Class Zero

by Y A Marks

  The human cop slammed me against the wall. My left arm took most of the impact with my right arm forced up behind my back. I pulled my left hand up and reached for the cop over my shoulder. He dodged my hand as my body slid side to side.

  I couldn’t go to jail. I couldn’t abandon Mari and Miko. They wouldn’t have food or a place to live without me. If they were picked up on the street, they’d be killed, processed into scrap for androids.

  Gaining nothing from my shoulder attack, I stretched my left hand around my side. I poked objects along his belt, but my hands grasped air. He forced me harder against the wall, and I pulled my left hand around to push off the wall. My left knee lifted between my body and the wall. Pushing hard against the wall, my body raised in the air about a foot. I swung my right leg back at him, and he let go of my right arm and grabbed my right leg. I angled forward and just managed to get my arms up to shield my head from hitting the wall. I fell all the way to the ground. A sting radiated into my left elbow. Cries tore from my mouth. I couldn’t stop because of the pain. This was my chance, I had an opening. I spun around, putting my back on the floor. With my left leg, I kicked him repeatedly in the gut and as close as I could between his legs.

  Something within me surged. I was on fire. Years of rage flooded out of me as my body gained strength I didn’t even know I had.

  I launched myself off the ground and spun my legs from under me. On my feet, I lunged at him, but this time I knew what I was going for. I wanted his gun. It called to me. I threw myself onto him. He wrapped his arms around my body. His fists punched into my back. I yanked on the strap that held his gun and pulled the gun free. My index finger wrapped around the trigger, but nothing happened. I fiddled with the sides, hitting buttons and working to find the safety. My back felt like it was about to break from all the abuse of his constant pummeling. I wasn’t sure if I could stand up anymore.

  The gun fired. A hollow sound echoed off the walls. The cop stopped hitting me. I took a few quick steps away from him. His arm reached out, but I kicked my leg up to keep him away. I lifted the gun from beneath my stomach and aimed it at him.

  Sweat poured from my scalp and tears flowed from my eyes. The fear within me intensified, straining my reasoning into paranoia. Quakes rattled my bones.

  The officer glared at me. His eyes widened and closed with a darkening expression. His muscles contracted in spurts and his heels rose slightly from the ground.

  “Try it.” The words cracked from my mouth. Every drop of hate and bitterness I had from living on the street gathered in my mind. “Please try it. I want you to try it.”

  My finger bounced over the trigger. The cop’s death played in my mind. All the pain the world had inflicted upon me was about to be repaid. At that moment, I could fight back. I could take his life.

  Rawness ate at my skin. I didn’t even know how I was standing. Even with all the adrenaline, my body felt like I had been mashed inside a dump truck.

  “Where are they taking Mari and Miko?” I demanded.

  “Who?” The cops face twisted.

  “The kids. The kids just now. Where are they taking them?”

  “They are orphans. They’ll be processed and sent to Juvenile.”

  As the words sank into my spirit, I scanned the area around me. It felt odd to be able to stand this long pointing a gun at an officer with no one throwing me to the ground or riddling my body with bullets.

  Twenty yards away, three older men aimed weapons at ten cops. Mr. Palmer stood in the middle of them holding what appeared to be four grenades.

  I couldn’t understand what he was doing. Where did he get those, and why was he holding them? He couldn’t be planning to use them on the cops. They would gun him down where he stood.

  “Get out of here, Paeton,” Mr. Palmer said.

  “They took Mari and Miko,” I said.

  “Forget the kids. Save yourself.”

  “No!” I yelled. The kids were my life breath. I couldn’t abandon them. “They’ll be taken to Juvie. When no one comes for them, they’ll be chopped up into androids.”

  “Then you have two weeks to figure something out.” Mr. Palmer glanced in my direction and smiled. His thumb rotated with a metal pin looping around. “You’re a good girl, Paeton, and I really hate these sons of—”

  One of the grenades went off. Everything flashed white. My body jolted up the ramp into the main arena. I slammed into the guard rail and then fell back onto the walkway. After a few tumbles, I rolled to a stop. My back ached. My neck burned. A second after, three more explosions went off, each just as powerful. Pieces of the chairs and concrete on the third level began falling down onto the second level. My arms covered my head as I waited for the debris to settle.

