Zero, What a God!

Vanessa's laugh drifted through the half-open bedroom door. "Mmph… relax, he's just a guard. He won't be home before six."

Vittorio froze in the hallway with the cake box in his hands. What? That was his wife's voice.

Thursday night was his first wedding anniversary with Vanessa, so he had swapped his break at the Whitmore Heights guard post to ride home for one hour. The forty-dollar cake in his hands said Happy 1st, Nessa in pink icing.

Thursday night was his first wedding anniversary with Vanessa, so he had swapped his break at the Whitmore Heights guard post to ride home for one hour. The forty-dollar cake in his hands said Happy 1st, Nessa in pink icing. In his jacket pocket, an empty orange pill bottle rattled, because Dr. Graves, his memory therapist, had put the refill on hold two days ago without giving a reason. Near the front door, he had stepped past a pair of men's Italian loafers, two sizes bigger than his own.

Inside, the bedside lamp lit up their bed. Vanessa lay in it bare, her soft mounds pressed against the chest of Trent Holloway, the Kessler Group events director she never stopped talking about.

Vittorio kept silent, because he wanted to hear who his wife really was.

"How do you even sleep next to a guy in a two-hundred-dollar uniform?" Trent asked, drawing circles on her shoulder.

"I don't. I face the wall every night and pretend to sleep until his alarm goes off. Then I listen to him tiptoe around in the dark so he won't wake me. Do you know how pathetic that is, Trent?"

Vittorio had tiptoed for her. For a whole year, he had laced his boots in the dark hallway, and she had lain awake the entire time, laughing at him.

Trent snorted into her hair. "Then why marry the guy at all?"

"Because Grandpa Walter swore he'd cut me out of his will if I refused the boy Teresa raised. So I said yes, I smiled for the photos, and I cried on his mother's shoulder in the kitchen like a good bride. He's kind, I'll give him that, but kindness doesn't pay rent."

Those tears on Teresa's shoulder had been part of the show. Teresa had come home that night and said she finally had a daughter.

Hearing that, Trent kissed her bare shoulder. "Tomorrow you start in Kessler Group's events division. A new car will be waiting for you by lunch."

"He offered me half of his gas-station sandwich last month, Trent. He came home soaked from the rain and held it out to me like a birthday present."

He had given her the bigger half and eaten his own piece standing at the sink, so she could keep the only chair beside the heater.

Heat climbed up the back of his neck. He pushed the door open and set the cake on the dresser.

Vanessa snatched the sheet up to her chin, and for half a second her face showed shock before it went cold. "Y-you should have knocked!"

"Knock? Why would I knock in my own home?" Vittorio's voice broke on the question.

Without any hurry, Trent climbed out of bed and pulled on his trousers. "Then get out of your own apartment, guard, before you get hurt. She's done pretending for you, and I'm done waiting for you to notice."

Vittorio stayed where he was.

Trent's jab snapped Vittorio's head back, and the taste of copper filled his mouth. A hook slammed into his ribs before he could raise his arms.

THUD!

Trent's knee drove into his stomach, and Vittorio folded over it and dropped beside the dresser. Two kicks landed in his side, and Vanessa watched every one of them from the bed.

"Two years of boxing, guard. You're a rent-a-cop who can't even protect his own bed. Tomorrow all of Kessler Group will hear how you cried on the floor." Trent spat beside Vittorio's face.

Last spring, Vittorio had carried that mattress up the stairs alone to save the delivery f*e. Now Trent stood over him and called it a bed Vittorio could not protect.

Trent hauled him up by the collar, and the cheap uniform shirt held for one second.

RIIIP!

The fabric split all the way around his back. Behind him, Vanessa sat up straight. "Since when do you have that?"

A golden leviathan coiled across Vittorio's back, a sea dragon with black-and-gold scales wrapped around his spine. He had never known where it came from.

"What is that, a two-dollar tattoo to scare babies?" Trent sneered, and his fist came again.

The knuckles struck the swelling bruise on Vittorio's cheekbone. Suddenly, the pain split his skull open with white light. Snow rose to his knees in a blizzard, where a hooded man with a silver cane walked past a line of shaking boys. Then his own bare hands were hauling him up a cliff of ice while his fingernails tore.

In a hangar, a hundred soldiers stood at attention while a voice called one name across the concrete.

The name was Zero, and it had always been his.

Trent's next punch never landed. Vittorio caught the fist in one hand, and this time, he knew exactly whose hand was holding it.

A gust of wind tore through the bedroom with every window shut, and the curtains billowed. The air grew so cold that Vanessa's breath came out white. Vittorio's black eyes had taken a dark red tint.

"My neighbors hate noise," Vittorio said, and his voice dropped deep and flat. He turned the wrist half a circle.

CRACK!

Trent dropped to his knees, screaming, his hand dangling at a wrong angle. One shove of Vittorio's palm threw him backward out of the bedroom.

BANG!

Trent's shoulders struck the hallway wall hard enough to knock their framed wedding photo off its nail, and glass burst across the floor around him.

"Y-you… you're a monster!" Vanessa screamed, scrambling to the far side of the bed.

A year ago at their wedding, the same woman had called him the gentlest man she had ever met.

Trent crawled out on his knees, cradling his wrist, and Vanessa ran after him wrapped in the sheet. At the bedroom door, she turned back with her face twisted. "Tomorrow you sign the divorce papers, Vittorio! My mother is bringing them herself!"

The word divorce stayed behind in the empty room. It hurt less than the wall she had faced every night.

Alone, Vittorio let the cold go with one long breath. Every punch Trent had landed came back at once. He sat on the edge of the bed and checked what had returned.

His code was Zero, Commander of the Leviathan Corps, a secret army that answered to no flag.

Then he found the holes.

The last five years before his fall were dark, and so was the night he went over the edge of Gallows Ravine. Someone had sent him into that ravine, and Vittorio could not see the face.

Teresa had pulled a broken stranger out of that same ravine two years ago and named him Vittorio. Six months ago, she was found dead at the bottom of it, and the police called it an accident. Vittorio had never believed them.

He went to the kitchen and knelt by the sink. Behind the bleach bottles sat Teresa's old tin box, which held the deed to this apartment and the bill receipts he had saved all year.

Under the papers lay the black card Teresa had found in his fist at the bottom of the ravine. A silver leviathan was stamped above one engraved word, MORETTI. Teresa had taken his surname from that word. Tonight, he knew exactly what it could open.

A dead man in a guard's uniform was the last thing the traitor in Leviathan would look for, and Teresa's killer would never fear a man who lifted barriers for a living.

Just before eleven, Vittorio stopped at the gas station across the road from the complex gate and bought a coffee he could barely afford. At the ATM beside the ice freezer, he slid the black card in, and his fingers typed a six-digit PIN he had not touched in two years.

The screen showed a balance of $3,812,406,000. Under the number, one line of text appeared. [Welcome back, Commander.]