She felt two soldiers closing on their sides. She pointed to the left, as they ran. Hopefully Daniel had understood what she meant.
The male soldier on the right attacked a second earlier than the female soldier on the left. The tall, wiry blond man raised his crossbow, his pose open and relaxed. A dart sped from the crossbow’s insides toward Meke’s thighs.
Meke twirled her poleax so the blade blocked the dart’s path. The dart bounced off the blade, skittering on the ground in front of her. The soldier’s crossbow was already armed with another dart.
That wasn’t the biggest problem. Two long stretches of strings hung in front of her, meters and meters long. One was at knee-level, and the other was at chest-level. At the rate that Meke was running, she would crash into the strings and trip. But maybe…no, she couldn’t jump through.
Her feet gouged deep grooves into the dirt as she skidded to a halt.
Daniel was already fighting the female soldier. Their swords clashed as Daniel tried to overpower the smaller woman. His heavy strokes, however, were no match for her quick jabs. He leapt back, evading her sword by millimeters.
The blond man cocked his head as he aimed the crossbow at her shoulder. The end of his mouth twitched into a smirk as he looked down the crossbow’s length. His eyes flickered to her hands, his mouth moved in clear words. “Good-bye, Zero.”
Meke dove for the discarded dart. The soldier repositioned his crossbow and fired. Clutching the dart in her hand, Meke rolled away. The dart whizzed by her leg and sunk deep into the dirt next to her right calf. Meke exhaled sharply. She was lucky today.
She couldn’t afford more hair-width misses. She didn’t have the carbonized clothing of the Elite Force soldiers. No other soldier received such protection, especially the ones on the wrong side. Nobody knew the secrets of carbonized fabric other than a select few Stars.
As the soldier reloaded his dart, Meke stuffed the dart in her pocket, pointing the needle away from her body. With a grunt, she scrambled to her feet. Her poleax in hand, she bounded to the soldier.
As she swept her blade down, he blocked it with his crossbow. The two weapons scraped against each other, their handles rattling in their owners’ hands. The smile still on his face, the soldier withdrew his sword with his free hand. That smile infuriated her. He wasn’t taking her seriously because of her Zeroness.
He tossed aside the crossbow, held the sword loosely in his hand. A perfect pentagon shone from his hands. Meke tightened her grip on her poleax.
His strike came from the left, so fast that Meke almost didn’t block it in time. The next blows came so quickly that Meke always felt a millisecond too slow parrying the strikes. He deserved his position in the Elite Forces, all right.
He wedged his blade between the twin blade of Meke’s weapon, locking them together. Sweat moistened her forehead as he pressed the two weapons upon her. With a flick of his foot, he swept Meke’s feet out from under her.
Meke’s back smashed against the hard soil underneath. Grainy dirt flew onto her face and hair.
Meke gasped, trying to regain her breath. Despair washed over her. She had lost and she was going to pay for it now.
The Fiver’s faint smile grew into a full-grown smile on the soldier’s face as he gazed down at Meke. He turned slowly and retrieved a dart from the discarded crossbow.
Meke flipped on her stomach and rose into a crouch. The soldier cocked his head and grabbed his sword.
Fight dirty, Meke thought as she hurled a chunk of dirt into the man’s face. The dirt got into the man’s eyes and mouth. For a moment—just a moment—he squeezed his eyes shut and spat out the dirt, but that moment was all Meke needed.
Meke jumped forward, retrieving the dart from her pocket, holding the thick part between her index finger and thumb. She plunged the dart deep into his neck before he had a chance to stop spitting.
The effect was instantaneous. His eyelids drooped and his body crumpled onto the ground.
She stood over the man, her chest heaving and shoulders slumped. Sweat ran down her face in rivulets. Her arms felt like someone had stretched them and snapped them back. Tooth emerged from a tree, trotting over to Meke as if nothing had happened.
Tooth bared his fangs to something behind her. Meke glanced back, seeing Daniel’s slow sword strokes as the female soldier feinted. Daniel’s hair was now dark brown with sweat and was panting hard.
The sight snapped Meke out of her fog. She bent over the unconscious man and reclaimed her crossbow. She fetched a bolt from her back pouch and shot.
