The Burn Zone

by James K. Decker

He turned, looking back at me. Yes, but they’ll send us straight back when they—

  We’ll have to take our chances.

  “Vamp, change of plans,” I whispered.

  “Sam, what the—”

  You take the girl, I sent over the 3i.

  I grabbed Alexei by the wrist and dragged him along after me as I bolted toward the window. Vamp, a beat later, scooped the girl up in his arms and started after me.

  “Stop them!” Ligong barked. She raised her weapon toward me and fired just as Nix rose to his feet, fanning his suit out in front of us. I heard the round hit it, then two more as she fired again.

  The slugs clattered to the floor as I hauled Alexei out the window with me, Vamp hot on my heels. I scrambled down the stairs toward the next floor as Nix came through the window after us and put the girl down on the landing. Through the grate, I could see that the street below was full of security vehicles, and armed soldiers that were clustered around them.

  A shot from above glanced off the building face next to me, pelting me with brick powder. Back on the landing, Nix covered Vamp as the two headed down after me.

  “Nix, do it now! Open it!”

  An airship glided out from behind the building and descended above the street to our level. A pattern of red lasers blinked flashed on the wall overhead and began to glide toward us as the wind sent my clothes flapping around my body. The lasers drifted down past me and I saw a turret follow them to take aim at the stairwell and landing below. I stopped short, causing Nix, Vamp, and the girl to pile up behind me.

  The gun spun up and began to fire, bullets sparking off the fire escape and thumping into the brick face where it was mounted. We couldn’t go down the stairs without walking right into the line of fire. I looked up and saw Ligong climbing out the window after us. Over the rail was a several-story drop.

  “Stop where you are,” a voice boomed from the airship’s bullhorn.

  “Nix!”

  The turret was winding up again, and the spinning barrel angled toward us. Down through the grate I saw soldiers assembling, ready to either come up after us or secure the mess when it fell. We weren’t going to make it.

  The turret open fired as Ligong closed in from above. Nix reached into his coat for something as the fire escape below us broke loose and dropped a few feet before catching again as glass and rubble showered down onto the sidewalk below.

  Nix manipulated something in his hand and a bright white point appeared in the air above the street, just over the metal railing.

  “He’s opening a gate!” Ligong shouted.

  The point of light got brighter and brighter until it suddenly expanded into a hexagonal opening with a thin white edge that floated a half story down. On the other side, I could make out dim light and a black surface.

  “Jump!” Nix called.

  Several shots went off and I saw Nix’s head jerk, a honeycomb pattern flashing brightly as a round glanced off the inertial dampener. He was trying to move away when suddenly he staggered, clamping one hand down on the railing for support.

  I looked back and saw Ligong was headed down the steps toward us, a graviton gun trained on Nix. She adjusted the field, and he crashed down onto his knees.

  “That dampening field won’t stop the turrets!” she yelled. “I’d rather have you alive, but you’re not using that gate! Close it now!”

  The airship banked around, and I squinted as the red laser flashed in my eyes. They’d realized what we were going to do, and were targeting us for real. Nix struggled to pull free of the graviton beam but could barely lift his head.

  “They can contain it!” I called back. “On the ship, they can contain it!”

  Ligong kept the pistol trained on Nix as she drew a stun gun from behind her back and fired.

  “They can—”

  I felt a jab in my neck, slapping one hand over a metal prong that trailed a thin wire.

  “Sam!” Vamp shouted. He moved toward me, reaching for the needle as the wire went hot and the lights went out.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Seventeen

  06:39:41 BC

  “... message will repeat indefinitely as long as we can maintain the signal,” a voice said in the dark. It was faint, and tinny, like it was bleeding over the 3i’s audio tap.

  My head pounded, throbbing in time with the 3i contact hearts, which had begun to fade back into view.

  “... have somehow managed to alter your— “

  The voice cut out as I snapped fully awake. I was lying on something soft, something plush and cool. My ears were filled with the rush of air and the low thrum of a graviton engine, and I reached out and felt smooth plastic as a chat window popped up in the dark.

  Sam, are you okay? Vamp.

  Yeah. You?

  Yeah.

  I opened my eyes and saw I was in the backseat of a posh aircar.The inside was beautiful, with a big crescent-shaped seat that was soft and smelled great. There was a table in front of me, and on the other side of it was another seat where Pei Ligong sat, looking idly out the window. Next to her was ...

  I sat up suddenly, and the two turned to look at me. The man sitting next to Ligong was Military Governor Jianguo Hwong himself. I’d seen his face on TV and on billboards enough to know it in my sleep. Hell, there was a statue of him in Ginzho Square. He was bigger in person than I had expected, an older guy with cropped gray hair and a leathery, lined face, but his shoulders were broad and his chest was thick. He wore a silver machine pistol on his belt, and his colored medal bars stood out against his dark gray shirt, laser-thin gold trim glinting in the sun that streamed through the window.

