The Burn Zone Read online

  Taste aside, my stomach felt hollow, but I didn’t want Dragan to come back to nothing at all. They’d send him home with a fresh ration punch sheet, but they always backdated them and the punches wouldn’t be redeemable until the next day. I took another puff off the cigarillo and then went back to plop down on the couch in front of the TV. My reflection looked bony in the windowed wall behind it, a pale ghost in front of the city lights beyond where streams of air traffic painted lines in the night sky.

  The canister’s black haan certificate overlapped the human one, both stickers askew above the Shiliuyuán logo. The round authorization stamp, basically a haan signature, was orange this time around instead of red like it had been since my first surrogate at thirteen. The symbol was different too, I’d noticed. Under that were my surrogate ID number and the name SAM Shao. Tānchi began reaching for the canister as I found the remote.

  SAM. Dragan tagged me with the nickname after a detail with an American expat—it stood for Surface to Air Missile, and was also a Western name. He said it fit me because I left everywhere I went looking like a bomb went off. Now practically every A.I. in Hangfei used it.

  Guardian. I thought about how quick I’d been to correct Ling. True, Dragan wasn’t my real father, but I still felt guilty for saying it. It wasn’t like I was any great prize. There was a reason meat farmers grabbed people like me—when they chopped us into scrapcake and sold us on the black market, no one cared. When Dragan broke me and the others out of there, I wasn’t anything to take home —a used-up twelve-year-old train wreck who kept a knife under her pillow and had panic attacks—but that’s what he did. He took me home. He never judged me, or pitied me. Why couldn’t I call him my father?

  Tānchi pawed my face, the ghost image of his bottle appearing and then fading as a throb of hunger seeped in through the mites. It ached, making my own stomach feel even hollower, but beneath it was that constant warm thread that bonded us, and I smiled. Ling thought she was helping with her prodding about a family, but I’d lost that option a long time ago. Haan were the only children that would ever truly be mine, and I was okay with that.

  “Sorry,” I told him. “Long day.”

  I cracked the seal on the top of the bottle, and felt it warm in my hand as I pulled out the rubber tube. At the sound, two little hands with their five delicate fingers reached out of the cocoon of blankets and began to grope at the air in front of his face, which was the color and texture of smoked crystal. The wrinkled gray mass of brains that lurked behind his bulbous forehead shifted eagerly, the second, smaller one drawing up beneath it and shuddering in the dark fluid there. Behind his honeycomb lattice of ribs, his tiny heart beat a steady samba at the thought of gorging. With my free hand, I used my phone to enter the feeding time into the online worksheet.

  Once I got the confirmation, I pointed the business end of the bottle toward his wide, contoured face, making a spaceship noise in the back of my throat as he chattered happily.

  “Coming in,” I said, moving the bottle closer. “Beginning docking sequence ...”

  When the tube touched his glassy lips, his mouth and chin dissolved into cool smoke. As the tube was sucked down into the tiny cloud to coil inside his belly, his hands grabbed hold of the bottle and I heard a greedy sigh.

  “Easy there,” I said.

  My stomach growled as I watched the haan child eat, and I took another drag on the smoke to compensate. Swaddled in his blankets, he clutched the silver canister to his little chest in a death grip, consuming calories at a rate that still amazed me every time I saw it. The cylinder, a variant on haan inversion tech, contained liters even though it fit neatly in my palm. Calorie-wise, that one bottle alone could easily feed me and Dragan for a week if it weren’t for the fact that, despite being processed from feedlot stores, haan formula would rupture a human’s intestines inside of a minute.

  The scalefly landed on the canister’s bottom, and I waved it away as I put one foot up on the coffee table next to a cluster of shot glasses packed with chewed, lipstick-kissed butts and flipped on the TV.

  The channels were full of bomb news. I’d thought I wanted to know, like it would help somehow, but the barrage of video footage, blood, bones, and black smoke turned me off. I couldn’t watch it, not right now.

  “... explosives were smuggled in via a one-man skiff and then carried across the tidal flats to avoid detection at the Hangfei gates,” a reporter rapped out as I flicked past. On the next channel, the headline CYBER ATTACK hovered over another talking head. A crawl at the bottom of the screen showed the current food index for the different feedlots. Most stayed steady while one, feedlot five, had gone up another tick. That was eighty-three point one percent in total now being sent directly to the haan.

  “... suspect that the mysterious signal, first noticed a month ago buried in the time server feed, may be part of an ongoing cyber-terrorism attack whose purpose is not yet known. All attempts to block the signal have so far failed, as have all attempts to decipher— “

  I flipped again.

  “The bombing took the lives of sixty-three people, and completely destroyed the largest ration distribution center in the borough— “

  Flip.

