The Burn Zone

by James K. Decker

  Out of Range.

  “Screw you, out of range,” I whispered. How could he be out of range? Everything pointed to him being somewhere right in the city. It didn’t make sense.

  “Sam?” a voice asked. I jumped a little as the screen flickered on the stall door a few inches from my face.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s some nice ink work,” the A.I. said.

  Crunchy, driving music began to pipe through the speaker at a low volume as a stylized logo appeared in front of me.

  “Oh, come on....”

  “No, really. It’s nice work.”

  I held out my right arm and made a muscle, flashing the bond bands there: Dragan, then Vamp. “Thanks.”

  “Are the wrist ticks for each successful surrogate imprint?”

  Not many people knew what those were for. The bot was pretty good, but I wasn’t in the mood.

  “Are you okay?” it asked when I didn’t answer.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Great.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” it said. “You know what else is great?”

  “No.”

  The music swelled and the screen did a slow pan across the shoulders and back of a guy with some of the best ink work I’d ever seen.

  “Actually that’s not half bad,” I said, wiping my brow.

  “I know, right? When I tell you about the deals we have going on—”

  The restroom door slammed against the wall, and the woman jumped, dropping a mascara brush down into the sink. She turned to her right, her eyes widening as the door groaned shut again.

  “Quiet,” I told the A.I.

  “But you haven’t heard about the deals yet—”

  The screen flashed and the images were replaced by a security lockdown warning as boots clomped across the restroom floor outside.

  “Security,” a woman’s voice barked. “Everyone out.”

  I leaned closer to the door crack and peered through. I could make out the women by the sinks as they packed up their things and hustled out. One of the stall doors opened and a toilet flushed. A few seconds later, another one opened.

  I stood up and pushed open the stall door. When I stepped out into the bathroom, I saw a woman in full security gear standing there, one hand resting on the butt of the pistol strapped to her hip as she watched the stragglers scurry away. I started to leave with the crowd, but she put one hand on my chest and stopped me.

  “Not you,” she said.

  Shit.

  When the others were gone, she went down the row of stalls, pushing open each door. When she was sure they were all empty, she stalked back to the restroom door and slapped a security boot on it.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked her.

  She crossed back to me, then drew her pistol and pointed it at my face. A stamp-sized image of me appeared next to the grip. It flashed red, and the woman smiled.

  “I knew I recognized you,” she said. “End of the road, cannibal.”

  The bounty. The guard was looking to collect.

  “Listen,” I told her. “It’s not true.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m not a-”

  “I said shut it, you little skeeze.” Outside the door, someone started working the handle, shaking it when it wouldn’t open. The guard shouted back over her shoulder, “Security lockdown! Can’t you read?”

  “Please,” I said. “Look, I can pay you.”

  A fraction of the hardness went out of her eyes. “I’m listening.”

  “I have ration punches,” I said. “I’ll give them to you.”

  “Unless it’s a gold sheet’s worth, try again.”

  “A credit chit,” I said, wishing I’d grabbed the stack of paper money from Eng’s hotel room. The guard made a face. “I can get money. Please, you have to let me go.”

  “Look,” she said. “You ask me, the charge is trumped. You can’t afford scrapcake and you’re too small to be a meat farmer. The thing is, though, I don’t care. They’re offering a good bounty for you. So either at least match it or let’s go.”

  I stood, my hands still out toward her in appeal, and struggled to think. What else did I have or could I promise that this woman would want? If I tried to offer the stun gun or the drugs, she’d just take them as a matter of course, and if I tried to zap her she’d shoot me for sure.

  “Please,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Sorry. That just isn’t the way it works.” She waved for me to come over to her, and reached down for one of the zip ties on her belt. “Come on. Turn around and put your hands behind your head.”

  “My father needs me. Please.”

  “Now.”

  Something crackled softly and as I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, the guard turned alert.

  “What the hell is that?”

  The air warped behind her, like ripples coming off heated blacktop. A bright point of white light appeared, and expanded to a large hexagon that blotted out the room behind it. At almost the same time, a figure stepped through from out of the shadows on the other side. As soon as he was through, the gate collapsed again.

  I jumped back in surprise, one hand going to my mouth as almost at the same moment I realized I actually recognized the figure. It was a male haan, clad in a draping black suit that looked like wings as he spread his arms apart. His softly glowing pink eyes peered at the guard as he opened his long-fingered hands and began to reach around on either side like he meant to embrace her.