  “Welcome back,” he said.

  I looked to my left and saw Nix slumped in the seat next to me, a shock pin sticking out of the back of his neck. Only a very faint glow flickered in his eyes as he stared down at the tabletop.

  “Where’s Vamp?” I asked.

  “Your friend? He’s up front,” Hwong said, pointing toward the closed divider.

  A shadow passed over the vehicle as we cruised underneath a massive skyway, and then I saw our vehicle reflected in a mirrored building face as we began to rocket upward. In that reflection, the Pot sprawled off into the distance, the smaller building spires falling away as we went up and up.

  “What about the others?” I asked.

  “The old man and the girl will be debriefed. Then he will go home and she will be held until we decide if she should be deported or not.”

  “And the kid? Alexei?”

  “He is being seen to.” He leaned back in his seat. “You know, a disaster was narrowly averted today. You caused us quite a bit of trouble.”

  “But they didn’t...”

  I trailed off as Ligong turned from the window to look at me. There was a cold, dangerous look in her eyes.

  “Didn’t what?” Hwong asked. “Didn’t do anything?”

  “Please,” I said, “sir, we didn’t do anything wrong— this whole thing is a misunderstanding.”

  Hwong smiled faintly, and he raised one hand to quiet Ligong, who was about to interrupt me.

  “I want to hear what she has to say,” he told her. He turned back to me. “Go ahead.”

  “My father ... I mean Specialist Shao ... was just on assignment working border security at Camp Juanhai.”

  “Where he met a Pan-Slav terrorist named Innuya Drugov, and her son, Alexei.”

  “That’s just it, it’s a mistake. She wasn’t a terrorist. She was just one of the refugees.”

  “Our intelligence confirmed she had terrorist ties,” Hwong said. “I understand this is hard to accept, and I don’t blame you, but Alexei Drugov is not the legitimate son of Innuya Drugov, and they are not from the border territory of Lobnya. A terrorist cell embedded them there, where Innuya began looking for a foreign soldier she could ply. She found one in Specialist Shao, who has blood ties to the PSE.”

  “Dragan is not a—”

  “He is. I’m truly sorry, but he
is. I don’t know if he became a true sympathizer or if he just believed her lies and was trying to do the right thing, but her purpose was to deliver Alexei to this country as part of the biggest biological attack this world has ever seen. If we hadn’t recovered him, do you know what would have happened?”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. He raised his eyebrows, and I quickly added, “Sir.”

  “And how do you figure that?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean any disrespect, but please listen. There’s more to the story you don’t know. I’ve got inside information you need to hear.”

  Hwong’s face was stony, and I thought he might shut me down before he finally waved one hand at me to continue.

  “The intelligence was faked,” I told him.

  “Faked? Why?”

  “To cover up a mistake. Some of your guys, your soldiers, are working with a haan,” I told him.

  His eyes narrowed a little. “Go on.”

  “A female. The haan female. She was there the night they picked up Dragan,” I said. “You’ve got guys working for her in secret, behind your back.”

  “To what end?” Hwong asked.

  “The Pan-Slavs weren’t going to attack us. It’s the other way around,” I said. “These guys set up some kind of secret deal with the haan to get rid of the PSE— We were going to attack them. Dragan didn’t bring the kid here as part of an attack. He was trying to quarantine him, and it got out of control. He meant to turn the evidence of all this over to you. He just never got a chance.”

  Ligong glanced at Hwong.

  “You’re saying the haan are behind this?” Hwong asked.

  “Just one. She’s killed all but one of the guys who helped her, but the one guy left, Kang, told me he and some of your guys made a secret deal with Sillith. I’m telling you it’s true. If he’s still alive you can ask him yourself.”

  “Even assuming there is a conspiracy to destroy the PSE, why would the haan be involved?” Hwong asked. “What would they stand to gain from it?”

  “I’m not sure, but she was promised ...”

  I felt an anxious spike through the mite cluster and stopped myself from saying any more. Nix was awake, and growing more and more anxious as Hwong’s eyes turned bright, and predatory. I remembered what Kang had told me, back in the bar:

  “Deals are made, kid. We see new tech appear, new benefits, better standards of living, but behind closed doors, deals are made.”

  “Promised what?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I swear it’s all true—”

  Hwong nodded at Ligong, who leaned across the table and gave me a hard push away from Nix.

  “Move over,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She grabbed a fistful of my shirt and pulled it until my tit poked out the armhole. She shoved me away, into the corner of the backseat opposite from Nix. “I said move it.”

