Zero Repeat Forever

by G. S. Prendergast

  Broken, like my arm, my ribs, like all the locks on all the doors in the apartment building. Like the world. Is there a thing left on Earth that isn’t broken? We were friends, August and I, for only a few hours, it seems. Now that’s broken too.

  I pull my hand with the knife away from his throat and start talking, with a feeling that his words are actually coming out of my mouth. I might still find my way to the base if I killed him. But I don’t want to kill him. And one day I’ll have to tell Topher why I didn’t do it.

  Maybe if he can explain it, I can let it go. “You were walking with her, the girl?” I ask. “Patrolling or hunting, whatever you do?”

  He nods, not looking at me. I need to go on. I need to know about Tucker’s last minutes before I take another step of life without him.

  He points to the scar on his chest. Not the one Topher made, the other, more faded one. He taps it hard and hunches over, clutching himself with one hand, reaching with the other.

  “He shot you first? Then her?” Tucker could reload the crossbow as fast as Emily. He had practiced for hours. In between . . . the other stuff.

  August looks up, tilting his head backward, pointing to the gaps between the armor on his neck.

  “An arrow went through her neck. That killed her.” Like we speculated. Just as August once showed me. There’s a weakness in the neck.

  He doesn’t reply. Doesn’t nod or acknowledge me. Lowering himself, he leans forward and buries his hands in the snow.

  “And you were scared because you were lost. Lost without her. She took care of you, right? You didn’t know what to do.”

  He hisses out a long, shaky sigh.

  “Did you chase him?”

  Still hanging over the snow, he chops one hand into his chest hard. Sorry.

  I find I can’t say any more. Tucker’s death plays behind my closed eyelids like the worst kind of horror movie. I wonder if he yelled as he ran, if he screamed. I wonder if he knew in those last moments that he was going to die. Did he think of me? Or Topher? Or only of himself? Minutes tick past. I see Tucker fall, face forward, the soft mulch of pine needles and willow leaves cushioning his fall. I hear the whine of the dart gun. I feel the punch of the dart at the base of my neck and the sour stinging of the Nahx poison rushing through my veins and out my eyes.

  “Was it painful?” I say at last. “Did he suffer?”

  August shakes his head.

  “Was it painful for you?”

  After a moment he answers, signing fluidly, and clearly, though one of the words is new to me.

  Tucker had a square machine.

  “A square machine?”

  He makes the square in front of his face, pointing at his eyes. Picture. Machine. Like the time I broke the table.

  Oh. God.

  “A video? He had a video. On his phone?”

  Yes.

  “A video of him killing your . . . the girl? The girl you loved?”

  Yes.

  So.

  There’s the truth at last. Tucker wasn’t hunting for food when he left my bunk that night. He was hunting for glory. Why would he do that? He knew already that I hated the videos. That I thought they were stupid.

  But Emily liked them. I’m not sure why that changes everything, but it does. Tucker filmed his attack on August and his companion, and it was playing back when August caught him. Maybe they both watched it as Tucker died. Then poor August smashed the phone to pieces.

  He lifts one hand out of the snow and lays it on his chest over the scar, over his heart, if he’s anything like me inside.

  I reimagine the scene, this time from August’s point of view, and it breaks me. Bleeding from his chest and in terrible pain, his only companion murdered in front of him, a dead human boy under a tree, lost and scared and alone on a planet full of people who want him dead. With a video playing back the moment his life fell apart. I can’t imagine his pain.

  I could no more kill him now than myself, than Topher, than my own poor parents who tried so hard to keep me out of trouble, who forgave so much and lost me anyway. Tucker will never get his vengeance, not from me. I drop the knife. It rings like a bell when it hits the ice at our feet.

  The world, which may or may not have ground to a halt while we resolved this catastrophe, starts moving again. I feel it lurch beneath my feet, unbalancing me, while things that have cycled between terrifying and familiar so many times they became a blur settle on familiar again. There’s a kind of finality to it. I trust him now, and that won’t change again. Trust is enough for us to go on.

