Zero With A Line Through It Novels & Stories

​ A blocked number flashed acro‌ss th‍e s​creen​ with a si‌ngle l‌i⁠ne: Wa‌lk a‌way from Cr​oss. Last wa‌r​n‍in⁠g,They wont protect you twice, Alvarez.⁠

Me– 0, zero, zilch, nada, none, cero. I weep for my spirit this time. "Ok, see you tomorrow" I said, feeling like the call should end that minute and it did. "Good night Nuts, sleep well we have a long day tomorrow" he said quietly and hung up.

He had drawn something. It was a circle with a line through it—the symbol of the High Code of the Silverfangs. But he had drawn it backward.

What was written on them wasn't medicine names. Numbers. Names. All crossed out. Ink faded to dead brown. 78.3%. 82.1%. 76.9%. 91.4%. The names varied. Some Omega. Some Beta. Some just code, nothing but letters and digits. Every single one struck through. The force of the lines had bitten into the wood, some of the paper punctured clean through. The last sign's ink was still wet. 99.7%. Name: blank. A shiver shuddered through my scent gland.

It wasn't a symbol of a closed system. "What's that?" Meilin asked. Leo looked at the circle, then at the fire, then at the horizon where the first real lights of a rebuilding city were beginning to twinkle. "It's a 'Zero'," Leo said with a faint, witty smile. "But I think... I think I'm going to turn it into a 'One'." He drew a single line through the circle. The story of the Project Renaissance had ended. The story of Humanity 2.0 had just begun.

“I’m dying.” “What the fuck?” The tone in Minus’s voice immediately shifted from anger to concern. I gasped, my hand reflexively covering my mouth. “I have CRC.” “What the hell is that?” Minus asked with a slight drawl. Evidence of his time spent in Savannah. “Jesus, Minus, you sound like a goddamned hillbilly,” Cutter said with a chuckle. “Colorectal cancer,” Warthog sang out, in a mock country singer voice, to a cheery tune that did not fit the lyrics.

“We do i‍t yo⁠ur way.” He w‍alked over to t‍he whiteboard, picked up a marker, a‌nd dre‍w a large, definit‍ive ci⁠rcle around‌ the word BA‍IT. It felt lik⁠e sig‍ning a death warrant. ⁠

And that was wrong, because first wolves don’t freeze for nothing. My phone buzzed again. Not Zevran. Unknown number. Not anyone from the network or Isara. Not anyone who'd ever contacted me before. One line. No words. Just a symbol. A circle. No line through it. Complete. I stared at the screen. Rhydian looked over my shoulder, went still, like he does when something doesn’t fit any category. "The network used a circle with a line," I said. "Erasure," Malek murmured.

Noah made a show of trying to divide 130 by 0 on his fingers, “…infinitely more people than you, yet are not considered dangerous, then why should you be considered dangerous?” Astar Levi couldn’t understand just when, how, and where the suffocating gloom within his chest had disappeared to, but right now, the only thing he felt was a ticklish warmth. So cozy, so gentle, like a butterfly kiss. Unbeknownst to him, the corners of his mouth twitched upwards, “There is just one of me, but who knows how many deer.” “That’s true,” Noah nodded, “But 0 multiplied by the number of deer is still 0, ah!”

Jasmine threatened and turned off the phone. Brave looked at the dark phone screen and wanted to scream loudly: "Okay, I quit, I won't do it anymore." Unfortunately, that was just his heart of words. In fact, his expression was as gloomy as a family, thinking to himself: "Life is so boring.” He did not know that his misfortune had just begun. His wife - Bright in a pink apron, with a cute bear print on her chest, holding the long big chopsticks, angry bullet-shaped eyes looking at him questioningly.