The Burn Zone

by James K. Decker

  “You messed those guys up pretty bad.”

  He nodded. “I acted rashly.”

  “I don’t blame you, Nix. Nobody would.”

  “I do.”

  “But how? How did you ...?”

  “I am stronger than I appear,” he said, and would say no more on the topic. “Do you remember anything after your collapse?” he asked instead.

  “Not really,” I said, but he wasn’t convinced.

  “What do you remember?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just... a hallucination or something. Like a near-death experience, I guess.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Nothing,” I said again. “For a second I felt like I was being dragged down into the dark by something horrible. I thought I might have been going down, instead of up.”

  “Down?”

  “To hell.”

  I felt vague amusement from him.

  “Your neural pathways had begun to shut down,” he said. “What you experienced was a by-product of that, nothing more.”

  I shrugged, not certain I believed that. “Sure, if you say.”

  “Your brain activity ceased,” he said, “but I was able to pass you through jump space and slow your functions long enough to revive you.”

  “You brought me back to life?”

  “I revived you using technology you will receive in Phase Seven. I don’t have the ability to bring the dead back to life.”

  “That’ll probably be in Phase Eight.”

  I sensed confusion from him for a minute before it clicked.

  “A joke,” he said.

  “A bad one. Thanks, Nix. Either way, you saved my life.”

  “I told you once that none of us is ever permanently gone,” he said, the mass in his head shifting uncomfortably. “When I first met you, I knew that it was different for you, but I didn’t really understand it. You were the first human who ever cared for me, but it was more than that. I found the longer I stayed with you, the more attached to you I grew.”

  “You must be a glutton for punishment,”

  “No,” he said. “Your death has permanence. It’s why you weren’t able to let them take the boy back with them, even though it was the easy thing to do, even though it would have helped you. Your feelings for your father, for your friend ... even for a boy, a girl, and an old man you’d never met... even for me, the thing that makes them so compelling comes from the fact that you could lose them, forever, at any time. I...”

  His voice box flickered out. He went quiet for a minute.

  “I realized that what holds true for you would also be true for me, since you are human. If you were to die, it wouldn’t be like a haan who I would still maintain a connection to. You would be gone forever, even to me.”

  I leaned over and planted a kiss on the cheek of his smooth, glasslike face.

  “Well, that’s the nicest thing any haan ever said to me,” I told him. “Bizarre, but nice.”

  I touched his arm, and winced then as I remembered the concrete saw. The arm felt fine, and completely undamaged, as I ran my fingers down the length of it.

  “Things aren’t always as they appear,” he said, holding up both arms to show me.

  “Like one arm turning into three?”

  “I will be fine,” he said. “The gate activated as an emergency measure, but I will heal.”

  “Don’t duck the question.”

  “Things aren’t always as they appear.”

  He wasn’t going to answer me. I decided that, for the time being, it could wait.

  “So, wait, while you were ... reviving me, did you remove that... ?” I pointed down toward my belly, where the invisible umbilicus was perched.

  “No,” he said. “The fact that it is helping to maintain your systems is one of the only reasons you’re still alive. Even if it weren’t, it will need to be removed under controlled conditions.”

  I looked down at the spot, pulling up my shirt to probe the spot above my belly button. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “I don’t know, but we need to extract the foreign tissue before it begins to grow again. Ideally, I would like to keep it intact for study.”

  “How long do I have?”

  “The umbilicus is nearly empty.”

  “Then we’d better get going,” I said.

  He gestured at the table, where six airbike keys lay in a row.

  “We need to leave this place,” he said. “Quickly. A radio signal was transmitted from this location, and we have to assume Hwong knows something has gone wrong here. There are several vehicles in the lot outside we can use.”

  “What about the others?” I asked. “The other captives?”

  “They should leave as well.”

  I looked over the keys on the table. Six keys meant six airbikes in the lot. In addition, Nix had recovered three phones, two covered in blood that was still sticky, three pistols, a tranquilizer gun, and a stack of five rations, three krill and two scalefly.

  I grabbed the phones and the rations, plus two sets of keys.

  “We’re going to have to double up,” I said. “Those things won’t seat three, so we’ll need two.”

  “What about the others? There are thirteen of them total.”

  “Some of them are kids,” I said. “A bike will probably lift one adult and two kids. We’ll take two of them.”

  “That’s still not—”

  “They’re going to have to sort it out,” I said, grabbing two sets of keys. “We have to go. Tell me you still have the twistkey.”

  He reached into his jacket and removed the blue metallic key, holding it up under the light.

