“Sam!”
I shoved Kang’s body out of the way as best I could and reached one foot down to the pedals underneath. When I found the emitter control, I stomped on it and cranked the stick.
We spun, veering toward the building until I saw myself reflected in the glass there, looking very small behind the wheel of the big vehicle. We hit, crunching against the glass until it exploded and crashed down over us.
“Turn!” Vamp yelled from behind me.
“I’m doing it!”
The racket drowned both of us out as we scraped along the building side, plate glass buckling, then shattering as we went, until I managed to pull the nose around. I veered, and pointed us down the alley in the direction of the gate.
Something hit the undercarriage with a heavy thud, and red lights began to pop up on the dash.
I shoved the stick forward, and the buildings sheared past on either side as we accelerated back toward the main drag.
~ * ~
Chapter Twenty-five
03:35:00 BC
The car was going down. In the rearview mirror I saw red fluid spraying through a trail of black smoke, and even with the emitters cranked we were losing altitude fast. Two more vehicles had picked us up and were pursuing, but we were close. The intersection, and the gate hub, were just up ahead.
“Hold on!” I called back.
There wasn’t any time to be delicate about it. I took us in, siren wailing the whole way as people scattered. We crashed onto the pavement right in the middle of the intersection, sparks spitting as we dug a short trench through the blacktop.
The car lurched to a stop, the tail coming up off the ground and threatening to take us end over end before it slammed back down again. As soon as we stopped moving, I found the door control and slammed my palm down on it. All four doors sprang open.
“Move!” I barked. “Go, go!”
The people queued up at the gate hub were looking at the vehicle now, pointing and taking pictures with their phones as the other two aircars closed in from over the street behind us.
“Out of the way!” Vamp barked. “Move!”
“Halt!” a voice boomed from above. “Stop where you are!”
The crowd backed away as the shit storm closed in, and we ran for the gate. Through the portal, I could see a street somewhere across town, and through the buildings there I saw the distant lights and fanfare of the parade going on only three blocks behind me.
“Vamp, the twistkey!”
He dug in his pocket and pulled it out, handing it to me. I found the socket, guided the key in, and turned it.
The air crackled as the view through the gate faded away to nothing. In its place, a dark, interior view appeared where I could make out a grimy floor and stained, pitted concrete walls.
“Freeze!”
I turned and saw that our pursuers had landed, and Ligong was heading toward us as more soldiers piled up behind her.
“Now!” I said, pulling Vamp’s arm. “Come on!”
I stepped through just as the first shot went off behind us.
The sound waves of the shot caught up the second I plowed through the gate, and then the waveform flattened into silence. Out of the corner of my eye, for just a second, I could see a bullet suspended there and then we stumbled out the other side.
The room was dimly lit by the glow of battery-powered lamps, mounted on mold-stained cinder block walls. Two bullets struck the wall ahead, one exploding in a small shower of concrete and the other knocking out one of the lights with a loud pop. I turned around in time to see Vamp come through, and there, through the gate behind him, was Ligong, making a run for it.
Sam, forgive me.
The message from Dragan popped up from the 3i tray just as we came through. I went to stick the twistkey back in, to collapse the gate before Ligong could reach it, but there was no socket.
“Change it back!” Vamp snapped.
“I can’t!” I turned to Nix. “She’s coming. Shut it off!”
“The gates are on a centralized grid,” he said. “I can’t just shut one down. It will revert to its original point of exit once the timer expires, but not before then.”
Sam, forgive me, I—Another shot zinged through the air and struck the wall as we scrambled back, away from the doorway. Ligong was closing in fast with her group of soldiers. They were going to make it with time to spare.
“Back,” I said, waving down the corridor behind us. “Go!”
I darted back between them, patting Vamp on the ass as I went. They followed as I bolted down the broken corridor, following the string of lights and trying to keep my footing on the uneven floor. My toe banged into something and I nearly tripped as I passed through a rusted metal hatchway. A heavy door was pinned there under the buckled ceiling above. Farther up ahead, the hall opened up into a dimly lit room.
“That way!” Ligong’s voice echoed down the corridor behind us. I risked a glance back. She’d put a lock on the gate, holding it open, and more soldiers were moving through.
Nix stopped suddenly, skidding along the floor and then reversing course.
“Nix, what are you doing?” I shouted, slowing as Vamp stopped between us.
“Keep going,” Nix called back.
Flashlight beams appeared down at the far end of the corridor as Nix grabbed the edge of the thick metal hatch and braced himself as he began to pull.
