Zero With A Line Through It Novels & Stories

Deleted. We are the delete button, Ren realized, staring at his reflection in the dark monitor. But what happens when the user is done typing? They delete the button. The Admin called him an "Asset." Assets depreciate. Assets become liabilities. Eventually, Squad Zero would know too much. Eventually, Jinx would crack the encryption again, or Tank would ask the wrong question. And when that day came, the Admin wouldn't fire them. The Admin would send a drone to Apartment 402.

He commanded. "Yes sir." I was tempted to stand at ease but I was wise enough to discard it. I stood in front of his desk, my head bowed a bit while my hands were joined together. I intentionally kept my gaze to the floor to avoid meeting the evident glare he wore at me. "Nikki Hood?" Chad ruffled through his desk and picked his phone up. Turning the screen at me, he shook his head pitifully. "Could you please explain to me what this means?" There on his screen stood all petite version of me, an unshaven bush grown on her private area and a smug grin on her face. My nude image! Not knowing what next to do, I fell in his desk direction, holding my head in place and 'passing out'.

“We…don’t…speak…it.” Coward, the Zenaida-voice inside me hissed. “Then draw it,” I said. “In the blood you were so eager to spill.” I lifted my boot, just enough for him to move his arm. He hesitated, then dragged his fingers through the puddle of red by his leg. His hand shook as he traced on the concrete, rain already working to blur the lines. The symbol that emerged was ugly in its simplicity: a circle with a line through the center, and four smaller cuts radiating outward like claw marks.

I’ll be in touch, he said putting the paper in his pocket. S’bu is somewhere thinking you are so perfect, he has no idea that you are such a whore, they said when they saw Thandi give TT the paper. Backstage TT handed the paper to his cousin. What the heck is this? S’bu asked. You tell me, she your girl, TT said. S’bu looked at the paper again. She wants you to work it out, he said amused taking a pen and working it out. Divide any number by zero: 0

During the escape, she unknowingly grabbed a single loose page from the fallen Subject Zero file. Across the top, in faded typewriter text, are six chilling words: IDENTITY OF SUBJECT ZERO: CLASSIFIED Beneath them… Someone has handwritten a single name. The ink has been smeared by rain. Only the first letter remains visible. E…

Denton The line clicked once. Secure. Encrypted. Silent for half a beat too long. “Identify,” the voice on the other end said—calm, clipped, authoritative. “Seven-Six,” I replied. “Double zero clearance. Confirm.” A pause. Then: “Confirmed. This is Control—Zero-One.” I exhaled slowly, tension held tight beneath discipline. “I assume you received my request.” “We did. And we’ve acted on it.” “Status.”

I asked, furrowing my brow. “It doesn’t!” Zara said, her eyes wide as she opened a keypad typing the number. My heartbeat increased a little when I saw that she had memorised it despite her thinking it was a number of male escort agency. “That’s a zero.” She gaped at me. “It’s not.” “It is. That’s a zero.” I said, pointing to the closed loop on the picture she had taken. “That’s a six, Hayden,” she said. Her black coloured nail pointed at the line. That must have been my mistake. “See? That’s a six.”

’ “What did it look like?” “I’m not sure. I was young when I saw it, but I remember the shape. It was…” She closed her eyes, trying to pull the memory from somewhere deep inside her mind. “A circle with three lines through the middle. The three lines looked like stars in you looked too hard.” Aly suddenly gasped. “That symbol.” Zahra turned toward her. “You remember it too?” “I remember Father telling us never to touch anything that carried it.” She answered still with a gasp.

He releases my wrist and holds the phone up, crushing it. Using only his hand he demolishes it. The cheap plastic casing crunches, the screen spiderwebs, and the internal components snap. He drops the debris into a small trashcan like it’s nothing more than a crushed soda can. "Protocol Zero," Kirill states. "You fucking asshole!" I shout, staring at the ruined tech. "Protocol Zero," he repeats, his voice hard. "Total blackout. No electronic emissions. No outgoing signals. No incoming data. We are a black hole. You don’t touch anything electronic."

The screen didn't go black. But the green phosphor text vanished instantly, replaced by a single, clean window of high-contrast white that had no directory trees, no file paths, and no signatures from 2001. A single line of text ran across the center of the display, the letters large, sharp, and perfectly legible under the crimson glare of the ceiling light: LOCAL CORE ZEROED. TERMINAL PURGED. Sophia stopped by the landing. Her face didn't break into an expression of anger, but her hands tightened inside her pockets until the gray wool of her trench coat tore at the seam with a short, sharp rip that sounded like a dry branch snapping in the wind.