The Burn Zone

by James K. Decker

  “Don’t move,” I called, my breath pluming in front of me. He looked down at his arms and hands in horror as small back bodies began to worm their way up from beneath the skin. I could see their wings pulling free, and their hooklike legs pawing at the air as they struggled.

  “Jei!” a Pan-Slav voice barked from the alley mouth. “To chto proishodit tam?”

  I caught a glimpse of a man dressed in a long wool coat and carrying a machine gun as I ran to Alexei.

  “Don’t move!”

  One of the flies wriggled free and extended its wings. I swatted it down onto the ground and stomped on it, dropping to my knees in front of Alexei and throwing the skin around both of us.

  Please let this work. Please—

  “Ostanovit’!” the guard yelled, raising his weapon as he marched toward us.

  I looked back through the collapsing gate and saw Nix, his pink eyes staring back at me. He stood in the tunnel next to a second gate he’d opened, while a cloud of flame erupted behind him. Vamp was with him, conscious now and struggling to run after me as Nix held him back. Slumped in Nix’s other arm was Dragan.

  Nix pushed Dragan through and forced Vamp in after him. He had turned then to grab a woman from the bed behind him when another explosion went off, and a column of flame roared down the tunnel.

  “Nix!” I shouted.

  In the second before the fire took him, he closed his gate. I saw him, a dark shape engulfed in the brilliant blaze, and then Sillith’s portal winked out.

  “Ostanovit’!” the guard yelled again. He stepped in front of us, pointing his rifle.

  Sillith’s remains quivered one last time. The world hitched again, the walls of the alley warping in front of me, and then flashed away.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Thirty

  2:59:29 BC

  I awoke to darkness, phantom tickles from Sillith’s slimy skin still playing on my neck and shoulders. My body felt weightless, suspended in warm, thick fluid, and when I reached in front of me I couldn’t find the surface.

  “Don’t panic,” a voice said. It came from the 3i’s audio plug, tinny and faint. I flailed, struggling to swim toward what I thought was up, but it was like trying to move through oil, and if anything, I sank deeper.

  “Don’t panic,” the voice said again.

  I pulled the 3i display up, my jerky movements sending windows and pages spinning every which way. The air burned in my chest.

  “Breathe,” the voice said. I shook my head.

  “Yes, you can.”

  I struggled again, panic welling up inside me.

  “Trust me. Calm down, and breathe.”

  I didn’t trust the voice, and even if I did my brain wouldn’t cooperate. It wasn’t until I began to suffocate that my body gave in and out of desperation sucked in the breath that I knew would kill me.

  It didn’t. I sucked warm liquid in through my mouth and nose, and it gushed down my throat into my lungs. The sensation was horrible, but instead of choking, relief flooded through me. It felt as if I’d taken a big breath of clean, crisp air.

  “See?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Breathe.”

  I relaxed, and let myself get used to breathing the heavy stuff. A contact request appeared on the 3i, the pink heart pulsing in time with my own. I accepted it.

  Nix?

  “No. You know me as Ava.”

  Right. The new haan female. The one who I first approached, and who sent Nix to kill me.

  Where am I?

  “You are on what you call the ship,” she said. “You are safe.”

  Why can’t I see?

  “There is nothing wrong with your eyes. There is no light for you to see by, that’s all.”

  An image of Sillith flashed through the fog, the real Sillith, and panic spiked. I jerked again, sloshing in the darkness.

  Dragan.

  “He is alive.”

  I shook my head. He was—

  “He is alive. Your friend Vamp is with him. They are both okay.”

  My body relaxed, a little. The kid?

  “Also alive. The engineered larva have been removed and destroyed. He will no longer be a danger when he leaves.”

  And Shiliuyuán?

  She paused, just a beat, before responding, “Destroyed.”

  What happened to the people down there?

  Again, the pause.

  “Gone.”

  I felt her presence, then, a tentative approach through the surrogate cluster.

  “We were able to heal your father,” she said. “He is still weak, but he will survive. You will all be returned to Hangfei shortly.”

  What do you—I cut the message short. I wanted to know how much of what I’d seen was real, and what else the haan might be hiding from us. I wanted to know what the haan’s real intentions were, what the exact nature of the deal they’d made with our government was. I wanted to know if the men who made that deal had any idea of what they were really dealing with when they made it.

  I wanted to know all that and more, but it occurred to me that with Sillith dead, along with every human who had planned the burn, there might be no one left who knew how much I’d learned. It was possible that, for all Ava and the rest of her kind knew, I was still unaware of their secret.

