Trove glanced at Meke. “Can you keep on the alert for any intruders? Or survivors?”
Meke nodded. Her mind whirled. This could be a trap, but there could be survivors as well. If they ran back, they would be safe, but that would mean abandoning the mission. She couldn’t do that, not when she needed this.
Daniel and John gripped their weapons so tightly that Meke was surprised that their knuckles didn’t pop free. Their faces were pale and drawn. Trang’s and Theria’s faces were blank, except for the slight twitching of their clenched jaws. They also gripped their weapons as their eyes absorbed their surroundings.
Trove motioned for Meke to follow him as he melted into the forest. It was still surprising how well Trove moved through the thick foliage. Despite his bulk, he almost faded among the trees. Meke couldn’t believe that genetic aptitude gave him that skill.
Meke kept a firm grasp on the area surrounding the rubble. She had to stop the group several times to rest her mind. John and Daniel frowned every time that happened. She could feel the energy leaching from her. Everyone’s eyes stayed on her as she leaned against a tree. Don’t pay attention, she told herself.
Trove raised his hand for everyone to stop when they could see the rubble. He glanced at Meke and she shook her head. Everyone’s jaws went a bit slack as they beheld the utter destruction. Daniel and John shuffled their feet, staring at the ground.
Nothing moved. No wind blew the acrid smell away, so a few solitary wisps of smoke twirled in the air. Several pits pockmarked the terrain.
Only an air bomb could do this damage. Air bombs were one of the few high-destruction weapons left in Prosperon’s arsenal. With an air-propelled projectile launcher, air bombs wreaked nearly as much damage as the old bombs.
Meke frowned. Smoke rose from the blackened rubble. Air bombs didn’t cause fires. They must’ve set fire to the institution. They wanted to destroy this place.
Trove walked over to the scorched remains of the sprawling foundation. Only the skeleton remained, a sad reminder of its former glory. Meke tried to disentangle the rocks, shards, trees and planks crowding her brain. She tried to sift any human forms from the non-human. But nothing moved. Nothing had the soft and rounded human shape.
Everyone else picked through the upturned stones, wood and steel pieces. Levin stopped smiling as he picked up a doll whose hair was completely burnt off. Daniel and John walked around, peering past shattered walls. Their faces were stony as concrete crumbled at their touch.
There was a slight tickle in Meke’s mind. Her heart started pounding painfully against her rib cage. It was a movement so slight that it could be the wind, except that there was no wind. It was near the pile of rocks furthest away. Meke picked her way through the burnt metal and concrete.
Tooth was already there, pawing at a large boulder that towered over Meke. Meke bent down besides Tooth, brushing soot from his dark fur. Closing her eyes, Meke tried to make sense of the different shapes. Her eyes flew open when she realized that a shape under the boulder was human. It twitched.
It was still alive.
Meke looked around frantically for anything that she could use to lift the boulder. The body was trapped under two boulders that she couldn’t move. Meke punched keys on her handheld as fast as she could, asking Trove to come.
“There’s someone under there.” Meke’s hands stumbled over each other as Trove approached. “It’s alive.”
They, along with Levin, Trang and John, moved the boulders so they could reach whoever was trapped. Meke almost dropped her end of the boulder when she saw who it was.
Doctor Ball lay crookedly on the ground. Black soot etched the deep wrinkles in his face. His light eyes shone from his dark face. His eyes focused on Meke for a second then he opened and closed his mouth. Without saying anything, his eyes fluttered shut.
Trove bent down, holding Doctor Ball’s head up. Trove’s mouth moved rapidly as he nudged Doctor Ball. But Doctor Ball remained still.
Trove shook his head in disgust as he released Doctor Ball’s head. He looked back at Meke and shook his head. “He’s out.” Trove looked at Theria, and his lips moved. “Check him.”
Theria bent over Doctor Ball. With a wet cloth, she wiped away the blackness, revealing the skin’s pallor. Theria checked his pulse, listened to his breathing and checked his limbs. “He has a few broken bones and I think he may have a concussion,” Theria said.
Trove crossed his arms, hovering over the two. “Can you get him to wake up again?”
