Zero's Return (4 page)

Twelve-A’s blue
eyes flickered back toward her. 
We can’t go now.  The aliens will kill us. 

Marie felt like
she’d been struck.  “You know about the aliens?”

I’ve been
watching them.  They’re hunting down the other labs.  This is the only one they
don’t know about.

Marie blinked at
him, once again shocked by how much he had managed to hide from them.

“We need you to
fight,” Marie whispered.  “We need you to stop the—”

Twelve-A looked
up at her sharply. 
I’m not killing the aliens.
 

“But you’ve got
to help us defend the—”

No,
Twelve-A thought. 
I don’t.

Coldness settled
in the pit of Marie’s stomach.  “You’re going to kill us, aren’t you?”

I’m killing
everyone who knows about this place,
Twelve-A said, his voice cold and
final.
  It’s the only way the People are going to survive.

Marie met the
deep blue of his gaze and sweat slid like ice down her back as she began to
bargain for her life.  “Once we’re dead, then what?  Where will you go?  What
will you do?” 

Twelve-A’s gaze
lost its certainty and he reluctantly looked away, but not before she saw nervousness
and anxiety tightening his thin face.  For all of his talents, Twelve-A had
lived in a cage.  He had no idea how to survive on the surface.

Seeing her
opportunity, Marie pushed on.  “You don’t know anything about the real world,”
she insisted.  “You’ve had everything handed to you.  You don’t know how to
survive
. 
I can help you create new lives for yourselves.  I can help you
adapt.
 
I’m your
friend,
Twelve-A.  I can help you.”

He didn’t answer
her.  Looking drained, Twelve-A got to his feet. 
Come with me to the Dark
Room.  I want you to watch something.

Marie hesitated,
wanting to say more, but Twelve-A was already getting to his feet, waiting for
her to open his cage.  Reluctantly, because she didn’t really have a choice,
Marie swiped her card and entered her code.  Her skin prickled as the minder
smoothly stepped past her and led her out of the holding area, through
abandoned rooms and unmanned monitoring stations.  Everyone, she noted, was
gone.  Every tech had left his or her post, every doctor had found somewhere
else to be. 

Once they stood
outside the small green door to the Dark Room, Twelve-A gave Marie a gentle
nudge to continue further down the hall, toward the observation booth. 
Confused, she went.

The inside of
the booth was packed, the occupants were milling in obvious agitation.  Every
face she had ever seen inside the lab was there, checking their watches,
grimacing at the blond experiment pacing in the Dark Room.  As more staff
filtered into the observation booth, Marie anxiously glanced from Twelve-A to
the group of observers and back, wondering what he planned for them.  Her
entire body trembled with fear and adrenaline.  She’d heard the minder’s death
was painless, like falling asleep.  She was terrified she was about to find out.

“So what are we
waiting for, Colonel?” one of the generals finally demanded.  The group had
become more and more aggravated as nothing happened in the room before them.

“We’re waiting
for your test subjects,” the colonel replied briskly.  “You said you had
Dhasha.  I don’t see a damn Dhasha.”

The general’s
face went slack.  “What test subjects?  We’re here because you told us your
famous Twelve-A could do something that would save billions of lives.”

At Colonel
Codgson’s frown, a man in a pristine black suit bitterly snapped, “Do
not
tell us you brought us all together to waste our time, Colonel.”

The colonel
stared back at them in complete confusion.  “I never sent for you, you diddling
furg.”

A thin woman
with short-cropped brown hair entered the room and shut the door behind her,
but paused on the colonel’s last words.  Frowning, she said, “You didn’t?  Then
who did?”

In the center of
the Dark Room, Twelve-A stopped pacing.  He turned, his ice-blue eyes cold
beyond the leaded glass. 

Me.

It was like a
mental thunderclap. 

I brought you
all here.  To kill you.

Several members
of the committee screamed and staggered toward the door.  Only Colonel Codgson
remained where he stood, staring at Twelve-A through the glass with a queer
little smile.

Twelve-A looked
at them through the glass, meeting each of their eyes, though Marie knew he
couldn’t possibly see through the tinted windows.