  She sensed him and whipped around, jamming the barrel of her pistol into his gut as his arms enveloped her in a ruffle of cloth.

  “Nix, don’t!”

  I gasped as the gun went off, but the report sounded dull and muted, like a distant boom of thunder. I stepped back, shocked, and waited for him to collapse onto the floor while the guard stared with wide eyes.

  Nix didn’t collapse. Instead, the guard went limp and I thought maybe she’d taken the bullet herself when the flattened slug fell onto the tiles between them, then spun to a stop. Her arm dropped to her side and the gun fell from her fingers, clattering to the floor. Nix held her, her cheek pressed to his chest right over the mass of his heart, which pulsed behind the honeycomb lattice of his rib cage. Her eyes went dreamy, lids drooping. Her cheeks flushed, and her lips turned a little darker as she slipped her other arm around his neck for support. As he lowered her to the floor, her eyes squeezed shut in what might have been pleasure and she convulsed suddenly. As she continued to twitch, the strength seemed to go out of her.

  Nix leaned her gently against the wall next to the row of sinks as her eyes closed the rest of the way. He retrieved the pistol from the floor and slipped it back into her holster.

  “It won’t last long,” he said, glancing back at me.

  I knelt down and picked up the slug, still warm between my fingers, and looked up at Nix. “What just happened?”

  “I am wearing an inertial dampener.”

  “A what?”

  “A type of force shield. We should go before she recovers.” He reached down with one delicate hand and helped me to my feet.

  “What the hell did you do to her?”

  “She is a surrogate. I used the brain band to place her in a pliable state,” he said.

  I looked at the guard. Her face was sheened with sweat, and her lips had turned full and dark.

  “Pliable state, huh?”

  “It won’t last long,” he said. “We should go.”

  He stepped toward me and when he did, a stray signal tingled at my forehead. I felt my nipples start to harden as the tingle began to wander down south of the border.

  “Hey,” I said, waving one hand. “Dial it back.”

  “Sorry.”

  The heat from him eased off somewhat, and left me feeling dizzy. He took my arm and guided me away from the guard as I ran my fingers through my sweat-dampened hair.

  “Are you following me?”

  “We should-”

  “Answer my q
uestion first. Are you following me?”

  “No,” he said. “I was following Sillith. She was following you.”

  “Who’s Sillith?”

  “The haan female who attacked you back at the hotel.”

  “Wait, you know her?”

  “She is the current haan female.” He paused, and the glow on his voice module shifted as his tone became softer. “I was wrong this morning.”

  “I wasn’t at my best either. Just forget it.”

  “I didn’t realize how much the haan child meant to you,” he said.

  “Look ... I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “No individual is ever lost to us. I knew you were different, but I didn’t realize that to you the loss of an individual was final. I didn’t understand.”

  I didn’t know what he meant by that, but at the moment I didn’t care. I didn’t want to talk about my surrogate.

  “It’s okay,” I told him.

  “I do now.”

  “I said it’s okay.”

  “And I’d like to help you, if I can.”

  I looked at the guard, with her head still lolled to one side. A soft snore came through her nose, but her eyes had opened a little.

  “All right,” I said. “Come on. Let’s beat it before she gets up.”

  “Beat it where?” he asked.

  “I’ve got somewhere I’ve got to be. If you really think you can help, you have to come with me.”

  I crossed back to the guard and pulled the badge from her clip. Leaning over her, I noticed the four-pack of smokes in her shirt pocket and grabbed it. While I crossed back to the security boot she’d put on the door, I shook one out and stuck the thin black cigarillo’s end into the corner of my mouth, tasting sweet anise on the side of my tongue.

  “You’re going to steal from her?” Nix asked.

  “Bitch owes me these.”

  I ran the badge through the boot’s reader, and the light flipped from red to green. Digging into my pocket, I dredged up my lighter and flipped the cap open, sparking the flame and then holding the end to it. I puffed clouds of blue-black smoke, then took a big hit, holding it for a few seconds before blowing it out my nose. Chems tickled into my bloodstream, appetite suppressants, stimulant, and something else ... a narcotic undertone that played well with the double cross. I smiled and flicked the badge back toward the sleeping woman. It cut through the air, spinning in an arc before pegging her in the side of the head with one corner and bouncing away.

  When I turned, I felt the same nostalgic pang from him that I’d felt the first time I met him back in the hotel, only stronger. It startled me, and I looked up into his eyes.

  “There it is again,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nix, do we know each other?”

