The 17 (19 page)

Lucan removed his helmet, his hair pasted to his scalp in thick sweat. He lifted his arms high and yelled, “We won’t fight! Don’t fight! Let’s show them they can’t manipulate us!”

Six of the figures walked slowly forward in a triangle pattern, the muscular boy in front leading the way. One, a female based on her slight build, stayed back, a sword held heavy and shaking in her small hands. As they drew closer, Zack could tell they were very human-like.

They stopped about twenty-five yards away, the muscular boy gripping the handle of his gladius tightly; his biceps flexed.

“Don’t do it,” Lucan pleaded. “This is exactly what they want.”

The muscular boy didn’t heed. Instead, he raised his gladius high, screamed and charged. The five behind him followed with swords swinging.

Instinctively, the other Omians picked up their swords in defense. Lucan didn’t, however; he just stood his ground. Zack knelt to scoop up his gladius, but stopped. He peered up at a girl with thin arms as she pressed the point of her sword on the soft flesh of Zack’s neck, barely breaking skin.

The clanking of metal on metal echoed all around him. The muscular boy pushed Lucan to the ground and held his sword high above his head, ready to thrust.

There were groans as some of the Omians were felled. Some of their opponents fell, too; blood stained the dirt.

Valentina fought gallantly. She had taken out two of their foes, one with a piercing blow through an opening in the armor near the arm pit and the other with a quick cut through the neck. She was now in a fierce battle with another girl, who kicked her to the ground, sword poised to end her.

Lucan peered back at her with dread.

He deeply cared for Valentina
.

“Are you just going to let her get slaughtered?” Zack whispered to Lucan, who scowled.

Lucan snapped his eyes back to him. “She’ll come back.”

“What if she doesn’t? Are you a coward like Crotos trash? Yes. I can see it in your eyes. You refrain from battle not because you are noble. You refrain because you are scared.”

Lucan turned his eyes to Valentina and his lips quivered as the girl swung her sword and sliced it through Valentina’s neck. Her gurgling gasps for air made Lucan turn away.

Valentina’s murderer joined the muscular boy in lording over Lucan.

“Lucan,” Zack yelled. “Pick up your sword and fight for yourself. Avenge Valentina unless you are too much of a coward.”

Lucan reached out slowly for the gladius with his quivering hand. His jaw was clenched and there was a fire in his eyes, a deep well of anger behind them. Zack could tell Lucan so wanted to grab the handle of that sword tightly in his fist and run it through Valentina’s murderer. His hand brushed the handle with the tips of his fingers and then wrapped around it. He lifted the sword and pointed it at the girl.

The muscular boy just threw his head back and laughed.

Lucan set defiant eyes on Zack. “I’m no coward.” He turned the sword on Zack and pushed it through his neck. Zack grabbed the wound with both hands against the gush as he fell to the dirt onto his side.

He heard the loud, mocking laughter of their opponents and his vision blurred.

Lucan rolled to his knees and peered up at his would-be executioners. The muscular boy, his laughter finally stopped, drove his sword into the soft flesh of Lucan’s neck. Lucan flopped to the ground next to Zack and peered at him with hatred in his eyes.

The muscular boy removed his mask. Zack wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating, but Harness’ smug face stared down at him.

The girl removed her mask, too, and Zack saw Cass smile at him with accomplishment.

As the life bled out of Zack, he watched as the girl who had hung back during the battle limped forward toward him. She slipped off her helmet and golden hair flowed down and green eyes met his with remorse.

It was Caroline.

She knelt, removed his helmet and rubbed his face soothingly. She whispered something that Zack couldn’t understand. The last thing he saw was the compassion in her wet eyes.

†††

Instead of a cell with an uncomfortable cot and an annoying spring, Zack opened his eyes on the leather couch in the observation room. Splifkin stared down at him. His skin was green but his words were flaming red.

Zack would have preferred the spring.

“Congratulations, Zack. You have set a record for the fastest bungling of an assignment. You may be more of a bumbling idiot than Eb.”

Zack swung his legs to the floor and sat straight, eyes wide with fear. “What did I do wrong?” he asked, knowing full well the answer.

“You are supposed to observe, not instigate. You have been removed. Fred has taken your place.”

