Burn this City: A Dystopian Novel

by Brenda Poppy

  They chatted as they ate, sharing bites and stories and sweet smiles. For a moment, Burn forgot her mission, swept up in the elegance and abundance of this world. But as she pushed the final crumbs around her plate, her reason for being there resurfaced, and she knew that she needed to get to work.

  “Do you think you could give me a few minutes?” she asked as sweetly as she could. “I need to find the ladies’ room,” she lied, getting up from her seat and looking around. “I’ll join you back in the ballroom when I’m done.”

  He agreed, giving her a bright smile before walking back the way they had come. Glancing around to make sure she was alone, she moved her hand to her necklace and pressed down the button.

  “Scar, are you there?” Burn was half afraid that the pendant unit wouldn’t work or that her sister wouldn’t be there, but her worries were for nothing. The reply came within seconds.

  “I’m here. What took you so long?”

  Burn sighed in relief. “I had to mingle,” she said in place of an excuse. “Cross says hi, by the way.”

  “Shit, you’ve been busy. Find out anything good yet?”

  “Nothing,” Burn said quietly as she began testing out various doors in the hallway.

  One opened into a small kitchen area, and she glimpsed a few servants plating trays of food before quickly shutting the door again. Another opened into an elegant bathroom with shiny fixtures and deep red wallpaper. She closed that door, too, venturing further down the hall.

  The next door she tried was locked, and she slipped out her lipstick and unscrewed the bottom to free her biometric key, which opened the door in seconds. She glanced inside, but it was dark, and she couldn’t make out the shapes. Burn dug through her bag again, this time coming out with the glasses. Turning on night sight, she glanced around the room again, but saw only piles of old furniture and rolled-up carpets leaning against the wall. A storage cupboard.

  Burn narrated her movements for Scar, giving her brief updates with each new room she discovered. Eventually, she reached the end of the hall and turned left, following a new hallway into the back of the house.

  This hallway was dark, obviously not intended for guests, and Burn was grateful for the night sight feature Scar had installed on the lenses. There were fewer doors here, and each led to a larger space than before – a spare bedroom, a fitness area, a library with plush chairs.

  Soon, she had reached the end of the hallway, with only one more unexplored door left. Burn was running out of time and knew if she was gone much longer that Kaz would start to worry. But she couldn’t leave empty-handed.

  She approached the final door and placed her finger on the scanner. But instead of allowing her entry, the door beeped and another panel slid open above the first. Curious, Burn looked closer – and was surprised when a red light shot out and swept over her eyes. It was a retinal scanner, she realized after a beat, glad that she had Scar’s glasses on.

  The machine thought for a few seconds, taking its time to process her scan. The extra wait made Burn nervous, and she wondered if some sort of silent alarm would be triggered if the glasses didn’t work. She listened for footsteps coming in her direction, but all was quiet.

  Eventually, she heard a small click and the door swung open before her. She let out a quiet sigh of relief and slipped inside.

  The room was almost completely dark, save for the light coming in through a large window on the opposite wall. The window looked out into the night sky, like a framed picture of the stars and moon and nearby planets. For a heartbeat, before her eyes and her glasses adjusted to the space, the window and its contents were all she could see.

  Gradually, the rest of the room came into focus. The walls were dark, covered in a wallpaper design Burn couldn’t quite make out, and dotted with canvases in golden frames. Inching closer, Burn realized the framed pictures weren’t paintings, like she had presumed, but maps. She walked slowly around the space, mentally cataloging the places depicted on them – the Saffron Quarter, the Peace Sector, the Collina Quarter, and on and on.

  This was Kasis, reduced to flat, two-dimensional space and repurposed as art. Burn found it strange to see her city like that – lifeless and displayed like a prize on the walls of the powerful. The sight made her uncomfortable, and she turned her attention away from the maps, surveying the rest of the room.

  Along the far edge, just in front of the window, was a large desk bathed in moonlight. It looked solid and heavy, the kind of desk specifically crafted for important people to sit in while they made decisions about other people’s lives. Burn turned to make her way to the desk, hoping it might hold some key piece of information, but her progress was almost instantly impeded by another piece of furniture in her path. Outside of the reach of the window’s light was another surface, this one a circular table, and Burn had walked right into it, sending the small figures on top of it clattering in various directions.

  Burn swore under her breath as she tried to replace the small toys in their previous locations. Her mind, confused as to why an office would house a collection of children’s toys, froze when she looked down at the statuettes she held in her hands. Soldiers. Little toy soldiers. Cautiously she bent down to table, looking more closely at the scene. Then she understood. This wasn’t an office at all. It was a war room.

  Chapter 14

  Little toy soldiers were set against little helpless citizens who were fleeing in terror. Burn couldn’t tell where in the city this gruesome diorama was depicting, but she could tell it was going to be a massacre. Little barricades had been constructed at the end of tiny alleyways and miniature streets, trapping the people within the nightmare. Many had already perished, lying facedown on the table, and Burn was unsure how much of that was her doing and how much had already been staged.