  I took it. “We saddle up, cross the wall, and meet at the closest public gate. The parade’s started by now, so it’s going to be a complete cluster out there. Follow my lead. We’ll land and be through before they know even know we’re there.”

  “That is a very risky plan. You could turn the key over to Ava, and let us take care of it.”

  “No,” I said. “Not to her or anyone else. Let’s go.”

  “She might be better equipped to help than we are.”

  “And she might decide Sillith had the right idea, or that the people down there are expendable, or that she doesn’t want the truth about that place getting out,” I said. “I watched her throw a baby into a meat grinder, right in front of me, like it was nothing. I’m going. Me. Not your shipmates. Not the soldiers. Me.”

  “But you’ll fail.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “You’ve seen what Sillith is capable of,” he said, more softly this time. “You’ll die for this man.”

  “Yeah, Nix. I would. I would die for him. So what?”

  “Would he want that?”

  No. He wouldn’t. I knew it too.

  I tossed him Dragan’s wet drive, and he caught it.

  “He’s just going to have to understand,” I said.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Twenty-three

  03:52:32 BC

  The captives were huddled in the corridor that led to the factory exit, but most of them were still pretty jangled. They watched, anxious, as we approached, and some backed away. I noticed that the strangers had already formed loose groups. The kids, three scrawny boys and four girls, were bunched together in a small section of room exposed by a partial collapse. Two women and one of the men lingered near them while others stood by the metal door that led out into the rim.

  One of the men, a middle-aged guy with graying hair, seemed to have taken the leader role. A woman stood near him, shaking in spite of the heat. Her long hair was plastered to her neck and shoulders, and she stared through the tangles as we approached them.

  The man stepped forward to meet us and held out his hand. When I shook it, I could feel plenty of strength left in his bony fingers.

  “I’m Jin,” he said. “You saved our lives. Thank you. All of you.” He nodded at Nix, and Vamp behind me.

  “No problem,” I said,
not quite sure how to react to that. I looked to the others, and then back to him. “You don’t really look like a criminal.”

  “Depends on who you ask,” he said. “I’m an astronomer. Or I was before they threw me in here.”

  “What did they arrest you for?”

  “Telling the truth.” He shook his head. “Never mind. You got us out. We’re in your debt.”

  Before he could say anything else, I handed the cardboard box full of stuff to him.

  “There’s some food here,” I told him. “Not much. Cell phones too. You can call for help.”

  He rooted down and found one of the phones, holding it up and making sure it worked.

  “There’s also keys for four of the vehicles outside,” I said. “We need two. We can take one, maybe two of the kids with us when we go.”

  Jin shook his head.

  “They’ve got an airtruck in the other lot,” he said. “I saw it when they brought me in, and I’ve seen it come and go through the window. We can get the kids out using that, but I’ll call this in and get us some help first. I’ve got some contacts who can move under the radar.”

  “Don’t wait too long. We think the soldiers who brought us here are on their way back.”

  He nodded.

  “Maybe, but trying to cross the wall is suicide,” he said. “They’ll gun you down for sure. Wait for help.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Well, if you’re determined, then don’t keep in a straight line. Speed won’t save you. It takes those turrets a second or two to adjust their aim. Best bet is to let them lock on, then change course. Don’t let them lead you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I had a front-row seat back there,” he said. “That was gutsy, what you did.”

  “Thanks,” I said, ”but—”

  The woman stepped forward then and before I knew it her arms were around me. She crossed them over my back and pulled me close, pressing her lips to the side of my neck.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. I rubbed her back like Dragan used to do to me, even though she was much older than I was, while she trembled. Then she pulled away, turned, and retreated.

  “Good luck,” Jin said. I watched the woman chew on her thumbnail, not looking back at me.

  “You too.”

  Vamp pushed open the door and I squinted into the wind that rushed through, stinging me with ash and grit. The door whipped out of his hand and clanged against the outside wall as the shredded remains of a tarp snapped overhead.

  “Does this mean you’re in?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “I’m in.”

  “I’ll take one bike,” I called over the wind. “You guys double up. They might be able to still track me, so probably best if no one’s right with me.”

  “Where are we headed?” Vamp called back.

  “The parade must be going by now,” I said. “With all the air and road traffic, it’ll be a complete mess. If we can lose ourselves in there, we’ll have a better chance. Is eye-bot running?”

  Vamp nodded. I brought up the 3i app and saw that a map of the soldiers’ movements had already begun to emerge. From the look of it, security was grouped in clusters at key points and then staggered in between. There were gaps, though—probably by this point they were watching for us, but most of them had been deployed for general crowd control. They weren’t guarding the gate hubs.