Zack was not entirely sad about that. In fact, he felt relieved.

“You’re lucky you weren’t thrown back in with the population,” Splifkin barked. “You’re lucky you didn’t become lunch for the norge.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes. You are.”

Splifkin stomped away, brushing past Mizuki on his way out. She walked slowly into the room, sat next to Zack and gently rubbed his back. “Don’t listen to Splifkin. You were awesome. Man, you really got under Lucan’s skin. I can’t believe you got him to kill
you.”

Zack sat silently, his head rested in his hands. “They set me up.”

“Who?”

“The Ankhs.”

The test, he feared, was more for him than the Omians and he failed it spectacularly.

“What are you talking about?”

“The first battle I’m in with the Omians and it was against Harness and the others. And they replaced me with Caroline, my next door neighbor and best friend.”

Mizuki’s mouth gaped. She attempted to say something, but no words came.

He was a fool. No matter what he did, no matter what plan he and Mizuki hatched, it mattered little. He feared he no longer had the will to fight.

The passion to resist had been sucked out of him as surely as the Ankhs would suck out his Spark.

Concern blossomed on Mizuki’s face. “I know that look. Don’t give up, Zack. We can fight this. They only have three. Lucan is definitely out now. They have a lot more to find and you bought us more time to figure something out.”

Zack nodded halfheartedly. He feared for Caroline, who didn’t deserve this fate. No one did, really, but she least of all. He felt responsible for her being dragged here, to this perdition, this nightmare without end.

Not even Mizuki could drag him from his despair.

She stood without saying a word—he figured she could sense he needed to be left alone—and walked away, peering back at him with worry.

Zack stared at his palms, at the wrinkles and channels that cut across them, and wondered what they meant.

Did they foretell of his damnation? At this moment, he thought the only answer to be yes.

†††

The morning came with the same uneasy silence. The breeze felt good on Zack’s face, but little else did. He began to loathe his carefully recreated room. He tore down the posters and ripped off his YOLO t-shirt.

He thought “You Only Live for an Eternity” was more apt.

He slipped on a plain, black t-shirt and rubbed his fingers through his mussed hair. It hadn’t grown an inch since he had been here. Nothing about him had changed. It was as if he was preserved in a jar, a specimen on a shelf.

Zack had never felt this down before, not even when his classmates had duck-taped his ankles together in the boys locker room of the school and tossed him out, naked, into the gymnasium during a basketball game. Everyone in the packed stands roared at the sight as he struggled to free himself and scurry away. Even the players paused in mid-game to point and laugh.

He almost would welcome that again because that would mean he was home and away from here.

As he stared at the reflection of a defeated boy in the mirror, his door flung open. Mizuki stood in the arch, her face ominous. “They brought in another one, and you’ll never guess who it is.”

Zack figured it mustn’t be Lucan

Then who?

He followed Mizuki down the hall, through the double doors and snaked with her along the drab passageways to the Great Hall. They hunkered down out of sight near the entrance and listened as Bertha droned on about the great peril the Ankhs were facing.

Then, he heard a cracking female voice say, “Why me?”

Zack was stunned. “Is that … Valentina?”

Mizuki simply nodded.

Zack and Mizuki continued to eavesdrop.

“You have the Spark we need,” Bertha explained.

“What of the others? What of Lucan?”

“Lucan is duplicitous,” a male voice Zack knew as Fred’s responded. “He is a very good pantomime. He pretends to have the Spark, but he does not.”

The discussion progressed very much like the one Zack had with the panel of shadowy figures, Valentina posing the same questions and Bertha giving the same answers.

Finally, satisfied with their choice, the Ankhs dismissed Valentina. Zack and Mizuki slipped deeper into the shadows as Eb escorted her out of the hall with his distinctive waddle.

“Valentina is nice and all,” Mizuki said. “She has nice boobs, but she doesn’t have a Spark.”

Zack gulped and nearly choked. “You saw that?”

“Yeah, I was watching.” Mizuki smirked and jabbed him in the chest with her finger. “Have you never seen boobs before?”

This was not the time to talk about such things. Zack changed the subject. “The Ankhs must be dying more quickly than they thought.”

