Zero Repeat Forever by Gabrielle S. Prendergast

As the humans pour in through the door of the building, I leap up and tear open a window. I grab the human by the neck and fling it away, watching it tumble into a heap with others. One of them gets its fingers around her arm, pulling her rifle down. Our line breaks, and we follow a group that plows right through the shields and guns. Behind the humans with shields others are pushing and running, trying to get into a building. Bullets bounce off my back as she leads me into the fray. Hundreds of humans with guns and shields fire at our lines. We run between two high buildings, emerging into chaos. She drags me away before I can take a breath.įollow me! Her hands slash through the air. I turn and drive my fists through the window of the door. There’s a screech as the car swerves toward us, and I’m leaping for it, pushing it away into a high wall as she stands there, undaunted, her rifle still raised.īreak it, she signs with one hand, marching toward me. I fumble for my rifle, but she has already fired the dart punctures the glass and the face of the driver. Ahead of us on the road, emerging from the flames and smoke, a human vehicle appears. She drags me, pulling my hands away from my ears. Stupid defective low rank mud for brains. Our precise ones and their brutal, noisy ones. Then I am running behind her, my hand on her shoulder, clanging over steel and stone as we’re consumed by heat and fire and noise. I grip my rifle tightly, fingers and hands absorbing the weight of it, the feel of the trigger, the faint vibrations. The directives are humming in my mind like a swollen river churning over rocks. The heel of her hand connects hard with my forehead, slamming me back against the metal wall behind me.ĭart each one. I try to catch them, but they skitter into cracks and holes, like frightened animals. “He’ll learn from you.”īehind my eyelids thoughts squirm around, jumbled and messy, out of order. Obedience and anger, as though that’s all I’m made of. The idea of obedience fills me, flowing through me like warm, viscous fluid.

“Close your eyes.” I can’t remember ever choosing for myself, so I do as I’m told. “Do you know who you are?” I search that part of my memory and find it a void. Something about memorizing them and being tested on them. “Do you know where you are?” I try to answer but find I can’t speak because there’s something in my mouth.

Zero Repeat Forever by Gabrielle S. Prendergast