James Decker - The Burn Zone

With a loud snap, Sillith’s entire body erupted at once into a huge blob of water. Her skin snapped away like a wrinkled, broken water balloon as the payload of water flew apart and came crashing down in a huge splash.

I closed my eyes, covering my face with one arm as the warm flood gushed over me, followed by a rain of cooler drops and mist.

Wiping my face, I opened my eyes in time to see Sillith’s head go thumping down the tunnel. Swaths of her skin lay quivering on the graviton plates between me and the gate that was just starting to collapse. They had begun to flicker, the air around them rippling.

I looked down at my chest and saw what looked like a giant black amoeba lying there, its network of slick tentacles plastered across the floor like veins on either side of me. I sat up and shoved it away, kicking it into a pile as it rolled down onto the wet floor.

I hauled myself to my feet, facing the gate, where I could still see Alexei as he lay in a heap on the other side. It would be closed in a matter of seconds.

Sam, forgive me. I couldn’t let them do it. I know how it looks, but I couldn’t let them all die, not even for you. I’m sorry to leave you. I know what that means to you, but I’m just one man and you’re strong enough to make it on your own now.

The soldiers were going to destroy this place, and everything in it. I only had one shot. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but it was the only shot I had.

One shot. Save my father, my friends, or save them.

I couldn’t let them all die.

Don’t worry, I sent. They won’t.

I sprinted for the gate, grabbing one of the flickering sheets of skin as I passed. It peeled up off the floor, trailing sticky threads, a sickening, still-warm streamer that tickled against my palm like millions of tiny, squirming worms.

The gate shrank, closing like an iris to choke off the alley on the other side as I ran. When I reached the edge, the world around me skipped, turning dark before flashing back again.

It’s going to go, I thought, pulling the skin to my chest. It’s going to take me with it.

I jumped through the gate, an electric jolt shooting down my back as my head brushed the glowing white edge. Everything slowed down for a beat, and then I came out the other side.

Freezing cold braced my skin, chilling the sweat that covered my body as I fell and rolled to a stop on the gritty pavement. Alexei was there, stirring now.

“Don’t move,” I called, my breath pluming in front of me. He looked down at his arms and hands in horror as small back bodies began to worm their way up from beneath the skin. I could see their wings pulling free, and their hooklike legs pawing at the air as they struggled.

“ Jei! ” a Pan-Slav voice barked from the alley mouth. “ To chtoproishodit tam?”

I caught a glimpse of a man dressed in a long wool coat and carrying a machine gun as I ran to Alexei.

“Don’t move!”

One of the flies wriggled free and extended its wings. I swatted it down onto the ground and stomped on it, dropping to my knees in front of Alexei and throwing the skin around both of us.

Please let this work. Please—

“Ostanovit’!” the guard yelled, raising his weapon as he marched toward us.

I looked back through the collapsing gate and saw Nix, his pink eyes staring back at me. He stood in the tunnel next to a second gate he’d opened, while a cloud of flame erupted behind him. Vamp was with him, conscious now and struggling to run after me as Nix held him back. Slumped in Nix’s other arm was Dragan.

Nix pushed Dragan through and forced Vamp in after him. He had turned then to grab a woman from the bed behind him when another explosion went off, and a column of flame roared down the tunnel.

“Nix!” I shouted.

In the second before the fire took him, he closed his gate. I saw him, a dark shape engulfed in the brilliant blaze, and then Sillith’s portal winked out.

“Ostanovit’!” the guard yelled again. He stepped in front of us, pointing his rifle.

Sillith’s remains quivered one last time. The world hitched again, the walls of the alley warping in front of me, and then flashed away.

2:59:29 BC

I awoke to darkness, phantom tickles from Sillith’s slimy skin still playing on my neck and shoulders. My body felt weightless, suspended in warm, thick fluid, and when I reached in front of me I couldn’t find the surface.

“Don’t panic,” a voice said. It came from the 3i’s audio plug, tinny and faint. I flailed, struggling to swim toward what I thought was up, but it was like trying to move through oil, and if anything, I sank deeper.

“Don’t panic,” the voice said again.

I pulled the 3i display up, my jerky movements sending windows and pages spinning every which way. The air burned in my chest.

“Breathe,” the voice said. I shook my head.

“Yes, you can.”

I struggled again, panic welling up inside me.

“Trust me. Calm down, and breathe.”

I didn’t trust the voice, and even if I did my brain wouldn’t cooperate. It wasn’t until I began to suffocate that my body gave in and out of desperation sucked in the breath that I knew would kill me.

It didn’t. I sucked warm liquid in through my mouth and nose, and it gushed down my throat into my lungs. The sensation was horrible, but instead of choking, relief flooded through me. It felt as if I’d taken a big breath of clean, crisp air.

“See?”

I nodded.

“Good. Breathe.”

I relaxed, and let myself get used to breathing the heavy stuff. A contact request appeared on the 3i, the pink heart pulsing in time with my own. I accepted it.

Nix?

“No. You know me as Ava.”

Right. The new haan female. The one who I first approached, and who sent Nix to kill me.

Where am I?

“You are on what you call the ship,” she said. “You are safe.”

Why can’t I see?

“There is nothing wrong with your eyes. There is no light for you to see by, that’s all.”

An image of Sillith flashed through the fog, the real Sillith, and panic spiked. I jerked again, sloshing in the darkness.

Dragan.

“He is alive.”

I shook my head. He was—

“He is alive. Your friend Vamp is with him. They are both okay.”

My body relaxed, a little. The kid?

“Also alive. The engineered larva have been removed and destroyed. He will no longer be a danger when he leaves.”

And Shiliuyuán?

She paused, just a beat, before responding, “Destroyed.”

What happened to the people down there?

Again, the pause.

“Gone.”

I felt her presence, then, a tentative approach through the surrogate cluster.

“We were able to heal your father,” she said. “He is still weak, but he will survive. You will all be returned to Hangfei shortly.”

What do you— I cut the message short. I wanted to know how much of what I’d seen was real, and what else the haan might be hiding from us. I wanted to know what the haan’s real intentions were, what the exact nature of the deal they’d made with our government was. I wanted to know if the men who made that deal had any idea of what they were really dealing with when they made it.

I wanted to know all that and more, but it occurred to me that with Sillith dead, along with every human who had planned the burn, there might be no one left who knew how much I’d learned. It was possible that, for all Ava and the rest of her kind knew, I was still unaware of their secret.

“What do you wish to know?” Ava prompted.