  Standing, August takes two steps before turning back to me, holding out his hand. I reach for him, his fingers close around mine, and we walk like that, holding hands like two children, back to where we left the packs, as the sky lightens around us. His hand pulses warm in mine and squeezes to the knife-edge of too tight, to the precipice of painful. The stinging and heat radiates up my arm, my shoulder, and neck. I wonder if he doesn’t know his own strength or if the grip is intentional, if there is some unspoken message in it.

  If he is angry with me, at last, I suppose I deserve it. Angry, fed up, exhausted, frustrated—it’s not like it’s a new sensation to me, to inspire such emotions. But this time I decide to give myself a little break. I have the right to grieve and be bitter and resentful. And so does he. There are no easy answers, not anymore. Probably there never were any.

  Morning breaks, and a blue sky blossoms above us, making a wonderland of the craggy rocks and hills ahead. But the day passes in silence. August lets go of my hand only to give me water or food. I open my mouth only to drink or eat. Was it just a few days ago that I told him we could be friends in a different time or universe? I’m not sure I meant it then, but now I think I’d like to be his friend. It feels safe walking hand in hand with him, the first time I’ve felt safe in what seems like forever. I know who he is and what he did, but that was somewhere else. Maybe this is the universe in which we can be friends.

  It is dusk when we reach the helipad at the canyon’s edge; it emerges from the ice haze like a mirage. August silently considers the dormant helicopter, tucked away under camouflage tarps and a thick layer of snow. He turns and looks at me, setting the pack down between us.

  I breathe deeply, exhausted from our daylong walk, and emotional, too. Emotionally exhausted, like I’ve been watching children die. I feel as fragile as glass, a stained glass replica of myself.

  Before this all happened, I had never said a real good-bye. I close my eyes and picture Sawyer, in the grocery store, the expression on his face, the silent something we shared the second before he gave his life for mine. Tucker and I never had that chance. He snuck out of my bunk as I slept, took his crossbow into the forest, and I never saw him alive again. But that is death. In a way it is a better good-bye, because at least you don’t wonder forever. My parents, if they live, must wonder about me, as I do about them. Topher wonders about me. Wonders whether I am alive or dead. What must have been going on in his head when he saw August carry me away? That kind of good-bye is torture that never ends.

  I will never see August again. Never know what happened to him, whether he lived or died. Whether he rejoined his kind and their pillage of our planet. Or if he snuck away and hid somewhere, alone in exile, until . . . what? He died? Can he even die? There are still so many unanswered questions. And no more time.

  “I have to walk to the base,” I say, struggling to keep my voice even. “There’s a narrow path, and the entrance is kind of hidden. It’s a secret base.”

  He nods at this last fact.

  “You can’t tell your people where we are.”

  He shakes his head. Behind him he opens the pack he’s been carrying and tucks my own smaller backpack inside. Then he carefully slings the whole thing over my shoulder. It’s heavy. He takes time to adjust the strap and hands me a flashlight, which I stash away.

  I go now, he signs finally. He adjusts his rifle, slinging it over his back, and takes a step awa
y from me, as though to leave, just like that.

  “August.”

  The light is fading, and he is doing that thing where his shape gets less distinct the less light there is. It is a shadow that turns back to me expectantly.

  “Where will you go?”

  The shadow shrugs.

  “What will you do?”

  See you nevermore.

  It’s like being stabbed with three sharp and perfect icicles. Zero. Repeat. Forever. I’m not even sure that Tucker could have been so beautifully pitiful. Not even if he were angling for the best roll of his life. August has nothing to gain from me. He’s just being honest.

  “No, probably not. Here, I want you to keep this.” I dig in the bag he’s slung over my shoulder and come up with the slim book, “The Raven,” and my red pencil.

  To August, I write on the title page. Take care, from Raven.

