The Burn Zone

by James K. Decker

  “This is not your planet!” She took three more quick steps toward him, and every movement in her body implied a threat. The shape inside her skull bristled as her muscles flexed and coiled around the bone underneath. Even the alien movement inside her guts seemed to have focused on Hwong as she stopped with only ten yards separating them, her hands flexed into claws. It was clear Hwong still believed her to be as breakable as she seemed, though, and despite the display he still stood his ground.

  “You won’t detonate those weapons because you wouldn’t dare,” she said, glaring at him. “Your leaders want the defense shield we can provide, and the promise of more power to come, and they wouldn’t allow it.”

  “They aren’t here, Sillith. I am. I am empowered to give the order.”

  “You only think you have power because we let you believe it. We stay in your settlements and let you stand guard outside so that you will feel superior, but you aren’t. This isn’t your world.”

  “This is our world!”

  “This was never your world!”

  “It was always ours!” Hwong snapped, barking his words out suddenly in a spray of spit. “Our world! Our planet! You are refugees at best! Any benefits you get, any privileges you get are all at my discretion. Do you understand me? You continue to exist at all here because I let you! Me! No one else! Do you understand me, Sillith?”

  “I am warning you,” she said, lowering her voice. “If you attempt to go back on our deal—”

  Hwong glanced back and signaled Ligong. “Kill her.”

  The gunfire that erupted was immediate, and pounded through my ears even as I plugged them with my fingers. I could feel the rapid-fire reports rattle through my chest as shell casings spat through the air all around me, and I crouched to try and stay out of the line of fire.

  Vamp and Nix hit the deck next to me, Vamp shielding me uselessly with one arm as bullets sparked off the shelving in front of us. Sillith had disappeared from the spot where she’d stood, but my eyes caught a flash from the shadows above and I looked up to see a pair of flame red eyes where her body hung at the peak of its leap.

  “There!” a voice boomed. Lasers traced conflicting paths through the hazy air as the soldiers attempted to retarget her. Nix slithered an arm around my waist, and I was jerked away from the soldiers with Vamp in tow as Sillith plummeted down through a cloud of steam.

  She landed so hard I felt it through the floor, and when I looked back I saw the soldier between us jerk in surprise as his rifle flew from his hands. The weapon went soaring through the air, end over end, as she lashed out toward him. His body seized, and he let out a scream as his arm came free in a spray of blood. Before I could see what happened, he was falling to the floor in three big pieces as, at the same second, the two soldiers next to him had their weapons ripped away from them.

  From the ceiling above, constructs were being shaken loose and dropping down like pedaling, squirming rain. I turned away, swatting a small, crawling machine from off my shoulder where it landed as I bolted through the fray. Soldiers were regrouping, adjusting to account for Smith’s sudden new location. Bullets whizzed by over our heads as we approached a cluster of crouched soldiers who had begun firing a heavy volley at something behind us.

  Lights like hot coals appeared in the murk of the vats, and I realized they were eyes. One of the clones broke the surface in a shower of fluid and grabbed the soldier standing nearby. He screamed, but before he could even turn around, something struck his back and his chest exploded outward. The remaining four clones erupted from their vats as his body fell to the floor, clambering over the sides as the soldiers fired.

  The curtains of wire filaments that extended up toward the ceiling high above us were undulating now, rippling, as more and more movement began to fill the room. Nix led us past one of the shelves as a burst of gunfire managed to punch through the neck and face of one of the clones. There was another doorway on the far side of the room, and Nix was signaling, pointing toward it.

  A torso, trailing ragged shirttails in the place of legs, went arcing over our heads and crashed into the shelves farther down. As we made a run for it, I glanced back to see Hwong faced off against Sillith. He took aim with the rail pistol, but before he could fire, it was torn out of his hand. Sillith slammed one palm into his chest and he staggered back, nearly falling to the floor before righting himself. He sucked in air with obvious effort, his face dark and his normally cool expression twisted in pain. The fibers of his light combat armor flexed as he unsheathed a wicked-looking knife from his belt and angled it toward her.

  She went for him and he ducked, whipping around in a circle and slamming the point of the knife into her side. Before she could grab him, he’d pulled it free and spun around behind her. He lunged again and buried the blade deep into her opposite side.

  He was clearly expecting her to be crippled if not dead, but Sillith didn’t appear fazed at all. Hwong wrenched the knife free and skated back, preparing to strike again, when suddenly his body seized as if he’d been grabbed by invisible hands. The armor plating creaked, and his eyes bugged out.

  “Shoot the fucking thi—” he grunted through his teeth.

  His arms shot out by his sides to form a cross. Then the armor plates cracked and sprang away as they both rolled suddenly, hands spinning 360 degrees and the shoulders twisting out of their sockets. Under the suit the material of his shirt tore away along with rubbery strips of skin until the two limbs were pulled free. They hung in midair for a second, and then thumped down onto the floor next to him.

