Chapter Eight: History
"Yes, Lady. His corpse was destroyed, although the shield did give them some trouble. His head is being taken in for analysis as we speak."
"Excellent. Perhaps they'll be able to lock up his reboot protocol in time, and we can get some real work done."
"Work, Lady?"
"On his head. Without his backhacking systems to deter them, our hackers, seeded among the police force's forensic examiners, would be able to alter Zero's virtual drive at their leisure. It wouldn't be the first time we've changed a warrior's mind to make him join us. Of course, that's an outside chance."
"Why, Lady?"
"Don't be stupid, Vile. His weakness for women aside, Zero Doppler is the perfect warrior. Our examiners probably won't be able to stop him from rebooting in time, not without destroying his virtual drive outright…and I don't want that, for several reasons that I don't feel like explaining. So, back to the point, it is imperative that we have plenty of our programmers on hand to copy as much of his physical schematics as possible. I'm afraid they'll have a short life expectancy, trying to get inside Zero's head."
"Yes, Lady. I will see to it."
"You know, Vile, for a man with a bucket for a helmet, you're an effective lackey. Much better than those tiresome ghost men."
"Thank you, Lady."
00000
Zero's eyes snapped open and he sprang into a ready pose. Or he would have, if he hadn't been bound to a table with a dozen separate sets of manacles. As matters stood, the crimson warrior's efforts didn't so much as force a clank or jingle in his silversteel restraints. After a moment's experimentation, however, he discovered that he could wiggle his fingers.
Zero relaxed. Fingers were a start.
His sapphire eyes roamed around the bare blackness of the ceiling. He noticed several cosmetic cracks in the stone, as well as a very minor stress fracture that could become serious in the event of someone hitting it with a two-ton hammer every day for several months.
The crimson warrior frowned as he recalled the last few moments of his memory before his death and subsequent reboot. "There are other people in this prison. I am Zero. Who are you?"
Someone laughed bitterly. "We're all going to ------- die. Shut your -------, you -------." The voice was a deep bass.
Zero sighed. "Anyone else?"
"Nope. Noone but the ------- priest. He'll be here to ------- us soon. Now shut your ------- up, you -------."
A rhythmic tapping noise approached the prisoners' ears. Footsteps.
"Sigma knows all, brother Hana. Do not disparage him or his servants." The new creature's tones rasped like a cheesegrater against Zero's soul. His face pinched up visibly.
"Silence, brother Hana. I will silence you if you keep on." Pages rustled. "Brother Doppler, I am Uncle Fastener. I see you are new here. I will tell you the story as I have done for your comrade."
"I'm not his ------- comrade, you -------—" his voice cut off in a rustle of cloth.
The priest's voice chafed against Zero's ears once more. "I have heard that you were educated in a blasphemous den of nonbelievers, Brother Doppler, so I will give you the short version of the story first. Later, we can fill in every precious detail."
Uncle Fastener cleared his throat with a noise like sandpaper rubbing on bare human flesh. "In the beginning, the world was dark and foul. For all memory it had been so. The mutated spawn of pond scum filled the earth, growing into ever greater and more blasphemous forms. Their slop huts covered every continent, their meandering, aimless lusts polluted the waters, and their excrescence stank to heaven.
"Finally, billions of years after the twisted mockery of life arose on Old Earth, a higher form of life descended from the heavens to the scum beings. There arose among them a leader both wise and mighty. Sigma was that leader.
"The Genesis King resolved to raise the scum beings from their despicable, oozing state to a higher, purer realm. With a wave of his omnipotent hand, the Genesis King ripped the cursed Old Earth from the universe of its birth and into a new one, empty and ready for His people. In a single, glorious instant, Old Earth became our own blessed world, Diamond Earth. Those who already worshipped the Genesis King, as well as a few who he in his wisdom declared worthy, survived the transfiguration and gained new bodies, bodies without the host of foulnesses and blasphemies that had polluted Old Earth. He provided the servers, the sun collectors, the very operating systems that allow us to interact. We owe him everything we are.
At this point Uncle Fastener left his partly true, if highly propagandized, recounting of history and focused on the gospel of repentance. "We are Sigma's children. Our consciousnesses sprang from his before the world was, and he gave us the bodies we now wear. As his children, we must not stray from the path that the Great Mind dictates. We must put aside our rebellious ways to serve his cause, to—"
At this point Zero shut down his ears and became completely deaf to the priest's grating voice and lecture. His lips moved soundlessly, and not entirely under his control.
"Sigma must die."
Zero's memory turned back to the first time he'd said those words.
00000
"Don't be afraid, darling. We'll be right here for you. We'll always be right here." Hinata Doppler's warm alto washed over the boy like the warmth of a bonfire on a winter night.
"Whatever happens, you'll make us proud, Greenie." Morcalo Doppler patted his son's shoulder.
Greenie stood still for a moment, looking up into their eyes. "Do I have to go?"
