The Legend of ZERO: The Scientist, the Rat, and the Assassin

by Sara King

  Slade cocked his head at the device. Mickey, who had been pawing through huge picture-books with Twelve-B, glanced up at him curiously. The experiment had gladly exchanged his ratty jeans and T-shirt for fresh clothes that they had found in the nearby department store, but Twelve-B had absolutely refused, finally holding up her hand towards them in a move that clearly told them both “The Next One Of You Who Tries To Dress Me Becomes The Amazing Stone-Headed Man.”

  “Slade?” Rat asked again.

  Slade put down the gynecology book he’d been reading and slowly pulled the walkie-talkie from his waist. He frowned at it a moment, then said, “Sounds exciting. I’ll be sure to wear that purple thong.”

  “Great,” Rat said. “Where are you? I’m in town right now.”

  Slade felt a little tremor of unease ripple down his spine. “I was getting those drugs we needed and I got lost. I think I’m in what’s left of a grocery store.”

  “You dumbass furg. Come out into the open where I can find you.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Slade replied. “Let me just grab another can of peanut-butter, then I’ll be out.” Then, releasing the button and cutting the link, he switched the walkie-talkie off, lowered it to the table, and left it there. He had to fight the urge to run outside, find the impostor, grab him by the throat, and demand to know what he’d done with his lady love. The urge was so strong that he actually had to fist both hands to stay in place.

  Something about that woman made him stupid.

  By the shelves, Twelve-B was standing and frowning at him. “So…we’re hiding from her?”

  “No,” Slade said, still fighting for control, “we’re going to kill her.”

  Mickey seemed to digest that a moment, then said, “Was it another not-person?”

  Slade twitched and looked up at his companion. “Not-person?”

  Mickey frowned. “I don’t know what they are. They look like people, but inside, they’re not. Codgson had a couple in his army, and there were several hanging around the lab when we got here. I didn’t like them. Inside they’re a lot like…” Mickey cocked his head accusingly, “…you.”

  Slade’s brain immediately snapped into focus. “You ran into them around here?”

  “At the base of the hill near the lab,” Mickey replied. “Killed three by tugging them out, three by bashing their heads on rocks.”

  Slade immediately winced. “Bashing their heads on rocks is woefully ineffective on a Huouyt. Their brains are elsewhere. How long ago did you kill them?”

  “Uh,” Mickey said. “A couple days before you showed up?”

  Slade’s breath caught in his throat. That would have been very good information to know before they sent Rat off to die.

  Mickey must have seen his irritation, because he frowned.

  Knowing there was nothing they could do about it now, Slade waved a dismissive hand. “Never mind. She’s a badass. She can handle it.” He took a deep breath and held it. “But unless I say otherwise, the next time you see Rat, bash her head open on a rock until I can come in and finish the job, okay?” He glanced at Twelve-B. “Until then, we need to start teaching your friend some basic words. I have the feeling shit’s about to get complicated.”

  “Um,” Mickey said, “you mean her hurting?”

  Slade frowned. “What?”

  “Twelve-B hurts,” Mickey said. “It’s getting worse.”

  Slade, who hadn’t seen any noticeable change from yesterday in the maker’s happy, childlike behavior, raised a brow at Mickey. “You linked to her, didn’t you?”

  Mickey again raised his chin defiantly. “She doesn’t care.”

  So the Human-bred hivemaster was already starting his own minion army. Slade tapped his finger to his cheek in thought. “So you can talk with her? In her head?”

  “No,” Mickey said, immediately clamming up nervously again.

  “Oh come on,” Slade said. “There’s a high probability that we’ll all be dead in the next two days, so what does it matter?”

  “I can feel where she’s at, what she’s doing,” Mickey said reluctantly. “And…other stuff.”

  “Can she feel you back?” Slade demanded.

  “Uh,” Mickey said slowly, “I don’t know. She can’t—”

  “Talk,” Slade finished for him. He tapped his cheek a few more times. Hivemasters were supreme generals, and during the conquest of their homeworld, they had taken huge swaths of Congressional soldiery under their command before it was discovered what was happening and they sent in assassins to all but wipe the hivemasters out. “Do it to me. We’re gonna find out.”