  “Hey,” I spat, pulling my shirt back into place. “Just wait—”

  Ligong pulled a small controller from out of her jacket and pushed the button. When she did, an electric crackle sounded that was so loud that I jumped in my seat. Nix’s body went rigid.

  “Hey!” I shouted. One of Nix’s legs had kicked out into the table between them, and sparks flashed from the shock pin in his neck. The strobe lit up the car interior as the angry snapping sound grew louder and a horrible burned smell filled the cab. Ligong’s face never changed as she cranked up the juice until I could see muted red light flashing inside Nix’s chest. His heart clenched behind his rib cage, and the shape beneath his skull had begun to twitch rapidly.

  “Stop!” I screamed. Ligong balled her free hand into a fist, and, still holding the controller’s button with her other hand, she hammered it down at me as I cringed back into the seat.

  The blow caught me in the forehead, and my head snapped back against the window. I began to slide down the seat toward the floor and caught myself, grabbing the door handle for support. Warm blood dribbled down over my lips and chin, and when I shook my head to clear it I spattered the tabletop with red drops.

  “Stop shocking him!” I screamed, my voice breaking. I lunged for her arm, but she stopped me with her hand and held me back until she finally released the button.

  The snapping sound stopped and the flickering light went out. Nix’s body collapsed back into the seat as a thin curl of black smoke drifted up from the base of his skull. I tried to squirm free from Ligong’s grip.

  “Get off!” I grabbed one of her fingers and tried to peel it off as she reared back to hit me again.

  “Enough,” Hwong said. Ligong pulled her hand away and leaned back, glaring at me. She put the zapper back inside her coat and straightened it out as I scooted back over to Nix.

  “Nix?” I whispered. “Hey, Nix?”

  He didn’t move, but his eyes, which had rolled back into his head, slowly reappeared from the bottom as if they had done a complete revolution. The pink glow returned like two rising suns.

  “Nix, are you okay?”

  I touched his chest, thin smoke drifting out from between my fingers. The spot was still warm, but the heart hadn’t stopped.

  “What Sillith was promised,” Hwong said, his voice calm, “was a small portion of what will become the occupied PSE—an autonomous haan state bordered by our new territory.”

  I turned to stare at him, and it finally sank in. The deal that was made, it wasn’t just made by a small group of rogue soldiers. It went higher than that, a lot higher.

  “This was your idea,” I said under my breath.

  “Specialist Shao didn’t just bring back the boy, and a recording,” Hwong said. “He brought back something else. A twistkey.”

  I looked from Hwong to Ligong.

  “Twistkey?” I asked.

  “Don’t play dumb,” Hwong said. “That key is the only way to access the labs in Shiliuyuán Station, and you know it.”

  “But—”

  “My men scanned you all, and no one seems to have it,” he said. “So where is it?”

  We were in trouble. I’d made a huge mistake, and we were all in big, big trouble. Hwong was in on this from the start, and now all three of us knew way too much for him to just let us go. I realized then that the only thing that might be keeping us alive was the fact that he wasn’t sure where the information he wanted was, and he thought one of us might know.

  “Look,” I said, “I just want my father back. That’s all. If I give you the key—”

  “That’s not how things work,” he said. “Decide which one of you has what I want before we get where we’re going. Otherwise I will find out myself, one way or the other. Do you understand?”

  “I got it,” I said. Nix groped with one hand, putting it on mine. He urged me with his eyes not to provoke them any further.

  “I understand,” I added.

  “Good. Just sit tight. We’ll be there soon.”

  A window popped up on the 3i, floating between me and Nix as he messaged me. The letters came slowly, and erratically, crawling across the chat window like the trail of a dying insect.

  Don’t do it.

  Nix...

  Don’t let them into Shiliuyuán Station. If you do, and they see what she’s done, then one individual’s actions will be the end of all of us.

  Nix, I don’t know if I can stop them.

  You can. Bring the boy there, like you planned. Stop the burn. Sillith will be gone soon. Her cycle is at an end. It will be over. No one has to know what she tried to do. Please.

  He closed his eyes, and the little beating-heart icon next to his name went still and gray as he dropped offline. I looked back to Hwong, who was now gazing out the window, calm, and almost bored.

  The weight of millions of impending deaths did not register in his eyes at all.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Eighteen

  06:07:02 BC

  The ride took us high over Tùzi-wō proper, and I was surprised to see the blue dome of the haan
force field growing larger in the windshield.

  “Are we going to the ship?” I asked, peering out the window. We were getting so close that I could make out the hexagonal light formations through the blue haze. Behind them, the ship towered above all else, a spired behemoth that loomed over the surrounding skyline. Pinprick lights twinkled from within seams along the hull.

  “Not even I can get in there,” Hwong said.