Theria tiled her head back, squinting up at Trove. She shrugged and shook her head. Trove pressed his lips together and nodded.
Meke stared at Doctor Ball’s prone body, his paleness even paler next to the blackness of his soot-filled hair. Meke’s fingers itched to force his gray eyelids open and make him tell her where the patients were.
Her eyes burned from the air’s dryness. Meke closed her eyes, trying to will some moisture back into them. As she opened her eyes, her gaze fixed on Doctor Ball’s inert body. Smears of black framed his face. His clothes were dirty and torn. His mouth hung open, like a sleeping child.
It was strange to think that she stood in front of him. She could do anything she wanted to him right now. She could drag him to the forest and tell him what she thought of him. Except she didn’t know what she thought of him. All Meke knew was that she should be happy about how he couldn’t do anything to her now, but she wasn’t.
He looked ruined. His cheeks sunk into his face and his collarbone stuck out past his open collar. Bluish veins crisscrossed his hands, neck and feet. He had lost weight. He still had the paunch pushing against his shirt, but everything else had sunken.
She found herself with clenched fists by her sides, staring at Doctor Ball.
Trove turned around and looked at her. His eyes were quiet and wary. “Why don’t you go with Daniel to clear the perimeter?” he said.
Meke blinked. Trove remained crouched by Doctor Ball, watching her. Meke sighed and nodded.
“Take Daniel with you,” Trove said.
Meke raised her hands to protest. Trove stood up. “No arguments from you. We need to clear the area. You’re the best person to do that and you need backup. Everyone comes home, including you.”
Meke glanced at Daniel. His mouth pressed together as he watched them sign.
“Fine,” Meke said. A part of her knew that she was being petulant, but Daniel wasn’t the company she wanted right now. Expressionless, Trove turned and spoke to Daniel. The dirty-blond man’s mouth tightened as he nodded.
Meke stomped off, letting Daniel trail behind her. They searched the rest of the wreckage with her eyes and her mind. Only smoking debris—black, gray and the occasional white where the fire hadn’t burned—remained.
Her feet aching from being on her feet all day, Meke sat down. Shards of thick glass protruded from the rubble, broken remnants of the prison that had been her home. Meke wondered if anything remained of her room. It was fruitless to look—a deep pit gouged the area where the sleeping rooms had been. Meke watched smoke wisps rise from the blackest part of the pit, swirling into elegant helixes and fading into nothingness.
Meke tried to relax her muscles and monitor their surroundings. The morass of shapes were still tangled together in her mind. She set at work picking apart each tangle, but they were stubborn and unyielding. Daniel continued to upturn small rocks and boulders.
Then she felt it. A small hill in the forest behind her.
A hill wasn’t the right word for it. A mound, perhaps. The mound felt odd. Vague, imprecise shapes lay under the mound. She focused on disassembling the shapes. Haphazard angles and curves emerged—shapes that made no sense.
Meke walked into the forest, ignoring Daniel’s stare. Bare of plants or grass, the mound stuck out in the middle of a meadow. It was just a big clump of brown, grainy dirt.
As she approached the mound, her sense cleared. It wasn’t rocks under the dirt. It was bodies, bodies that were jumbl
ed together under a layer of soil.
Now she could see it all too clearly. The arms, the legs and the heads. The bodies came in all sizes. Arms tangled together and legs hooked around heads and necks. Every limb remained absolutely still.
Her throat constricted into a choke, Meke ran to the mound, falling to her knees. Her fingers scraped into the dirt, trying to clear the dirt off the bodies underneath. Dirt flew up in the air as Meke dug, raking the soil with her fingers. Tiny rocks and splinters dug under her fingernails. It only took her several minutes to reach their first body.
Black soil fell off her hands as they shook. With bated breath, Meke touched the grayish-white foot. The skin seemed to glow as moist, dark soil surrounded it. It felt cold. Holding her breath, Meke continued to wipe away the soil from the body. Black and gray were smeared all over the body, so she could just barely make out the face’s feminine features.