  Mickey scrunched up his face like Slade had told him to bathe in crap. “Why?”

  Slade cocked his head. “Because I asked you to?”

  Mickey looked him up and down with a grimace. “No offense, but you’re weird.”

  “I’m unique,” Slade said.

  “Does that mean crazy?” Mickey asked him.

  Slade opened his mouth to tell him no, of course not, hahahaha, how silly, then closed it again with a frown. “We need to test this theory before we go running off looking for Huouyt. It could save us a lot of heartache later.” Plus, they could have a handful of shape-changing assassin minions at their beck-and-call. That could be fun.

  The experiment peered at him for several moments in consideration. Then, finally, “You didn’t say no. Why would I want to link up with someone who’s crazy?”

  “Consider it a science experiment,” Slade gritted.

  “I am a science experiment,” Mickey retorted.

  Sighing, Slade said, “Fine. We’ll just study it later, if we survive.” He glanced at Twelve-B. “How bad is her pain getting?”

  “Bad,” Mickey finally said reluctantly. “It’s making it hard for me to sleep.”

  Never a good sign, when somebody’s pain made it difficult for somebody else to sleep… Picking up the backpack he’d filled with antibiotics and drugs in the pharmacy, Slade tucked a couple medical textbooks under his arm and said, “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. There’s a Huouyt out there looking for us, probably with nefarious intent. We’re going to lure him out in the open, then we’re going to kill him. Then we’ll be taking Twelve-B back to the lab for a better diagnosis and possibly some surgery.”

  Mickey gave him a dubious look. “You ever operated on anyone before?”

  Slade gave him a bright smile. “Does a dead frog count?”

  Mickey narrowed his eyes, and again, Slade watched a brief mental video of his own face exploding upon the nice, hard outer wall of the library. Then, glaring, Mickey said, “A dead frog does not count.”

  “Have no fear,” Slade said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’re my replacement bodyguard and I’m your personal, resident genius. Just keep me alive long enough to get a good grasp on what’s wrong with your friend and we’ll figure something out, okay?”

  “A dead frog does not count,” Mickey repeated dangerously.

  Slade gave a dismissive wave and dropped his stuff in a pile. “I’ll improvise.” He started to undress. “Until then, we need to know if these things are trying to kill us, or have something else in mind.” As he unzipped his pack and pulled out a spare set of clothes, Twelve-B stood up to reach for a new book, then flinched and doubled over, holding her gut with a whimper. Mickey immediately went to hold her, wrapping his thin body around her protectively. As she whined and clung to him, he lifted his head and glared at Slade over her shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, kiddo,” Slade said, tugging one of the huge legal books off the shelves and beginning to tear out pages. “We’ll get her fixed.” Then, as Mickey watched him with a suspicious frown, Slade started crumpling the pages and packing them inside his empty shirt. Eventually, Twelve-B crawled out of his arms and went back to her books, leaving Mickey to walk over and peer down at what he was doing.

  After several minutes of watching him, Mickey said, “Uh, Slade?”

  “Yes, Mickey?” He kept st
uffing the shirt. Rip. Crumple. Stuff. Rip. Crumple. Stuff…

  Mickey’s single purple eye lifted to Slade’s face like he was looking at a bug with extremely large breasts. “What are you doing?”

  “This,” Slade said, stuffing the shirt, “is what is called a ‘diversion,’ Mickey.”

  “It’s your shirt. Filled with paper.”

  “Very true,” Slade said. “I love this shirt. I wear it all the time.” He finished stuffing his shirt, then shook out his spare pants and stuffed that, too. When they were packed, he reached up, grabbed the backwards-facing hat someone had stapled to the Books Are Cool poster, and went looking for the librarians’ station. He hopped behind the librarians’ desk, which was, he realized with a grimace, covered in stale piss—probably someone who had been issued too many library late-fees—then used a sheet of paper to shield his fingers as he tugged open drawers until he found the paper clips and tape.

  “I was always very good at crafts,” Slade said, coming back to ‘pin’ his stuffed pants and shirt together with bent paperclips. Then he went to affixing the hat to a ‘head’ he made out of paper, to which he affixed a full-page photo of himself from a Criminal Psychology textbook.

