I pulled my pants up and cinched the belt. They were still a little damp, but wearable. The same went for the tank top. I pulled it down over my head and snapped the waist tight to my hard stomach and smoothed the material down over my ribs. “So, are you here to help me or what?”
“Help you?”
“Find Dragan. Find my guardian. The haan and the other soldiers took him last night. Are you here to help me find him?”
“No.”
I frowned, picking up the stunner and pistol and stuffing one in each front pocket. “Then no offense, Nix, but why are you here?”
“I was obtained to investigate the potential involvement of a haan in the attack.”
I shook my head. “Well, you’ll never get in there now, not until security’s done going over it, and probably not until they manage to pull the airbike out of our living room.”
“I don’t need to. If you’ll allow, I can gather what I need from you.”
“Me?”
“If you’ll allow.”
I was picking up something, an anxious hum through the surrogate cluster. Something was bothering the haan, something he was trying to keep to himself but wasn’t quite able to.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “How about I let you do whatever you’re looking to do and you help me find Dragan?”
The anxious feeling grew worse as he looked into my eyes with his iridescent pink ones.
“Yes,” he said.
“So you agree to help me?”
“Yes.”
Nix moved in front of me and leaned closer, until I could feel the warmth of his face against my neck. After a moment he reached into his tablet and drew some kind of electronic wand from out of the field. Sprouting from the tip of it was a set of metal prongs, two thin ones coiled around a central, thicker one. He held it between two spindly fingers as he drew in air, and then something under his clothes made that rattle again as he vented it.
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“A congenital defect sometimes causes an internal scraping of—”
“No, the wand.”
“It will take the sample I need.” I looked uneasily at the device as he moved it closer to me. The prongs were wickedly sharp.
“Will it hurt?”
He stepped closer, and I felt another weird surge through the surrogate cluster. A wave of unhappiness, and uncertainty mixed with a strange longing ... a sense of familiarity, as if someone he thought he’d lost was returned to him after a long absence.
“Nix, do I know you?”
He shook his head, moving the prongs closer to my chest. “I was born in the axial hive.”
I peered down at the wand, feeling like I wanted to back away. “Wait, will it hurt or not?”
He held the wand frozen in front of me, so close that whatever energy it gave off made the skin beneath it tingle. Through the jumble of strange feelings pouring in over the link between us, I felt a sudden pulse of deep, abject misery.
“Hey, are you okay?” I asked him.
The current of signals stopped. He moved the wand away from me and stowed it back inside his tablet.
“Yes,” he said, “and no, it won’t hurt.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes. I’ve already taken the sample.”
“Oh,” I said, but he was lying. I didn’t get haan completely—no one did—but somehow I was sure that what he’d just said was a lie. I’d just missed something, something important, but I didn’t know what.
“This will help,” he said.
“Will it help with the fact that you’re a big, fat liar?”
His rigid face offered no expression I could read as he fell quiet. For a second I thought he’d gone into some kind of trance or something when I noticed a lot of little movements through the smoked glass of his skull. They settled down, and the sunset pink of his eyes flickered once.
“Your guardian’s security transponder is no longer active in Hangfei,” he said.
“What?”
“Each of your security personnel is fitted with a transponder used for identification purposes. Your legal guardian, Specialist Dragan Shao, cannot currently be located in Hangfei.”
“You’re saying he’s not in the city anymore?” That didn’t make any sense.
“Maybe. His transponder may also inactive, or someplace where the signal cannot be reached.”
“Oh.” I dropped the pack back down on the bed.
“That’s all I can say.”
“Are you ... supposed to know that?”
“I have to go.”
The sudden shift had left me off balance, and a little angry. My head was pounding again.
“Fine,” I said. “Great. Go.”
He paused for a minute, then turned and crossed back around the bed. I followed him as he stepped back toward the hotel room door.
“Look, will you just tell me what’s going on?” I asked him.
“No.”
He stopped at the door and turned back to me. He extended his hand, and I shook it again.
“Wait,” I said. “Before you go.”
“What?”
“The haan female ... Ava.”
“She is transitioning to become the new haan female.”
“Whatever. Will you see her again?”
“Yes.”
“Can you ask her for me about Tānchi?”
“Who?”
“Sorry,” I said. “The kid I dropped off last night. My surrogate.”
He nodded. “Ask her what?”