  She felt a sudden pain in her hand and looked down, seeing one of the toy soldiers still clasped in her angry grasp, his gun broken and his legs twisted at an unnatural angle. She had been clutching it so hard that its gun had pierced her palm, covering the soldier in small drops of blood that appeared black in the darkness.

  “Burn? Burn, what’s happening?” came Scar’s voice in her ear, soft but insistent.

  “They’re planning a slaughter,” was all she could get out.

  “What? What do you mean a slaughter? Slaughtering who?”

  Burn came to, pulling herself up from the table and back into the real world. “I don’t know.” Then she spotted the desk again, her brain ticking. “But maybe I can find out.”

  Careful to avoid colliding with the table – or any other furniture in the dim room – she made her way purposefully to the desk. Pushing back the large leather chair, she set herself down in its cool embrace and got to work examining the wooden monolith.

  The surface of the desk was annoyingly tidy, holding only a pen, a paperweight, and blank pad of paper. Burn flipped through the pad, hoping to find an absentminded note or code word, but discovered nothing among its pages.

  Disheartened, she turned her attention to the drawers. Her heart dropped further. Instead of biometric scanners or retinal readers, they were secured by large old-fashioned locks with perfectly crafted keyholes.

  “Damn it,” she muttered, both to herself and her sister. “They’ve gone old-school, Scar. I need an actual key to open this.”

  A few seconds of silence greeted her, but then Scar’s voice returned, bright and eager. “Unscrew the earpieces of your glasses,” she advised without further explanation.

  Confused, but not wanting to argue, Burn removed the glasses, casting the room back into complete darkness. After a few moments of fidgeting with one of the ends, however, something gave, and a long thin utensil dropped into her hand. Doing the same with the other side, she released the second half of the antiquated lock-picks and stared down at them.

  “You’re a genius,” she muttered to Scar through the comms. “A mad genius.” Her sister didn’t reply, but Burn knew she was proud of herself for this one. Sh
e put the glasses back on, now lighter, and looked down at the small metal tools in her hands.

  It had been years since she’d used tools like these – maybe even a decade. In his training lessons, her father had instructed her on how to open even the most difficult of locks, but she’d never put the skill to use in the real world. Despite her doubts, though, her fingers seemed to remember the familiar objects, and she hastily got to work on the top drawer.

  A minute went by. Then two. Burn was getting frustrated with herself and knew that she didn’t have much time before Kaz came looking for her. She had to do this and do it now.

  A small click sounded from inside the lock and Burn sighed in relief, pulling the drawer open. Bingo. Sitting atop a stack of documents was a tab, the screen black and lifeless. She pressed the button on the side to boot it up and watched as the screen came to life.

  “Enter Password,” the screen read. Burn dove back into her bag, coming up with the cash card Scar had made for her.

  “You’re up,” she told her sister, placing the card on top of the tab.

  Her sister didn’t respond, but she heard the clattering of a keyboard as Scar began breaking down the device’s security. As she worked, Burn leafed through the papers in the drawer. Most were unimportant – departmental finance statements, memos on rising crime rates, dossiers on assorted inmates and their crimes. Burn glanced over these briefly but couldn’t find a connection between them and the tabletop battle the Peace Force was planning.

  Then her eyes alighted on a report at the bottom of the drawer. She held it up, adjusting her glasses to focus in on the text. “New strain of ManniK found to be particularly potent when administered to mutants,” said the headline. Intrigued, Burn read on.

  “According to this,” she told her sister after scanning a few more lines, “the tainted ManniK that’s been hitting the streets affects those with gifts differently than it does everyone else. Listen to this: ‘Symptoms for the freaks go beyond the blind rage typically seen in normal citizens. When dosed, these mutants demonstrate increased strength, loss of inhibitions and memory, and monstrous violence, even to their friends and loved ones.’ ”

  “Wait,” Burn said as she looked closer at the page. “Some notes have been inscribed in the margin. It looks like it says, ‘Good start. More testing needed to extend duration.’ Testing? They’re testing it on us?!”

  A ball of fire rose in Burn’s chest, threatening to blind her. What were they doing testing drugs on citizens? What right did they have? Her head pounded as she rooted through the rest of the files, looking for more.

  “Burn. Burn!” Scar almost had to scream to get her attention. She’d been so focused on her rage that she hadn’t even heard her sister speak. “I’m in,” Scar continued, drawing Burn’s attention back to the tab. “But it looks like most of the files have been wiped. I’ve copied what I can and am downloading it now, but there doesn’t seem to be much there.”

  Burn picked up the tab to examine it, but instantly stiffened, her eyes on the door. Footsteps. She had heard footsteps coming down the hall in her direction. Multiple people were approaching – and quickly. Her heart sped up in panic. She grabbed the cash card and threw the tab and papers back into the drawer, slamming it shut.

  “Someone’s coming,” she relayed to Scar as she scanned the room for an adequate hiding spot. Her eyes came to rest on the flowing floor-to-ceiling curtains flanking the window, and she darted behind one. She had just enough time to cover her feet and nestle herself into the corner of the window before the door opened and light flooded the room.

  Burn heard several figures enter before closing the door behind them. Her heart raced, and she could hear the blood pumping through her veins. She tried to quiet her breathing, taking long sips of air instead of shallow gasps, but it still sounded far too loud to her highly attuned ears.