  Before he could even scream his feet launched up off the floor. Armor cracked apart like an insect’s shell as his legs were splayed, splitting him down the center. I turned away at the last second, covering my mouth as I heard the guts splash down onto the floor.

  The mites tingled with sadistic delight as Sillith took a moment to admire what she had just done. I felt her satisfaction drum down into the pleasure centers of my brain not only for squashing a human but also for silencing Hwong, who she hated even more intensely than most.

  Why does she hate us so much? I’d felt arrogance, annoyance, and frustration from the haan ... even contempt at times, but never hatred and never anything approaching this level. Something deep inside Sillith made her hate us and everything we stood for in a way that I couldn’t even begin to understand.

  She was still soothing that hatred, letting the sight of Hwong’s mutilated body slake it even if it was only for a minute, when Ligong took aim with her rail gun from across the room and fired.

  She almost got her too, but Sillith spotted her at the last second and the shot went wide. She never got a second shot off. Sillith lashed out, and the fog between them was disturbed by something I couldn’t see. The gun leapt from Ligong’s hands and spun away, punching through the curtain of filaments like a rock through a spider’s web before clattering across the concrete to strike the wall next to the doorway ahead. Ligong flew forward, across the room to Sillith’s waiting hand, which clamped down on the chest plate of her combat armor.

  The armor whined as Ligong attempted to wrestle free, but before she could the collar of the suit broke free with a crunch and one half spun across the floor. The chest plate was peeled free then by some invisible hand as she was forced to her knees, and Sillith’s right fist reared back behind her.

  “Screw you, you fuck—” Ligong spat as Sillith let her fist fly.

  It punched straight through Ligong’s breastbone, forming a deep pocket in the middle of her chest. The life went out of her face, one eyelid drooping as her struggles stopped cold, and her arms fell by her sides like hanging lead sashes.

  Sillith shoved her away like a piece of garbage, and the body tumbled back into the fray still going on around them. Then, without warning, she turned and ran. Steam swirled in a wake behind her as she darted through the doorway on the other side of the room.

  “Shit,” I said. “Go, go now.”

  “Where the hell is she
going?” Vamp asked.

  “She’s going to get the kid,” I said. “She’s going to take him through herself before it’s too late. Come on!”

  “Sam—”

  I shoved past a soldier, his uniform spattered with blood, and ran as fast as I could after Sillith.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  03:10:41 BC

  I snatched up Ligong’s rail gun from the floor next to the doorway, hefting the heavy weapon as I stormed through. As soon as I did I stopped short and skated across the slick floor a few feet before regaining my balance.

  The far side of the room was littered with piles upon piles of human bodies. Some were so badly eaten from the inside out that they were little more than empty skins, torn open and slopped down. Others had empty guts, empty rib cages, or were missing limbs. Sillith’s failed experiments covered the floor, stacked four high and even higher in the corners, hundreds and hundreds of bodies, decaying and oozing together into a swamp of bones and jellied flesh.

  Vamp coughed, holding one arm in front of his nose and mouth, as he clomped to a stop next to me and Nix moved in behind him.

  Sam.

  The 3i chat came back, flickering on in the air in front of me.

  “Dragan’s back on,” I said. “He’s close.”

  “Where did she go?” Vamp asked.

  I turned, clamping a hand over my nose and mouth to keep from gagging. Across the warehouse floor the concrete had been broken away to form a huge, jagged sinkhole in the floor. Trickles of water wandered through the creeping green-black lines that covered every surface, and a haze of steam boiled up under the ceiling.

  Old hospital bunks with their bedding removed were stacked along the walls, while trays of equipment that looked new were positioned at the mouth of the pit. Wires snaked down the walls in thick bundles, then wandered across the floor and down over the edge of the hole.

  As I gazed down over the side, I saw the pit plummeted down into darkness. Arranged in a ring about six feet down from the top were a series of metal framed bunks, their heads fixed to metal supports that left the length of each hanging out into the open air. There were maybe twenty total, and beneath them, a few feet down, was another ring, and below them another. I counted eight levels before they were lost in the shadows below. Glassy, hexagonal plates interlocked to form paths between the beds, starting at the sinkhole’s lip and then following the wall down into blackness.

  “There,” I said, pointing.

  The plates were graviton emitters. Sillith was marching down the wall, dragging Alexei behind her as she passed under rows of beds that fanned out over them like archways.

  I crept to the edge of the pit and looked down. Lying in each bed was a person, the eyes covered with a slick rubber mask and tubes sprouting from the nostrils. Warm, wet air rose from down below, creating a low moan as it passed through the bed frames and ruffled the sheets. Some of them were stained with blood, and some were more red than white as the hot air inflated them like sails and then subsided, letting them settle back down over the bodies underneath. When the blanket of one of the closest beds stirred, I saw exposed ribs underneath, and a dark, glistening gap where the man’s insides had been. Somehow he was still alive, his eyeballs moving back and forth behind the thin rubber mask.