  “... how long before a conventional bombing turns to something far worse such as nuclear, or even biological? We need to strike first or...”

  The camera zoomed in on the ocean’s horizon where the ever-present fleet of foreign ships sat like a city skyline, the sky above it streaked with jet contrails.

  I punched in the code for my friend Vamp’s site and jumped away to Channel X, replacing the stream of reality with a welcome splash of electric glitz.

  He’d changed his site backdrop to a new fan pic, a tall, whip-thin black girl in a two-piece that didn’t leave much to the imagination. She had a big Afro and lip gloss and made the signature X sign with her index fingers. At the bottom of the screen, the countdown to the Fangwenzhe Festival ticked off the remaining thirty or so hours second by second.

  I glanced down as Tānchi’s little body shuddered with pleasure, and smiled. After a minute the last of the gelatin disappeared and he squeezed the canister one last time before stretching, shivering, and then going limp in a fit of post-gorging bliss. He groped with one little hand and when I reached down he gripped my index finger. The tube slithered back into the bottle, and his face turned solid again, lit by the mellow orange glow from his big, lidless eyes. When the twin trios of pinprick pupils found me, I felt a low rush of exhausted happiness. Then his digestion kicked into overdrive and he passed out.

  As he snoozed, I cruised to Channel X’s main page where a map of the city displayed the blue specks of active users like scattered stars. Under that he’d posted a countdown to the haan’s Phase Five tech, which was due to be released to us in six months, along with a copy of the catalogue. We’d get the Escher Field, second-generation rations, limited freestanding gate portals, and of course, the defense shield.

  One of the little pink hearts throbbed in the corner of the 3i window where a tap from Vamp let me know he’d posted the music cracks I’d been after. I pulled the files down to my phone and rang him up.

  “Hey, Sam,” he said. “You get my post?”

  “Yeah, thanks. Nice backdrop.”

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  “That your new girlfriend?”

  “She wishes. She’s the lucky winner.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Tell me you’re not still doing that.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Hey, I just feel bad for her,” I said.

  “It’s for a good cause.”

  “What, the ‘you getting laid foundation’?”

  “In my heart, Sam. That’s where that hurts.”

  “Upkeep for your pirate site and spying on security doesn’t count as a good cause,” I said, a smile creeping over my face. “You just like to date your fan mail.”

  “Fame is a blessing, but also a curse, I’m sorry to say. Besides, ho
w else would you have met me and then subsequently gotten both of us banned from the Joy Coffee Bar for life?”

  “That was your fault.”

  Normally he would have kept ribbing me. Our infamous contest date, which also got us kicked out of the skate park, was usually ripe territory, so when he didn’t respond my smile began to fade. I knew what he was going to ask next.

  “You see the bombing from where you were?”

  “No,” I said, “but I heard it.”

  “Did you see the blast site on the—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now, okay?”

  “Sure. Okay.” He got quiet for a minute. “You getting psyched for the festival?”

  “Totally. I need it this year.” I paused. “Can we do something fun tomorrow?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Something fun. Here, though. I’ve got the kid. Is that okay?”

  He didn’t let on, but I knew haan babies creeped Vamp out a little. He hesitated a little, so I pushed.

  “I just want to forget all this, you know? Just for a while.”

  “No, I know,” he said. “You got it.”

  “You don’t have plans?”

  “Nope, I’m all yours.”

  My smile came back.

  “Dragan’s back tomorrow, right?”

  “Yeah, but not until late.”

  “You must be relieved.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s he holding up over there?”

  “I don’t know ... he’s been kind of blowing me off.”

  “He probably scored some primo Pan-Slav tail.”

  “He did not,” I said. My hackles went up, but just then the floor vibrated, and outside a soft rumble began to swell. Through the plate-glass window, I saw a distant light flash above the clouds and I looked off toward the skyline for the source. At first I thought it was another bomb, but it wasn’t. Past the colorful sprawl of neon lights, flashing ads, and coursing air and street traffic, off where the electric pulse trickled and faded to black at the rim, one of the dark towers there had begun a slow-motion fall. I could see it silhouetted against the faint blue light of the dome behind it as crews chipped away at the urban ruins that still surrounded the Impact site.

  Right, the demolition. The ad box had tried to remind me. They were doing more demo tonight, and right in our backyard this time. Any drug cookers and meat farmers they shook out would come running right into our little warren of Tùzi-wō, with security right behind them.

  “Perfect,” I muttered, hoisting myself off the couch and carrying Tānchi over to the window.

  The rumble swelled above the shaking of the air conditioner as hundreds of stories’ worth of concrete and glass collapsed into a growing black cloud that billowed out in front of the blue force field and the towering hulk of the haan ship behind it.

