THE BEAST ─ five hargreeves

[ 005 ] zara strikes a deal with the devilーer, goat

V.

z a r a   s t r i k e s   a  
d e a l   w i t h   t h e
d e v i l — e r,   g o a t

—TO MOST PEOPLE, Five would have sounded like—for lack of a better term—an absolute lunatic.

Zara was one of those people.

"So, let me get this straight," she said, once Five had completed relaying his rather batshit crazy origin story, "you . . . stabbed a table, verbally berated your adoptive father, ran away from home, somehow managed to yeet yourself out of existence, fell in love with . . . whoever the bloody hell 'Delores' is, and had a rather successful career as a time-travelling assassin, before returning to your childhood home seventeen years later as a middle-aged man stuck in the body of a surprisingly hostile teenage boy."

Five gave a curt nod of his head.

Zara released a shaky breath, her jittery hand stroking Kiki in an effort to calm herself down. She was very, very, very badly screwed.

When she accepted the mission, Zara was not expecting anyone to know anything at all about the impending apocalypse—much less try to stop it. The whole assignment was meant to be simple. She would befriend Vanya Hargreeves, figure out her powers, and oversee the destruction of planet Earth.

No one was supposed to stand in her way.

But this . . . this was bad. If Five came from the future, he knew all about doomsday. He would try to fulfill whatever god-complex he had, and save the world. To make matters worse, the only logical reason why Five would tell all of this to a complete stranger like Zara was because, of course, he wanted her help.

The plan was going to hell, and Zara did not intend to tag along.

"I survived on scraps," said Five, jolting the girl out of her rumination, "canned food, cockroaches. Anything I could find. You know that rumour that Twinkies have an endless shelf life? Well, it's total bullshit."

"Poor Kiki," the bird added, sensing the tense atmosphere, "fetch the water."

"I wish someone did," Five chuckled bitterly, "We could've used some back then. You do whatever it takes to survive. Or you die. So we adapted. Whatever the world threw at us, we found a way to overcome it."

"We?" Vanya asked.

Zara had the same question. Who was the elusive Delores? A mere figment of Five's imagination?

Hopefully.

At this point, Zara was half convinced she was a corpse that Five had tricked himself into believing was an actual person. He didn't seem like a necrophiliac to her, but neither did Bella Swan. Besides that, Zara had so rarely been right today that she decided not to trust her instincts.

Her instincts, for the record, were rubbish.

Five lifted his coffee cup with a sigh. "You got anything stronger?"

"Oh, yeah!" Zara grinned, "Bring on the tequila!"

As much as she could've used a drink at the moment, Vanya seemed reluctant to give any to the underage children in her apartment. Instead, Zara was forced to be satisfied with a very diluted glass of whisky. The taste made her want to carve out her tongue with a steak knife.