Secret Value of Zero, The (18 page)

Meke tore her eyes away from the dying woman and pulled Daniel behind the tree’s trunk. The soldier who had shot at Daniel was leaping onto another tree. The other two were circling them, dashing behind trees.

These soldiers deserved the label of the best. Meke never had enough time to aim and shoot whenever the soldiers were out in the open. They were invisible to ones with normal sight. Even Meke had difficulty tracking their constant movements.
 

She knew that their position left them exposed. Trees provided minimal protection for them and maximum concealment for the soldiers. They had to leave, but how?

Daniel signaled for her to cover him. Meke drew closer to Daniel, checking the locations of the soldiers. They were circling them, but they kept their distance. Daniel tapped the handheld, but the screen remained black and lifeless. His insistent fingers continued to fiddle with the handheld. Meke glanced over and frowned. The handhelds never failed.
 

Shifting her crossbow onto her other shoulder, Meke freed her handheld then threw it to Daniel. After a few seconds, Daniel cursed and threw down the handhelds. The black devices stuck out from the loose dirt, useless.
 

Trying to keep track of all three soldiers, Meke tried to find the others. Her brain strained with the effort of accounting for so many moving bodies. Finally, she found them. Trove and the others were under attack as well, by soldiers who were bolder than hers.
 

Trove fought three people while the others sliced and punched their opponents.
 

With a dry mouth, Meke signaled to Daniel what was happening. As she formed her hands into different shapes, a slight tickle alerted her to a movement in a tree only a hundred meters away.

She whirled around and ducked as she felt the cold breeze of the dart passing her neck.
 

The tree-climber’s speed astonished Meke. If she had been a millisecond slower, she would be unconscious at this moment. She couldn’t stay here. If she stayed still, the tree-climber would best her. No luck was infinite.
 

Meke raised her crossbow and released the bolt. Before the bowstring resettled in its drawn position, Meke knew that she had missed. Accuracy wasn’t her aim anyway.

It worked—the tree-climber ducked behind the trunk.

Grabbing Daniel’s hand, they ran with only one direction in mind: toward the others. They zigzagged through the trees, hoping that their erratic route would elude the tree-climber.
 

She felt two soldiers closing on their sides. She pointed to the left, as they ran. Hopefully Daniel had understood what she meant.
 

The male soldier on the right attacked a second earlier than the female soldier on the left. The tall, wiry blond man raised his crossbow, his pose open and relaxed. A dart sped from the crossbow’s insides toward Meke’s thighs.

Meke twirled her poleax so the blade blocked the dart’s path. The dart bounced off the blade, skittering on the ground in front of her. The soldier’s crossbow was already armed with another dart.
 

That wasn’t the biggest problem. Two long stretches of strings hung in front of her, meters and meters long. One was at knee-level, and the other was at chest-level. At the rate that Meke was running, she would crash into the strings and trip. But maybe…no, she couldn’t jump through.

Her feet gouged deep grooves into the dirt as she skidded to a halt.
 

Daniel was already fighting the female soldier. Their swords clashed as Daniel tried to overpower the smaller woman. His heavy strokes, however, were no match for her quick jabs. He leapt back, evading her sword by millimeters.
 

The blond man cocked his head as he aimed the crossbow at her shoulder. The end of his mouth twitched into a smirk as he looked down the crossbow’s length. His eyes flickered to her hands, his mouth moved in clear words. “Good-bye, Zero.”

Meke dove for the discarded dart. The soldier repositioned his crossbow and fired. Clutching the dart in her hand, Meke rolled away. The dart whizzed by her leg and sunk deep into the dirt next to her right calf. Meke exhaled sharply. She was lucky today.
 

She couldn’t afford more hair-width misses. She didn’t have the carbonized clothing of the Elite Force soldiers. No other soldier received such protection, especially the ones on the wrong side. Nobody knew the secrets of carbonized fabric other than a select few Stars.
 

As the soldier reloaded his dart, Meke stuffed the dart in her pocket, pointing the needle away from her body. With a grunt, she scrambled to her feet. Her poleax in hand, she bounded to the soldier.