“I was wondering if there’s any chance I can finish the imprint with him,” I said. “Once this gets straightened out.”
He paused, and there was more subtle shifting from inside his skull. “You have already failed to complete the imprint.”
“I know, but—”
“Failure to complete an imprint disqualifies you from further surrogate service.”
My mouth dropped. As he turned to leave, I grabbed his sleeve and stopped him in spite of the fact that doing so could, under the current laws, be interpreted as an assault against a haan.
“Wait,” I sputtered. “This wasn’t my fault.”
“I know.”
“He could have starved if I didn’t bring him back. I did the right thing!”
He looked down at my fistful of his suit, and I took my hand away.
“Failure to complete an imprint disqualifies you from further surrogate service.”
“But—”
“Thank you for your time. Good-bye.”
“Wait,” I said, squirming past to block him. I held my hands up between us, and he stopped. “Just wait a minute, please.”
It hadn’t occurred to me until right then, not really, just how much I’d come to depend on being a surrogate. Not just because of the extra money or rations, and not just to earn my keep with Dragan. Taking care of the little ones was one of the few bright spots I had, one of the few things that really, truly made me feel good. Now, just like that, not only had I lost Dragan but I was going to lose that too.
“This has to be a special case,” I said. “I’m a good surrogate.”
“I don’t—”
“Just ask her.”
“Just say you’ll ask her!”
He paused, his body tense, before relenting.
“Your assigned foster has already been sent back,” he said.
“Where did you send him?”
“Back.”
“Back wh—”
“Your transaction is complete.”
“Wait,” I said, almost grabbing his sleeve again. An awful feeling was sinking into my stomach. “Back where? What does that mean?”
I knew, though. On some level, I knew. I remembered waving to him as Ava closed the hopper door, and the low vibration that went through the floor afterward. It had reminded me of a garbage disposal.
“All haan young must be imprinted,” he said. “No exceptions. I’m sorry. I thought you k
new.”
I couldn’t say anything. A lump grew in my throat, and I felt tears in my eyes, but I couldn’t speak.
I killed him. It was all I could think. I’d talked those guards into letting me inside. I trekked all the way across town in the middle of a security sweep, just so I could send him to his death when I could have just gotten a new kit in the morning.
“Are you okay?” Nix asked.
“Go,” I said, my voice thick and hoarse.
“If I—”
“Go!” I snapped, a fleck of spit landing on the shoulder of his coat. It was all catching up with me finally. I clamped my hands down over my head like it was an eggshell I was trying to hold together. My stomach was full of bile, and the pressure building up behind my eyes was horrible. The shine had been a mistake. I put one hand on the wall to steady myself, using the back of the other to wipe my eyes.
“These are your government’s rules,” I heard Nix say.
“You guys are so cute when you’re little,” I said. “What happens?”
Nix just stared at me, unblinking. “We grow up.”
I pressed my palms to my eyes and watched spastic, electric spots swim in the darkness behind my eyelids.
“I suggest you do the same.” He stepped through the gate and it closed, leaving me alone.
~ * ~
Chapter Six
23:22:02 BC
I stormed back to the bed and grabbed my pack so violently that stuff came spilling out of it. A tube of lipstick and an empty glass perfume bottle bounced onto the floor while the stun gun clattered across the end table and almost broke the lamp.
“Damn it....”
I grabbed the stun gun and tossed it back into the pack, then snatched the stuff back up from off the floor. When I stuffed the tube of lipstick in my pants pocket, a piece of paper crunched and I pulled out a black slip of paper covered in several haan stamps. It was the receipt they’d given me for Tānchi.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I crumpled it and threw it in the trash. I went to drop the bottle in the pack too when something rattled inside. I held it up where I could see, and found a stray tetraz tablet stashed inside that I’d forgotten about.
“Oh, thank Gonzo.”
I shook it into my palm and popped it in my mouth, crushing the bitter pill piece between my back teeth, then using a swallow of shine to wash it down.
Tears welled up again, and I forced them back. I couldn’t think about Tānchi right now. On top of everything else, it would push me over the edge. I had to focus on what I could fix.
I’m downstairs. The message appeared in the chat window. It was Vamp.
Sam?
I’m on my way. Meet me out back.
