Zero Repeat Forever

by G. S. Prendergast

  “God,” he says quietly. And then “Okay . . .” I wish I could have spared him this. I wish I could have spared everyone everything.

  August rises up to rest on one knee. He looks around the plateau and then back to me, with his head turned to the side. I bite back a whimper as a sudden spasm of pain lances through me.

  “Please,” I say, and I don’t add there’s not much time.

  August reaches up to his helmet and pulls on something. There’s a loud crack, almost like a gunshot, and when black fluid drips down his shoulder, I panic for a moment that he has been shot, but he just reaches over and snaps something on the other side of his helmet. Another loud bang. Xander twitches under me.

  August slowly leans forward to rest on both knees, with one hand on the ground. Reaching, he grabs the back of his helmet and pulls. There’s another noise, a wet squooshing sound, and the helmet splits in two, front and back, and falls to the ground. His head emerges, wet, covered in the same fluid that leaked out. It looks like what I’ve always thought of as his blood.

  He holds there, his head hanging down, and I can see that the helmet is still connected to him via a dripping tube, which splits into three as it seems to originate in his mouth and nostrils.

  “What the . . . ,” Xander says.

  August starts to cough and choke. With a shaking hand he grabs the slimy tube and pulls about a foot of it out, then another few inches until finally the whole thing slithers out, along with a stream of sludge. He hangs there for a moment as I watch him cough and gag. Then he ejects a torrent of black vomit onto the snow. A few seconds pass. Finally, he takes a wet, wheezing breath.

  “August?”

  He sits back on his knees and does something to his wrists. With two more cracking noises and more sludge his gloves come away. He gathers a handful of the fresh snow and rubs away the fluid from his hands, revealing pale, almost gray skin beneath. Clambering over the puddle of vomit, he returns to my side and looks down on me.

  “Oh my God,” Xander says as August takes me, sliding me back to cradle in his lap. August wipes his face and scrapes some of the fluid from his eyes. He bows his head, looking down at me from inches away.

  “You’re . . . you’re . . .” For a moment I’ve forgotten the word. When it pops back into my head I almost laugh. “You’re human?”

  Repeat human, he signs.

  “Can’t you speak? Now that you’ve taken the mask off? You can’t speak?”

  No. Cut voice. He tilts his head back to show me a mass of scars and some metallic implants that form part of his neck.

  “But you’re human? I mean apart from . . .” I reach up to touch the implants on his neck and jaw. “You look just like a human.”

  Repeat human.

  At first I think he’s agreeing with me, because repeat means “alike.” But then I realize it can also mean something else.

  “Copy human? You mean, like a clone?”

  He nods then, and moves one hand up to touch my hair, my brow. A little sigh escapes him. And he smiles.

  Human. But not. There are things about him that don’t look quite right. His teeth look sharp. His irises are pure black, and larger than they should be. And his skin, where I can see it as he wipes more of the black gunk away, is actually gray. When I run my fingers over his lips and teeth, and he opens his mouth, I see that his tongue is black too. His face is smooth and hairless and what hair he has on his head looks messily shorn and mashed and matted with the oily fluid.

  But somehow, despite all this, he is unspeakably beautiful. If I had to guess, I would say at least one of his parents or grandparents was Chinese. He has a delicate nose and angled eyes along with a strong jaw and prominent cheekbones—one of them marred with a bright white scar from his temple to his bow-shaped upper lip.

  I use the sleeve of my hoodie to wipe more slime from his pretty face. He looks so harmless for how frightened I’ve been of him, for the things he’s done, the people he’s killed. He looks innocent.

  “How old are you?” I ask.

  August shrugs, never taking his black eyes from mine. I become aware that his breathing is a bit forced. “Are you okay? Can you breathe like this?”

  Don’t worry about me.

  And saying this seems to release something in him. His eyes fill with silvery tears.

  I’m sorry sorry sorry.