  By the end, he had a stuffed Slade-sized ‘man’ wearing a hat and Slade’s face. This, he carted out in front of the library and lowered into a reclining position onto one of the two benches. He tilted the hat down so that it was mostly covering his ‘face’, then folded his ‘arms’ over his ‘abdomen’ and lowered a book over them to hide the fact the dummy had no hands. For feet, he shoved the legs into his own boots.

  “That should do it,” Slade said, gesturing to his companions. Halfway through his preparations, Mickey had stopped peering at him like he’d lost his marbles and a shrewd look had come over his face. Twelve-B, on the other hand, had tried repeatedly to peel the picture he’d pasted to the front of the dummy off and excitedly show Slade that it looked just like him.

  “Yes, I know it looks like me, dear,” Slade said, gently putting the picture back when she did it again. “The journalist just about blinded me when he took it. Come on. Let’s go meet our creepy friend.” Then, at a trot, Slade led them across the street and down a block, where they could watch the library from an abandoned hobby-shop. There, Slade pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt and switched it on. Bringing his index finger to his lips in a Shhh motion, Slade depressed the button and said, “Hey baby, now I know I’m lost. I just found the library. Again. I think I’m just gonna chill here on the bench out front with some books and wait for you, okay? I’m really tired from babysitting these two furgs all day. But I found a really cool hat stapled to one of the posters inside!”

  “Where are the experiments?” Rat demanded.

  “Upstairs playing,” Slade said. “There were some coloring books in the kid-room. They’re having a blast.”

  “I’ll be there in nine tics,” Rat’s voice said immediately.

  “Gotcha,” Slade said. Then he switched the walkie-talkie back off and sat back to wait, the binoculars trained on the bench.

  He didn’t have to wait the full nine tics. His head—and his cool new hat—exploded in five. Twelve-B, who had been watching, sucked in a startled breath to scream, but Mickey quickly grabbed her and slapped a gloved hand over her mouth. “Shhh,” he said, mimicking Slade’s gesture with a leather-clad finger. Twelve-B gave Mickey a startled look, then grinned guiltily and nodded.

  Out on the bench, Paper Slade was raining down in burning bits of legalese for a twenty-foot radius.

  Well, Slade thought, getting a sinking feeling in his gut, that certainly doesn’t bode well for the home team.

  “Looks like she wanted you dead,” Mickey said softly.

  “Yes,” Slade said, “but on the bright side, now we know he wants us dead.”

  “You dead,” Mickey said.

  “Good point,” Slade said. “It is, however, far too late to make two more dummies to test the theory.”

  “What theory?” Mickey asked, frowning. “They don’t want us dead. They tried to take Twelve-B and me on a ship.”

  Slade froze, then looked at Mickey. “You know,” he said slowly, “that would have been very useful information before I got into a guerilla war with a Huouyt assassin.”

  “I thought I killed them all,” Mickey said. “It was after we escaped Codgson. They used drugs, but I woke up before they were ready.”

  Those wonderful Efrit genes at work, Slade thought. “Okay, so I’ve gotta adjust my game-plan just a little bit. That’s annoying.”

  Mickey gave him a nervous look. “Adjust it how?”

  “I was operating under the assumption we were dealing with Huouyt that were sent by Congress to annihilate any leftover experiments, just like Ra—” He froze and trailed off at the end. Glancing at Mickey, whose gaze had sharpened, Slade said, “Huouyt have a long history of trying to take on Congress. Like, one of the very first things they did, when the first Ooreiki explorers found them, was infiltrate the envoy ship, go back as the ambassador and his team, and try to get a foothold on Poen. Would have made it, too, if it weren’t for a visiting Jahul. They can usually tell, though not as well as my goodie-goodie brother, supposedly.” Slade gave the dead dummy another look. “If the Huouyt realized there was a lab that didn’t get caught—assuming they didn’t sponsor the lab in the first place—they would have sent a group to bring back any surviving experiments. Hell, most of their work was done for them. All they have to do is get you guys to breed like rabbits, cull the rejects, and within a few decades they’ll have their own unstoppable mind-slave army. Normally, all they’d need was your DNA, but there’s something about you experiments that don’t take well to cloning. Kind of like the oil palm.”