“It’s stuck!” Vamp called. “You’ll never-”
Plaster and concrete rained down from the ceiling as with a low groan, the door began to move. When he’d managed to pull it away from the wall, he repositioned and jammed one shoulder against it. Vamp sprinted back and joined him, putting his back to the door and pushing against the wall with his feet. The hatch caught as the footsteps approached from the other side, but then came free as more rubble sifted down from overhead.
A shot struck Nix, the slug bouncing off the material of his jacket as two more rounds sparked off the metal hatch. The door moved a little farther, coming within a hand’s width of being shut before sticking again, this time for good.
“That’s it,” Nix said. “Go.”
A body slammed against the other side of the hatch and I heard a grunt as one of the soldiers tried to move it but couldn’t. The beam of a flashlight shone through the gap as footsteps pounded on the other side, piling up in front.
“Out of the way!” I heard Ligong snap. Her face appeared in the gap, and when she spotted us she tried to sneak through but couldn’t.
“Go!”
I turned and made for the end of the hallway, Ligong screaming a string of threats after us that got lost in the racket and echo. I darted through the doorway with Vamp right behind me, then Nix. I slammed the door behind him.
“Get this thing open!” I heard Ligong bellow back in the distance. “Now!”
Sam.
“He’s here,” I said, pulling up the chat.
“That hatch isn’t going to hold them long,” Vamp said.
I waved him away. “Shut up, he’s here. Hang on.”
Dragon? Dragan, it’s me. Where are you?
I couldn’t let them do it.
“Damn it,” I muttered.
“Where is he?” Vamp asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s picking me up. He’s just firing off text, like in a loop.”
“He may still be comatose,” Nix said, “or semiconscious.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, then, let’s find him fast.”
“How are we getting out of here once we get him?”
“Nix, can you gate us?” I asked.
“I can form a freestanding gate, with end points at three points in Hangfei.”
“What about the ship?”
“One on the ship.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s find them and then let’s get out of here.”
I stepped forward into the shadows, and my foot came down on something that crunched. When I looked down, I saw the fl
oor was covered in black powder that had sifted down into the cracks around old, buckled linoleum tiles. Lying sprawled there facedown was a skeleton with the rotted remains of a lab coat tented over the bones. I’d stepped on the bones of the forearm, snapping them under my heel.
I jerked my foot away. There was a second body next to the first one, also facedown, and a few feet from where they were I spotted a clipboard partially buried in the black powder.
I shined the flashlight beam through the room. It had been some kind of office at some point, but the walls had crumbled to blackened framework, exposing the surrounding rooms. As I passed the beam through the empty spaces, I saw rows of desks piled with mold-covered computer equipment, wires trailing underneath layers of dust and ash. Some of the desks still had figures slumped over them, mummified bodies fused to their swivel chairs and claw hands still at their keyboards. Pens rattled in a dusty coffee mug as the low vibration hummed through the air.
The 3i tray wobbled at the corner of my eye, the display warping as my hair suddenly stood on end. Particles of dust rose from the floor and hung suspended in the flashlight beam for a few seconds before drifting back down.
“I’m getting major interference,” Vamp muttered.
“It was on the wet drive footage too,” I said. “Nix, what is that?”
“Our power grid extends into the colonies, but it all converges here. The field generators must be above us.”
“Is it safe?”
“It should be.”
I shined the flashlight back down at the floor, casting the shadows of old toppled equipment as the beam drifted past. Fresh footprints were tracked through the soot there, shoe and boot tracks overlapping along a path that led through the room.
“Dragan came through here,” I said. “It was on the recording.”
even for you. I know that you will
Dragan’s looped message stopped short as the vibrations swelled, rattling in my chest and causing dust to drift down from the bowed ceiling. It drowned out the sounds from behind us, the hissing of the torch and the sounds of the soldiers, before fading back to a steady hum. The chat window warped, and the connection dropped.
I chewed my lip. “He’s close.”
Dust rose around my feet as I pointed the flashlight and followed the footsteps into the gloom.
~ * ~
Chapter Twenty-six
03:28:18 BC
Scaleflies flitted past as we moved deeper into the ruins, forming a small swarm that buzzed toward a set of heavy metal doors up ahead of us. They’d clustered over the jagged bits of glass poking from an empty window frame on the right-hand door, while trails of them buzzed in and out. A swath had been cut through the dust and grease at the base of each door as if they’d recently been opened, and the footprints stopped in front of them.
Vamp moved ahead and pulled one of the doors open, waving away the cloud of disturbed flies so I could shine my light through. The way looked clear.
The chamber on the other side had been sheared in half, the floor coming to an abrupt stop off to our left in a wall of packed dirt and stone. The ragged ends of three huge pipes jutted out there up near the ceiling, torn free from their joints during the collapse. Lime had caked around their rims where brown water condensed and dripped under the slow escape of steam.