  It’s getting hard to think through the throbbing burning from the broken flesh inside me and the ache in my heart, but dimly, I’m aware that Xander is crying too. Strange that I don’t think I’ve ever felt as loved as I do this moment. Two beautiful boys crying over my imminent death. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better scene. I feel like Juliet.

  “Xan-Xander? Will you tell . . . my parents what happened to me, if you find them?”

  He nods, sobbing.

  Dandelion. I promise I will take that black-haired boy to the humans.

  I laugh, but it turns into a moan of pain.

  August gulps air and clings to me, pulling me close.

  “Put your mask back on if you can’t breathe.”

  He shakes his head, and gasps.

  “Dude, come on. . . .” Xander reaches for him, but August shoves him back.

  No!

  “August, please. You just promised to take Xander home. You promised.”

  He shakes his head, his beautiful face now streaked with gray tears.

  Live. Live. Live?

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think I will.” My vision is starting to turn dark at the edges.

  Live forever?

  “No. No one lives forever.”

  August takes a raspy gulp of air, leaning down to me, clutching my chin in his warm fingers. With his other hand he points to his eyes and ears.

  Look! Listen! he signs with a low hiss.

  “I’m listening,” I say, trying to maintain focus on his face. Trying to fix all his expressions of sorrow and frustration in my mind. After so many months never seeing him like this, of having to guess his emotions, it’s precious.

  He signs slowly, adding punctuation with firm hand movements.

  Do. You. Want. To. Live. Forever?

  “Everyone does. But that’s . . .”

  He presses his hand over my mouth. Yes or no?

  In my fading vision I see a small spark of light, like a firefly. I try to reach for it, but my arms are too heavy.

  Yes or no!?

  “Yes,” I say, more to the firefly than to anything else. It’s buzzing closer now. If I could just lift my hand . . .

  August hoists me up roughly and reaches to his thigh under my back. When he lowers me down, I see what he has in his hand.

  A Nahx dart.

  His face is a mask of regret and sadness, eyebrows drawn together, his sharp white teeth digging into his top lip, his eyes streaming with tears. He bites something off the end of the dart, revealing the needle tip.

  Yes? Say yes.

  “Yes,” I say. To him, to the firefly, to Xander, who is nothing but a muttering ghost at the edges of the light. To Topher, who walked away. To someone . . .

  August jams the dart into my neck. The firefly explodes, sucking away the light like a collapsing star.

  “What . . . ,” I say, but fire is coursing through me. My body spasms, spine curling backward as I try to escape the inferno inside. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out, the light of my voice sucked away with everything else.

  “What was that? WHAT DID YOU DO?” I hear Xander screaming.

  I begin to shake, and as August holds me up, I see that the blood leaking from my stomach is changing color. Everything is changing color. The black at the edges of my vision becomes hard and thick. I look up and meet August’s eyes. He shakes his head and presses the side of his hand into his chest.

  Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

  Then he lifts my hands and puts them on either side of his face. Looking into his eyes, locking on to him as my mind drowns in darkness, something of the mystery of August
begins to unfurl and sail above the waves, something of the mystery of the Nahx, of their darts, their strange blood. What they are doing to our planet. It makes sense at last, and with that comes such relief that I think I smile. August smiles back at me through his tears. I tug his face down until our lips touch. His kiss tastes like fresh snow and the smoke of a campfire. He pulls back and touches his lips with his fingers.

  I feel my heart stop, like it has stepped into quicksand and sunk without a struggle. Things start to move slowly. August blinks, and it seems to take an hour, a day. The poison of the dart infuses all parts of me now, and I know. This is time stopping, just as August said. I know what the darts are for. I feel the beginnings of disdain for my own weak, imperfect species. This is how we become perfect. This is how we live forever.

  My brain focuses on his face, which is frozen, inches from mine, his eyes wide and frightened, snowflakes suspended in the air around him, like stars.

  There is darkness underneath me, like that murky lake of my dream. There is something under the water, pulling at me, something I’ve forgotten, something vital. If the Nahx darts are human perfection, if they are immortality, then what have I forgotten? Something too terrible to remember. Something under the earth, under the snow, something under the shadows of a leafless tree.

