Zero's Return (54 page)

Shael obviously sensed
something amiss, but she eventually turned to look at Alice, anyway.  “She
chose to apprentice under
me
over
you
?”  The woman sounded
almost…shocked.  She quickly hid it with a disdainful sniff.  “At least
someone
in this clan has some sense.”  Giving the dogpile a disgusted wave, she said,
“Keep your ill-bred Takki, Voran.  I will guard the intelligent ones.”  At
that, she turned and strutted off towards Twelve-A’s little group, shoulders
proudly back.  A few moments later, she started cursing their laziness in Jreet
and kicking apart their grass-piles.

Twelve-A leveled an
irritated glance at Joe.  
I want five tics for that
, he said.

Five tics of
memory-surfing, as opposed to dealing with Shael, was a small price to pay.

Still, the meddlesome
mind-furg had it coming.  “Find your own memories,” Joe snorted.  “No
freebies.”

Twelve-A narrowed his
eyes, but he stuck to their bargain and kept his mental fingers to himself.

Snickering to himself,
Joe went to find a patch of sun to dry off.  The idea that he’d pulled one over
on the minder—not to mention that Shael
respected
him—was kind of nice.

#

“You are to be
the greatest warriors that Earth has ever seen,” Colonel Codgson said as he
paced, his gloved hands clasped behind his back.  “You are its future.  Its
hope
,
you understand?”

“Yes, sir!” Six
Six Five shouted with the rest of her class.  They stood at attention in exact,
perfect lines around her, their spines rigid, their faces straight ahead.  Each
of her companions was the same age as Six Six Five, though Six Six Five was the
smallest of the group.  A ‘runt,’ she had overheard the doctors say during her
last personal inspection, in which she had stood before the adults alone,
pretending she couldn’t hear the things they said about her as her heart
pounded and her knees shook.  To show any reaction—any at all—would have meant
failure, and she had seen what happened to those of her companions who had
failed.  Six Six Five knew she couldn’t fail.  Not now.

So Six Six Five
had stood in terror, staring at the wall, silently listening to them discuss
her tiny body, her female weaknesses, her lackluster physical strength,
wondering if the next soldier to come in would be there to take her to the
little blue door at the end of the hall. 

It had been
Doctor Molotov’s argument that Six Six Five had more potential than most, and a
physically small body meant nothing if her war-mind worked properly, but aside
from the time she’d broken the chain in the fight with Six One Eight, her
war-mind had evaded her completely.  The other doctor had simply argued to
cull, that they had enough movers to satisfy their quota—all the
powerful
movers were already ‘on ice with the minder.’  The only real use she could have
would be for ‘Phil’s ridiculous Jreet experiment.’

But now that she
knew what it meant to be ‘culled,’ Six Six Five had been desperate to prove
herself.  She spent every night alone in the dark, staring up at the empty bunk
above her—a reminder, Codgson said, of what happened to failures—doing nothing
but trying to reach her war-mind.  For almost a
year,
she had tried to
concentrate, to find that perfect stillness and serenity that had come to her
with that cold chain around her ankle, her own blood on her face, and for
almost a
year
, it had completely evaded her.  And that, she knew, was
failure.

Just thinking
about the way the doctors had talked about her at her last progress report,
casually listing out her mediocre statistics and lackluster performance, coolly
discussing her growth potential and inability to reproduce her ‘one-time
results’, brought sweat to Six Six Five’s face and made her hands start to tremble
where she clasped them behind her back.  She
had
to grow.  She
had
to
be strong.  She couldn’t fail. 

Without wanting
to, she once again saw the restrained bodies on the tables, saw the white,
bubbly froth at their lips, their jerking bodies, their glazed, staring eyes…

The colonel
stopped pacing and cast the formation a cold look, making Six Six Five snap
back to the present on a wave of terror that he would notice her attention
drifting.  “I’m not sure you do,” he said in that sickly-smooth voice that
reminded her of blood and the smell of bowels.  “We are at
war
.  Do you
know what that means?”