“Sam—”
Another surge in the vibrations drowned out Vamp’s voice. They got so intense that the 3i cut out and stemmed off Dragan’s text messages, which I was kind of glad for. The pipes shook, and something above us creaked, low and ominous. I pointed the flashlight up toward the ceiling and saw spindly haan constructs creep through the exposed wiring and ductwork. Snaked in and around the old electrical system were shiny coils of filaments like I’d seen in Shangzho. Nestled in and among them were unfamiliar devices that hung like flies in a spider’s web.
The room, or what was left of it, seemed to have once been some kind of control center. The hunkered shapes of computer consoles and equipment, long dormant and speckled with mold, sat in the gloom with stools and swivel chairs at the helms. Wires hung from the damaged ceiling, while power and data cables ran from the workstations, through the grime to disappear into the rubble. The far wall of the hub was dominated by three huge rectangular windows that looked on into blackness, huge fractures marring safety glass that must have been a meter thick. I shined the flashlight around, until it swept across a soot-streaked sign mounted on one crumbling wall.
DEEPWELL BIOTECH LAB: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
“Deepwell,” I whispered.
The echo of the humans who’d run the place lingered here—coats draped over chairs, personal photographs, and wrinkled, overlapping newspaper printouts whose edges had warped were taped up here and there—but like Shangzho it now carried that distinct haan fingerprint. Graviton plates covered a section of wall, disappearing through a dark hole in the ceiling, and black, shiny scales had formed over the floor in clusters. Scaleflies crawled over the abandoned equipment and swarmed through the air, carrying their messages to and from haan who no doubt lurked somewhere nearby.
A row of glass domes, some kind of specimen jars, covered a work surface that ran the length of the room’s far side, and I could see clouds of flies bouncing around inside. The jars were fixed to bases where pinprick indicator lights flashed, and slimy tubes trailed to a bank of haan equipment behind them.
I moved farther into the room, sweeping the flashlight over the news clippings. I peeled one of the stained photos off a soot-covered console and wiped it on my shirt. It showed an apple, floating in midair. I held it up so Vamp and Nix could see.
The apple floated in the middle of a makeshift wooden shack that had been surrounded by a sandbag enclosure where armed soldiers stood guard. Across the other side of the sandbags, people had gathered near a row of sawhorses, and through the wooden shack’s open doorway a hanging plastic tent was visible. Hazy figures stood inside.
SECURITY ERECTED AROUND “FORBIDDEN FRUIT,” the headline read. I tossed it down onto the desk and looked at the next, which showed a picture of Fangwenzhe, shining brightly above the Hangfei skyline.
NEW STAR APPEARS IN NIGHT SKY.
“New star …” The date on the article put it fifty years or so ago. I blew dust from the paper, trying to make out the writing underneath.
... no explanation for the sudden appearance of a previously uncharted star closer than any recorded... astronomers are unable to explain...”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I said. I looked at Vamp, the paper still dangling from my fingers.
Fangwenzhe had always been there. Stars didn’t just come and go. They didn’t just appear from out of nowhere. It wasn’t possible. Even if it somehow had, people would know. Astronomers ...
“What are you in here for?”
“Telling the truth.”
“Sam, we’ve got to move.”
“He knew,” I said. “That guy, Jin, back in the prison. It’s why he was there.”
Vamp tried to take the paper and I snatched it away. I folded it and slipped it into my pocket.
“Sam, which way?”
I looked around the room, trying to think back to the images on the video recording. They’d had to climb before they arrived in this room. They’d scrambled up a collapsed section of floor...
“There.” I pointed toward the corner where the tiles sank, sloping down to a big fracture that had opened up into a large open space below. Electric light flickered down there, casting jerky shadows.
Vamp leaned over the edge and peered down. “Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
When I turned back to him, the flashlight swept back around and passed through a large, open section of wall to his right, where a human face stared back at me from the shadows.
“Shit!” I yelped, nearly dropping the light. Vamp and Nix both turned as I steadied the beam.
The face belonged to a Pan-Slav man. He looked like he might be dead, bu
t he wasn’t shriveled like the other bodies. His skin looked fresh, if ashen. He sat with his knees up by his chin and wrapped in some kind of black membrane that had him stuck to the wall. His eyes stared back at me, blind and unfocused, while his mouth hung open.
He wasn’t alone. As I moved the light through the room, I saw there were more in there like him, men and women all wrapped in the same kind of wet, leathery cocoon.
“Holy shit,” Vamp said under his breath.
The Burn Zone Page 32