It was all too easy.
The soldier, preoccupied with Daniel’s wild swings, never saw it coming. The bolt pierced her neck, its force throwing her back against a tree. Blood spurted until her heart stopped. Her lifeless eyes stared back at Meke, the blood pooling around her slumped body.
Meke lowered her crossbow, leaving it dangling on her fingers. She blinked at the strange scene before her—three green-clad bodies sprawled in unnatural angles, one alive, one dead. She didn’t notice when the crossbow fell from her hand and bounced onto the ground.
She hadn’t even given it a second thought. A life was gone because of her, and she had taken it instantly. Tooth butted his head against Meke’s calf, shaking her thoughts free. She smiled at the black-brown cat, bending down to stroke his dusty fur.
Daniel stood next to her, his mouth open as he panted. He walked over to the blond man’s inert body. After a few moments’ worth of chest heaving, Daniel plunged a knife in the man’s neck.
“Let’s go,” he signaled as he stood up.
Meke tried not to look at the blood on his hands. She nodded, crushing her strange, weak thoughts. With a sigh, she went with Daniel, keeping her senses on alert. She located the others and her throat constricted.
Theria was off to the furthest left corner of Meke’s sense. She was running behind a cliff face, evading two pursuers. Trove, with Doctor Ball slumped over his shoulder, had tucked himself behind a rock. With his sword held close, he peered out at his three attackers. She couldn’t find Trang or John.
Meke crouched on the ground, wiping an area smooth with trembling hands. Daniel’s eyes crinkled in confusion as she drew crosses and lines on the ground, mapping everyone’s position.
CHAPTER TWENTY
MEKE'S SHAKES subsided as Daniel drew his suggestions onto the black soil. With his thick fingers, he drew the rough outline of the area, with Meke marking where everyone was.
Meke fidgeted—this was taking too long. But they could hardly barge in without preparation. She remembered Trove telling her that a few moments of preparation could save hours of mistakes. She hoped he had been right.
Meke shuffled her feet, sending tiny pebbles and dried leaves flying. Daniel shot her a glare and Meke stopped her fidgeting. With a few deep breaths, ones that she felt in her belly, her pulse slowed to a somewhat reasonable rate. Once again, she expanded her mind and found Trove, Doctor Ball, Theria and Levin. Trang and John remained hidden, somehow, from Meke’s sense, making her nervous.
She shooed away Tooth. This was no place for a cat.
Once they had decided on their next steps, they snuck to the edge of the meadow that held the institution's remains. Trove still crouched behind a rock with a half-shattered wall behind him, protecting Trove’s and Doctor Ball’s backs Meke could feel Trove’s heavy breaths, as he gripped his sword. Three soldiers crouched several meters away from the rock's face, waiting for their target. Their chests rose in a smooth and steady rhythm, utterly unaffected by the events.
Theria had circled around and was now in a sword-to-sword struggle with a short, wiry man. Levin was running from a tall, heavily muscled male soldier behind him. The soldier chasing Levin had nothing on the small wiry man; his big muscles and broad chest slowed him down as Levin's legs carried him further and further away.
They had agreed to help Trove first. He was their commander, after all. Also, three against one were worse odds than one ag
ainst one. Meke had to hope that the others would be all right.
Meke and Daniel moved squarely behind one of Trove’s pursuers, a middling man. Meke felt Daniel fidget beside her. Meke focused on the man, ignoring Daniel’s doings. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about the man’s appearance, except that he wore the green Elite Forces uniforms and was a Fiver. His hair was the same muddy brown-blond as Daniel’s and John’s.
Meke stepped away from the tree's protective shield and aimed the crossbow at the middling man. The crossbow's smooth coolness focused Meke's mind.
With a twitch of Meke's finger, the crossbow released its bolt. As the projectile sailed in the air, the soldier jerked away. The bolt hit his shoulder instead of his neck, bouncing off the carbonized uniform. The man's hand grabbed his shoulder. The bolt may not have pierced flesh, but rest assured, it bruised.
With curses running through her brain, Meke fished a bolt from her pocket—she only had a few more—and loaded the crossbow.