  After a moment, I looked up. Bits of plastic and concrete showered down. Over sixty cubic feet of stadium was destroyed. I couldn’t believe how powerful the grenades were. They had torn the building apart.

  High pitched tones looped in my ears. My knees wobbled as I stood. I stared into the flames of where Mr. Palmer stood a moment ago. My chest burst into sharp fragments which cut into my heart. He was a nice old man. He taught me so much and cared about me. I didn’t have many people in my life, and three of them were taken from me in less than fifteen minutes.

  I staggered and ran my hands across my eyes. Tears burst from their ducts and warped my vision. Once I could walk two steps in a direct line, my gaze left the fiery remains of Mr. Palmer. Gasping, I dashed between the seats and along the aisle that linked to the arena ramps. I remembered the direction of where they took Mari and Miko. I had a gun. I could fight. I spied down the ramps as I passed them, hoping for a clue.

  Something came up behind me, something big. I spun around, the gun clasped between my fingers. A hovercycle floated in the air, ten feet from me. On its back was a familiar face with gray eyes. I aimed the gun at his face.

  “We need to get out of here,” Gray-Eyed Fox said.

  “You did this. You did this to me,” I rambled. My mind played the events from last night—the ones I had seen on the monitor. He stopped me. Why did he have to stop and talk to me? I wouldn’t have been on camera. I would have been safe.

  “We need to go. We need to go now.”

  “I can’t. I have responsibilities. I’m not leaving without them.” My breath tore, and my sight modulated in and out of focus. Flashing dots and orange blobs floated through my vision.

  “You can’t save anyone but yourself.”

  “I can. I will. I’m all they have.” The words pulsed from my mouth.

  A roar increased throughout the Stadium. I spun around in circles and saw twenty officers speeding toward me. The mental lights in my eyes intensified to the point I could barely see. The officers were at least thirty yards away. I could still make it. I had to. I had to be there for Mari and Miko.

  Gray-Eyed Fox stood in front of me as I completed my fifth or sixth circle. His face was sad, but determined. An eyebrow lifted slightly as though he was trying to figure something out; not within me, but within himself. He lifted his hand and hit me. Everything went black.

  CHAPTER 11

  A throb tore at my head and ripped me back into reality. I touched my forehead and noticed the rush of wind through my hair. The world sped past in blurry lines. My stomach bubbled and churned. I extended my head over some kind of railing, awaiting the vomit stirring inside. Below, two-story buildings zipped by. My eyes shot open because of the oddness of it all.

  My gaze spun in wild circles. I was on a hovercycle. I briefly glanced at the person driving it. Heavy-headed, I craned my neck and saw the Stadium growing smaller in the distance.

  I didn’t remember getting onto anything with anyone. None of this made sense. Adrenaline surged through my veins.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  The hovercycle spun around in the air, right above a small factory building.

  “What’s wrong?” the hovercycle driver asked, staring back.

  It di
dn’t take me long to notice the gray eyes.

  “No, not you!” I exclaimed.

  I couldn’t believe this guy. Was he kidnapping me? If I wasn’t so frazzled from worry about Mari and Miko, I might have beaten him senseless.

  I shuffled around to get free. A belt-like cord was wrapped around my waist and torso. The belt anchored to small bars on each side of the hovercycle. After unsnapping the cord, I freed my body.

  Gray-Eyed Fox reached out, rambling that he was landing, but I didn’t care. I didn’t need him. All I wanted right then was to be away from him. My leg fumbled over the seat. The hovercycle descended, and the factory’s rooftop shot up to meet me. Seven feet away from the roof, I jumped from the hovercycle. My body landed on the building and rolled forward to soften the impact.

