decide to let Doctor Shaw continue the process,
he went back to studying Six Six Five.  Now that he had taken the doorway into
her mind, she was fascinating to him, something to distract him from the horror
that was the outside world.  Right now, she was still awash in a sickening rush
of terror, but that was even then losing its force.  Her core, deeper, where
the starry tendrils had disappeared, held a soothing promise, a hope, an
openness…  Even the desperate quest for love.

All of that,
however, was being crushed by the doctors who even then argued about which
program they should dump her in.  And, after that, they argued with Codgson
about her worth, her value to their program.  The longer Twelve-A listened, the
angrier he got, until it was all he could do to sit back and watch, and not
reveal himself.  Again, he wanted to put them all to sleep for what they were
doing.  He wanted to kill.

They’re
hurting her,
Twelve-A thought. 
Just like they hurt everyone they
touch.  Just like Humanity hurts itself.  They don’t even see her as Human.
 
Indeed, he could see the wisps of thoughts, could feel their lack of
compassion, the distance they’d put between themselves and their subjects. 
Even Doctor Molotov had detached herself from her heart, shielding her core
from the horrors she perpetuated out of sheer routine, the continued cruelties
of custom and habit.

Suddenly, a new
knowledge burned in Twelve-A’s mind, so powerful he rocked with its intensity. 
I can stop this.

And, in that
moment, he had to decide.  One way or the other.  Bringing the silence or
letting the pain continue.  For everyone.  He had to know which way to go, and
he knew that it was not his decision to make.

“Let’s see if
we can turn you into a Jreet…”

No,
please, I’m so scared.  So scared…

Right then,
Twelve-A decided who was going to make the decision for him.  He knew he was
too empathetic to decide such a thing.  He understood everything about
everyone, knew what had broken them, why they hurt each other, what mechanisms
rotted behind their cruelties.  He held no one above another, could not choose
one life over another.  Yet, if he offered the decision to an innocent…  What
better judge than the hamster who sat within their cage, suffering their
‘kindness’?  He tentatively stepped through the door of Six Six Five’s mind,
engulfing himself in her terror, and said,
Do you want me to kill them all?

Who are
you?
 
It was a startled sound, one of hope.

My name is
Twelve-A,
he told her.  His essence was vibrating with the horror of what
he was about to do. 
I need to know.  Right now.  I’m very strong.  They
don’t realize how strong.  Do you want me to kill them all?

I think
they’re going to make me forget who I am,
Six Six Five said.

Twelve-A began
to ache inside. 
They’re going to try.

Can you
help me?
Six Six Five whimpered.

Twelve-A
hesitated for several moments.  As he did, Doctor Philip finished his injection
and went to close the lid of the brainwashing machine.  He was thinking about
how disgusted he was that he had to waste so much of his life on a stupid
project the military wasn’t going to look at twice anyway when the
real
prize was Twelve-A.  If only he could get at the lab, he was
sure
he
could make another Twelve-A.  The jenfurgling techs must have screwed up the
nannite programming.  He could be a
hero
if he could just get to the
lab
.

Yes,
Twelve-A finally said. 
I can help you.

Six Six Five
hesitated. 
Will you?

Twelve-A felt
the question burning in his mind, the moral dilemma that had been haunting him
since he’d been aware enough to recognize the stew of misery in which the Human
race now drifted. 
Yes,
he said. 
But I need you to answer me.  Do
you want them all dead?

I want
Colonel Codgson dead,
she told him softly.

Twelve-A
hesitated.  He looked at Codgson, felt every failure, every humiliation, every
childhood manipulation that had twisted him into what he was. 
It can’t just
be him.  He’s only a symptom of an overall disease.  I’d have to kill them
all
.

Even
Doctor Molotov?
she whispered back.

Even her,
Twelve-A said softly. 
Everyone.  Every soldier, every doctor, every Keeper,
everyone who is not one of us.  They’re all part of it.  They’re all sick
inside.

She seemed to
digest that, but she still didn’t answer his question. 
Can you help me
not forget?

Twelve-A
hesitated, not having expected that response. 
I won’t let you forget,
he agreed.

She seemed to
relax.

Do you want
me to kill them?
Twelve-A insisted. 
I need to know.

Ask me
when I’m older,
Six Six Five said. 
I don’t really want to kill
anyone right now.  I don’t want to be a soldier.

Twelve-A was
taken aback, but he felt Six Six Five’s mind beginning to tire and slip from
the drugs.

Please
don’t let me forget, Twelve-A.  Please.

I won’t,
he promised, still a bit stunned.

Please,
she whimpered, as the void began to claim her.

You will
remember again,
Twelve-A said. 
I promise.
  He watched her sink even
further into darkness, away from him, buoyed by a wave of strange images and
the machine’s soothing tones. 

Twelve-A jerked
awake suddenly, the void of his mind-space replaced by the blackness of the
night.  All around him, the People were cuddled amongst themselves, snoring. 
Joe Dobbs had settled back against a tree, gun in his lap, still stubbornly
refusing to sleep when Twelve-A slept, despite Twelve-A’s assertions that they
were alone for miles.  The old Congie Prime was even then whittling a stick,
watching Shael’s continued nocturnal contortions with a little frown on his
face.