  “Sillith, wait!” I shouted.

  More gunfire erupted from back the way we’d come as I edged closer to the mouth of the sinkhole. I squatted down, and when I touched the surface of the nearest hexagonal plate with one palm, it seemed to almost stick there.

  Forgive me, I couldn’t—

  “Vamp, come with me,” I said. He hustled over as I put the sole of one shoe down on the pathway, then the other. They seemed to be drawn toward it. Not stuck like glue, just a gentle but insistent pull.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, grabbing one of my arms. I squirmed loose.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “They’ll—”

  The words stuck in my throat as my butt came up off the floor and in a flash the whole world flipped around me. I heard Vamp bark something and his hand clamped down on my wrist in a death grip as I stumbled but didn’t fall.

  I was standing on a smooth metal walkway at the base of a circular tunnel that extended forward into darkness, where Sillith was dragging Alexei. To my left and right, the edges of metal bunks extended upward, each at a slight inward angle. A few feet forward, another set of bunks were propped behind them, each with a man lying on it completely upside down. The bedding and the men on them seemed stuck to the bunks, the sheets hanging toward the far end of the tunnel like they were stuck in a perpetual strong breeze.

  Looking up, I saw the bunks ringed the entire tunnel. All of their occupants’ feet pointed in toward the middle.

  “Sam!”

  I turned back around and saw the tunnel ended abruptly in that direction into what appeared to be the middle of a big open space with no floor or ceiling. Across the chasm were metal rafters, with light fixtures that were pointed toward me.

  Vamp was standing on the wall just at the bottom edge of the tunnel as if he lay on an invisible platform.

  “Come on,” I said, gesturing for him to follow. “I’m going after her!”

  He shook his head, but before I turned I saw him sit down and put his feet on the plating. Ahead, Sillith got snagged on one of the bedsheets and tore it away. Not sure which way to fall, it did a weird tumble in the air as it tried to zero in on any one of the eight walkways that lined the tunnel at regular intervals. When it couldn’t decide, it fluttered down the tunnel in front of her like some kind of festival ghost, rippling away until it disappeared into the shadows.

  “Shoot her,” Vamp called from behind.

  “I can’t. I might hit—”

  I stopped, staring as a rush of hot air stirred the sheets around me.

  “What?” Vamp asked, closer now.

  “There.” I pointed up ahead. “There!”

  I could only make out his hair, but it was all I needed. The salt-and-pepper sweep had become so familiar I’d have recognized it anywhere, and when I did my mind seized on it.

  “Sam, hold on!”

  I sprinted down the walkway to the bunk and stopped short, grabbing fistfuls of the sheet. As I pulled it away, a lump rose in my throat, and my eyes filled with tears until his face blurred in front of me. It was him. It was Dragan.

  His broad chest rose and fell slowly as the air current disturbed the black and gray mat of hair there. The tattoos were his, indelible markers that labeled him mine, and nobody else’s. The military tat on his shoulder, the dragon coiled across his chest... they belonged to Dragan—no one else. It was him, and he was alive.

  Sam, forgive me, I couldn’t let them do it. I know —

  I moved onto the edge of the bed, and as my second foot left the walkway, the world flipped again and I fell down into the bed next to him. Over the edge of the bunk, the pit went down into oblivion, Vamp staring back up at me from where he stood on the wall at a ninety-degree angle.

  “Dragan!” I yelled, pulling the sheet away. He didn’t move. I saw the more recent tattoo that ringed his right forearm, braided patterns bordering the name Xiao-Xing, and my voice broke as I shook him again. “Dragan, wake up! Wake—”

  I choked as pain stabbed deep into my guts and I doubled over.

  I couldn’t let them do it. I know how it looks, but I couldn’t.

  “Sam!”

  Vamp came to me as I slid off the bed and tumbled back onto the graviton plating, my stomach lurching as the world spun around me. I went down on my knees, curling over until my forehead touched the metal plate. Something was moving in there, growing. I felt his hand touch the back of my neck, his thumb stroking the knobs of my spine as he leaned close to whisper in my ear.

  “Sam, can you move?”

  “It hurts.”

  “I know, but it’s got to be now—”

  He let out a grunt as something whipped past me and hit hi
m in the chest. He staggered back on his heels, his mouth gaping, and then fell onto his back.

  “Vamp!” I screamed, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t move.

  ... but I couldn’t let them all die, not even for you.

  I made myself uncurl. It felt like there were pins in there, and a bad stitch stopped me for a second, but I was able to sit up and rest back on my heels. My breath was coming fast and shallow.

  “Sillith, wait!”

  She stopped, and I could see there was something in her free hand. She activated it with her thumb, and a point of bright, white light appeared in front of her like a tiny sun.

  “Oh, no.”

  The point expanded into a large hexagon with blazing white edges. Through it, I could see brick face and peeling paint on the side of a metal trash bin. Graffiti was scrawled next to it in sloppy Pan-Slav characters.