Identity Zero novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: Cake

Jesse ate the note.

It was the only safe place he could think of.

Three weeks.

Luke would be here, inside this fence, breathing the same wet air, in three weeks.

He came out of the latrine and Ollie was standing in the barracks aisle in his socks, holding a paper plate with a towel over it.

Half the class was crowded around him.

"Don't freak out," Ollie said.

"Why would I freak out?"

Ollie whipped the towel off.

A square of white sheet cake, the cheap kind from the mess hall, leaning a little to one side.

Somebody had stuck a single kitchen match in the middle of it.

Twenty-Two struck another match and lit it.

"Happy birthday, Seventeen," Ollie said.

Jesse stared at it.

It was his birthday.

He'd forgotten. Somewhere between the tank and the Box, he'd lost the date.

"How do you know that?"

"I'm a vault. Vaults know things." Ollie held the plate out. "Blow, before Twenty-Two burns the barracks down."

Jesse blew out the match.

Forty men cheered.

Somebody started singing, badly, and everybody joined in worse.

Ollie had traded two weeks of his dessert to the mess cook for the cake.

He'd also traded his good socks, his flashlight and a promise to scrub the grease trap.

"For a guy you met three weeks ago," Jesse said.

"For a guy who carried my pack eight miles." Ollie shrugged, red to the ears. "Also, full disclosure. I didn't know it was your birthday."

"Then how?"

Ollie dug in his pocket and handed him a twenty-dollar bill folded around a strip of paper.

"This was on my pillow after the Box."

The paper said, in block capitals: 17'S BIRTHDAY. GET HIM A CAKE. DON'T SAY WHO.

Jesse knew the handwriting.

He'd just eaten some of it.

"Any idea who?" Ollie asked, innocently.

"No."

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