I tossed the gun in the pack, zipped it up, then headed out and took the elevator back down to the ground floor. I signed out at the desk, then crossed the lobby and made my way down through the first-floor hallway to the exit that went out into the rear lot. It was already hot outside, and the humidity hit me like a wave when I pushed open the warm metal door. Vehicles streamed by in a line past the mouth of the alley, where colorful graffiti covered the sweaty brick face. A miasma hung over the little pocket of blacktop and metal outside the door that smelled like chemical fumes and smoke. I didn’t see any blues flashing out on the street anymore. The way was clear, for now.
Vamp leaned against the wall by the stairs, his white tank top plastered to his wiry but chiseled brown body. His thumbs danced over the screen of his phone, the muscles in his forearms causing his ornate jiangshi tattoo to ripple. Most of Vamp was tattooed, all of it expensive, detailed work I never got tired of looking at. Braided lanyards, one black, one white, dangled from the wet drives embedded behind each ear, swaying in the gentle breeze. When he saw me, his eyes widened.
Something clunked behind me and I spun around to see a chunk of rust fall from the fire escape above. It pinged off the wall and skittered off into a drift of city grit that had collected in a shallow pavement sink. I shielded my face against the glare from the hotel’s mirrored face, but I didn’t see anything. High above, the sleek shadow of an airship cruised past.
“Sam, are you okay?”
“Huh?” I turned back toward him. “Yeah.”
A scowl formed on his face, and anger flashed in his eyes. “No, you’re not. What the hell did they do to you?”
“I’m okay.”
He put his phone away and reached out, angling my face so he could see the other side. I squirmed away.
“The soldiers did this?” His voice had turned serious. I nodded, leaving it at that for now. He’d gone into protective mode, which sometimes felt like an inconvenience, but not now. Right now it made me feel a little better, but I needed him to focus.
“Vamp, I need help. I need to find out where they took Dragan, and how I’m going to get him back.”
“Sam ...” He looked uncomfortable.
“First thing is we need to find out what detention center they took him to so we can—”
“Sam,” he said again, squeezing my arm gently.
“What?”
“I have bad news,” he said.
“What?”
He shook his head. “It’s about Dragan.”
My heart began to drop before he managed to get the words out. I’d never seen a look like that on Vamp’s face before, and as he struggled with how he was going to say what he had to say next, I realized what that was going to be.
“Don’t,” I said. My legs went shaky.
“Because of the weapons trafficking charge—”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“I know, I’m just saying ... when you get flagged a dissident, they can treat you a lot different. He resisted, and during the fight—”
“No,” I said, holding up one hand. “It’s a mistake.”
“It’s on the feed already,” he said. “Sam, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. They shot him—”
“Shut up!”
My throat knotted, and I felt like I was going to bawl, but it never came. It just stayed there, stuck in my throat like a bitter chunk of scalefly I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t speak. Even the sounds of the city, the vehicles and the blanket of anonymous conversation, started to sound far away.
“Sam, are you okay?” He went to take my arm again, but I pulled away. The ground felt like it had begun to move. It was true that he had resisted. The last thing I saw as I went out the window was him fighting the soldiers. By the time I got back up there, he was gone.
“Sam?”
“There was no blood,” I said.
“Huh?”
“When I went back, there was no blood.”
Vamp just pressed his lips together while looking so sorry it made me sick. He knew it didn’t prove anything, and I knew it too.
“He messaged me,” I said. “Late last night, he messaged me on the 3i. He’s alive.”
Or he was.
Vamp didn’t say it. He was thinking it, but he didn’t say it.
“Do you have any idea what he was up to?” Vamp asked carefully. “His e-mails made it sound like he’d gotten mixed up in something.”
I shook my head.
Passage clear to Duongroi. Meet me at my place in the Pink Bull, Hăiyáng-Gāodù, to pick up passports. Bring payment, and come alone.
“Eng,” I said softly.
The name started to pulse in my brain like a fire alarm klaxon. Whoever he was, he was one of the last people to see Dragan before ...
I couldn’t finish the thought.
He’s not dead. He messaged me. They have him, somewhere.
“Sam?”
“Did you get the eyebot logs?” I asked, my voice rough.
“Yeah, but—”
“Send them to me.”
“Sam—”
“Just do it. Please.”
He nodded.
“I have to go.”
“Go where?”
“There’s someone I have to go see.”
The Burn Zone Page 9