As she swept her blade down, he blocked it with his crossbow. The two weapons scraped against each other, their handles rattling in their owners’ hands. The smile still on his face, the soldier withdrew his sword with his free hand. That smile infuriated her. He wasn’t taking her seriously because of her Zeroness.
 

He tossed aside the crossbow, held the sword loosely in his hand. A perfect pentagon shone from his hands. Meke tightened her grip on her poleax.
 

His strike came from the left, so fast that Meke almost didn’t block it in time. The next blows came so quickly that Meke always felt a millisecond too slow parrying the strikes. He deserved his position in the Elite Forces, all right.

He wedged his blade between the twin blade of Meke’s weapon, locking them together. Sweat moistened her forehead as he pressed the two weapons upon her. With a flick of his foot, he swept Meke’s feet out from under her.

Meke’s back smashed against the hard soil underneath. Grainy dirt flew onto her face and hair.
 

Meke gasped, trying to regain her breath. Despair washed over her. She had lost and she was going to pay for it now.
 

The Fiver’s faint smile grew into a full-grown smile on the soldier’s face as he gazed down at Meke. He turned slowly and retrieved a dart from the discarded crossbow.

Meke flipped on her stomach and rose into a crouch. The soldier cocked his head and grabbed his sword.

Fight dirty, Meke thought as she hurled a chunk of dirt into the man’s face. The dirt got into the man’s eyes and mouth. For a moment—just a moment—he squeezed his eyes shut and spat out the dirt, but that moment was all Meke needed.
 

Meke jumped forward, retrieving the dart from her pocket, holding the thick part between her index finger and thumb. She plunged the dart deep into his neck before he had a chance to stop spitting.

The effect was instantaneous. His eyelids drooped and his body crumpled onto the ground.
 

She stood over the man, her chest heaving and shoulders slumped. Sweat ran down her face in rivulets. Her arms felt like someone had stretched them and snapped them back. Tooth emerged from a tree, trotting over to Meke as if nothing had happened.
 

Tooth bared his fangs to something behind her. Meke glanced back, seeing Daniel’s slow sword strokes as the female soldier feinted. Daniel’s hair was now dark brown with sweat and was panting hard.

The sight snapped Meke out of her fog. She bent over the unconscious man and reclaimed her crossbow. She fetched a bolt from her back pouch and shot.

It was all too easy.

The soldier, preoccupied with Daniel’s wild swings, never saw it coming. The bolt pierced her neck, its force throwing her back against a tree. Blood spurted until her heart stopped. Her lifeless eyes stared back at Meke, the blood pooling around her slumped body.

Meke lowered her crossbow, leaving it dangling on her fingers. She blinked at the strange scene before her—three green-clad bodies sprawled in unnatural angles, one alive, one dead. She didn’t notice when the crossbow fell from her hand and bounced onto the ground.

She hadn’t even given it a second thought. A life was gone because of her, and she had taken it instantly. Tooth butted his head against Meke’s calf, shaking her thoughts free. She smiled at the black-brown cat, bending down to stroke his dusty fur.

Daniel stood next to her, his mouth open as he panted. He walked over to the blond man’s inert body. After a few moments’ worth of chest heaving, Daniel plunged a knife in the man’s neck.

“Let’s go,” he signaled as he stood up.

Meke tried not to look at the blood on his hands. She nodded, crushing her strange, weak thoughts. With a sigh, she went with Daniel, keeping her senses on alert. She located the others and her throat constricted.

Theria was off to the furthest left corner of Meke’s sense. She was running behind a cliff face, evading two pursuers. Trove, with Doctor Ball slumped over his shoulder, had tucked himself behind a rock. With his sword held close, he peered out at his three attackers. She couldn’t find Trang or John.
 

Meke crouched on the ground, wiping an area smooth with trembling hands. Daniel’s eyes crinkled in confusion as she drew crosses and lines on the ground, mapping everyone’s position.
 

MEKE'S SHAKES subsided as Daniel drew his suggestions onto the black soil. With his thick fingers, he drew the rough outline of the area, with Meke marking where everyone was.

Meke fidgeted—this was taking too long. But they could hardly barge in without preparation. She remembered Trove telling her that a few moments of preparation could save hours of mistakes. She hoped he had been right.