I want you to
know,
Twelve-A said in another resounding mental boom,
that I killed
them because they didn’t want to live, not because you told me to.
 

Every expert and
government official in the room was screaming and rushing for the door,
throwing each other aside as they wrestled for the exit.  Marie stayed where
she was against the back wall, knowing that there was nowhere to run, nowhere
she could hide from the telepath’s mental barrage.

But with you
,
Twelve-A continued,
it’s because you deserve it.

Desperate men
and women were making it out into the hallway, and Marie heard their frantic
footsteps on the tiles of the corridor outside.  Back in the Dark Room, the
telepath shut his eyes and inclined his head slightly.  As one, the dozens of
uniformed men and women occupying the room around her collapsed in a silent,
falling wave of flesh that thudded lifelessly to the floor. 

Except for
Marie.  She kept breathing, waiting for it to happen, but it never did. 
Minutes after her companions’ wide eyes began to glaze, she was stunned to find
herself still standing amidst the corpses.  Alive.

She looked at
Twelve-A.  Beyond the glass in the center of the Dark Room, his body had
slumped to the floor along with his victims.  He was now lying on his side,
half-curled into a fetal position, arms pulled in towards his chest.  Heart
thundering, Marie climbed over the bodies to see if he lived.

Put me back
in my cell,
Twelve-A whimpered when she entered the room and knelt beside
him.

Marie recoiled. 
“Your cell?  Why?”

He squeezed his
blue eyes shut, face creased in obvious agony. 
I want to die.

“No!”

Do it.

The mental boom
allowed no argument, and Marie felt her body responding to the command before
she realized what was happening.  In a daze, Marie drew him to his feet and
helped him back into the containment area.  As she settled him onto his bed,
Twelve-A grabbed her by the forearm with a white-knuckled fist. 
Please kill
me.

The mental
whimper was infused with so much emotional despair that it left Marie fighting
to breathe.  Her eyes flickered toward the IV rack they used to keep the
experiments sedate.  “I’ll go get the drugs.  They’ll make you feel better.” 
She turned to go.

Twelve-A
continued to hold her arm, stopping her, his blue gaze intense. 
You should
kill me, Marie.

“No,” she said,
finding strength in the words, “I shouldn’t.  I should get you and all your
friends out of here like I said I would.”  She patted his warm, slender hand
and Twelve-A reluctantly released his hold.  She went to the labs, got the
drugs, and hooked them to the rack.  As she was connecting his IV line to the
bag, however, the minder stopped her again.  This time, his cerulean eyes were
angry.

If you’re not
going to kill me, leave.

She winced at
the force of his words, like sledgehammers that pounded against the aluminum
walls of her brain.  “What about your friends?”

Don’t worry
about us.  Leave.  Lock the doors and never come back.

Marie met his
deep blue stare, saw the danger there, then dropped everything and ran from his
cell.  She heard the gate to Twelve-A’s cage slam behind her as she went to the
containment doors and set them to shut.  She used her card to lock them, then
rushed through the facility, gaining speed as she realized she was the only one
left alive.  The only one who knew about the experiments.  The only one who
could help them create new lives on the surface. 

The only one who
could keep them
alive
.

She could
rehabilitate them.  Find them jobs.  Find them friends.

The guard was
not at his booth.  She remembered his fat corpse in the observation deck, still
jiggling after it collapsed to the floor.  Buoyed by her new mission, Marie hurried
past, pushed through the bullet-proof glass doors, and locked them behind her
with another swipe of her card.  She followed the corridor upwards out of the
mountain and exited through the single door at the top.  Facing it, the
entrance looked like the door to a decrepit coffee shop, with the Coffee House
Express sign hanging askew and the paint peeling on the CLOSED FOR BUSINESS
notice.

Under the
façade, however, the door was tank-proof, the walls behind it bomb-proof.  It
would take nukes to get inside.  Or get out.

Marie locked the
entrance with her card, sliding it through an inconspicuous crack in the wooden
trim. 

Thank you,
Twelve-A told her. 
That should keep them out.

“Yes,” Marie
said, hurrying toward her car.  “But don’t worry—you won’t be in there long. 
I’ll find somewhere to keep you.  The war will make it harder, but once I’ve
got living quarters and food, I’ll come back for you.”

