Zero Novel Novels & Stories

“We have a new member of the council I’d like to introduce.” I sit up straighter, curiosity piqued. I glance at the unfamiliar man again, and this time, his gaze locks with mine. There’s a brief flicker of something that passes between us. It’s hard to describe. A pull, a faint sense of recognition, though I’m certain I’ve never met him before. I feel intrigued, but not in the way my mother has always described I should feel when I find my One. It’s different. Subtle. Yet, it’s there.

He drew the briefcase on the floor up to the bar and slid it across to me. I caught it and looked at him. "What's this?" "Open it and see." Without taking my eyes off him, I opened the briefcase slightly. It was stacked with neat-looking one hundred dollar bills. I brought out one and sniffed it before putting it back. I looked up to see the man watching me closely. "Hi, my name is Zero, glad to make your acquaintance." I lifted a hand towards him in a hand shake and watched in rising amusement, the flow of emotions on his face. I knew he debated on whether to shake me or not. Coming to a conclusion, he brought out his hand and clasped mine in a firm shake.

Oh, he is so cute. I waved to him, took a deep breath and regained my composure because I knew just how much a first time impression meant, and then I yelled out to him. “You are new here, right?" He said something but I couldn't make any sense out of it. I wondered whether he stammered a little or it was just my ears, which still surprised me as I was supposed to hear him anyway, I was a werewolf and our senses were heightened. I guess he didn't really have much to say, which was alright, I didn't either. By the way, who would?

Wren asked him with precise calm. At four forty-seven in the morning — as the sky outside began the shift from black to deep blue — a new voice entered the room. Small. Furious. Unmistakably present. A girl. Nova lay back against the pillow and Dr. Wren put a warm, wrinkled, absolutely indignant small person on her chest and Nova looked at her face and felt the thing she had felt twice before — the specific, total rearrangement of everything she thought she understood about herself. *Oh,* she thought. *There you are.*

“They thought if they showed me what I could’ve been, what I wasn’t, I’d break.” She looked ahead. “But I don’t want to be perfect anymore. I want to be free.” The console ahead lit up again. The words scrawled across the screen in red: CORE PROXY NEUTRALIZED. NEXT NODE: GATE ZERO. Echo swallowed. “Gate Zero… sounds final.” Mira narrowed her eyes. “It’s not the end.” She glanced down at the drive, now humming steadily against her hip. “It’s the real beginning.” End of Chapter Forty-Two

"I just found a better way to bleed." "Will he wake up as the man you loved, or is he just the first of a new, broken breed?" Subject Zero asked as she faded into the shadows of the falling palace.

On New Year’s Eve, Kian Newman never came home. Instead, he had someone deliver a container of frozen ravioli and sent me a single message: "Stay safe this year." I had barely locked the screen when a photo popped up in the company group chat. Isabel Wilkinson, Kian's assistant, had posted it. It was a lavish holiday dinner spread across the table, every dish clearly homemade. The caption read: "Someone spent all day cooking so I could have a taste of home. Love you."