  The footsteps moved further into the room, coming to a halt somewhere between the desk and the tabletop war. Someone sat. Others stood. Burn willed herself to stay still, but it felt like her body was vibrating with anxious energy. She grasped her hands in front of her, each hand trying to stop the other from shaking. She knew that any hint of movement would cause the thin piece of fabric to flutter, revealing her presence.

  Someone cleared their throat – a man, judging by the deep sound. The rest of the room hushed, turning their attention to him. Burn, too, focused in on him, holding her breath as she waited.

  “Thank you for joining us,” the unfamiliar voice began. Judging by its cadence and timbre, Burn imagined the speaker as older and distinguished, probably a senior officer and a member of the rule-making elite. Their identities were kept secret, supposedly to guarantee their safety and to “ensure impartiality” – or so no one could bribe or blackmail them to create laws in their favor. But they were corrupt enough on their own, without external influence, and had been ruling in their own favor for decades.

  Burn briefly considered taking out the mint bombs in her bag and chucking the entire container in their direction. With any luck, she’d be able to take out a few of them before she was apprehended or shot down. But, the voice of reason in her head chimed in, they would simply be replaced by equally crooked figures, and life would go on as it always had. Besides, she was more use to the Lunaria alive than as martyr. So she remained where she was, listening from the shadows.

  “You all know why we’re here.” Burn didn’t know and was silently hoping that he would explain anyway, in the typical fashion of egotistical rulers everywhere who stated the obvious for the sole purpose of sounding superior. But, once again that evening, she was disappointed.

  He continued, “We’re standing on the precipice of something exciting, a history-defining moment, if you will. The next few days are crucial to our success – and to the continued success of our great city. I don’t want to keep you long from the festivities, but I thought it was important to keep you all apprised of the evolving situation. I’ll now turn the floor over to General Cross for an update.”

  Cross. Burn’s blood froze. She had known he was at the center of this, whatever this was. Anger and disdain roiled within her as Cross rose, drawing the room’s attention.

  “Thank you, sir,” came his deep voice, silky and cold. The hairs on Burn’s arms prickled. “We stand at a crossroads, one which has the power to change the fate of this city. On one side stand the barbarians, the violent, the mutants who seek to wrench away our control and plunge this city into a sea of blood and chaos. We stand on the other, a barrier between them and the anarchy they so desperately crave.”

  Cross began to move, coming closer and closer to where Burn stood. She looked down, out the window and into the darkness of a sheer drop-off, which offered no promise of escape. If she were forced to flee, it would have to be through a mess of bodies and fire.

  “We only have a few days left to change the tide of this war,” Cross continued. She could sense his presence a few short strides away, his body pointed in her direction. “And we’re nearly ready to strike.” He punctuated his speech with pregnant pauses, reinforcing the importance of his words.

  He came even closer to the window where Burn stood, speaking to the group with his back to them. “In a few days, we’ll have everything we need to make our move. Production of our assault weapons has been increased, and our operatives are armed and trained to kill. Increased recruitment over the last year means we have more than enough bodies to wield those weapons, with more to spare.” A chuckle went around the room at that.

  Fury rose up in Burn’s throat. They were talking about people, about sacrificing human lives. Well, officers’ lives, but still. He was talking about them as if they were disposable, like pawns in his deadly little game. She thought about Kaz and Grayland, about her father and the men like him still serving on the force. Their lives didn’t matter to these people. They were just the currency of war, a commodity to trade for more and more power.

  Burn felt her fists tighten into a ball in
front of her, as if ready for a fight. But the rest of her body remained still behind the curtain, waiting for more.

  “Our research has been promising,” Cross finally continued, drawing out his time in the spotlight. “We’re testing a few more subjects as we speak to fine-tune the formula. But when it’s done, it will be the perfect catalyst.”

  He sounded so confident, so smug about his plan, like there was no chance of failure. Pride cometh before the fall, thought Burn. She couldn’t wait to bring him down and pull that easy confidence out from under him. She just needed a little more information, a few more details to fill in the gaps.

  “When will it be ready?” came another male voice from further away.

  Cross remained where he was, dangerously close to the window. Looking out from her hiding spot, she could already see the tips of his shoes. Another step or two and he’d be fully visible – as would she. Burn held her breath, afraid to exhale for fear of alerting him to her presence.

  “Three days, maybe four,” he said lazily. “I’ll send out the signal once everything’s in place. Don’t worry – you’ll have enough time to prepare before it happens. Just make sure you keep your distance.” Another round of sniggers rippled through the room.

  One man whispered under his breath, “Like we’d ever set foot there,” but it was too quiet to catch Cross’ attention. He merely stood, gazing out the window.

  “Gentleman,” said the initial speaker once more. “I think that’s enough business for tonight. Let us return to the party and our wives – or our mistresses, in some cases.” More chuckles.

  Such a cheerful bunch, thought Burn in derision. Who would have thought that planning a war was such lighthearted work? Meetings of the Lunaria certainly weren’t as entertaining. Maybe if they adopted a similarly laissez-faire attitude toward human life, they’d find more to laugh about.