Chapter 227: ZERO FOUR

THEN

She was so small when he first took her in his hands.

The girl with red hair and grey eyes smiled at him.

She trusted him to take her to her mother.

She held his finger with her small hand.

Little did she know, she was being taken farther away from her mother.

Little did she know, it was her mother who sold her.

He felt something for the first time in a mission.

He has successfully completed every assigned mission without feeling an ounce of pain.

That was how they were brought up.

That was how they were trained.

They don't have feelings.

They never felt any.

But this little stirred an emotion in him.

She doesn't have a name.

Her mother, who was an addict, never bothered to give her.

As he left the girl on an isolated island and watched her wander into darkness, something inside him moved.

He called her back and crouched before her.

"Your name is Layla." He whispered. "Remember that. You have a name."

The girl didn't seem to understand him.

She simply pointed her little finger towards the darkness, "Mama?"

The man nodded.

He kept looking at her as she walked in a series of tottering steps and disappeared into the darkness.

Then her screams followed, the sound raw and piercing, until it broke into muffled sobs.

The man stood there, trying to breathe as invisible hands started to choke him.

What is this emotion?

He couldn't name it.

He was so sure it was the first time.

He went to his home again, but this time he was different from the others.

They all wear the same dress.

They all have the same haircut, same height, same weight.

But something about him started to shift.

He wasn't the same man he was born to be.

One and a half years later, he was sent to be a foot soldier to the cruellest man alive in the Bernan Islands.

Kai Marcellous.

He was on a rampage to find his daughter, her mother, painting the night in blood.

The night reminded him of that toddler again.

Watching her father like that evoked something he had never felt before.

Fear.

The little girl's trusting eyes and Kai's similar eyes filled with rage haunted his nights.

After all these months, he dared to take her out of that hell.

"She was nothing without her trigger. An accidental trigger." He heard the mad scientist discussing with someone else.

So, he killed the trigger first. A woman in her twenties.

Then he ran away with Layla and left her mother.

Now that he was out all alone to himself without anyone manipulating his thoughts, he realised that he, like other brothers in the house, was a victim, a lab subject who was trained to become cruel.

Even the robots can learn to be polite, to show affection.

They couldn't.

They were not human.

There was no hope for them.

He wandered through many islands, collecting information, doing odd jobs, and running away from his past.

Years have passed, and it was one such night when he was chased to a dead end.

He was almost killed.

Almost until a boy who is hardly sixteen pointed a fake gun at the killer with trembling eyes.

That's all the distraction he needed to take down the man who came to end his life.

"What's your name?" He asked the boy.

"Leon," the boy answered, still shaking but feigning courage.

"Leon. I don't have anything to repay you."

"That's fine," the boy said.

His eyes were bruised, his lips busted, and his clothes were torn."

"Were you in a fight?" The man asked him.

Leon didn't answer.

"I will teach you how to fight with a blade. Use it when necessary."

"I don't need to learn it," Leon growled. "I can defend myself without a blade."

The man shook his head. "The world is an ugly place, Leon. Let me teach you. Then you can go to Wayfarer."

The boy looked confused.

"Where is it?"

"Ylumia. That place is another hell. Still better than this. There is a steel factory. The owner is a good guy. He will give you a job. There is a public school. Go there. Educate yourself. Don't mix with the wrong crowd. Don't show weakness and don't react to provocation."

Six months after training him, he left the place again in search of something, someone who could help him bring the truth about the Project Kairo into the light.

He reached Ylumia once again with evidence in his hands.

He went to Cillian, who was nicknamed the Good Dufort.

And he died in the hands of a bad Dufort.

"Four. Zero four." That's what the girl called him when he came to take her back because he had no name.

The girl knows numbers.

If he were four, he hoped there were only three other children who were being experimented on.

He hoped Cillian could bring justice to all the kids taken away as soon as they were born.

He hoped Layla was happy.

He hoped Leon was stronger.

Zero Four’s final sight was the sky, before the endless ocean swallowed his lifeless body whole.

ZALEY || NOW

It was silent in the hospital.

Maybe it was the horror of the staff that made them like that, or it was the peace the children felt after finally feeling safe, or it was both.

It was silent until the parents of the girl rushed to the hospital.

By afternoon, so many of them rushed to the hospital.

Thanks to Remi and his team, who found them through the missing reports and the information given by the girls.

Rose's father was sitting outside the ICU, crying and hitting himself on his chest.

"Was he even safe?" Zaley thought. "He is a man, after all."

But the man controlled himself and pretended to be brave in front of his eyes.

None of the girls is in grave danger.

But Zaley wished he hadn't waited for a week to plan the attack.

He wished he had taken the action as soon as he learnt about Veyrith.

He would have saved Nancy.

He would have saved Rose from the nightmare that would haunt her forever.

By the evening, parents of all the girls had responded except for the toddler.

The youngest among them.

She is so scared that she didn't allow anyone to touch her hand.

"They gave her needles." He remembers the girls telling him.

"It was a trauma reaction." The doctor said.

She is two.

Why should she have to go through it?

He doesn't understand.

Watching her reminded him of Layla and the video he received.

"What are you scared of the most?" Someone asked her.

"Needles," she said without blinking.

For the first time in his life, Zaley started to respect Kai.

He felt indebted to him.

It was his reputation, his relentless search for his daughter, that got her out of Delmere.

Slowly, the girls departed the hospital, each hand tucked safely into a parent’s.

The toddler stayed.

"It shall pass," He heard Seline's voice from behind.

"The pain."