Zero's Return (11 page)

Considering the
Geuji had somehow worked himself into a mess that even without his intervention
could mean even more devastating wars for Congress, Rat knew that the most
important thing for them to do, right now, was to figure out the Geuji’s game. 
To do that, they needed to figure out why he spared a Huouyt hybrid.

Why a Huouyt?
she wondered.  All the psychotic burners could do was shapeshift and
out-think—

“Wait,” Rat
said, her neck prickling.  “Zero’s brother was a genius
before
the
experiment.  Like, everybody called him the Tesla of the Congressional Era. 
What was he
after
?”

“I don’t care
about the hybrid!” Mekkval snapped.  “I want the telepath.”

“Humor me,
milord,” Rat insisted. 

Looking annoyed,
Mekkval said, “Impotent and insane.”

“Can he
shapeshift?”

“No,” Mekkval
growled.  “The scientists running the experiments overlooked the fact that a
Huouyt needs zora to shift.  He has no zora.  They checked.”

She frowned.  “But
he could out-think a Huouyt?”

Mekkval
snorted.  “If Forgotten’s plan was to infect the Human race with alien genetics
during their Sacred Turn of penance, there would be no need to out-think a
Huouyt.  The only beings allowed on Earth right now are Humans.”

But Rat’s
experience dancing to the Geuji’s tune on Neskfaat had taught her to think,
rethink, and over-think every single piece of the puzzle she found, and she was
certain that the Huouyt hybrid was part of the puzzle.  The more Rat thought
about the circumstances of the brother’s escape, the more she was sure that it
had been part of Forgotten’s plan.  Forgotten
never
did anything by
mistake.  Which made her even more leery of what was to come.  “Milord, have
you…?”  She swallowed, trying to decide how to ask such a sensitive question
without insulting her master.

Mekkval gave her
a sharp look.  “Have I what?”

“Already sent
Huouyt to find them, master?”

Mekkval’s scales
tightened with anger.  “I took an oath to uphold the law.”

“So you
didn’t
?”
Rat pressed.  “To hedge your bets?”

Orange saliva
started to dribble from between his teeth, and glacial fury iced his words when
her prince said, “If it were anyone else to have asked me such a thing, Leila,
he would be dead right now.  No.  I did not.  Ask me such a shameful thing
again and our friendship will not save you a second time.”

Sensing how
truly close she had come to meeting her death on her prince’s claws, Rat
lowered her head in acknowledgement, burning with shame.  “My humble regrets,
milord.”

Mekkval
grunted.  “Find the telepath for me and we shall consider the debt forgiven.”

The telepath
again.  Rat frowned, but said nothing.  Personally, if she were in Mekkval’s
place, she would be more interested in making sure Zero’s brother was
neutralized first.  Ignorant, scared Human weapons, she could handle, but if
Zero’s brother were anything like
Zero
…

“So Zero’s
brother,” she hedged.  “Do you know where he might be?  Do you have an
address?  A picture?”

“The hybrid is a
secondary priority
,” Mekkval barked.  “His existence is annoying, but
scientists confirmed the experiment had made him impotent, so he’s really of
little importance to our goals.  It’s the ones with the capability to
reproduce
that you need to concern yourself with.  The telepath and his friends.  We
don’t want the worms
breeding
.”  He swung his head back to again become
transfixed by the gruesome images on the screen.

“Understood,”
Rat said softly, even though her mind was churning with the exact opposite
conclusion.  “I just need to know what I’m looking for.”  She knew from
experience that the more innocuous Forgotten made something look, the more
important it was. 

Mekkval grunted,
still watching the screen.  “The hybrid is tall for a human.  All documents on
him were purged by a system error a few months after his escape, but witnesses
said his eyes glowed and his hair writhed.”

“Glowed.”  Rat
frowned.  Huouyt eyes didn’t glow.  They just…made observers uneasy.  Like
looking into a mirror.  A flat, psychotic mirror.

“An
exaggeration, obviously,” Mekkval said, sounding impatient.

“Obviously.”  She
glanced again at the grisly death-scene that had been replaying on Mekkval’s
wall for eight days.  Knowing the familial ties of Dhasha, she understood
Mekkval’s strategic lapse, and decided not to push it.

