Echoes of a Past Life [2]

She tilted her head. Calm, empty gaze. 

— Nael, do you want to live? 

Chest coldness muddled my thoughts. Answering felt pointless, but I spoke anyway. 

— Yes. 

She pressed a finger to my bullet wound. 

— Then learn to survive. 

Her touch held no warmth, but her voice outweighed pain. 

— Weakness kills. Emotions distract. From now on, your life and death belong to me. 

I blinked slowly. 

— What if I refuse? 

She smiled—no joy, no threat. Just fact. 

— There's no refusal. 

Silence stretched. Gunpowder and blood still clung to my skin. 

— When do we start? 

The smile vanished. 

— Now. 

— What should I call you? 

— Queen — she replied with her usual frost. 

**Training** 

The first lesson came with cold. 

Wind sliced like invisible blades as I walked through rubble, feet sinking in blood-crusted mud. The field stretched ahead—a graveyard of bodies and shattered steel, where only survival mattered. 

— If you die, it's because you chose wrong. — The Queen's voice came behind me, emotionless. 

She wouldn't stay. Wouldn't help. Wouldn't guide. 

I was alone. 

The first shadows came fast—hungry eyes, blades in hands. My body moved instinctively, dodging by millimeters, feeling steel's heat graze skin. One mistake cost a deep arm cut. 

The second nearly opened my throat. 

The third didn't happen. 

Their hunger turned to desperation. I smelled their adrenaline, saw fear in their eyes before blades met flesh. Blood splattered soaked ground, warm on my fingers. 

Nael didn't exist here. Just a body in motion—an animal learning to hunt before being hunted. 

**Deconstruction** 

The room was cramped. Rusted metal and sweat stank. Only intermittent water drops broke silence. 

— What's the difference between a human and a tool? — the Queen asked, standing before me. 

No answer. 

She stepped closer, eyes seeing through me. 

— Humans hesitate. Tools obey. 

Electricity crackled. Muscles spasmed. Blood filled my mouth. 

— Again. 

Shock returned, burning nerves, vision reddening. 

She watched. Always watched. 

— When you feel pain, don't think. When you fear, don't suppress it. Let it shape you. 

I trembled—not from pain or fear. Just reflex. 

— Again. 

The question stayed unanswered. Only felt. 

**The Blade** 

The hall was vast, pale lights casting hard shadows on cracked concrete. Three fighters surrounded me. 

— They're better than you — the Queen said from darkness. — Faster, stronger. You can't win. 

No order needed. 

The first lunged. I ducked. Fist grazed hair. 

The second attacked. I was gone. 

The third hesitated. 

An improvised blade slid between ribs. A choked scream, a thud. 

The Queen didn't react. 

— You're learning. 

Sweat and blood mingled on my face. 

She turned to leave. 

— But not enough. 

I stayed standing. She kept watching. 

Waiting. 

The Queen was an enigma—crushing silence, each word a verdict. 

— You're not a person. — Her cold eyes met mine. — You're a shadow. 

The concept was simple. Nayara was 01—the heir. I was 00—existing only to ensure her survival. 

It never bothered me. 

The Queen showed no mercy. Every mistake brought pain. Every hesitation, punishment. She wanted me broken—to shed humanity and accept my purpose. 

I accepted. 

But then came Nayara. 

**Nayara** 

The courtyard was empty when I first saw her. 

She moved like a blade cutting wind—sharp, precise. Strikes echoed off concrete, impacts reverberating. 

She noticed me before I spoke. Turned, amber eyes glowing under faint light. 

— You're Number 0? 

No reply. 

She smiled. 

— Look more like a 1.5. 

Hard to tell if taunt or joke. Her smile felt too real. 

The Queen summoned us. 

— You're not equals. — Her voice cut air. — But you'll learn together. 

Training with Nayara was different. 

She didn't just fight—she danced. A fire burned without consuming. 

She talked too much. 

— You don't laugh? 

My fist stopped inches from her face. Block's impact vibrated through my arm. 

— No. 

She laughed for me. 

I never understood Nayara. She knew me better than I did. Like she saw something I couldn't. 

She insisted on calling me brother. 

— It's strange — she once said after brutal training. We sat on cold floor, panting. — You never try to get close, but I feel we already are. 

No answer. 

She sighed. 

"If you ever need to smile, I'll be here." 

I stared at her. Nayara always spoke as if it mattered. 

But it didn't. 

I was just a shadow. 

And shadows don't smile. 

**At 11 years old.** 

The rain fell thinly on that gray day. I walked the streets as if invisible—a boy with empty eyes disguised in adult clothing: prostitute and gigolo, pawns in a game where I was "00." The chill down my spine mingled with the scent of wet asphalt, and the city seemed to whisper dark secrets. 