  “Rat wants to kill us?” Mickey said.

  Slade waved Mickey’s inevitable questions off without listening, not wanting to waste precious time or brain power explaining the subtleties of DNA methylation to a knuckle-dragging furg who wouldn’t remember it when there was a Huouyt trying to kill them. “Look it up later, if you want. Essentially, researchers couldn’t figure out why cloning the oil palm resulted in unusable, twisted, oil-less palm seeds.”

  Mickey was still scowling at him. “Rat was sent to kill us?”

  Slade groaned and rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Seriously, look it up later. I don’t have time now. Now shhh. Time to locate our creepy friend.” He pulled out his walkie-talkie and held a finger to his lips.

  Mickey gave him a suspicious look, but said no more.

  Slade depressed the TALK button and said, “Aw, now honey, that hurts!”

  In the very next building, at the same time, Slade heard a loud, electronic, “Aw, now honey, that hurts!” Eyes widening, Slade quickly turned off the instrument completely so that it went dead in his hands.

  Did you hear that? he mouthed at Mickey, jabbing his finger at the wall. Mickey, who was similarly wide-eyed, nodded. Slade lifted his head to look out the window, but the Huouyt hadn’t left the building. Unless it was using the walkie-talkie as a decoy, like Slade would.

  Fuck, Slade thought. Huouyt were smart. Smarter than Humans. Which meant probably getting close to as smart as him. Dammit. “We’ve gotta move,” he whispered. But which way? He really didn’t want to leave this to a game of Eenie-Meenie. Something smart would be slipping out the backs of the stores to change vantage points, knowing he’d been had. Something knowing that Slade was really smart would be watching the backs of the stores from a nice sniping position.

  But did they know Slade was really smart?

  He winced, thinking of the dummy. Well, if they hadn’t known he was really smart, they did now.

  “Out the front,” he whispered, pointing. He started tiptoeing towards the front door of the store, keeping his head low, the Exploding Paper Slade still vivid in his mind.

  Reaching the exit, he hesitated and cracked the door open to get a look at the street. It looked abandoned, but there were an awful
lot of dark, empty windows up and down the street. What if the Huouyt was indeed just using the walkie-talkie as a distraction and was actually even then settling in to an upper-story position on the other side of the road, waiting for him? What if he was smarter than Slade and was using reverse-reverse-psychology, expecting him to do the smart thing and doing the stupid thing instead, waiting for him to step out into broad daylight so he could blow him away?

  For the first time in a very long time, Slade began to get a little freaked out. He glanced at the two experiments, who were watching him with wide eyes, waiting for their fearless leader to lead them to safety, then lifted his gaze into the store behind them, considering the back door, instead.

  Front door or back door? Where would the Huouyt be watching? He had the not-so-fun, gut-nagging dread that if he chose the wrong one, he was going to act as a real-life demonstration for the kiddies on the mind-blowing wonders of modern alien weaponry. Slade swallowed and stared at the front door. He would be out front, watching the street. But he was smarter than a Huouyt. Wasn’t he?

  Of course he was. He could do all sorts of things a Huouyt couldn’t do. Like empathize. Or hack Peacemaker files on Levren. Or invent mind-blowing new weaponry.

  Standing there, staring at the doorknob, Slade got the very strong impression that the next few seconds of his life had the potential to really suck.

  And I thought this was a good idea…why?

  Because, quite simply, he had the equivalent of two mental ekhtas at his beck and call, and it had made him complacent. Dammit.

  Front or back? One choice would result in an Amazing Exploding Slade, and the other would result in a really fun hide-and-seek game with a Huouyt assassin with energy weaponry.

  God hates a coward, Slade thought. Taking a deep breath, he put his hand on the front doorknob, steeled himself, eased the door open, then walked out.

  When a shot didn’t explode his chest into a boiling froth of pretty red gore, Slade motioned for the others to follow. Together, keeping their heads low, they darted across the road and behind the old tire shop on the other side of the street. From there, they crossed the tire-yard and entered a stand of water-starved brush, then hurried up the gulley to the brush-covered ridge on the other side. Then, face down against the ridge, they watched their backtrail, waiting to see if they were followed.