  “There,” I said, pointing. “The hub at the intersection of thirty-six and 103rd. It’s a pretty straight shot from the edge of the wall.”

  “Okay,” Vamp said. He took a deep breath.

  I hugged him, squeezing him hard around the neck as he squeezed back. I tucked my chin into the crook of his neck as we were pelted with rim grit.

  After a minute, I broke away, keeping one hand on his chest. I took the twistkey from my pocket and pressed it into his hand.

  “If they shoot me down or grab me,” I said, “you get him out, okay?” He nodded.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  I stepped out into the howling wind, shielding my face to look back. Vamp was moving toward one of the bikes, and I spotted Nix’s eyes shining like embers through the smoke as he followed.

  I gave them one last wave, then sprinted back toward the row of airbikes. As I approached, I triggered the key that disengaged the emitter locks and zeroed in on the one that chirped in response. It was a slick-looking black and chrome deal, and when I jumped on the seat, I saw the rearview mirror was adorned with hanging tassels. Each strand was threaded through a row of human teeth. I jerked it free and threw it away as I fired up the bike.

  “Thirty-six and 103rd!” I called. Vamp straddled the bike a few spots down, and signaled back.

  I opened the emitters, and my stomach dropped as I rocketed up through the stream of wind and ash howling over the top of the lot. Black grit and soot chaff stung my arms, raining against the side of the bike until I cleared the worst of it and was out into the open air where twilight had fallen. The city blazed with light past the wall in the distance.

  Off to my right, I saw Vamp and Nix appear in a plume of gray ash. Behind them, the force field glowed faint blue in front of the great wall of the ship’s north face.

  I didn’t know how long it would take for security at the wall to detect us, but I guessed not long. I brought the bike around and locked on to the gate hub’s location with the GPS.

  Please let this work....

  I leaned forward and held on tight as I gave the bike everything she had. Below me, the sea of ruins and rubble became a blur of gray and black.

  Less than a minute later, something flashed up ahead. I shielded my face with one forearm, squinting into the light as one of the floodlights found me. A red warning message appeared on the windscreen’s heads-up display.

  Stop your approach and wait for security to escort you back to the wall.

  There wasn’t time to worry about what Vamp and Nix were doing. The message flashed as I cut the wheel and the bike spun around 180 degrees in the air. The wave of dust and ash kicked up in the wake blotted out the worst of the blinding light, but the engine sputtered and when I tried to breathe in I choked on it.

  I opened up the emitters, and the nose of the bike lurched upward. Hard flecks of rim sediment rained over me as I rocketed up out of the cloud and into the clear night air above. The bike threatened to go over, but I locked my feet in the metal stirrups and held fast as I tried to aim the nose back down.

  The floodlight swept back in my direction and found me again as I cranked the throttle, but when I tried to turn, the bike hesitated. Rim dust had clogged up the cooling vents, causing one side to drag. As I dove, I went into a spin.

  The skyline streaked by in front of me, and I caught a flash of Vamp and Nix’s bike as a warning shot boomed through the night air. I began to slip off the edge of the seat, and struggled to right myself while more warning messages flashed on the windshield’s holoscreen: Stop the bike or you will be fired on.

  I wrestled the spin into a wide spiral. I’d intended to head back down on the other side of the cloud before they could find me again, but I was still way too high and totally exposed.

  Don’t shoot, I broadcast. I had no idea if they were listening or not. Don’t shoot. We escaped from—

  You are wanted by Hangfei security. Stop your approach to the wall and await a military escort.

  I can’t, I—

  This is your last warning.

  I pushed back my heel on the right pedal, killing the emitter that had lost its partner. The bike steadied about ninety feet in the air and below I could see the big, lazy swirl of dust beginning to lean in the night breeze. A shower of grit streaked diagonally through the beam of the floodlight as it zeroed back in on me.

  A bright light began to flash from somewhere ahead, and something whipped by on my left like a stream of giant, angry hornets. A beat later I heard the low, rhythmic thumping of automatic gunfire.

  Last chance.
Stop the bike—

  I cut the channel and pegged the forward throttle. As I picked up speed and the wind began to roar in my ears, the turret opened up again. Tracer rounds spat through the darkness below as they struggled to adjust the angle.

  There was a break in the shooting and I killed all the emitters at once. The inertia carried me forward, and then my stomach fluttered as the bike began to fall like a thrown stone. I began a free fall down toward the wall where a turret spat out an arc of shell casings. Rounds whistled over my head as I dipped below the line of fire.