You don’t
understand, Marie.

She stuck her
key into her Ford.  “Don’t understand what?”

Once it’s
safe, we’re going to get ourselves out.

“But I can—” 
Terror infused Marie’s soul as she realized why Twelve-A had left her alive. 
Babbling, Marie said, “Please, Twelve-A.  I can help you.  I won’t tell
anyone. 
Please—
you don’t need to kill me.”

Twelve-A gave a
mental shudder, buoyed on a wave of self-loathing. 
It’s always so hard.
 

Even as she
opened her mouth to scream, a wave of calmness overpowered her.  Her eyes
drifted shut and she slid to the concrete beside her car, the keys tumbling
from her hands to clatter on the cement.  Trapped in the darkness of her own
body, Marie felt her heart stop.

Somewhere, deep
underground, Twelve-A replaced the IV line and closed his eyes.  His shoulders
began to shake as he waited for oblivion to take him.

CHAPTER
2 – A Human Mistake

Earth
Representative Fred Mullich was scowling at the latest—alarming—reports from
his home planet when the Watcher activated a node in his apartment without his
permission.

“
Representative
Mullich, the Regency requests your presence in its chambers immediately for a
Regency-wide disciplinary action.  Shall I take you there now?
”  The
Watcher’s voice was perfectly Human, lacking any of the metallic or artificial
quality of other AIs.  Of course, there were plenty of whispers that the
Watcher
wasn’t
an AI, but to say as much anywhere within the
gravitational pull of Koliinaat was political suicide, at least for a
Representative as politically impotent as Fred Mullich.

Today the
Watcher was using the London dialect, sharp and crisp.  Fred wasn’t sure if the
Watcher knew it, but it switched to a British accent whenever it wanted Fred to
take him seriously.

More than a
little spooked by the idiots back on Earth, Fred glanced at his call log. 
Whoever was behind the Watcher’s request was influential enough not to have to
use the CALL feature, which would have required Fred’s acknowledgement before
the Watcher could speak to him.  Which meant a Board chair or a Tribunal
member.  Which meant that Fred would create an interplanetary incident if he ignored
it.

“Give me a
moment to finish what I was doing,” Fred said, still desperately trying to make
sense of the disturbing numbers on his screen.  He needed to send a courier to
Earth immediately.  Get some sort of explanation.  And, for the love of God, convince
them to cease and desist.  This was the sort of crap that got planets pummeled
back into their Stone Age for hundreds of turns, to give them a chance to serve
penance.

The Watcher’s
irritation was palpable, but it said nothing more.  Instead, it merely hovered
somewhere in the alien circuitry at the edges of his room, watching.

His nervousness
increasing, Fred continued flipping through the files he had been examining. 
He
really
didn’t like what he was seeing.  Back home, military and
scientific expenditures had quadrupled in the last three turns. 

It almost looked
as if Earth was preparing for a war.

He needed to
deal with this, and fast.  Before the other species’ Representatives were given
the same numbers he was reading.  If they got wind of them, the insignificant
planet Earth and its single sentient species would be obliterated.  Like a
Dhasha ripping apart a vaghi.

“This is
important, Mullich,”
the Watcher interrupted.

“The Regency can
go on without me,” Fred snapped.  “The attendance of any one Representative is
not required for a session to progress.”

“It is not in
your best interest to deny this call to attendance, Representative,”
the
Watcher replied.

“I’m not denying
it, you inbred mass of circuitry,” Fred said.  “I said give me a
moment
.”

He could almost
feel the Watcher giving him a flat look through the sensors. 
“For someone
who depends upon my cooperation and perfection for every single
transportational transaction on this planet, you have a…unique…view of my
capabilities, Representative.”

Fred ignored
him.  As with any newly-drafted planet, Earth was at the very bottom rung of
the political hierarchy.  With only one planet and only nine billion people,
Earth had no clout compared to the founding member species like the Ooreiki,
the Jahul, and the Huouyt, each of which had trillions of citizens and
thousands of planets.  As long as Earth paid its tithes and supplied bodies for
the Draft, nobody cared.