“Yes, sir!” Six
Six Five rasped, adding her voice to the others, her throat tight with fear. 
It had been almost a year since she’d gone back to the room with an empty,
blanket-less bunk where Six Two One had once slept.  Pizza had likewise been
gone, but they had left his cage.  Another reminder.  Though the other soldiers
did not consciously understand, Six Six Five knew what that meant.  Hamsters
could not survive without cages.  Pizza, like Six Two One, was dead.

“It
means
,”
Colonel Codgson went on, “in the coming years, we are all going to be forced to
sacrifice.  We need to give
everything we have
to save our home.  We
need to give this war our dedication.  Our concentration.  Our commitment.” 
Codgson paused and gave them all a hard look.  “Some of us will even have to
give it our lives.”

Though none of
her companions flinched at that, Six Six Five once again remembered the white,
rolled-up eyes of her dying brethren, the blue-clad doctor injecting their
driplines and checking his watch.  While her batchmates grinned and
enthusiastically waited for their next test, their next chance to prove their
worth, Six Six Five had come to understand what they really were:  Hamsters. 
Hamsters in a cage.

“
Today
,”
Codgson continued, “you will each be given the chance to show us your
strength.  You’ve done the endurance training, the mental conditioning, the
book-learning.  You’ve done the study.  But none of that means anything unless
you have the
spirit
to do what must be done in the end.  To
kill
. 
You are
soldiers
.  Your
job
is to kill Earth’s enemies.”  He
paused again at the head of the formation, giving them a long, fatherly look
with cold, emotionless black eyes that had always left Six Six Five feeling
sickened and dirty when they stopped on her, as they did now.  “And Earth’s
enemies,” Codgson said, holding her gaze, “are those who fail to win.  Earth’s
enemies,” he went on, “are the
weak
.  The
unprepared
.  The
fearful
. 
They
are the ones who handed over Humanity’s children to the Draft, and
they
are the ones we need to remove from our ranks as thoroughly as possible.” 
Codgson gave Six Six Five that same weird little smile as he watched her, then
turned and continued to scan the rest of the ranks.  “Starting today.”

Six Six Five’s
little feeling of dread was morphing into something all-consuming, something
eating into the tiny crevices of her soul, etching out a raw and painful
interior.  All around her, her batchmates seemed to be hovering on their toes, ready
,
eager
to prove themselves.  Yet watching Codgson, listening to him talk,
remembering the two dying boys, gurgling in their own blood, Six Six Five
wanted to be anywhere else. 
He’s going to cull me this time,
she
thought, swallowing down the urge to back out of formation, to run back to her
room to hide. 
He’s waited all year and now he’s going to cull me.

Looking out the
corner of her eyes at her bigger, stronger, more confident batchmates, Six Six
Five thought about how she was the smallest one in the room.  A runt.  The
doctors had said so.

No,
she
mentally shook herself. 
You have to be strong.  They cull you if you aren’t
strong.

That had become
her mantra over the last few months.  Ever since Six Six Five had seen what was
behind that little door on the end of the hall, she had repeated it to herself
as she fell asleep each night.  The strong survived.  Codgson always said the
strong survived.

…yet Six Six
Five wasn’t strong.

“We will begin
with something simple,” the colonel went on casually.  He gestured to one of
his ever-present white-clad assistants, who quickly went to the door and let in
a long line of technicians, each with a small cage in his or her hand.  Six Six
Five immediately recognized them as the hamsters that they had been given just
after their seventh birthdays, one year before.  Even from that distance, she
could see Charlie in his huge, four-times-the-size cage being carried by a big
soldier.  She saw his big white shape dancing around inside, anxiety in his
twitching nose.  Charlie hated it when someone moved his cage.  His cage was
his
home
…

The cages were
brought inside and stacked along the wall, just as they had been stacked along
the wall many months before, that day they’d gotten to pick their pets.  Most
of the children were smiling, finding their pets amongst the group, excited to
see their friends.  Only Six Six Five continued to stare directly at Charlie,
unable to look away.  Dread was consuming her that Charlie was up front, near
Colonel Codgson.  People near Colonel Codgson died.

Not Charlie,
she thought. 
Please not Charlie.

“Lieutenant, if
you would bring me the hat?” Codgson asked.

One of the
technicians quickly handed Codgson a jar filled with little white slips of
paper, then ducked back out of sight.