  As I dashed to the roof’s edge, scrappers flew around the stadium like bees. This was something out of one of my worst nightmares. Several of the scrappers spun around and chased one of three mysterious objects, which had the appearance of two people riding a hovercycle. I followed the three objects with my eyes. I couldn’t even fathom what those things were.

  “Holo-decoys. Pretty cool, right?” Gray-Eyed Fox asked.

  “I have to go back.”

  I wiped his antics from my mind. My bones shook inside my skin. What was happening to Mari and Miko? They needed me. I needed them.

  I began searching for a way off the roof. A curved ladder was to the right of where Gray-Eyed Fox was landing the hovercycle. As I moved toward the ladder, he jumped off the cycle and cut me off.

  “Move.” I looked him square in the eye. Anger spun in my stomach, but chills bit at my spine. He may have helped me before, but he was a boy and probably stronger than me. I wasn’t going to play games with him and end up a statistic.

  I slipped my ringer onto my middle finger. I didn’t have time to deal with this fool any longer. I had to get back to Mari and Miko before anything happened to them.

  “It’s over up there. I barely got you out,” Gray-Eyed Fox said, pointing to the Stadium.

  “You should have left me. I didn’t ask for your help, not today, not yesterday.”

  I didn’t understand his actions. He risked his neck to pull off this stunt. I didn’t want his help, but getting caught would have been bad news for either of us. Being part of Escerica, I’m sure he already understood the consequences.

  “So this is my fault?” His voice rose and his jaw clenched. One eyebrow flew high as he examined me.

  Deep inside, I understood whose fault it was, and I hated it. A wave of frustration ripped through my bones.

  “No, this is my fault,” I said. “Mine, because I was stupid… for five minutes, I let my self be curious, be silly, be a… a teenager.”

  He clapped slowly twice. “Thanks for applauding teenagers everywhere.”

  “This is not funny. You may be some lonesome loser who can just pop up when he wants to and then disappear, but I have responsibilities.” Tears bubbled in my eyes. I grabbed at my shoulders, looking for my backpack straps to calm me. If I could hold the straps even for a second, I could steady myself.

  “The two kids, I know.”

  My blood boiled with his statement. “What did you just say?”

  “The kids—boy and a girl. I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Look, it wasn’t hard to—”

  “You followed me? Argaaaaah!” I pushed him back toward the hovercycle. “You followed me.” I couldn’t believe he would do that. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I had very few things in this world, and my privacy was one of them. He had violated that.

  My emotions blazed out of control, turning my vision red and white. I stepped back. A chill burned my skin, and I rubbed my arms. “I can’t believe—this is what I get. I let up for two seconds—”

  Every emotion that had built up in the last few seconds crashed down on me. I couldn’t move. My lungs tightened into slabs. I was lost at sea with no way to reach shore. I wanted to give up. It was so much easier to give up. My breath shortened and tears slid down my cheeks. This wasn’t fair. Five minutes had cost me everything.

  He stepped closer, and his body towered over me. “Look, if you would just calm down. I’ll call up—”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s my fault.” I wiped my face with my sleeve and twisted away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I just told you. I have to figure out a way to get Mari and Miko out.”

  “What? Are you crazy? You can’t go back in there.”

  I turned back to him. “They are all I have. What else can I do?”

  In the back of my mind, Gray-Eyed Fox was right. I had counted at least five scrappers. There were probably twenty human cops with another twenty androids aiding them inside. The place would be a fortress now, and it wouldn’t help Mari and Miko if I got arrested.

  The muscles in my arms tightened, my neck stiffened, and my back itched like mad. I was an emotional wreck. Sitting on the ledge of the building, I buried my head in my lap. Tears streamed out in waves. I wanted to think, but my body was too full of panic, fear, and frustration.

  There had to be some kind of way. Mari’s sweet face couldn’t be gone forever. I would kill myself is she or her brother ended up as… as… I didn’t want to even think about it. I couldn’t.