  “What do you wish to know?” Ava prompted.

  I was wondering if you knew anything about Nix.

  “Nix has not returned.”

  Is he dead?

  “He has not returned.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. We’d been through a lot, he and I. I’d raised him, and he’d helped me now, a lot. If I was honest, I knew I wouldn’t have succeeded without his help, but I couldn’t get the images out of my mind. I told myself it was the lie, the deception, and not the way they looked, the way they were, but I don’t know. I think it was both.

  I want to go home.

  “Shortly.”

  Thank you.

  “You have done us, and your people, a great service, Sam,” she said. “It will not be forgotten. Had you and your father not intervened, it might have meant the end of both our species.”

  Both?

  “As we need you, you need us. If we don’t help you ascend, you will not survive. Remember this.”

  Her presence lingered just for a moment, like a hand on my shoulder that was reluctant to move away. I had started to ask what she meant when there was a tingle inside my head, and I felt sleep come. It rushed in, sending me into blackness so fast I barely had time to think.

  “Don’t judge us based on the actions of one individual.” Her voice had grown very faint.

  My body felt weightless, like I was adrift in space, as the 3i began to fade. The pink borders flickered, and began to disappear.

  “We care about you ...”

  The 3i went dark, and the blackness closed in.

  “... and as promised, we will save you.”

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Thirty-one

  336:42:03 AC

  The elevator squeaked as it made its way up, and I adjusted my gear’s strap on my sunburned shoulder. It had been a long, hot day, and the cold air dribbling down from the overhead vent felt like heaven. I closed my eyes and looked up, letting it cool the sweat on my face.

  “Sam?” a voice asked. I opened my eyes a slit and saw that the ad box screen had lit up gray.

  “Don’t start,” I warned.

  “You could always take the stairs,” the A.I. pointed out, and I sighed, still looking up into the vent.

  “Go ahead.”

  The screen flickered, and an image of a man in uniform appeared. He was handsome, square-jawed, and had perfect features. His uniform was clean, crisp, and sharp. He stared out of the screen at me, not smiling, and his piercing eyes met mine. I didn’t know if he was an actor, a virtual construct, or a real soldier, but his eyes were dead-on. They had that same intense, confident, powerful look that Dragan’s had.

  He didn’
t speak. No music played. No logo or crawling text appeared. A few seconds later his image faded and was replaced with mine, a shot taken when I’d first stepped into the car. I looked sunbaked and sweaty, my hair greasy and wind-mussed. My eyes looked glazed and tired.

  I got a good look at myself, wondering if the A.I. had tweaked it or if I really looked that ragged, when the image faded again. In its place appeared a combination of the soldier and me. My face and body, in a smartly tailored version of his uniform. The sweat was gone from my face. My hair was impeccably groomed, styled even shorter than it already was and not a one out of place. The tired look left my eyes and was replaced with that same look of stony, confident power.

  The image stayed there for a minute. Then the logo for the United Defense Force appeared, with block letters underneath: BE MORE.

  The words, and the image, faded. I smiled, laughing once through my nose.

  “That’s a good one,” I said.

  “Yeah, that one gives me chills,” the A.I. said.

  “I figured it would be butt implants or something.”

  “I do have several ads in that category.”

  “Maybe next time.”

  The elevator stopped, and as the doors squealed open I stepped out into the elevator lobby.

  Our new building was nicer than our last one, and in a nicer part of town. Not posh by any stretch, but nice. After a month it was starting to feel like home finally, and things were beginning to approach normal again.

  As I headed down the hall, I noticed a sticker on someone’s door. The logo had been popping up in the subway, and on everything from bumper stickers to T-shirts. It showed a silhouette of the PSE, with three nukes about to strike it.

  Hwong’s death was a big deal. Pretty much every media outlet covered the terrible news nonstop for weeks, telling the story of how he was killed by Pan-Slav bombers during a visit to the border zone. The whole city was in mourning at the loss of a hero, and their hatred for the Pan-Slavs and everyone who lived there had all but boiled over. Chat rooms and netcasts were glutted with cries to fry them into a giant field of slag.

  A month earlier, I would have been chanting right along with them, but a lot had happened since then. I’d never been able to get the image of that soldier with the concrete saw out of my head. He’d acted on Hwong’s orders and Hwong, not one to be content with stickers and online venting, had actually tried to do what the anonymous masses were calling for. He had done a lot for us, and I couldn’t ignore all that, but I couldn’t be sad that he was gone either.

