James Decker - The Burn Zone

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I shouldn’t have dumped this on you.”

Past the floating, colored window I made passing eye contact with a wandering vendor selling festival gear. I looked away too late, and the old woman started over.

“No,” Lijuan said. “Jake gave me an emergency number. I’ll try and contact him. Was Dragan actually arrested?”

“I don’t know. I think he was.”

“Do you know where they took him? What detention center?”

“No.”

“Did they say anything that you think might help? Anything I should tell Jake that might be important?”

I thought about telling her about the haan that had been with them, but something made me stop just short of doing it. The haan didn’t fit. Even with combat armor their bodies could never handle that kind of stress, but I’d felt her through the mite cluster; I was sure of it. There’d been a flood of anger and hate, along with an undercurrent of sadistic pleasure. She’d been hidden under the armor and behind a dispersion mask. Was it possible?

“Sam?”

“They…” I tried to remember as the old woman approached with a wrinkled smile. She held up a papery jiangshi ghost mask with green, iridescent eyes.

“Handmade,” she said. I smiled politely, shifting the phone to my other ear.

“… where did you take Alexei Drugov?”

“They were looking for someone,” I said.

“Who?”

“A Pan-Slav. Someone called Alexei Drugov?”

“Jiangshi,” the old woman said.

“Not now.”

The old woman poked me in the tit with a bony finger, and I swatted her hand away. “This one’s perfect for you,” she said. “What do you say? Half price.”

“Hang on,” Lijuan said. I heard faint typing on the other end of the line.

“They’ll be twice the price at the Fangwenzhe Festival,” the old woman explained, holding out the mask. She tugged at my pant leg. I looked past her and saw the spinning shadow and burning incense of a gonzo shrine.

“I know,” I told her. “I don’t have any money.” I held out my empty hand. “No money.”

“What?” Lijuan asked.

“Not you.”

“Sam, get off the street,” she said. “Keep your phone handy. Jake will get back to you.”

“Do you know why they took him?”

“Not yet. Just get inside and lie low for now. Don’t talk to the cops, the military, or anyone in private security until you hear from Jake.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll get this straightened out. Hang in there.”

“I will. And thanks.”

“No need. You’ll hear from us soon. Bye.”

The line cut as the old woman with the festival mask held it out toward me again.

“Look, I told you, I don’t have any—”

The weight on my shoulder suddenly disappeared as the ration kit’s strap sprang loose. Before I even knew what happened, the kit was torn from my side and the two ends of the severed strap whipped away, trailing behind a boy who had it tucked under one arm.

“Hey!”

He darted into the crowd, and in seconds I’d lost him. I turned back to the old woman and found that she’d disappeared too. The crone had set me up.

“You little shit!” I yelled after the kid. “I hope it kills you!”

Heads turned toward me, but lost interest just as fast. Way off in the distance, a blue arc flashed in the sky between two buildings while another distant rumble began to swell.

A hot breeze cut through the summer air, smelling like B.O., car exhaust, and scalefly repellent. I hugged Tānchi to my chest, feeling his warm weight in my arms, and for the first time it occurred to me that I couldn’t keep him, not anymore. Even if the kit hadn’t been stolen, our place had been destroyed. I couldn’t go back there. I had to hunker down and I couldn’t just keep Tānchi out on the street with me. It was too dangerous for him.

Security blues flashed down the street over the thick lanes of traffic, and through the layers of street signs above me I spotted a couple of security vehicles as they floated past. One of them shined a cone of light down onto the sidewalk as it went, sweeping it around as it turned between two buildings. Eyebot called it out, highlighting the ship in white outline, then noting the license plate ID, make, and GPS coordinates.

Do they already know I’m still alive? Are they looking for me?

I had to go. I spotted a gate hub across the lanes of traffic about two blocks ahead and made my way over to it. At the queue, I split off from the flow of foot traffic and headed for the rightmost gate, the one leading to the haan settlement of Shangzho. Unlike at the others, there was no crowd waiting to go through and the scanner flickered out of sleep mode when I approached the thin metal frame. On the other side I could make out a long, reinforced brick wall topped with rings of razor wire. Over the wall, low in the night sky, star Fangwenzhe glowed like a second, smaller moon.

In spite of his anxiety, Tānchi had fallen back into his food-induced sleep, warm and limp inside the blankets. I held him to my chest as I strode up to the gate, whispering into his ear.

“One… two…”

A strange feeling of limbo gripped me when I stepped through the portal, and then a beat later space and gravity returned as my foot came down on a sidewalk across town.

“…three!”

A klaxon made me jump as a red light flashed from behind. I turned around and saw a holographic panel flicker on, a grainy translucent display with instructions in six different languages. It wanted me to pay the balance for the trip. Back toward the wall, heads were beginning to turn as I swiped my cash card and headed toward the settlement entrance.

Razor wire sat spiraled along the pitted, spray-painted wall that separated the fourth colony from the rest of Hangfei, until it reached a guard station where two armed human soldiers stood. There were others there, people lined up in loose groups eyeing the wall sullenly from a makeshift camp of bedrolls and sleeping bags scattered on the pavement just outside the security zone. Faces watched me as I approached, lit by the steady glow of an electric lantern. I could make out their handmade signs that were propped up halfheartedly, with slogans like THEY EAT: WE STARVE and 0%, a reference to the food index. One old man with a scraggly beard and hollow cheeks held one that just said SIPS. Starving In Plain Sight.

A short distance away from the protesters, a group of Fangwenzhe worshipper gonzos had set up shop. There were five of them, three men and two women, all on their knees with their eyes closed and hands clasped, facing the brick wall. A shrine had been set up there next to a poster of their leader, Gohan Sòng, the tips of incense sticks glowing cherry red in the breeze and a cheap plastic apple spinning in midair a few inches above them. Behind it, someone had spray-painted their catchphrase in colorful hanzi: ONLY HE CAN MOVE THE STARS.

All of their eyes followed me as I broke through the line and approached the guard station. The eyebot app painted the two guards when I got closer, and I saw some data go scribbling across the bottom of the 3i’s pink window as it identified their faces. One of the guards, a tall guy with bronze skin and oily hair, looked up as I fumbled for my ID. His name was Gang Sun. I cradled the kid in one arm and held the badge where he could see.

“What’s this?” Sun asked. The other guard, a broad-shouldered guy with a buzz cut who eyebot identified as Shen Liao, chuckled to himself.

“I need to get inside please.”

“Does this look like the mall? Go home.”

“Visitors are allowed inside.”

“During specified hours,” he said, “with a written permit. They’re locked down for tonight anyway. There’s a security sweep about to start, in case you hadn’t heard. Go home, and come back in the morning with a permit.”