  It comes back to me as August’s face dissolves into nothing. With the last impulse of my human body, I form the word and whisper it through half-frozen lips.

  “Tucker . . .”

  Then the darkness sucks me down.

  AUGUST

  Her eyes are open, but I know what she sees. Nothing. I can remember the nothing.

  “You should close her eyes,” the black-haired boy says. He wipes snot from his nose with his sleeve. “What did you inject her with? Was it medicine or something?”

  I can’t move. I don’t want to close her eyes or stop looking at her. I know when she opens them again, if she opens them again, she won’t be my Dandelion anymore. Even now there are streaks of black in her golden hair, veins of spiderwebs on her skin, no longer warm sunlight brown, but gray as a storm cloud. Gray as mine.

  “I guess it didn’t work. Unless . . . well, she was going to die anyway. I think the arrow went through her spine.” He wipes his dark eyes. His tears are as clear as ice, unlike mine. They smell of salt, and sorrow. “She was in a lot of pain.”

  I gulp for air, and it feels like swallowing claws and teeth.

  “You need to put your mask back on,” the boy says, reaching for it. When his fingers are a few inches away, the tentacles of the breathing tube spring to life and wind around his hand.

  “Ugh! Get it off!” he says. But the mask rejects him, the tentacles curling back and falling slack. “What the fuck is that?”

  I gulp another breath. But before I put the mask on, I bend down and kiss Dandelion’s cold lips again. And close her eyes.

  The boy looks away as I reconnect to the mask, the tubes finding their way into my nose and mouth, making me gag and cough. When I fix the helmet into place and latch it closed, I’m rewarded, or punished maybe, with a burst of slug syrup. The relief of pain lasts only a moment, because I cling to Dandelion and remind myself she’s gone. And I’m not sure how to bring her back.

  I lift her into my arms and hold her tight. My mind struggles with the thought-numbing fluid, tries to hang on to the feeling of losing her. I think if I lose that, I lose everything. If I stop caring, I’ll kill the black-haired boy and dump Dandelion somewhere for the others to gather. They know how to bring her back, but then she really will be lost to me forever. They’ll cut parts of her away, her mind, her heart, the part of her that begged for life, the part that told me I have a choice. I hang on to the pain and wish that I had said more things to her, that I had a voice to tell her how much I love her. I’ll hang on until I’m sure the pain has carved a permanent mark in my syrupy brain.

  “The ground is too hard up here to bury her,” the black-haired one says. “But we could make a cairn. There are enough rocks.” He grimaces as he glances at the dead body slumped in a puddle of blood. “For Liam, too. We should cover them.”

  I ignore him, pulling Dandelion closer, pressing my face into her hair. After a moment I feel the boy’s hand on my shoulder.

  “She was pretty special, wasn’t she?”

  Before I can stop myself, I hiss at him. He stumbles backward.

  “Not that . . . There was never anything between us. . . . We were just friends, right? She explained that to you? Right?”

  I put my face back into her hair.

  “Really though. We should, you know, bury them or whatever.”

  Stupid human. I’m back where I started. He doesn’t know my words or understand what has happened. And he’s terrified of me. I hate him. I could break him in two and toss him down the mountain.

  No. Think. He and I are so alike. Looking at him I wonder now how I could have ever believed that I was so different from the humans.

  Think.

  Dandelion’s eyelids streaked with black veins. The smell of her hair. Not pine needles now. Charcoal. Like me. Dead but not dead.

  Stopped.

  I might have been someone else once too. We all might have been.

  I try to breathe out the hate for the black-haired boy. I promised Dandelion I would save him. And I will, but first . . .

  She wanted something else in her last second.

  Tucker.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what that means.”

  I close my eyes behind the mask and try to remember the shapes, the letters. I know I can read. I can make letters, too. Remember.

  I trace letters in the snow between us.

  T U K R

  “Oh. I’m sure she just said that because, you know, your life flashes in front of your eyes apparently, when you die. But he’s been dead for a long time.”