The man must have screamed an alert because all three ran toward her now. Daniel readied his daggers. Meke forced her hands to steady as she aimed the crossbow. The man wasn't wise. He ran in a straight line toward her.
Again, it had been too easy.
The man collapsed immediately, a bolt impaling his neck. The shock on his face contorted it into something far more innocuous, more familiar. Meke tore her eyes away.
The others were smarter. They stopped behind the thin-bodied trees for protection. Meke glanced at Daniel, who stared at the dead body ahead of them. She jostled him to tell him the others’ positions. He nodded, face pale. She held the crossbow firmly on her right shoulder, ready to shoot as soon as a foot slipped past a tree trunk.
But they never slipped even a single hair outside of the tree's protective shield. A movement caught Meke's attention. It was Trove. He walked away from the boulder in a slow crouch. His sword drew delicate figure eights in the air, its tip unwavering. He stood out of sight of the soldiers, whose gazes remained fixed in Meke’s direction.
Shifting his weight, he slid one hand away from the sword's handle and his hands contorted into familiar shapes.
Who was he signaling? Nobody else was around that could see except for her. She caught herself smiling, despite the circumstances. Trove was signaling her.
He repeated the hand motions. Meke released a long breath, feeling the air rush past her teeth. Trove would draw them out and Meke would do the rest with the crossbow.
Trove drew close to the ground, slipping between the trees. He closed upon a man who stood stiffly behind a tree. The soldier whipped his head as Trove raised his sword and managed to defend himself at the last minute. The soldier kept his sword up, even with Trove’s full weight on his sword.
As Trove pushed the soldier’s sword down, Meke felt a slight tickle a hundred meters from Trove. The female soldier had a throwing star in her hand.
Meke shifted her crossbow and shot, but it was too late. The star was already spinning in the air as the bolt sped toward the woman's neck. The spinning star tore through leaves and air to sink into Trove's thigh. As an afterthought, the woman collapsed to the ground, clutching the bolt that had ended her life.
Grasping his thigh, Trove sliced at the soldier, delivering the last blow. As the man crumpled onto the ground, Trove staggered to the nearest tree, trying to staunch the blood flowing from his thigh.
Meke threw her crossbow onto her back. She signaled Daniel to follow her. Her breath was ragged as she ran toward Trove. A slight tickle above her alerted her to the incoming dart. She threw herself onto the wet dirt, smearing her cheeks black with soil as the dart whizzed by.
Now she remembered. The tree-climber. He had stayed so still that she had forgotten about him.
She was on her feet before the tree-climber could release another dart. Panting, she skidded to a stop near Trove. He looked up at her, wincing as red streamed from under his hand.
Meke grabbed Trove's lapels just in time before a dart buried itself into the tree trunk, mere millimeters away from Trove's neck and her head.
Trove clutched her shoulder as he hobbled away from the tree, pointing toward his old hiding place. Meke half supported, half dragged him as he limped, leaving a trail of large blood droplets. Meke would jerk them both backward whenever a projectile came flying at them. Sometimes it was a bolt, sometimes it was a dart.
Somehow, they made it to where Doctor Ball still lay unconscious, oblivious to the happenings around him. Meke eased Trove as gently as she could to the ground, but he was so large and heavy, he fell on the rocks and winced.
"Sorry!" Meke winced as well.
His mouth tense, Trove waved away her apologies.
After glancing at Doctor Ball to make sure he was still breathing, Meke knelt next to Trove. With gentle hands, she removed his hand from the wound. He merely stared off in the distance as Meke tried to repair him.
Trove had the wherewithal to remove the star, but blood still leaked out of the deep wound in dribbles. Meke forced herself to look at the shredded flesh, the bright red making his skin a ghostly shadow of its former color. Meke tore off the bottom part of her shirt. She wrapped the wound as tightly as she could, but she could see the redness spreading through the white fibers of her makeshift bandages.
"Where's Daniel?" Trove asked, his fingers scarlet. Meke looked around and didn’t see him. Daft fool.
"He's still back out there. Should I get him?"
Trove lifted his handheld, pushed a few buttons. The screen remained as black as the ones that Daniel had thrown away. With a disguised sigh, Trove let the handheld clatter onto the rocks. Trove shook his head, his face growing paler. “Don't. He knows what to do.” Trove groaned and looked past the rocks. “Was it a man in a tree who shot at us?"