Rat took a deep
breath, the truth of what she was about to do beginning to sink in.  Mekkval
had given his vow to his brother Bagkhal to raise Bagkhal’s son as his own. 
She knew Mekkval would board a ship to Earth to kill the experiments himself if
she refused him.  His honor would allow nothing else.  In fact, she was
surprised Mekkval hadn’t killed her for her comment earlier.  All a worthy
Dhasha prince would be able to think of, at this point, was honor.  And she’d
bruised it.  Badly.

Rat gave a nod
of acquiescence.  “I’ll find them, my prince.”  She reached out and switched
off the video that had been haunting him for a week.  As Mekkval grunted and
rounded on her, his indestructible scales rattling as they clamped down in
anger, Rat looked up to meet his eyes, gently placed a hand on the cold, glassy
slickness of his shoulder, and said, “You have my word.  I’ll kill them all.”

CHAPTER
6 – New Basil Harmonious

“They’re
leaving
us here!  The ailo fuckers are
leaving
us here!”  The enraged thuggish
scream echoed down the concrete corridors to the chorus of men shouting and
beating their Bibles to pieces against the bars.  Slade sighed and continued to
stare at the ceiling.  Of course they were leaving them there.  They were
criminals
. 
Why should the pious, God-fearing men and women with their self-righteous
attitudes and handy lead-fortified nightsticks let
criminals
out of
their cells when the Earth was about to be rendered back into the Stone Age? 
That just set a bad precedent.  After all, Earth would be lucky to wind up with
a couple million survivors by the time Congress returned in its Sacred Turn. 
Why should those survivors be the descendants of
criminals
?

When the hooting
and chanting continued, Slade sighed and rolled onto his side to face the
opposite wall.  His bunkmate had been replaced by a graphic brass rendition of
the Crucifixion, bolted to the concrete with concussion guns.  Slade, the
wardens had quickly learned, could not have bunkmates.  Either he liked them,
or he didn’t, and either way, it turned out poorly for New Basil Harmonious. 

If he liked
them, Slade would turn them into his lackeys and begin yet another
carefully-designed institution-wide conspiracy to escape, four of which had
already worked…for other people.  Dammit. 

If he
didn’t
like them—i.e. if they were especially arrogant, obtuse, or otherwise distasteful—he
would patiently take the time to give them long, highly logical monologues on
their own lacking self-worth and safety until they ended up hugging themselves
in a corner, rocking quietly, and shaking like one of those tiny pet dogs in a
blizzard. 

The last one who
ended up in the straight-jacket had earned that honor for rooting through
Slade’s stuff while Slade was in yet another mandatory interview with the
government shrinks, then stealing—and chewing—Slade’s last illicit stick of gum
in front of him, which Slade had been saving to ease his headaches after
spending hours explaining to shrinks the mechanisms behind their own
personality flaws.  The one he’d straight-jacketed before that had been a
gerbil-brained furg who loved to slap Slade’s ass while he peed, then giggle
when he sprayed the floor and wall.  The one before that, Trent, had snored at
night. 

Had that been
Trent’s only failing, Slade would have simply turned the corpulent dimwit into
another lackey, but he’d been a chronic child molester before his ‘repentance’
at New Basil Harmonious, and Slade hated child molesters.

Thus, Slade was
alone in his room, staring at his friend the Pinioned Dead-Man Statue,
listening to the indignant roar of rapists, murderers, and thieves, when he
heard the telltale
click
of someone throwing his cell lock.  Frowning,
Slade lifted his head to look.

A tall, blond,
blue-eyed prisoner that Slade recognized from Third Lunch was standing inside
the door to his cell, gripping the bloody, broken handle of a mop with all the
reverence of a twelve-million-credit plasma rifle.  Slade was pretty sure he
saw hair and scalp clinging to the jagged end.

“Yes?” Slade
asked, sitting up carefully.  He hadn’t
remembered
pissing this guy off,
though maybe he’d hypnotized his little brother into thinking he was a vagina
or something.

“You the Ghost?”
the man demanded, peering at Slade.  His voice had a distinct Southern twang to
it, probably Alabama or Louisiana.

