The 17 (17 page)

“Yes. Yes. Yes.” Apparat said, pushing the stack toward Zack. “It’s all in order. Sign where indicated.”

Zack grabbed the first sheet and began reading. It was written in English—or at least appeared to him as such—but made no sense. Typed were random words shoved together into impossibly long sentences.

Zack looked up, perplexed, and Apparat bowed his head.

“What’s wrong now?”

“It’s gibberish. Can I ask you something? Does it matter? Why do I have to sign these anyway? Would it make any difference if I didn’t?”

Apparat snatched the paper from Zack and placed it carefully on the stack. He looked at Zack as if he had been mortally wounded, as if his feelings were deeply hurt. “It’s a custom on your planet to sign contracts, is it not? I mean, just about every decision you make requires you to sign something, correct?”

Zack nodded and chuckled.

Apparat was not amused. “The Ankhs were just trying to adhere to your beliefs, signing papers to be one of them. I was just trying to help. If you don’t require my help, I have other, more important things to do.”

Apparat stood, scooped up the stack of papers and placed them again on the top of his head. “Good day,” he said as he stomped away.

Eb stuck his head into the room and then waddled in. He stood uncomfortably close to Zack.

“Don’t mind him,” Eb said with fetid breath. “People hate him almost as much as they hate me.”

“Oh, people don’t hate you.” Zack knew they did.

“Thanks, human boy. You’re kind. But you’re mistaken. I am despised. It’s my looks and my odor. I can’t help it. I’m also kind of pushy. I can’t change that, either.”

Zack felt for Eb. He was a misfit like himself, just a different kind of misfit. He was just as out of place as everyone here, it seemed—except for perhaps Splifkin.

“Tell me about yourself, Eb.”

The albino was shocked and put his stumpy hands over his chest. “Oh, you don’t want to know about me. No one wants to know about me.”

“I do.”

“No.” Eb shyly smiled. “No, you don’t.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t interested and curious.”

“Well. Okay,” Eb said, shuffling around the table to sit across from Zack. “I’m a Zorgite. We’re a simple people from a simple planet that is far, far away from here, I’m sure. We were brought here and put into the arenas just like everyone else and, obviously, lost quickly and terribly. I don’t know how many times I saw my entrails spill out of my gut. We’re not fighters. We’re intellectual. We have a great attention to detail. The Ankhs saw that in me and decided to keep me around as a sort of troubleshooter. It’s not a bad job.

Eb peered into the mug left behind by Apparat and curled his lip in disgust before he continued. “Splifkin hates me. Apparat hates me. The Ankhs don’t particularly care for me and I think Mizuki simply tolerates me. I’m lonely and I miss my friends. I miss my planet, even though the Ankhs have given me quite a solid representation of my home world. But for a race with the attention to detail as sharp as ours, it doesn’t come close to satisfying me.”

“What happened to your friends, the ones brought here with you?”

“Oh. Some are here serving the Ankhs as I do. The others are long gone. Dead, I suppose. It takes a lot of energy to keep those habitats going. The Ankhs are very powerful, but even they have their limits.”

Eb picked up the mug and waved it in front of Zack, then showed him the purple ooze stuck inside. “Zorgites are kind of the crud at the bottom of the universe’s cup. I knew we’d be expunged.”

Zack couldn’t believe that to be true. “Every race has value.”

Eb laughed. It was an annoying one, which didn’t surprise Zack in the least. “You are so kind, so beneficent. Don’t lose that, no matter what they make you do.”

As Eb stood and tottered toward the exit, Zack called out, “What’s that supposed to mean? ‘No matter what they make me do?’ What will they make me do?”

Eb turned around, his pale face grim. “I like you, Zack Earnest. I enjoyed our chat.”

†††

Zack stared at the moving shadows across the ceiling, unable to sleep, unable to calm his restless mind or quell the foreboding he felt.

When he heard a pounding on his door, he wasn’t startled. He was relieved because he knew who was at his door—the only face that put a smile on his.

He sat up and yelled, “Come in.”

Mizuki swung the door open and entered, closing it silently behind her. She walked quietly across his carpet and sat on the edge of his bed. “I’ve never been in a boy’s bedroom before,” she said coyly.