Meke shuffled her feet, sending tiny pebbles and dried leaves flying. Daniel shot her a glare and Meke stopped her fidgeting. With a few deep breaths, ones that she felt in her belly, her pulse slowed to a somewhat reasonable rate. Once again, she expanded her mind and found Trove, Doctor Ball, Theria and Levin. Trang and John remained hidden, somehow, from Meke’s sense, making her nervous.

She shooed away Tooth. This was no place for a cat.

Once they had decided on their next steps, they snuck to the edge of the meadow that held the institution's remains. Trove still crouched behind a rock with a half-shattered wall behind him, protecting Trove’s and Doctor Ball’s backs Meke could feel Trove’s heavy breaths, as he gripped his sword. Three soldiers crouched several meters away from the rock's face, waiting for their target. Their chests rose in a smooth and steady rhythm, utterly unaffected by the events.

Theria had circled around and was now in a sword-to-sword struggle with a short, wiry man. Levin was running from a tall, heavily muscled male soldier behind him. The soldier chasing Levin had nothing on the small wiry man; his big muscles and broad chest slowed him down as Levin's legs carried him further and further away.

They had agreed to help Trove first. He was their commander, after all. Also, three against one were worse odds than one against one. Meke had to hope that the others would be all right.

Meke and Daniel moved squarely behind one of Trove’s pursuers, a middling man. Meke felt Daniel fidget beside her. Meke focused on the man, ignoring Daniel’s doings. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about the man’s appearance, except that he wore the green Elite Forces uniforms and was a Fiver. His hair was the same muddy brown-blond as Daniel’s and John’s.

Meke stepped away from the tree's protective shield and aimed the crossbow at the middling man. The crossbow's smooth coolness focused Meke's mind.

With a twitch of Meke's finger, the crossbow released its bolt. As the projectile sailed in the air, the soldier jerked away. The bolt hit his shoulder instead of his neck, bouncing off the carbonized uniform. The man's hand grabbed his shoulder. The bolt may not have pierced flesh, but rest assured, it bruised.

With curses running through her brain, Meke fished a bolt from her pocket—she only had a few more—and loaded the crossbow.

The man must have screamed an alert because all three ran toward her now. Daniel readied his daggers. Meke forced her hands to steady as she aimed the crossbow. The man wasn't wise. He ran in a straight line toward her.

Again, it had been too easy.

The man collapsed immediately, a bolt impaling his neck. The shock on his face contorted it into something far more innocuous, more familiar. Meke tore her eyes away.

The others were smarter. They stopped behind the thin-bodied trees for protection. Meke glanced at Daniel, who stared at the dead body ahead of them. She jostled him to tell him the others’ positions. He nodded, face pale. She held the crossbow firmly on her right shoulder, ready to shoot as soon as a foot slipped past a tree trunk.

But they never slipped even a single hair outside of the tree's protective shield. A movement caught Meke's attention. It was Trove. He walked away from the boulder in a slow crouch. His sword drew delicate figure eights in the air, its tip unwavering. He stood out of sight of the soldiers, whose gazes remained fixed in Meke’s direction.

Shifting his weight, he slid one hand away from the sword's handle and his hands contorted into familiar shapes.

Who was he signaling? Nobody else was around that could see except for her. She caught herself smiling, despite the circumstances. Trove was signaling
her
.

He repeated the hand motions. Meke released a long breath, feeling the air rush past her teeth. Trove would draw them out and Meke would do the rest with the crossbow.

Trove drew close to the ground, slipping between the trees. He closed upon a man who stood stiffly behind a tree. The soldier whipped his head as Trove raised his sword and managed to defend himself at the last minute. The soldier kept his sword up, even with Trove’s full weight on his sword.
 

As Trove pushed the soldier’s sword down, Meke felt a slight tickle a hundred meters from Trove. The female soldier had a throwing star in her hand.

Meke shifted her crossbow and shot, but it was too late. The star was already spinning in the air as the bolt sped toward the woman's neck. The spinning star tore through leaves and air to sink into Trove's thigh. As an afterthought, the woman collapsed to the ground, clutching the bolt that had ended her life.