It was a woman with smooth and clear skin. Her nose was long and narrow. Meke couldn’t tell what her hair color had been since every strand of hair was coated with mud. The woman’s eyes were closed and mouth relaxed. She was no older than Meke, probably younger. The body had no visible cuts or marks. If Meke didn’t know better, she would have thought that she was sleeping.
Meke scraped away more dirt, digging deeper and faster. A hand emerged. Meke wiped away the blackness from the top of the skin. A faint pentagon shone from the hand.
Meke fell backwards onto the ground. This was no Zero. She was a Fiver.
Holding her breath once again, Meke picked up the girl’s hand. There was a tiny needle mark on top of the hand, next to the pentagon. A bluish rash radiated from the wound. It was a faint echo of Meke’s old rash.
It wasn’t possible. They wouldn’t do such things to Fivers. Keeping an eye on the girl’s hand, Meke dug deeper, hauling mounds away as she dug. She grabbed every hand she saw. Squares. Zeroes. Fivers. Even one Star. Every rank was represented in the dead.
She smeared a large black mark onto her cheek as she wiped away her hot tears. She slowed her frantic breath, trying to clear her mind.
She had been too late. It had been for naught. She wished, from the tips of her hair to the ends of her toes, that she had someone here that she could fight. She could fell them with one swoop of her poleax.
She focused on the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she inhaled and exhaled. She needed to tell someone.
Daniel was the closest. Once her tears had run dry, she walked back, shaking just a little, to where Daniel was picking through. Daniel furrowed his brow when he saw her. Meke leaned against a charred boulder and waved Daniel over. With slow steps, Daniel approached Meke. Meke pointed at where she came from. Daniel frowned in confusion. She gave him the signals for target, found.
His eyes widened.
Meke could take no happiness in his understanding. Something about the Fivers, Squares and Stars there crystallized the horror. Everything felt startlingly real to her. The realness horrified her.
Meke walked with Daniel to the mound, keeping her eyes in front of her. She didn’t want to see the sight, but she felt it all the same. When they arrived, Daniel walked to the mass grave. Gently, he upturned all of the hands. He crouched there, staring at the bodies for so long that Meke started toward him. He rose, then started hauling handfuls of dirt over the bodies. Meke joined him. They worked in unison, shoveling dirt in turn. When they were done, Daniel found a flat stone as large as Meke’s two hands. He put the stone atop of the mound.
Meke’s eyes were dry. She felt hollower than ever. In an odd way, the gravestone reassured Meke. The gravestone marked the bodies’ existence. They wouldn't be forgotten.
Meke and Daniel were returning to the others when a sharp tingle exploded into her mind. She clutched her head, halting in the middle of the forest. It felt like something was hurling toward them.
It took her a moment to recognize the shape. It was an aircraft—coming straight toward them.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AN INVISIBLE weight slammed onto Meke’s body as the aircraft hurled itself toward them. Meke fell back, dazed from the unseen pressure.
There was no time to run. Meke closed her eyes and waited.
The aircraft slowed abruptly, floating in the air momentarily. The nose lifted up, passing them overhead by only a dozen meters. Jerked out of her paralysis, Meke’s whole body filled with adrenaline. With a quick glance at Daniel, Meke ran in the opposite direction of the aircraft’s path.
Perhaps the aircraft hadn’t hit them, but that didn’t mean that all was well.
Meke’s feet sprayed dirt behind her as she ran. Daniel followed only a few steps behind. They stopped, panting, at a thick patch of trees. They needed to see what was happening.
The aircraft arced around, its wings skimming the treetops. The trees’ tips bent and fell onto the ground as the aircraft’s metal body sheared them.
Four figures dropped out of the aircraft. Their jackets billowed out into multiple parachutes. With some twisting and turning, they fanned out in a circle around the two. The aircraft zipped away, pausing once more before disappearing.
There was nowhere to run. The green-clad soldiers—Elite Forces all—surrounded them.
Meke unlatched her poleax. Daniel retrieved a few knives from his belt. They both pressed against the tree, shielding themselves. The four attackers blended into the trees with their green-brown outfits, but Meke could feel them.