  Over thirty years they’d been here now. A stray graviton eddy on the platform of what used to be Shiliuyuán Station was about all the warning anyone got that they were coming, or so the story went. Then a quarter million people were gone in the blink of an eye, the haan’s force field dome growing around their ship while the rubble still smoldered. They hid then, safe behind that field, until they could convince us that what happened was an accident and not an attack. I understood the haan better than most, I thought, but even so I had to wonder when I looked at that field what promise they could possibly have made that kept us from retaliating when people still screamed for it even now.

  I’d never know. It was all classified, and it all happened before my time. Even Dragan was just a kid, drinking vodka or whatever eleven-year-olds did over in the Pan-Slav Emirates. Whatever they’d promised, it wasn’t anything they’d given us so far—the food was payment for that. Not the defense shield. Something else. Something better.

  We will save you. It’s all they would say.

  “You’re inside, right?” Vamp asked.

  “Yeah, but I have to go back out.”

  “You’re nuts. The sweep’s going to be up your ass in like an hour.”

  “I know, but I’m out of meds.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Don’t start.”

  “I’m not starting, I’m just saying a little Zen oil here and there is one thing, but—”

  “That’s starting.”

  “I’m just saying there’s a reason all that shit got legalized. They want to keep everyone fuzzy. Don’t play into it.”

  “I want to be fuzzy,” I said. “I need to be fuzzy. When I’m not fuzzy I...”

  I didn’t know how to put it. When Vamp and I met, I’d already been living with Dragan for a couple of years. He didn’t know what things were like before that, the things that happened to me and the things I’d done.

  “What do you want me to say?” I said instead. “I’m a mess.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I get it.”

  He didn’t, though. He thought he did, but he didn’t, and I didn’t want him to.

  “It’s not narcs anyway,” I said as a warble snuck into my voice. “These are legit meds. I don’t sleep without them, Vamp. I—”

  “It’s okay. Sam, I know.”

  The bundle of blankets had begun to get really warm as Tānchi slipped deeper into his food coma. I could feel his rising body heat against my chest and neck as I looked out the window to where the distant dust cloud formed a column, rising high into the night sky. If I was going to go, I had to get out there and back before the sweep, and before Tānchi’s last feeding.

  I realized then that I really didn’t have very much time at all, and if I didn’t make it I was going to be in for a long night.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “What about the kid?”

  “I’ll bring him with me. It’s just down the block. I’ll be careful.”

  “Okay, get going. Run the new eyebot build, though. We’re tracking the sweep live, and the more nodes the better.”

  “I’ll be back in before they get this far.”

  “Just run it. You never know.”

  I lowered Tānchi back into his crib and tucked the blankets around him, then crossed to the balcony door and slid it open. The concrete floor outside vibrated under my feet as the racket rolled across the city like thunder. A blue arc of electricity snapped up from the expanding cloud and flashed over the rim, a huge, electric tentacle that touched the bubble of light in the distance. A bright, hexagonal mesh pulsed around the strike point, lighting up the northern face of the looming ship. White-hot flakes tumbled down the side of the force field as the glow faded, and the blanket of clouds above formed a huge, lazy whirlpool over the dome’s peak.

  “Damn it,” I whispered. The streets were buzzing—I could hear it from fifty stories up. A lockdown would shut the markets down early. They’d be a madhouse right up until the point they had to scatter.

  I looked back through the balcony doorway Should I really take him with me out there? Or would he be okay until I got back?

  “Vamp, I gotta go.”

  I turned away from the crumbling bit of skyline and headed back in, canned air chilling the sweat on the back of my neck.

  “Run the app.”

  “I will. Bye.”

  I hung up and stood there for a minute, not sure what to do first. It might be safer to leave Tānchi, but it was also against the law. I crossed back to the crib and reached down to get him ready to go out.

  When the bolt on the front door snapped, I almost jumped out of my skin. The door flew open and I heard someone stumble into my gear, knocking the bucket over as heavy footsteps moved through the entryway. I turned, heart pounding, but it was just Dragan, back early. He stepped into the living room as the door swung shut back behind him with a thud.

  “Hey,” I said, switching off the TV. He didn’t answer. He was still dressed in his military uniform, his pistol still strapped to his hip. His eyes were wide.

  “D?”

  Something was wrong
. His cropped salt-and-pepper hair was spiky with sweat and grease, and the lines in his face looked deeper than usual. He was pale, making the wire-thin scar on his cheek stand out raw red, and the rims of his lower eyelids were the color of a bruise.

  “Sam,” he said distantly. “Get your things.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t answer. He just stepped farther into the room, a kind of slow shuffle, and I noticed something, a stain of some kind, spattered on the front of his uniform.

  “Is that blood?” I asked. He still wouldn’t look at me. He was just staring straight ahead like he didn’t know where he was, or who I was.