“Well, this isn’t really my room, so you still haven’t.”

She laughed and lay down across his legs, staring at the same ceiling he had just studied. He could hear her breathing deeply, and then hold it before she said, “Be careful.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing’s gonna happen to me. I’ll keep my head down.”

“I don’t mean with the Omians. I mean with
them
.”

Zack knew who the
them
were. “Right back at ya.”

Mizuki slapped his shin with her cold hand. “Just don’t be, well, you, and piss them off.”

Zack laughed. “Who me? I can’t make any promises.”

Mizuki rolled to her stomach and, even in the dim light, Zack could see the concern well in her eyes. “I’m serious, Zack. You think you’re safe because they chose you to be one of the seventeen, but they can just discard you.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. They have been searching for a long, long time. Fifteen or sixteen more, there is little difference to them at this point.”

It was a sobering thought. Zack had long reached his quota on sobering thoughts.

He changed the subject. “You look pretty tonight.”

She did. Her hair flowed down past her shoulders, as silky as ever. He had always been enamored with her big brown eyes and full lashes. He always felt a shudder when she batted them, like she did now. “Well, don’t you have a silver tongue?”

She rubbed his leg with the back of her hand. Even as cold as it was, it felt comforting and soothing.

Mizuki broke the silence. “Can I stay here?” She crawled up the bed to lie next to him. She batted those big brown eyes again and Zack felt that shudder roll and ripple through him. “I want to be uncomfortably warm tonight.”

†††

Zack turned the door knob slowly, quietly. Mizuki hung over his shoulder and he could feel her breath on his ear.

They peered through the crack between the door and the jam and heard muffled conversation.

“That looks like a Gorn,” Zack whispered.

Mizuki tsked. “Mercy of the Gods, why do you insist on calling them that?”

Splifkin stood with the Gorn—or whatever his race was called—in front of a door and then pushed it open, bathing them in a bright light.

Zack had known that race to be emotional and this one covered his snout in joy when he saw his new, pampered home.

Zack moved his head slightly to get a better view and recognized him as the one who mourned for his fallen mate, who Zack had saved with the injection from the syringe.

Splifkin laughed at the Gorn’s reaction, his deep chortle carrying the length of the hallway, and then turned and strolled, arms pinned behind him, toward Zack’s room.

Zack quickly shut the door. “He’s coming here. Hide.”

He felt very much what a boy in Maine would feel after sneaking a girl into his room. It felt quite normal, almost mundane.

Zack welcomed anything that felt normal and mundane nowadays.

Then again, a lizard man with razor sharp needles for teeth was walking briskly toward his room. That was anything but normal and mundane.

Mizuki was unimpressed by his boyish panic. She simply stood where she was, cocking her head disapprovingly. “Really? I’m not diving under your bed to hide. Who cares if we spent the night together?”

Zack shrugged as Splifkin knocked loudly on the door, and then swung it open.
Apparently Splifkin wasn’t big on privacy.

“You need to come with me, Zack.” Splifkin’s voice was particularly deep and intimidating on this morning. “You come, too, Mizuki. You two are inseparable anyway.”

Splifkin turned and walked away, his arms pinned behind him again.

They were led to a large room with a cozy couch set in front of a giant display screen. Mizuki plopped down and sunk into the leather. She patted the cushion next to her for Zack to sit.

Splifkin stood in front of the screen and stared at them. Zack bounced his leg up and down quickly—he did that when he was nervous—and, finally, Mizuki pressed her hand on his thigh to quiet it.

Splifkin’s voice boomed. “Get comfortable. You are going to be here for a while.”

The screen flickered on, displaying an atrium with mustard walls and chairs made of wicker set on either side of a marble bench with a thin mat stretched across it. In the center of the room was a sculpture of a naked man, reaching toward a skylight overhead that let in the soft rays of the sun.

It was very ancient Rome, Zack thought.

Soon, Omians filtered into the room. Some flopped on the wicker chairs, others rested on the bench. They all wore long robes of various colors and designs and laurel wreaths around their heads. Lucan was the last into the room and examined the sculpture.