  The three pupils in each of Nix’s eyes bloomed like sunspots as he radiated uncertainty. He wanted to say something, but for some reason he couldn’t. .

  “We do now,” he said instead.

  I sighed, and he took my arm.

  “I can help you, if you’ll let me.”

  Vamp, I sent. When you see me, I’ll be with a haan. Don’t freak out

  I logged off before Vamp could respond, then gestured for Nix to come along with me. “Come on. I know a place.”

  “Then you trust me?”

  “I don’t know, but I need someone to weigh in on this, and you’re the best I’ve got.”

  “Weigh in on what?”

  I tugged Dragan’s wet drive from my 3i port, and it dangled from the end of the lanyard as I handed it to him. “Can you access this?”

  “I can.”

  “Then do it on the way.”

  “What’s on it?”

  The guard stirred on the floor again, and I gestured toward the door. “You tell me.”

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Nine

  16:26:34 BC

  After two jumps and a half hour’s walking, the GPS flashed to let me know we were close. It had been a long time since I’d spent any time on the row, and being back, I couldn’t decide if I’d just forgotten how bad it had been, or if it had gotten worse. It made me think of one of those sags in old blacktop, a cracked pocket filled with road grit and cigarette butts that no one ever picked up. Hangfei’s flash had faded, its neon glitz replaced by rusted signs, graffiti, and smog-stained glass. The steamy hot air smelled of asphalt, and everyone walking the street looked like trouble.

  “Okay,” I told Nix, “keep your eyes peeled for the name Wei. It’s somewhere on this street.”

  “What is this place?” he asked, his electronic voice rising over the hum of traffic.

  “My old stomping ground.”

  I kept my voice calm and easy, but the truth was that I barely recognized the area anymore, and I’d begun to wonder if this had been such a great idea after all. Trash bins were practically buried under heaps of garbage, and the people who sat crowded together on the stoops of vacant shops looked mean and hungry. Eyes glinted in the shadows from hairy, unwashed faces. They followed us as we passed, while slurred conversations petered out and grew hushed.

  “Why here?”

  “Nobody will look for us here. Just watch yourself.”

  “We have attracted the interest of several humans,” Nix pointed out.

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “The inertial dampener will stop high-velocity impacts but won’t stop—”

  “We’ll be fine,” I said, not completely confident that was true. “I used to live here.”

  The wind blew and sent streamers flapping overhead, where two festival ghoul puppets swung by their necks from a power line. The street up ahead was splattered with red festival paint. At least, I hoped it was paint. No one down that way looked too festive.

  “Why?” He scanned the crowd and the mass inside his head made an anxious twitch, silhouetted against the neon sign that shone through from behind him.

  “It wasn’t exactly by choice, Nix.”

  “Your parents lived here.”

  “No. We lived in Baishan Park. They rented crash tubes by the week there.”

  “Why didn’t you stay with them?”

  “Mom died when I was eight.”

  “And your father?”

  Ditched me.

  “He ... ran into some trouble.”

  I was pretty sure my dad killed my mom. Not on purpose; I think he just flipped his lid and went too far. Either way, he was long gone before even a token cop ever showed up.

  “Doesn’t the city provide care for orphans?”

  “Orphan,” I snorted. “Those homes are worse than the street.”

  His questions had begun to grate on me. Anxiety pricked in my brain as he poked at nerves I didn’t want poked. I wanted one of the smokes I’d taken at the metro, hoping it would calm me down, but didn’t want to take them out in plain view.

  “Worse than here?”

  “I’ll help you....”

  I shook my head, waving him off. At the time I thought I’d do anything to stay out of one of those homes, but the truth was I’d questioned that choice a million times since.

  The image of an ugly, balding man in a suit seeped up like gas from a sewer grate. Humid air ruffled his coat-tails as he handed me a squashed ration. I’d been so tired, and so weak, that he used his other hand to steady me. I reached for the ration, but it was gone, pulled away, just out of reach as he drew me closer.

  “I’ll help you,” he said. His voice shuddered, and he sounded out of breath. “I’ll help you, but first you have to help me....”

  I shook my head again, a nervous twitch. “Look, I managed, okay?”

  “I was only—”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want to talk about it, so get off it!”

  My voice had risen without my meaning it to, and my hands had curled into fists. People were looking over at us, some pointing. I tried to calm down, but when I relaxed my hands I felt them shake.

  “Sorry,” I told him. “I’m
sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. Just... things didn’t always go so well back then. I don’t like talking about it.”