  I don’t quite have the heart to write “love.”

  August purrs softly as he reads the inscription, before tucking the book away somewhere in his armor.

  Sad. He makes the sign on his own face first, then repeats it on mine, tracing the track of the single tear I can’t stop. He moves to leave again.

  “Will you go back to your people?” He shakes his head. “Why not?”

  He makes a new sign, like a little cage with his hand, then he flips it upside down. The meaning is clear.

  I’m free.

  “You are free, August. Don’t forget that.”

  You made me free.

  I almost gasp. “No, you did that for yourself.”

  He nods, although I get the sense that he doesn’t believe me. Or maybe I misread his signs. It’s possible he meant “You made me a prisoner and now I’m free.”

  I have so many things I want to say to him all of a sudden, things I should have said before. And questions to ask, although I’m not sure how he would answer them. I don’t even really know where to start, but I have to get this all out in about thirty seconds, because if I don’t, I’ll never be able to leave him.

  “August, just . . . please don’t harm yourself. Okay? I know you think there is nothing in the world for you. I know that. And I know that you are so much better than what is expected of you from your . . . people, whatever they are. I know how you feel about . . .”

  I almost say me, but what would be the point of that?

  “ . . . things. I know you’re different from the others. You must be.” I’m rambling nonsense. I’d be embarrassed if I weren’t so miserable. The problem is I can’t imagine a future for him that doesn’t involve despair or death, most likely both.

  “Find somewhere to hide, August. Just hide away from all this. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  With Topher?

  “With other humans, yes. We’re going to hide here. You won’t tell anyone?”

  No. Forever.

  “You won’t . . . harm yourself, will you?”

  Promise.

  He’s so sincere somehow, without facial expressions or a tone of voice; I believe his promise more than I have ever believed anything in my life. Letting my head fall into my mittens, I release a shaky sigh. Eventually, I feel his hand on my left shoulder again.

  “I don’t know why you’ve been so kind to me,” I say, looking up at him. He draws a little swirl on his forehead, which I take to mean something like “I’m confused.” He puts his other hand on my shoulder and slowly draws me forward. I step toward him as though in a dream, one step, two, three, until I am pressed up against his chest, his breastbone at my eye level. Then he wraps his arms around me and squeezes me, so tenderly that my heart seems to contract in my rib cage, and expand again like a bird discovering its wings.

  “August,” I whisper, because I can’t think of anything else to say. He’s held me before, carried me like a child, but this is different. I encircle his waist with my arms and lay my head on his chest, letting tears drip down his armor, which is as warm as a hot water bottle. He drops his head and rests it on top of mine. I feel him slip my hood down and pull back the knitted cap. His fingers curl into the unraveling twists of my hair, his rattling, buzzing breath going in and out. I can feel his sorrow almost as acutely as my own and wish there were something I could do about it. I want to tell him we might be together again one day, that everything will be all right, that he makes me very, very happy.

  But only one of those things is true.

  We stand like that for a while, as the daylight fades. Finally, it is he who steps back. I wipe my eyes on my mittens.

  “Thank you for saving my life,” I say. I can’t believe I haven’t said this before. When I think of some of the things I did say to him . . .

  There are subtleties to his language that I am just beginning to understand. Things I will never fully learn now. Important differences that matter. Like the difference between me and my. The difference between happiness and pleasure.

  My pleasure, he signs. After a moment he adds, Say good-bye.

  I try but I can’t. My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. August takes my shoulders again, turns me and gives me a little nudge toward the path to the base. I take one step, two, three, before I turn back to see he is walking away, disappearing into the shadows of the mountains beyond. I watch him until he puts both hands on his head. Then his image blurs too much to see.

  AUGUST

  I walk until darkness covers me, until I’m sure if I looked back, I would not be able to see her, even if she hasn’t moved from where we parted. If I looked back, I would not be able to see the empty place where she stood, the deficiency of her. This is the thing I don’t want to see.