At the door of a forgotten building, the Queen awaited us. Her gaze, hard as steel, lingered over me and Nayara. She said nothing, only raised an eyebrow—a gesture that sufficed to command. 

"Today, prove you're a shadow." 

Her voice was a cutting whisper, devoid of mercy. 

Nayara, three years older, squeezed my hand tightly, as if trying to transfer courage even though words were unnecessary. She'd always treated me like a brother, and in that moment, her flickering gaze blended affection and demand. 

Without waiting for confirmation, the mission unfolded. 

**First Act: The Rapist** 

We entered a poor, filthy house where dim light and the murmurs of a family in agony echoed. There he was—a brutal man whose eyes dimmed when rage overtook reason. 

"Make it quick." 

The Queen murmured, and time seemed to freeze. 

I advanced. Each step was calculated, each movement cold and meticulous. His screams, muffled by the rain, blended with the sound of my own racing heartbeat. In moments, the steel of my blade found its mark. His wife let out a wail; the children cowered. 

"Don't cry. This is fate." 

Nayara whispered as the fog of despair mingled with our silent complicity. 

I didn't respond. My face stayed blank. The pain and horror of others couldn't reach me; all I felt was the precise coldness of someone accustomed to the abyss. 

**Second Act: The Cop** 

The next order came without ceremony. A corrupt cop—a symbol of poisoned hypocrisy—needed elimination. 

In an alley lit by flickering, grimy neon, the exchange was swift. 

"Now." 

The Queen commanded. 

The sound of a bullet slicing through silence was the answer. As the man fell, the city seemed to sigh, the air growing heavier with the weight of relentless justice. 

"Answers. Now." 

I said, emotionless, like a dice thrown onto a board where fate refused to wait. 

**Third Act: The Eradication** 

My old gang. An echo of a past filled with torture, drugs, and pain. Cold, immediate vengeance pulsed in my veins. 

"Time to clean the filth." 

The Queen declared, her tone an inevitable decree rather than a choice. 

Amid shadows and gunfire, I faced ghosts. Each familiar face, each silenced scream, was part of a macabre choreography. I advanced without hesitation, without a flicker of remorse. 

Nayara stood beside me, her eyes meeting mine in a fleeting moment of mutual understanding. She knew—without words—that in that instant, we were both pawns and players. 

As the city swallowed the screams and the silence of death, the Queen remained distant, her presence icy. Me—"00"—and Nayara—"01"—operated as flawless gears in a merciless machine. 

Later, when the echoes of violence faded, we walked together through deserted streets. 

"Will we ever escape this?" 

Nayara asked, her soft voice contrasting the day's brutality. 

"No".

I replied, the words as cold as my blade's metal. 

And so, we pressed on—prisoners of a fate that refused to change, living each mission as if death were our only true friend and the Queen, the sole master forging our existence. 

**Echoes in the Shadow** 

The dawn brought a biting cold and wet streets. At 15, I was a living legend. Every step, every shadow, carried the mark of "00." The city whispered my deeds—the Irish mafia boss and the Asian dictator lay in the past, victims of my lethal silence. 

Nayara, the "Princess," walked beside me. 

"Nael, do you ever wonder why we're like this?" she said, her gentle voice clashing with our world's harshness. 

"No. We just follow orders," I replied, not looking at her, my eyes as cold and calculating as ever. 

Between infiltrations and heists, silent assassinations, we were blood siblings—not out of affection, but codes written in violence and darkness. 

On the streets, our skin told stories: mine black, hers pale white, glowing under the dead light of streetlamps. 

"You never smile, Nael," she remarked once as we cleaned weapons after a mission. 

"Smiling is losing control," I answered curtly, and heavy silence fell between us. 

Everything continued relentlessly until a restless whisper began echoing within me. A doubt, a void: the truth about my mother. Something didn't fit. 

That night, as rain hammered the roof of an abandoned warehouse, I found her in my thoughts. 

"Why does everything feel so... wrong?" I murmured, more to myself than anyone. 

Nayara stared at me, her eyes searching for answers I refused to admit. 

"Maybe the past hides secrets even the Queen didn't want us to find." 

Her voice was calm, but shadowed by worry. 

The city continued its dance of violence and silence. I—"the Shadow"—now split my time between missions and unraveling the riddles of a hidden lineage. 

"If you uncover the truth, Nael, you might change," she whispered almost imperceptibly as the midnight fog swallowed our footsteps. 

I didn't reply. The cold within me intensified, each heartbeat marking the rhythm of newfound doubt. 

As echoes of our exploits faded into darkness, one question lingered: What are we truly when the truth emerges? 

And on that night, with rain as witness, the investigation began tearing the fragile curtain of our existence. 

**Codes and Shadows** 

October's rain washed the city in cutting silence. At 15, while blood still cooled in my scars, my fingers danced across code. 