“Now,” Codgson
said, holding up the jar, “here we have a list of names.  Every one of your
names is included.”  He shook the glass so that the little papers slid around
in a shuffle.  “I’m going to draw a name from the hat and read it off.  When I
do, I want you to come forward.”

Six Six Five’s
heart was hammering so hard she was finding it hard to breathe. 
No
, she
thought. 
No, no, no, no…

Codgson smiled
at them and withdrew a name.  He unfolded the slip of paper.  “Six Seven Nine. 
Step out of formation and come up here.”

A girl who had
trouble with her roundhouses briskly stepped out of line.  She jogged up to
stand in front of Colonel Codgson and clicked her heels together, her hands
tightly behind her back.

“Six Seven Nine,”
Colonel Codgson said, “go get your hamster’s cage from the wall and put it on
the floor in front of me.”

Six Seven Nine
immediately ran to the wall, though she was hesitant in bringing the cage back
in front of Colonel Codgson.  She set it down slowly, nervousness lining her
face.

Colonel Codgson
smiled down at the little black hamster.  “What’s your hamster’s name, Six
Seven Nine?”

Six Seven Nine
swallowed, blue eyes fixed on her hamster.  Tentatively, she said, “Kung Fu.”

Colonel Codgson
continued to give her that lifeless grin.  “Do you like your hamster, Six Seven
Nine?”

“Yes, sir!” Six
Seven Nine cried, much more enthusiastically.

The colonel
nodded, still smiling.  “If you had to choose between killing your hamster and
killing a batchmate, which would you kill?”

Six Seven Nine
froze.

“Keeping in
mind,” Colonel Codgson said, “your batchmates can fight back and kill
you
. 
With your hamster, it would be as simple as dunking him in a bucket of water.” 
He gestured to the bucket that had been left beside the cages.

“I…”  Six Seven
Nine swallowed.  She glanced over her shoulder at the rest of her batch.  Her
voice shook when she whispered, “Do I get to pick?”

“No,” Colonel
Codgson said.  “If you refuse to kill your hamster, I get to pick who you have
to kill, instead.”

“I have to kill
a batchmate?” Six Seven Nine asked.

“No,” Colonel
Codgson said.  “You have to kill either your hamster or your batchmate.”  He
was still smiling, but there was a coldness that was working its way into Six
Six Five’s chest, making it hard to breathe.

Kill the
hamster,
Six Six Five thought desperately. 
He wants you to say your
batchmate…

“But I don’t
want to kill Kung Fu,” Six Seven Nine whimpered.  “Can I be a doctor, instead? 
Six Two One said she was going to be a doctor…”

“You have to
choose,” Codgson said sweetly.  “Your hamster or a batchmate.”

Six Seven Nine
glanced behind her again.  She swallowed, then glanced down at the cage at her
feet.  “I’ll kill a batchmate.”

Codgson gave a
satisfied smile.  “Six Five Five, get up here.”

At first, Six
Six Five thought he had said
her
, but then she heard the big boots of
Six Five Five, the batch bully, jogging to the front of formation.  The huge
soldier was almost twice as big as the rest, and he came to stand beside Six
Seven Nine with a sharp click of his heels.  Immediately, Six Seven Nine’s eyes
went wide and she took an unconscious step backwards.

“Six Five Five,
your batchmate wants to kill you,” Colonel Codgson said.  “She’d kill you over
a
hamster
.  What do you have to say about that?”

“N-n-no,” Six
Seven Nine whimpered.  “I d-d-didn’t w-w-want to f-fight
him
.”

Six Five Five’s
face beamed in a confident grin.  “I’d kill her first, sir.”

“Six Seven
Nine,” Codgson said, “do you still want to kill your batchmate?”

“No,” Six Seven
Nine babbled, “no sir.  I want to kill Kung Fu, sir.”

Codgson’s lips
twisted in a cold smile.  “But you already made your choice.  Six Five Five,
kill Six Seven Nine, then kill Kung Fu.”

“Yes, sir,” Six
Five Five barked, grinning.  Even as Six Seven Nine was gasping and trying to
back away, the big boy reached out, grabbed her by the head, and twisted so
hard that Six Six Five heard the pop from across the room.  Six Seven Nine
jerked, then fell stiffly to the ground, her body twitching in spasms.