Chapter Forty-Three: Zero

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

ZERO

0.

The digit glares back at me, cold and merciless.

0.

0.

0.

More things are being shouted, conducted through the rattling cockpit, but I can’t process them. Can’t comprehend them.

Yizhi stares at the digit as well, unmoving.

The ground thunders with the force of something massive collapsing ahead. It snaps me out of it.

“White Tiger, open a grid for us!” I yell, scratching the cockpit walls, my voice shredded down to its last tatters. Maybe that huge sound was another Chrysalis, maybe it was a Hundun, maybe my ears heard wrong. Because it can’t be—

A few gashes peel open before me like claw marks. Thin streams of smoke breach through them. I cough on the particulate.

Then the air stops dead in my lungs.

The Bird slumps in a rising cloud of dust and smoke, extinguished of all light. The Tortoise crawls over it, grasping its neck with one hand.

With the other, it smashes down on the Bird’s head. Frozen spirit metal shatters like red glass under its palm.

The Tiger jangles to a halt, letting out a strangled cry.

“White Tiger, there’s no point anymore!” Chief Strategist Zhuge’s voice drifts through the static flatlining in my mind. “Focus on the battle!”

No point. His words echo around and around. No point. No point. No point.

In the first lesson Sima Yi gave me, he told me that humans are the most qi-dense beings on the planet. It’s how we can pilot Chrysalises despite being a tiny fraction of their size.

Finally, I see what he means. This body of mine is not big enough to contain the scale of emotion coursing through me. How could I feel a rage like this, and not be able to tear the sky open and scorch the earth? I clutch the gashes I’m looking through, shaking uncontrollably, a weak white light surging in my armor, yet I can’t even dent the spirit metal.

“Why don’t you just let them kill you?” My own words swing out of time to slam me down and grate me alive. “What do you even have to live for?”

A tiny noise trips out of my throat, far too meek and small for the storm spiraling inside me. My chest caves in, and my shoulders curl, as if I’ve been starved for weeks and months and years. A jagged, splintered pain radiates beneath my rib cage, sharpening with my every attempt at getting air. I can’t breathe. I can’t stop shaking. Flashes of hot and cold loop through me like the jumbling air outside, confused and mismatched. Acid wells up my throat and sours my tongue.

Why did I say those things?

Why didn’t I eject him first?

“Zetian…” Yizhi utters, sounding far, far away, touching my arm. His face is as pale as death. His bottom lip quivers nonstop.

“I did this.” I drag my quavering fingers down my face. “I guilted him into—”

No.

Shimin would not want me to feel this way.

This is the one thing he would never, ever want me to think.

The Tiger charges back into the main battle. Its frustrated curses whirl through my head several seconds too late, already a distant memory.

My thoughts race in circles. For a moment, I seriously consider ripping Qieluo from her seat and draining Yang Jian dry in a rampage. But the White Tiger isn’t powerful enough to win against both the Water Emperor and the Black Tortoise. Nothing left in this army can. There’s no way out—

One possibility strikes like an electric shock, sending my hand darting to my conduction suit pocket, just under the long skirts of my armor. I fumble for the kit of emergency flowerpox medicine the army made us all carry.

I don’t say anything out loud because I don’t want the strategists to know my next move, but Yizhi’s dazed eyes follow my movements and widen with understanding.

Cure the Emperor.

If the legend is true, if Qin Zheng really froze himself with the chilling powers of Water qi, then wherever he is, the Yellow Dragon is.

ThatChrysalis would, indeed, be powerful enough.