"Nael, do you really think this is enough?" Nayara asked, her eyes reflecting the monitors' flickering light in our hideout. 

"Enough to vanish into the crowd," I replied with the same indifference that always clung to me. 

Between lines of programming, I hacked NASA. No one noticed—not from negligence, but my precision. I split binary, reinvented it. Created "-10," a system where 0 and 1 inverted, becoming indecipherable. 

"Reverse binary," I muttered to myself as code flowed on-screen, cold as my gaze. 

Meanwhile, studies multiplied. Math, physics, chemistry—from simplest axioms to Einstein's relativity and the universe's string complexities. Each discovery was a brick in the wall I built between myself and the world. 

The revelation, when it came, cut like a blade. 

"You need to know: Nayara... she's your sister." 

The Queen's dry, emotionless voice echoed in a damp, dark corridor. 

I didn't react. My face, unchanged, held only the cold calculus of an algorithm—yet I faltered slightly. 

"My mother..." I began, but the words faded into the alley's gloom, where truth hid among shadows. From there, my rebellion began. At 17, I wanted out—still young but determined to distance myself, making sure everyone knew. 

Then, the mission. A near-impossible task, a trap. A confidential secret capable of shattering a continent. 

In the heart of a ultra-secure facility, 300 elite soldiers, secret agents, and advanced weaponry detecting the slightest thermal signature surrounded the target, poised to kill at first attempt. 

"Zero, you will execute. And if you refuse..." The Queen paused, her silence a fatal decree. 

"I refuse." My voice was low, cold, unshaken. 

Instinct, ever sharp, warned me this was a trap. 

"You can't retire." The Queen ordered, her icy stare rivaling my own apathy. 

"Then so be it." I replied without hesitation. 

Nayara, the "Princess," was assigned to eliminate the threat I'd become. 

"Zero, it's not personal," she murmured before vanishing into shadows, while I remained, isolated and calculating, watching chaos unfold. 

The facility's cold corridors filled with hurried footsteps, gunfire, ozone mixing with sweat and fear. Amid the turmoil, the mission dissolved into tragedy: Nayara was captured, the information sealed behind barriers none of us anticipated. 

I, with my codes and silences, was left wandering between guilt and doubt. 

"Maybe, in the end, truth is as impenetrable as '-10.'" 

It dissolved into a whisper lost in the rain still washing the streets, as I—Zero—remained in shadow, distant and unchanging, calculating the next move in a game where neither life nor death was truly mine to control. 

**Fortress of Silence** 

Rain lashed against shattered windows when the phone rang. Her voice, controlled yet urgent, whispered: 

"Zero, Nayara's trapped in that mission. She needs you. Even if it's the Queen who called me." 

I couldn't abandon her. 

She was more than an ally; she was my older sister, a presence I barely admitted needing. Without hesitation, I laced my boots and left. 

The path to the fortress was a maze of shadows and distant alarms. My mind calculated every step, every risk. Nothing was left to chance. Upon arrival, my own hacking system—"-10"—pulsed with code as I breached the digital corridors of the unimaginable. 

Inside that system, the battle wasn't with bullets but bits and bytes. 

"The intel..." I muttered, eyes scanning lines of data in a primal language—a dialect of ancient secrets. 

A terabyte of truths pulsed on-screen, impossible to copy without destroying the knowledge. Attempting duplication triggered self-destruction; stealing it changed methods but not outcomes. 

"Read, absorb..." My photographic memory devoured every symbol. Thirty minutes—a race against time, a silent war where every second counted. 

As I deciphered enigmas about the sky, moon, soil, and creation's purpose, alarms began blaring. 

"Get out now, Zero." Silence gave way to mechanical systems sealing shut. 

Outside, chaos erupted. I carried no real weapons—only improvised ones: sticks, pens, relics left by enemies. But violence was our only exit. Amid gunfire and muffled screams, I eliminated all who dared block me. 

At the chaos' peak, I found Nayara, shackled by the despair and betrayal of that place. 

"Come, now!" I ordered, yanking her toward the exit. 

We reached safety with hearts racing and adrenaline pounding like distant war drums. Yet without warning, she turned to me, eyes cold and resolved. 

"Sorry, '00.' This isn't personal." 

Before I could react, a gunshot tore through the air. I felt sharp pain, the inevitable fall, life dissipating in an instant. 

Everything went dark. I was dragged by unknown hands, and when consciousness returned, I faced another facet of fate: my mother. 

The setting was surreal, charged with hatred, love, nerves, and abandonment. Each emotion fought for space, but I remained unshaken—sculpted to endure the impossible. 

She watched me, her eyes piercing my soul as silence hung between us. 

"..." 

In that gaze, between regret and resolve, lay an unspoken question: What was the price of redemption when all we knew was surviving in the shadow? 

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