Zero

22 : A Hundred Numbers Headquarters

P A R T 2 2

(Continued Mindjournal)

1000 hours

Cady Melrose will not stop screaming. The piercing sound doesn't escape the glass dome, just rebounds off its inner surface and sort of echoes around us.

It's terrible.

When we zoomed into the steel tunnel, my first thought was "so this is what being on a rollercoaster is like". But later, Linnet tells me a rollercoaster goes at a slower speed than this.

There are all sorts of loops but other than this, not much happens throughout.

At last we come to a stop in the middle of a metal platform. Not sure if we're supposed to get off. Don't know how to get the glass dome to lift.

Then suddenly, the platform starts moving slowly upwards while we're still on it, in the rocket.

Melrose has stopped screaming at least.

We're in a vertical tunnel and as the platform rises I can see an opening above at the end of the tunnel. The platform fits perfectly into the opening when we reach the top.

We've been transported into a white-tiled room. There are tracks on the floor leading from the platform to a huge metal device that's about the size of a bookcase. The rocket we're in goes along the tracks in the room and off the platform, which disappears back underground.

Rocket halts and I spot a person in the room. She comes out from behind the device. Long black hair scraped painfully into a tight bun, pale heart shaped face, almond shaped gray eyes, bright red lipstick, severe expression, wearing a women's suit, carrying clipboard.

As instinct, I try to read her mind immediately. But I can't. It's like being repelled by a magnet. She turns a cold gaze on me like she knows what I'm trying to do.

Glass dome lifts and the Fifteen and I unbuckle our seatbelts and get off the rocket.

"Cady Melrose and Jarren?" The woman says. Am hating that I can't reach into her mind to find out her name.

Melrose nods. Am staring at the woman, meeting her judgemental gaze. She ticks off some things on the clipboard, then directs us to a door in the wall which we couldn't spot before because it is hidden behind the metal device.

Opened the door and step into a white curved hallway. Melrose is close behind. There are doors in the hallway and only one of them is open, leading to a large white room. Inside, the few people who have reached first are looking out a wall that is made entirely out of glass.

Went to join Pandora. Don't even know why- it's like my legs move on their own these days.

Reached the window and realise the reason they're all standing here.

We're very high up. And very far away from the town and city. Can't really see which number's allocated area is where.

But what we can see is the barricade around it.

And the nothingness of the outside of the barricade.

▲

{ A I S L I N G }

There was a time in Zero that I thought there could be something outside the wasteland box. Something better. Once, I tried to find the border of the wasteland. I didn't succeed, except at one point where I collided into something like a force field. It didn't allow me to go any further.

But since the force field was invisible, all I could see was more wasteland beyond it.

Now, from our bird's eye point of view, I see that it is not wasteland on the other side of the force field barricades.