"Yes, I've never seen anything like it before. The way that he jumps through trees…“ Meke trailed off, thinking of the graceful way that the man’s hands grabbed a nearby branch as he flew through the air.
Trove grimaced as he shifted his weight off his left leg. "Jens." His mouth tightened. "As a shot, he’s at least as good as you, maybe better.”
"How do you know who he is?" Meke asked.
"Oh, everyone knows Jens. He's the elite of the elite. He's a crack shot and he can leap from a tree to a tree like a—, a—I don’t even know what.”
Trove slumped, his face ashen, then he started laughing.
Oh no, he has gone insane, Meke thought. What am I going to do with a crazy Trove?
“They got us pretty good,” he said.
Meke looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry,” Meke said.
“What are you sorry for? It was a masterful move by Damore. He got me, too.”
“I was supposed to see them coming.”
“Looks like they know what your sense is like already.” Trove shook his head. “They played us perfectly. They came in too fast for you to see. Left this place unguarded, an easy target. I bet they’re moving in ways that it’s hard for you to see. Nothing you could’ve done. If anything, it’s my fault. I had a bad feeling about this, but—” Trove shook his head. “Orders are orders.”
Meke shook her head. Trove waved her away. “It doesn’t matter. We have to leave. I can't stay like this for much longer."
“We can hardly leave with Jens out there. You know that he’s just waiting for one of us,” Meke said.
Jens sat so high that the branch swayed with the wind. How the branch didn't snap under his weight, Meke didn't know. He held a crossbow in a relaxed position across his lap. The nonchalance of his handhold and swinging legs didn't fool Meke. He would seize the crossbow and release a dart or bolt as soon as someone exposed as much as a hair.
“I have an idea, but we need to talk it out first.” Trove glanced at Meke, his eyes regaining some of its vigor. “I’ll stand up and let Jens take an aim at me. You shoot him.” Meke shook her head, opening her mouth in protest. “It's the only way. Either that or I stay here, bleeding
to death. This way I have a shot at getting back alive. Actually, I’d rather be shot than bleed dry.”
The brutality of his words made Meke’s throat ache. “How do you know he’ll take the bait?” Meke asked.
“Oh, he will. He won’t miss a chance to beat me. Let’s do it soon or I may not be able to do it.”
Exhaling slowly, Meke nodded, She placed a small metal bolt into her crossbow and adjusted her pouch. Only five bolts remained. She didn't like this—not one bit. If she shot a fraction of a second too late, Trove would be gone and she would be alone. Useless thoughts, Meke scolded herself. She decided not to think any further than her trigger finger. Biting the insides of her cheek so hard that the coppery taste of blood flooded her mouth, she got into position.
Jens was a cocky one—obviously a Fiver—his feet swinging in the air. His jaw muscles worked as he munched on some food. Meke pressed the crossbow against her shoulder, aimed at the tree-man.
Trove inhaled deeply next to her, and heaved himself up.
Everything happened within a second.
Jens whipped his crossbow onto this shoulder and shot. Meke twitched her trigger finger. For an instant, both bolts soared in the air, traveling in opposite directions.
Meke’s bolt hit Jens right below his uniform’s seam. She had missed. Meke jammed another bolt into her crossbow and raised it again, but Jens was gone.
The force of the bolt’s impact had sent him flying, slamming through rough branches. His hands flew out for a handhold, but he found none. He hit the ground so hard that Meke was surprised to see that he was still breathing, albeit raggedly.
She glanced over at Trove who was clutching his arm with his eyes closed. He opened one eye and smiled at Meke, a thin line with a tiny curve at the ends.
Meke sighed, discarded her crossbow and grabbed her poleax. Using the poleax as leverage, she vaulted herself over the boulder. She was running, but slowed to a trot when she realized what had happened. Daniel already had a knife at Jen’s throat as Jens lay on the ground, coughing and cradling his chest. Jens had his eyes shut tightly, refusing to look at his captor. Daniel looked up at Meke, nodding gravely.
Secret Value of Zero, The Page 14