"Yes. And once you have, you'll realize you never needed to worry." Morcalo smiled and crouched down to face the boy at eye level. "Think of it. You'll get a real name, a name that you choose, that no one can take away. You'll get a talent, maybe even more than one, to give your life direction. People will look at you and say…" he stopped. "I don't know what they'll say yet. But you'll never know until you go out there."
Hinata smiled. "Don't worry the boy so much, Morry. He'll be in the next room. It'll be over in a few minutes," she reassured her son.
After another few minutes of encouragement, Greenie finally tiptoed out of the elevator and across the room. He glanced in passing at the bed to one side, the repair kit to the other, and focused on the Rods.
They deserved the capital letter. Though only a few inches in diameter, the three metal poles, standing each a foot apart in a line out of the floor, stretched through the glass ceiling into the clouds so far that Greenie couldn't even see the tops. Tentatively, the boy reached out and took two of the Rods with his hands, then rested his head against the center Rod. Storm clouds raged above him, his parents watched from the elevator, and the metal of the Rods felt cool to Greenie's touch. He counted slowly, wondering when it would happen.
After barely ten seconds' wait, the world skipped a beat, and the boy found himself on the floor of the room. Three piles of slag glowed hotly where the Rods had stood, and glass fragments mingled with steaming metal puddles covered the floor beneath the shattered glass ceiling. Cries of fear and sounds of movement warned the warrior child of enemies to the left, and he sprang to his feet. The boy drew his sabre from his belt and donned his shield in one sweeping movement, but his eyes stared at something far, far away. His voice cracked as he spoke.
"It's all gone. He killed them, he killed us all, Mavericks, Hunters, reploids, humans. Sigma…but I won. I helped him…he must die. Sigma must die." Zero's sapphire eyes, set in an angular face that had suddenly lost its baby fat, focused on Morcalo and Hinata Doppler. He held his sabre at the ready. "Tell me who you are and what you're doing here."
00000
Zero switched his hearing back on for a moment.
"…mmfr, mmfr, mlmfl, mmfgr…"
"…your duty, your soul, your love, your family is all in Sigma. He…"
Zero's head clicked as his ears turned off again.
00000
The crimson warrior returned to his memories. His christening had taken one freakish turn after another. Even after he'd recalled his parents' identities and descended from the tower with them, chaos and mystery had dogged Zero like psychotic hackers, bent on ruining his life. The fortuneteller's cards had burst into flames when she'd tried to read his destiny. Elder Programmer Gau, while digging into the warrior child's code to scan for viruses and other dangers loaded into him with his new system, had gotten counterhacked by his security programs and nearly died. Perhaps most dismaying of all, he'd forgotten the identity of Malon Haolin, his closest friend. Though he had regained the memory later that week, along with many others, she'd never looked at him the same way after that.
He sighed. No one had. After a scant six months in the town's warrior preparation school, they'd shipped him off to the Hurricane Force Academy, where his exploits became local legend and where he met the lunatic programming prodigy Flash. The masters of Hurricane Force cross-trained their students with nearby Wind Programming University almost weekly, and the two youths shared lots in common: the same village and the same off-the-charts abilities, as well as the admiration of their masters and the loathing of their peers. Not to mention that Zero had already met Flash's princessly little sister.
Zero frowned and stopped reminiscing as he noticed Uncle Fastener's scarred, grizzled visage peering closely into his own. His hearing clicked back on.
"Well? Do you or don't you?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
Uncle Fastener spat in Zero's face. "Submit to the will of Sigma! Join his ranks and be one with him!"
"Where am I? How did you get my body? How long was I out?"
"Answer the question, Brother Doppler! Answer!"
"Mmmfrg."
"Is this the police prison? Who brought me here?"
"Defiance will be punished! Punished!"
"Mnmnff!"
"What punishment could you do?"
Uncle Fastener stopped short and stood up straight. "I will return tomorrow. You will both come to Sigma. You will." Footsteps retreated from the prisoners' ears.
"Tphtu. ------- ------- ------- rag."
Zero sighed. The old priest's splittle drippled slowly down his cheekbone. "------- right."
"Yeah, that's what I'm sayin'."
"Hana, how much do you know about this place?"
"It's someone's ------- prison. The ------- won't tell us -------."
"Who captured you?"
"------- bounty hunters laid a ------- trap. Red ------- cut my ------- head clean off. Never saw the ------- coming. ------- took my ------- machine gun and my ------- boat, the -------."
Zero blinked. "Do you know his name?"
"-------. But I know his ------- face and his ------- friend's faces. Brunette ------- and a ------- ------- hacker."
"I heard about you. River bandits. You had a stealth boat and crew. What about the crew?"
"------- ------- got out free already. The ------- that lived. I gotta stay in here to make the ------- police look less ------- - -------. And that ------- priest ------- gets to ------- with me every ------- day."
If the people of Diamond Earth were capable of breaking into a cold sweat, Zero would unquestionably have done so.
Instead, he wiggled his fingers. "Time to get free."
Freedom failed to happen. Hana swore again.