They began to make their way back toward what would best be described as their dormitory with the dining hall in the heart of it. They were both deep in thought. The repercussions of this were evident and Mizuki was the first to say it aloud. “They’ll bring in more and more, Spark or not. It won’t be long.”

“No, it won’t.”

They sat and ate their breakfast, Zack gobbling down his bacon and eggs and Mizuki sipping on her hot broth. They shared a meal, but no words. The question was obvious: What was to become of them when the quota was met? Would they continue on with their lives, never aging, each day the same as the last? Or would they be absorbed into the Ankh, their consciousness, essence and soul erased for all time?

Neither scenario was particularly attractive.

Zack’s thoughts also wandered to the others and to Caroline in particular. What would become of her?
No scenario was particularly pleasant in that case, either.

Zack could see the same fears on Mizuki’s face. He could tell she saw the same on his, but both were at a loss to formulate a solution. That frustrated Zack most of all. He hated to be lost and without a path. He was rudderless and it was a feeling he dreaded.

Finally, Mizuki’s eyes lit up and she said, “It’s right in front of my face. How stupid.”

Mizuki pointed behind Zack, who turned his head slowly to see Eb leaning against the wall. The bulbous albino blew into his cupped hand and whiffed the foulness of his breath.

Zack turned to look at Mizuki again. Her eyes were wide and her mouth curled into a big smile. “Him? What’s he gonna do? Breathe on them and gas them to death?”

“No, silly. He’s going to help us and so are Splifkin and Apparat and all the other races they have enslaved. They’re just dying to have a cause. We’re the cause.”

Zack appreciated her zealousness but doubted her plan. She was assuming the others wanted to revolt against the Ankhs. Many of them had been here for decades, if not longer, and had grown comfortable in their pampered lives. He couldn’t see Splifkin possibly agreeing to their resistance, and certainly not Eb—he was too smarmy to participate. And Apparat was too allegiant and dutiful to disobey.

“I don’t know …” Zack said with a trailing voice.

“C’mon. What do we have to lose?”

She was correct about that. They truly had nothing to lose.

“All right, how do we do it?”

Mizuki’s smile was devious. “Let me take care of that.”

Part II

Chapter Five

YOLO

Mizuki had cornered Eb in the dining hall. She said a few terse words and Eb responded in kind with a breathy voice, which caused Mizuki to wave her hand in front of her face and turn up her nose.

Eb tried to leave a few times, but she pressed him back against the wall forcefully with her arm.

Finally, she waved for Zack to come.

“Eb will help us. Won’t you, Eb?”

Eb’s bleached face was even paler than usual. “Not that I have a choice.”

Zack sighed. “Eb. It’s okay. If you don’t feel comfortable helping us, you don’t have to. We don’t want to get you into trouble. Do we, Mizuki?”

Mizuki scowled at him and then relented. “No, Eb. He’s right. I’m sorry I pushed you so hard.”

Eb’s eyes flit between Mizuki and Zack. “You … you are giving me a choice? Well, that, well, that changes everything. You think enough of me to allow me to choose! I’m in. We need to try.”

“You’ve been here longer than us, Eb,” Zack whispered. “How do we stop them?”

“Oh, they can’t be stopped, at least not without a miracle. They are centuries and centuries more advanced than any of us. They have powers you’ve only begun to see. To borrow an example from your planet’s ecosystem, Zack, it would be like an orchid mantis trying to defeat a white rhinoceros in a fight.”

“You’ve been around them. You must know a weakness,” Mizuki said.

“I don’t know if you would call it a weakness, but they are very rigid in their beliefs.” Eb began to talk, imitating the Ankhs, “
‘We need seventeen. Sixteen won’t do. Eighteen won’t do.’
Such a precise number. I wonder why they need seventeen. It’s a prime number, perhaps—”

“Grrrrr,” Mizuki bellowed. “Just get on with it.”

Eb flinched, waiting for a sharp knuckle or elbow that never came before he continued. “They lost their ability to improvise long ago. They can’t be spontaneous. They are very dull. You know, I don’t want to brag, but I did see one in his true form before. Let me just say it was an experience I will never forget. I did snag some of their DNA. I was curious. I never tested it, though. Too afraid of getting caught with it. I test all species’ DNA, you know. Tedious work, but that’s what Zorgites do.”