Zack leaned closer to Mizuki and whispered. “What’s this?”

“Observation,” Mizuki answered. “I did the same thing with your people.”

Zack watched and listened as they talked—and bickered. He understood every word. They had the same fears and concerns as he and his group had; questions were posed such as “Where are we? Are we even alive? Is this all just a nightmare? Or are we in one of the three hells?”

Lucan did not take part in the debate. Instead he prowled and observed. When he did speak, it was forceful and charismatic. It only took a few sentences for him to disarm the tension and rally them around one goal: getting home. He pleaded that peace was the way, that if they refused to participate, their captors would have to deal with them and would perhaps yield and send them back to Wahe.

Zack smiled as he listened. It was a familiar strategy and he could tell Lucan was of the same ilk as he.

They watched the Omians for hours. At mid-day and again in the evening, Splifkin brought each a plate of food and drinks, grousing each time about not being a waiter.

Zack had learned quite a bit about the Omians in the hours he spent watching. He learned their habits and customs. He learned how they spoke and acted. He learned what they did for leisure—which wasn’t very much. They mostly just sat around and meditated. Occasionally they would talk about art, or wade in a great bathhouse.

Mizuki was uncomfortable with the nudity.

So was Zack.

He also learned there was a lot to admire about these people and their simple ways, but he resisted the urge to do so. Splifkin’s warning echoed in his thoughts.

He found out the hard way to always listen to Splifkin; he was nearly turned into a norge.

Zack couldn’t, however, quash his reverence for Lucan, who was quiet and confident—a leader.

Everything Zack was not.

Zack also noticed Mizuki taking a great interest in Lucan. She leaned forward on the couch and stared at the screen as Lucan went from person to person, offering encouragement and sage wisdom beyond his years. It was as if he were a Roman commander before a great battle, rallying his troops. Only he was rallying them
not
to fight.

Mizuki spoke somberly. “He’s the fourth. There’s no doubt.”

Zack agreed. “He’s pretty much everything they’re looking for. They’re making some serious progress now.”

Mizuki leaned back again and sunk deeper into the leather. “That’s not good for us. The one thing we had going for us was time.”

The worry on her face was clear. She nibbled on a nail as she watched silently, lost in thought.

“How bad can it be if they get the seventeen?” It was an innocent question, but it drew a scathing look from Mizuki.

“It’ll be bad.”

“What can we do?”

Mizuki slid closer to him on the couch, their shoulders touching, and then whispered, “Maybe when you get down there, knock that halo off Lucan’s head.”

Zack struggled for a response. He blathered out a string of unintelligible syllables before finally forming a coherent sentence. “You want me to sabotage him?”

“Not exactly—well, yeah, you could call it that, I guess. You can coax out his true nature. No one is that altruistic.” Mizuki winked. “Well, except for maybe you.”

She leaned in even closer. He felt her breath blow in his ear. “If we can get rid of him, that’ll put a dent in their ‘Spark’ collecting.”

Zack thought he would be lucky to simply fool the Omians for a day or two, let alone deftly orchestrate a systematic psychological attack on a member of a race be barely knew. It was an impossible assignment made even more preposterous.

Zack could tell Lucan would not be easily swayed, just as he wasn’t. For the most part, he stayed true to himself, even when rage did boil in him to a critical mass and he wanted to kill the German boy. Ultimately, he couldn’t, and the Ankhs saw it.

How can I fool both the Omians and our captors?

Zack could tell Mizuki didn’t have much faith in her plan, either.
It wasn’t much of a plan to begin with. It was more of a dream. It was better than nothing. Everything is in the trying

Besides, who can say no to those eyes?

Mizuki pecked him on the cheek. He felt the shudder again. “Just be careful. Lucan may be a pacifist, but the others aren’t.”

†††

Zack felt his head dip down and snap back up. There was a strange halo around everything, a sort of glow that forced him to blink his eyes rapidly.

It was fatigue. Mizuki also showed the same symptoms.

They had been at it for nearly sixteen hours, the Omians proving to be a tremendous bore. They were asleep now, too, having left the atrium for their rooms, which were displayed on smaller feeds on the big screen.

Zack wished he was sleeping as well.