James Decker - The Burn Zone

“Shit,” I said. “Go, go now.”

“Where the hell is she going?” Vamp asked.

“She’s going to get the kid,” I said. “She’s going to take him through herself before it’s too late. Come on!”

“Sam—”

I shoved past a soldier, his uniform spattered with blood, and ran as fast as I could after Sillith.

03:10:41 BC

I snatched up Ligong’s rail gun from the floor next to the doorway, hefting the heavy weapon as I stormed through. As soon as I did I stopped short and skated across the slick floor a few feet before regaining my balance.

The far side of the room was littered with piles upon piles of human bodies. Some were so badly eaten from the inside out that they were little more than empty skins, torn open and slopped down. Others had empty guts, empty rib cages, or were missing limbs. Sillith’s failed experiments covered the floor, stacked four high and even higher in the corners, hundreds and hundreds of bodies, decaying and oozing together into a swamp of bones and jellied flesh.

Vamp coughed, holding one arm in front of his nose and mouth, as he clomped to a stop next to me and Nix moved in behind him.

Sam.

The 3i chat came back, flickering on in the air in front of me.

“Dragan’s back on,” I said. “He’s close.”

“Where did she go?” Vamp asked.

I turned, clamping a hand over my nose and mouth to keep from gagging. Across the warehouse floor the concrete had been broken away to form a huge, jagged sinkhole in the floor. Trickles of water wandered through the creeping green-black lines that covered every surface, and a haze of steam boiled up under the ceiling.

Old hospital bunks with their bedding removed were stacked along the walls, while trays of equipment that looked new were positioned at the mouth of the pit. Wires snaked down the walls in thick bundles, then wandered across the floor and down over the edge of the hole.

As I gazed down over the side, I saw the pit plummeted down into darkness. Arranged in a ring about six feet down from the top were a series of metal framed bunks, their heads fixed to metal supports that left the length of each hanging out into the open air. There were maybe twenty total, and beneath them, a few feet down, was another ring, and below them another. I counted eight levels before they were lost in the shadows below. Glassy, hexagonal plates interlocked to form paths between the beds, starting at the sinkhole’s lip and then following the wall down into blackness.

“There,” I said, pointing.

The plates were graviton emitters. Sillith was marching down the wall, dragging Alexei behind her as she passed under rows of beds that fanned out over them like archways.

I crept to the edge of the pit and looked down. Lying in each bed was a person, the eyes covered with a slick rubber mask and tubes sprouting from the nostrils. Warm, wet air rose from down below, creating a low moan as it passed through the bed frames and ruffled the sheets. Some of them were stained with blood, and some were more red than white as the hot air inflated them like sails and then subsided, letting them settle back down over the bodies underneath. When the blanket of one of the closest beds stirred, I saw exposed ribs underneath, and a dark, glistening gap where the man’s insides had been. Somehow he was still alive, his eyeballs moving back and forth behind the thin rubber mask.

“Sillith, wait!” I shouted.

More gunfire erupted from back the way we’d come as I edged closer to the mouth of the sinkhole. I squatted down, and when I touched the surface of the nearest hexagonal plate with one palm, it seemed to almost stick there.

Forgive me, I couldn’t—

“Vamp, come with me,” I said. He hustled over as I put the sole of one shoe down on the pathway, then the other. They seemed to be drawn toward it. Not stuck like glue, just a gentle but insistent pull.

“What are you doing?” he asked, grabbing one of my arms. I squirmed loose.

“It’s okay,” I said. “They’ll—”

The words stuck in my throat as my butt came up off the floor and in a flash the whole world flipped around me. I heard Vamp bark something and his hand clamped down on my wrist in a death grip as I stumbled but didn’t fall.

I was standing on a smooth metal walkway at the base of a circular tunnel that extended forward into darkness, where Sillith was dragging Alexei. To my left and right, the edges of metal bunks extended upward, each at a slight inward angle. A few feet forward, another set of bunks were propped behind them, each with a man lying on it completely upside down. The bedding and the men on them seemed stuck to the bunks, the sheets hanging toward the far end of the tunnel like they were stuck in a perpetual strong breeze.

Looking up, I saw the bunks ringed the entire tunnel. All of their occupants’ feet pointed in toward the middle.

“Sam!”

I turned back around and saw the tunnel ended abruptly in that direction into what appeared to be the middle of a big open space with no floor or ceiling. Across the chasm were metal rafters, with light fixtures that were pointed toward me.

Vamp was standing on the wall just at the bottom edge of the tunnel as if he lay on an invisible platform.

“Come on,” I said, gesturing for him to follow. “I’m going after her!”

He shook his head, but before I turned I saw him sit down and put his feet on the plating. Ahead, Sillith got snagged on one of the bedsheets and tore it away. Not sure which way to fall, it did a weird tumble in the air as it tried to zero in on any one of the eight walkways that lined the tunnel at regular intervals. When it couldn’t decide, it fluttered down the tunnel in front of her like some kind of festival ghost, rippling away until it disappeared into the shadows.

“Shoot her,” Vamp called from behind.

“I can’t. I might hit—”

I stopped, staring as a rush of hot air stirred the sheets around me.

“What?” Vamp asked, closer now.

“There.” I pointed up ahead. “There!”

I could only make out his hair, but it was all I needed. The salt-and-pepper sweep had become so familiar I’d have recognized it anywhere, and when I did my mind seized on it.

“Sam, hold on!”

I sprinted down the walkway to the bunk and stopped short, grabbing fistfuls of the sheet. As I pulled it away, a lump rose in my throat, and my eyes filled with tears until his face blurred in front of me. It was him. It was Dragan.

His broad chest rose and fell slowly as the air current disturbed the black and gray mat of hair there. The tattoos were his, indelible markers that labeled him mine, and nobody else’s. The military tat on his shoulder, the dragon coiled across his chest… they belonged to Dragan—no one else. It was him, and he was alive.

Sam, forgive me, I couldn’t let them do it. I know —

I moved onto the edge of the bed, and as my second foot left the walkway, the world flipped again and I fell down into the bed next to him. Over the edge of the bunk, the pit went down into oblivion, Vamp staring back up at me from where he stood on the wall at a ninety-degree angle.

“Dragan!” I yelled, pulling the sheet away. He didn’t move. I saw the more recent tattoo that ringed his right forearm, braided patterns bordering the name Xiao-Xing, and my voice broke as I shook him again. “Dragan, wake up! Wake—”

I choked as pain stabbed deep into my guts and I doubled over.

I couldn’t let them do it. I know how it looks, but I couldn’t.

“Sam!”

Vamp came to me as I slid off the bed and tumbled back onto the graviton plating, my stomach lurching as the world spun around me. I went down on my knees, curling over until my forehead touched the metal plate. Something was moving in there, growing. I felt his hand touch the back of my neck, his thumb stroking the knobs of my spine as he leaned close to whisper in my ear.