They were Damore’s soldiers. Meke was sure of that. They moved as if gravity was a mere suggestion rather than an ironclad rule. They all carried a dazzling array of weapons on their belts. Their darting motion confused Meke’s sense. She had to concentrate to distinguish trees and rocks from humans.
Meke gripped the cold handle of her poleax and shifted the straps holding the crossbow to her back. Trying to slow her breathing, she adjusted her grip and hoped her training would serve her well.
Before she knew it, one soldier was aloft in a tree, with a crossbow aimed at Daniel’s head. The bolt flew into the air, cutting through leaves and air.
Meke leapt forward, shoving Daniel to the ground. When the bolt crashed into the broad face of her poleax blade, the reverberations almost made Meke drop the weapon.
As the bolt skidded off the poleax, a woman sprinted toward them, her legs a blur. Daniel was still sprawled on the ground, struggling to reorient himself.
Meke squared her shoulders and faced the running soldier.
Instead of a direct attack, the woman slunk behind a tree near Meke and Daniel. The slender woman with dirt-brown hair cropped close to her ears raised a hand holding three daggers. Meke didn’t know how she managed to hold all three at once, but they all looked equally deadly. The woman’s other hand held a dart. It was the same kind of dart that had hit Cecil all these months ago.
Meke swallowed. The daggers were for Daniel. The dart was for her. Capture her alive, she remembered.
She gripped her poleax tighter, ready to block any flying objects. She felt Daniel moving behind her, but she ignored him. She focused her attention on the woman. The soldier’s every twitch, every breath registered in Meke’s mind.
The woman slid away from the tree, hand with the dart raised. Meke positioned her blade as a shield, trusting her reflexes to be quick enough.
As Meke blinked, a dagger buried itself deep into the woman’s neck. It was one of the few vulnerable areas, free of the carbonized protection of the soldier’s uniform. Daniel released a long sigh, still crouching with his arm in front of him.
Meke watched as the woman sank to her knees, her hands clutching her neck. Blood spurted between her fingers, red dripping down her knuckles. She collapsed onto the ground, her blood staining the dirt black.
Meke tore her eyes away from the dying woman and pulled Daniel behind the tree’s trunk. The soldier who had shot at Daniel was leaping onto another tree. The other two were circling them, dashing behind trees.
These soldiers deserved the label o
f the best. Meke never had enough time to aim and shoot whenever the soldiers were out in the open. They were invisible to ones with normal sight. Even Meke had difficulty tracking their constant movements.
She knew that their position left them exposed. Trees provided minimal protection for them and maximum concealment for the soldiers. They had to leave, but how?
Daniel signaled for her to cover him. Meke drew closer to Daniel, checking the locations of the soldiers. They were circling them, but they kept their distance. Daniel tapped the handheld, but the screen remained black and lifeless. His insistent fingers continued to fiddle with the handheld. Meke glanced over and frowned. The handhelds never failed.
Shifting her crossbow onto her other shoulder, Meke freed her handheld then threw it to Daniel. After a few seconds, Daniel cursed and threw down the handhelds. The black devices stuck out from the loose dirt, useless.
Trying to keep track of all three soldiers, Meke tried to find the others. Her brain strained with the effort of accounting for so many moving bodies. Finally, she found them. Trove and the others were under attack as well, by soldiers who were bolder than hers.
Trove fought three people while the others sliced and punched their opponents.
With a dry mouth, Meke signaled to Daniel what was happening. As she formed her hands into different shapes, a slight tickle alerted her to a movement in a tree only a hundred meters away.
She whirled around and ducked as she felt the cold breeze of the dart passing her neck.
The tree-climber’s speed astonished Meke. If she had been a millisecond slower, she would be unconscious at this moment. She couldn’t stay here. If she stayed still, the tree-climber would best her. No luck was infinite.
Meke raised her crossbow and released the bolt. Before the bowstring resettled in its drawn position, Meke knew that she had missed. Accuracy wasn’t her aim anyway.
It worked—the tree-climber ducked behind the trunk.
Grabbing Daniel’s hand, they ran with only one direction in mind: toward the others. They zigzagged through the trees, hoping that their erratic route would elude the tree-climber.
Secret Value of Zero, The Page 13
