HOLD YOUR BREATH ─── six underground

xxix. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE SERIOUSLY DYING.

"Hey," One smiled, looking back at his sister.

               "Hey," Zero croaked weakly, trying to smile back. However, as she sat up, the pain in her lower torso contorted it into a grimace.

"Try not to move," Five advised, her hand on Zero's arm. "You don't want to tear the stitches."

"Why are you doing this?" Rovach spat from the floor of the helicopter, interrupting Zero's recovery. The ghost turned to the man and found her stomach churning with disgust for the low-life scum that sat before her.

"Take your pick," One replied harshly. "The thousands of innocent children you had killed, the mass of suffering you've caused, the actions against my sister."

Rovach turned to Zero now, his eyes narrowing. When he realised the girl's true identity, he spat once more on the floor beside her. "You fucking bitch."

                      Four twitched and was ready to beat him to a bloody pulp when Zero stopped him. She forced him back down and weakly grabbed his face, her eyes telling him everything he needed to know for him to calm down, her touch soothing him like nothing he had ever experienced. His jaw clenched as he glared at Rovach. But he did what he was told anyways.

"What did I do to you, huh?" Rovach questioned, infuriated.

                         For a long time, Zero was silent. The dictator gave up and was about to turn his back on her when the girl spoke. A type of gravity in her voice that forced all eyes to turn to her, allowing the impact of her words to soak straight into their hearts. All except a remorseless Rovach.

"Milo Samsari," she said, so quietly he almost missed it. The man shrugged.

"Doesn't ring a bell," he smirked.

                       "Milo was nine years old. Left an orphan after his mother and sister died in one of your gas attacks. When my foundation found him, he was starving and diseased. So fucking thin you could see his ribs. But he waited patiently for the younger children to be fed and treated first anyway. He looked after those kids like they were his own family," Zero revealed, tears rolling silently down her cheeks. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying any more heavily. "I had never met someone so special before. And so...the adoption papers went through that morning. Do you remember that attack, four years ago? I do. I saw the planes and I tried to warn them but it didn't matter. Thousands of children died. Milo was one of them. And I still remember his hand in mine, lying in that ash as I waited to die. You did that. You killed him like he never even mattered."

                   The helicopter was emerged into a stunned silence upon hearing her story. Four's grip on her hand tightened. And One looked at her sister with all the love in the world. He, like everyone else she knew, had been unaware just how deeply she loved that boy. The man came to realise that when she brought him along that day, she was trying to introduce him to the child she was to adopt. And instead, he had manipulated the entire thing into a publicity stunt.

"He didn't," Rovach finally remarked. One's gun raised to his head so quickly he flinched.

"Welcome to Act five," One said, opening the door to the helicopter. The light hit Zero like a punch to the face and her vision swam, searing agony shooting right through her skull.