  Tucker’s not dead. It’s odd how I’m not sure when exactly I realized this.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t . . .”

  I growl with frustration, and the black-haired one recoils.

  Tucker and Dandelion are not dead.

  He shrugs. It’s unfair how humans can put an apology on their face so easily. Or any feeling. It’s hard to stay mad at them.

  Xander. He needs a sign name.

  I draw a Z in the snow and point to him.

  “Yeah. Actually it’s X, but . . .” I growl again. I will have a daily struggle not to kill this one. “No, Z is fine. Z it is,” he says, his hands up.

  I make the Z in the air and point to him. Then I make my own sign name.

  Eighth Cycle of the Moon.

  I haven’t used this since Dandelion renamed me.

  “August, right? I’m Xander. Xander Liu.” He holds out his hand expectantly. It takes me a moment, but some splinter of memory eventually surfaces, and I reach forward. We shake hands like friends. He smiles back at me, though there are still tears in his eyes. His teeth are large and white.

  Maybe it won’t be so hard not to throw him from a cliff.

  I stand with Dandelion in my arms. Then I indicate with my head and hands that Xander should collect and carry the weapons. We will find more on the way. He needs clothes and food, too.

  Follow me, I sign, and he seems to understand. I turn and begin walking along the plateau. In the town where I will find clothes and food for him, I hope we can find a vehicle.

  Xander watches me walk for a moment, and part of me hopes he will not follow. Maybe he’ll go back to the base and continue scheming battles he can never win.

  “Shouldn’t we bury her?” he says at last, hurrying after me. “I mean, you’re not going to just carry her around? That’s so weird.”

  I ignore him. We reach the edge of the plateau, and I jump down the five meters to the path below. Xander scrambles down after me, but I don’t wait for him.

  “You can’t carry a dead human around. It’s disrespectful. I mean, we can leave Liam, I guess, but we need to bury Raven.”


  I walk away. I can hear his footsteps behind me.

  “She IS dead, isn’t she? ISN’T SHE?”

  I keep walking, driven to one goal. Though my eyes are wide open, it is all I can see.

  “ISN’T SHE?!” Xander yells.

  I could turn back maybe, and explain it to him. It might make things easier.

  I should explain it, what I think has happened. Is happening. Will happen. I could try to explain it.

  But I don’t think I know the words.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing is lonely work and often by the time a book is done I feel like I’m the only person on earth, struggling alone and unloved in an inconsiderate void.

  Then I get over myself.

  If you’re reading this, there are a whole slew of people who helped me get this book through your eyeballs, ears, or fingers and into your brain: the bookseller, librarian, parent, teacher, or friend who put it in your hands, for example, and the bloggers and reviewers who alerted the world to its existence. They all get my heartfelt thanks. If not for them, we’d be piling books up in warehouses wondering why we don’t have money to eat.

  Then there are the people who made it so you read a published book and not just four hundred pages of insensible rambling scribbled onto the backs of chain restaurant menus. The inventor of the laptop computer is one example, and Bill Gates (bless him) for creating Microsoft Word.

  But seriously and more importantly, the team at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers shepherded and shaped this book until it met their exacting standards. Zareen Jaffery and Mekisha Telfer deserve particular thanks—working with you guys has been a dream. Sarah and Nita from Simon & Schuster Canada and Jane from S&S UK, everyone at Oceano and Intrinseca, as well as Heather Baror-Shapiro, who has worked on all the international deals. And Lizzy Bromley for designing a ridiculously cool cover.

  Speaking of deals, Barbara Poelle deserves an entire paragraph of thanks. The first time we spoke on the phone, I mentioned “shooting for the moon” and she got right onboard and piloted me and my book out past the orbit of Pluto! You’re the agent of my dreams, Barbara. Here’s to many many more of my books for you to send into space. Thanks also to Brita Lundberg and everyone else at the Irene Goodman Agency for all your tireless work on contracts and payments and general awesomeness. I LOVE YOU GUYS!