  I will see her nevermore.

  After the battle in the city Sixth warned me about many things. That was when she still felt some responsibility for me, before I disappointed and frustrated her so much that she stopped caring what happened to me. She warned me not to disconnect below 4,000 feet, by the human measures, because I wouldn’t be able to breathe. And to never disconnect where humans could see. She warned me about the Elevenths and Twelfths, that they were mostly lost, defective, and not to be trusted if I should encounter one. And she warned me about human girls. I listened obediently, watching her hands make signs I knew but barely used. Of all the things she said to me, so many of which I’ve forgotten, I remember this: Human girls will interest you. You will feel things just by looking at them. You will confuse your devotion to me with feelings for them. This is a human trick. They will trick you into sympathy, into letting them go, letting them live. Higher ranks than you have been destroyed because they couldn’t bring themselves to dart a human girl. Stay focused and stay away from them.

  So. There. I failed her one last time.

  I hurt all over. My insides hurt. Parts of me that aren’t even real hurt. Like my mind, my memories, such as they are, the part of me that resists all that is expected of me. I wonder if those parts are dying now that she’s gone forever. I wonder whether I can go back to being a soldier, an assassin, go back to my people and resume my duties now that she has been excised from my life.

  If she made me rebel, surely her absence might make me comply. But I would rather die a million painful muddy deaths than return to that unliving life. I don’t care if it was all a trick. I am free.

  In the darkness the idea that captured me once, twice, more times I am too ashamed to admit even to myself, takes me again. I pull my arm back and hurl my rifle far into the night. Faintly, I hear it thump in the distance. Without it I feel as light as the mist rising from the fresh snow.

  My mind drifts back to that sunset on the roof when I stood there staring into nothing while she screamed at me, screamed and screamed and cried, shackled to the bed below. There is something so vulgar about that, so unspeakably vile, something I don’t quite understand. How she ever forgave me, I will never know. How she forgave me for anything, for everything, not that I deserved it.

  She would never know, would she, if I broke my promise? Just like I will n
ever know whether she lives or dies, she would never know if I drew my knife and slipped it between the armor plates on my neck.

  I would do it. I would. But I’m not sure I can actually die. If I can’t die, maybe Sixth is not dead. Maybe she is out in the world somewhere searching for me, waiting for me, waiting to judge my failures again.

  PART FOUR

  SPRING

  “The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE, “The Premature Burial”

  AUGUST

  Time passes, snowflake by snowflake, sunrise by sunrise. I’m scared that if I disconnect and purge my body of the thick oil that keeps me alive and awake, the memory of her might go with it. Or worse, I might forget that I have promised to leave her and her friends alone. I have promised not to reveal her location to my people. What if I forget that?

  So instead I wander through the trees, hiding from daylight like a . . . something . . . a vampire? That was in one of the other books I left behind in the tower. I lurk in my tree trunk chamber dreading the raven who will tell me nevermore.

  Raven. Nevermore. Like I need reminding. I look at the book sometimes, but the words swim in my vision. I think I have forgotten how to read.

  Nevermore.

  It stops snowing and starts raining. I imagine the raindrops dripping down the armor over my nose are tears. I only ever remember crying once, after I lost Sixth. I wasn’t sure what was happening. I thought maybe I was very sick or dying, it felt so bad. But after a while it became familiar, and the familiarity coalesced into a word, and I knew I was crying. I was ashamed at first, because I thought crying was for humans and children, but later it felt good, like the tears were sucking the malice out of me. That was when I began to resist, before I first saw Dandelion. Was that the reason I didn’t shoot her in the river? Because I remembered how to cry? Was it actually the pain of losing Sixth that saved me?

  Irony. A word I didn’t know I knew flops out of the sludge in my brain and gasps on the shore for a few seconds, like a dying fish. Irony. What possible use could that knowledge be to anyone, least of all me? Why remember these useless things now?