  I rounded the corner and crooked my neck, lighting up the 3i and bringing the holographic window to the front. I did a quick spin through the social taps, sending out an update that I was off work and back home. A message immediately dropped into the tray from Vamp.

  Check this out. There was a video attachment.

  I set it aside, and as I headed down the hall I sent back a response.

  I will. It’s my last night here. Talk to you tomorrow.

  When I got to the front door, I tapped my badge to the scanner and waited for the snap of the bolt. I went in and put my gear down next to the wall on my right as the door swung shut behind me.

  “Hello?” I called. A light was on in the kitchen, but it was quiet. I expected to hear Pan-Slav chatter, something I still seemed to hear all the time in spite of Dragan’s efforts to wean the kid off it, but there was no conversation, no TV, no music, just the hum of the air conditioner.

  I crossed the room toward the kitchen and found Dragan sitting at the table there. There was an expensive bottle of anise liquor in front of him, and two shot glasses, one in front of him and the other in front of the empty chair across from him. An ashtray sat between the glasses, along with a fresh pack of cigarillos whose tips had been dipped in Zen oil.

  He smiled when he saw me, but I could see something else behind the look. His eyes were thoughtful, and serious.

  “What’s all this?” I asked him.

  “I figured we’d spend your last night here hanging out, just you and me. Like old times.”

  I hadn’t expected it. When I first told him I was moving out, it seemed to make him mad, but he was so relieved I was alive that he didn’t harp on it. Afterward, as the day got closer, he kind of clammed up more and more. I’d been waiting for a fight, or something.

  “You know it’s not because of you, right?”

  “I know. You’re twenty, Sam. It’s time.”

  “I’m not going far.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m still going to miss you, though.”

  I crossed around the table and leaned down to hug him. He put his arms around me and squeezed, holding me the way he used to when I was little, the way that always made me feel safe. We stayed like that for a while, until he patted my back. Then I kissed his cheek and stepped away.

  “I’ll never be far,” I said.

  “Same here.”

  “So, where’s the brat?” I asked, moving to the free chair and sitting down.

  “Ling’s got him for the night.”

  “Lucky her.”

  He cracked the bottle and poured out two shots. He held his up, and I clinked it with mine before we knocked them back. The liquor was sweet, and smooth going down.

  I looked at the pack of smokes and the ashtray. “You gonna let me smoke in the apartment?”

  He shrugged. “You do it all the time anyway.”

  “When you’re not here.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I reached for the pack and peeled the foil off, then opened it and held the smokes under my nose. They smelled good. I drew one out and pinched off the tip containing the Zen oil, dropping it in the ashtray. Dragan grinned.

  “Sorry,” I said, sticking the cigarillo in the corner of my mouth while I fished out my lighter.

  “Don’t be. You’re better off.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t have to look so happy about it.”

  “How long has it been?” he asked.

  I shrugged, lighting the smoke. “A while.” It had been exactly thirteen days.

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Got tired of being fuzzy, I guess.”

  Dragan’s grin turned to a smile, a real smile that made crow’s-feet spread from the corners of his eyes. He nodded, and the smile faded as his look turned serious.

  “About what happened,” he said, putting the shot glass down, “at Shiliuyuán Station.”

  We hadn’t talked about it since that day, not really. We’d talked about everything that led up to it, and how we both managed to get out, but we’d never talked about the main thing, the big thing.

  I nodded, and felt my throat begin to burn. I guess I didn’t think I’d make it out without him saying something, but I was afraid, terrified of what he would say.

  “I left you,” I said.

  “You did the right thing, Sam.”

  I shook my head. “I ran, and left you both there to—”

  “You didn’t run,” he said.

  “I did, though.”

  “You made a tough call,” he said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table. “You put your own needs aside and made a very tough call. You could have lost people who are important to you, and I know what that means to you, believe me. You knew that, but you chose to save them. That was the right thing to do. The life of one forty-something-year-old man isn’t worth the lives of millions.”

  “It is to me.”

  “And still, you made the call. I’m proud of you.”

  I swallowed, feeling relieved and sad at the same time. “I thought you might feel like I betrayed you or something.”

  “Is that what this is about? Why you’re leaving?”

  I shook my head. “No, not that. It’s just...”

  “Time.”

  “Something like that.”

  He poured out two more shots and I sucked in smoke and held it while took the second shot, blowing it away while gazing out the window. The s
un had just dipped below the skyline’s staircase row of the Bojo Towers, and off in the distance, beyond the rust brown, one swatch in the sky had turned a particular shade of pink.

  “You ever hear from your haan friend?” Dragan asked.