An End Read Online Free Page B

communication, just fits and snatches of thought, mostly well-masked against Zero’s prying and curious mind.
    Zero’s head lolled to one side, still out of his control. A man draped in black material approached, quickly slid a needle-tipped device into Zero’s neck, withdrew it, waited for a reading. The device emitted a shrill beep. Again, the man slid the device under the flesh of Zero’s neck. Again, the beep. The man shook his head, consulted with another person who was draped both in black material and the shadows of the corner of the room. The words were a jumbled mess of guttural exclamations and smooth vocal elisions. Zero knew that it was not a human language.
    [no data on file. it has to be—]
    [don’t]
    The man in shadows stepped forward, gazed down on the disabled Zero with fire and contempt barely held placid under the glare of steely eyes. He reached out and turned Zero’s head toward him, so that their eyes met.
    [the sum of our fears. it hasn’t ended yet.]
    The words tore into Zero’s mind, a brilliant flash of tugging heated pain nestled directly behind his eyes. For an instant, he caught an image of what appeared to be two planets colliding, an image of a screaming woman trapped underneath the rubble of a shattered building, a hand so close a hand looking at looking out at his own hand wiping blood from a broken nose and feeling tasting bleeding that blood himself. The image retreated an instant after it appeared, and he was left with only those eyes steel gray eyes looking into and through him with a hatred he could not begin to describe with words.
    The man turned the aura of communications that emanated from behind his eyes directly at Zero. The experience was intimate, disconcerting, terrifying.
    [which colony are you from, son? who sent you?]
     
     
    Perhaps the most disturbing moment during the whole trip to Center Earth for Nine was the moment when the creature that was Mother looked back mischievously as he held Whistler’s considerably-larger hand and then began to skip down the remainder of the passage. Whistler had no choice but to skip alongside the Divine Merciful and Wise Mother of the Sixth Extinction, even summoning enough acting skill to let out a joyful “Hurrah!” as he skipped with her.
    She laughed as only an energetic five-year-old can, be damned the fact that she was little more than a machine-based lifeform from beyond the stars that was solely responsible for the deaths of trillions upon trillions of sentient beings in this backwater of the collapsing universe. She reached up for the doorknob to the inner chamber, but couldn’t seem to grasp it. She looked back down the hallway at her step stool. Whistler realized the dilemma, opened the door for her. She sweetly smiled, and ran into her abode, the curls atop her head bouncing playfully along. She was wearing a delightful pair of magenta corduroy bib overalls and a light pink shirt. Barefoot. She sat down in the center of the room, which had been redecorated in a childhood motif since Whistler had last been there. There were stuffed animals, dolls, a large rocking horse in the corner. Pastels with few primaries. On the floor, she devoted her attention to a stack of coloring books and a large pile of crayons, every color imaginable. She scribbled delightedly for a while, filling in the image of a duck with an umbrella an intriguing aesthetic of raw sienna and silver, ignoring the four people grouped around her, looking down in an uneasy mixture of confusion and horrifying fear. Eventually she was satisfied with the coloring job she did on the duck and his little umbrella, and she looked up, the smile gone from her cherubic face.
    [fleur, you betrayed me.]
    The words hung languidly in the air for a moment, and Fleur stumbled over her own voice, tried to think of something, anything to say in her own defense. Mother raised one hand, and Fleur fell quiet.
    [hush, little one.] The imperative was made doubly-disconcerting by