Aw, hell.  I
probably hired his sister to escort for me or something…
  Knowing it was
gonna hurt—if he survived it at all—Slade put on his best look of horrified
innocence and gave the guy’s ‘weapon’ a dramatically terrified look, trying to
calculate whether or not he could take it from him.  Probably not.  He was a
computer geek, not a barfighter, and this guy was
definitely
six-foot-four-bash-your-face-in goon material.  “
Me
?”  Slade scoffed,
exercising that geekish whine, “I wish.”  He had managed to keep that
particular nugget of information from his wardens and shrinks, but he knew
that, as a famous criminal overlord, the criminal underlings—who were usually
smarter than their captors by a factor of twelve—would start to put A and B
together. 

The blond dude
blinked, then glanced at the gruesome statue on his wall.  “I’m lookin’ for
Ghost.”

Apparently,
this one should have been given a nightstick,
Slade thought, exasperated. 
“Well, he isn’t here,” Slade said, “but if you’re lookin’ to pound some dude’s
face in, there’s a big guy down the hall who likes to read haiku at night.”

The guy gave him
a long look, then, surprisingly, turned and walked back outside his cell in
silence.  All along the corridor, inmates were howling and throwing their
belongings at the blond through the bars, demanding his attention.  Slade frowned
when the guy again reached for his lock, to seal him back inside.  “Why are you
asking?” Slade called, curious.  Most of the guys in here would have beat the
crap out of him anyway, just because.

“Got a computer
to hack,” the blond said, hitting the lock and sealing Slade back inside.  “Got
a tip on accessing the warden’s account through a secret terminal behind the
painting in the janitor’s office, but can’t get past security.  Locked me out
on the third try.”

Slade sat up so
quickly he hit his head on the empty bunk above him.  “I can help!” he
shrieked, grabbing his head and dancing out of bed so hastily he hit his head
again.  “I can help I can help!”  He hurried up to the bars to face the blond
on the other side, still hissing as he held his bruised skull with one hand. 
“Come on, dude.  Let me out.  I can do that.  I can hack.  No sweat.  I’m
Ghost.”

His would-be
savior gave him a flat look.  “You said you weren’t Ghost.”  He started to turn
away.

“You were
holding a
bloody mop handle
!” Slade cried.  “I thought you were gonna
kill me.  Take me to this secret terminal.  I’ll do it.  For the love of God,
I’ll do it.”

The man
hesitated, then turned slowly back to face him.  “I’m Tyson.”

Slade bit down
the urge to tell him he didn’t give a crap who he was, just give him something
with pixels and lines of code.  He smiled and held his hand out through the
bars.  “I’m Ghost.”

“Your jumpsuit
says Slade Gardner,” Tyson said.  It was pretty obvious he wasn’t going to let
him out again.  Or shake his hand.  Especially shake his hand.

Slade’s smile
faded and he dropped his hand.  “Listen, you ill-bred inebriate.  If you are
somehow smart enough to get your incompetent ass to a backdoor into the system,
you know damn well you can get us out if you can crack the code.  But you
can’t, because you’re an undereducated monkey with a Pleistocene fetish.  You
need
me, because you don’t have the processing capacity to work through complex
mathematical algorithms in your woefully inadequate little brain.”

Tyson stared at
him blankly for some time.  Finally, he said, “A what?”

“You
need
me,” Slade repeated for him.

The thug cocked
his head.  “No, I mean that word you said.  Plyyy…”

Slade blinked at
him.  Their lives or deaths were hanging upon the blundering orangutan’s next action
and he was standing there trying to get him to pronounce geological epochs. 
“Pleistocene.”

“Yeah, that.” 
Tyson scratched at his cheek, obviously struggling.  “So that’s like, what… 
Dinosaur time or something?”

Slade squinted
and considered walking away and letting the nice primate play with his bloody
stick.  But, because he
really
didn’t want to starve to death—he’d heard
that was a miserable way to go—he reluctantly said, “It’s a geological epoch that
lasted from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth’s most recent
period of glaciations.”  When the idiot just peered at him like he’d spoken
ancient Jreet, Slade sighed, deeply.  “It roughly correlates with the Stone
Age, give or take about six hundred thousand years.”

The tiny, rusted
gears in the guy’s head started turning.  “So you called me a Neanderthal?  He
pronounced it ‘Nander-thawl.’

Slade sighed and
lowered his cranium to the bars, his last little flicker of hope going out upon
that halfwit drawl.  “Never mind.”