  A few seconds later, an odd sensation of weight and warmth slid onto my back and shoulders. My mind calmed and my emotions steadied. Without looking up, Gray-Eyed Fox was next to me, touching me—holding me.

  “What–are–you–doing?” I asked, my face still buried in my arms.

  “You looked like you needed a hug, so I’m consoling you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re hurting,” he said, and rubbed my head.

  I was seriously contemplating changing his name from Gray-Eyed Fox to Gray-Eyed Frog—No, Gray-Eyed Lizard. Fury blazed behind my eye sockets and replaced the gloom in my chest.

  I jumped up and broke away from all the touching.

  “What?” he asked.

  I couldn’t even respond. My brain was in such a knot that all I could do was just look at him.

  “You’ve got a problem. I’m here,” he said.

  Confusion placed another loop in my mind’s knot. “Wait, let’s start this over. Why are you here?” I asked.

  “What do you mean? I just said—”

  “No, what’s the real reason. Why have you been following me since you saw me at the Perimeter?” I folded my arms over my chest. I was much calmer now. My tears had stopped and my brain was starting to focus again. I wanted to go Lower-C on him and roll my neck, but instead I just cocked it to the side.

  He poked his lips out, and I could tell he was stumped.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Well actually, I didn’t follow you yesterday. I was as shocked as you were when I saw you again later at night. Then I thought, well maybe it’s like a sign or something.”

  “A sign?”

  “Yeah. I mean how many cute fifteen—”

  “Six-teen,” I corrected him.

  “Sixteen-year-old girls do you meet twice in the same day? When I saw you at the bombing, I figured I’d go talk to you. But then you ran off like Cinderella.”

  “More Elsa than Cinderella.” A cute boy is a dangerous one. They could stomp on a girl’s heart before she even knew it happened. I couldn’t allow myself to be one of those girls. He had to know I didn’t run away because I was embarrassed by my frizzy hair or patchy skin; it was to protect Mari and Miko. My responsibilities outweighed any romantic concerns.

  My words weighed on him. His body deflated a little. “Ouch… Well… then… the cops had you, and I hate cops. And I followed you into the Stadium, but some old woman started asking the Holy Spirit to see me out.”

  The thought of him talking with Ms. Cooper made me giggle, despite my best efforts to stay angry. She could be a bit of a pain at times. She had sprinkled
me with holy water, anointed my head with oil, and put Jesus’ divine strength in me so many times over the last seven years that I’d sworn I’d grow angel wings. But as crazy as it all was, I was glad I was in somebody’s prayers.

  “The police barricade kept me from joining my friends, which was probably the best thing.”

  He stopped, and leaned back. A smirk twisted on his lips every few seconds as his mind replayed the events. “I camped out a little ways down. When I heard the ruckus this morning, I came a running.”

  His explanation about noticing me was logical. I was shocked to see him last night, and when he turned around to look, his expression was confused. I saw the barricades, had been with the cops, and wondered how I would get away this morning even before Capt. Davis stormed in with video of me and the Gray-Eyed Fox.

  Why he stayed around puzzled me. He could have been snatched by a random police patrol while sleeping. There had to be some genuine concern if he thought that far ahead.

  However, that didn’t change anything. Mari and Miko weren’t safe. My plan was broken, and I’m sure Capt. Davis knew the kids meant something to me. She may at least try to use them to get to me. I’d have to take the chance both kids would be safe until I could figure out a new plan. I needed to talk to Dhyla. She may have some ideas.

  For all the agony Gray-Eyed Fox put me through, without him I’d probably be in jail right now—twice. My mind unfolded and logic spread. I might have zipped back over to the Stadium like an idiot if Gray-Eyed Fox didn’t stop me. I didn’t feel like apologizing though. I mean, he invaded my personal space without an invitation. It was too bad we met like this. He did have this cutesy bad-boy thing about him mixed with a little heroic prince, like in all the million animated movies that played continuously in the Stadium.

  “Well thanks for… everything. I guess.” I tightened my grip on my backpack straps and anchored my emotions. After a deep breath, I walked toward the ladder.