The Burning World

  “How did they do it?” Julie says after a minute of grim silence.

  “Do what?”

  “Fed TV, Fed FM . . . people have been trying to get ahold of the Feed ever since BABL went online, what, nineteen years ago?”

  “Twenty.”

  “So after twenty years of everyone in America trying to hack this broadcast, you people show up”—her voice trembles and begins to rise—“smash into our homes, take control of our city, and while you’re at it, you go ahead and grab the Holy Grail? The only unjammed frequency in the whole country?” She shakes her head. “How?”

  I remember that brief interruption I observed on the bar’s TV. Security footage of the pitchmen’s assistants in some strange, dark chamber. A slow knock on the door in my head, tap . . . tap . . . tap . . .

  “It’s in the stadium,” I blurt.

  All eyes fall on me except Abram’s.

  “The source of the Feed is in the stadium.” I see a trace of a bitter smile on Abram’s face, and I look right at him. “It’s what you really came for.”

  He shrugs. “Well, we didn’t come for the nightlife.”

  “Bullshit,” Julie says, squinting at him like this is some inscrutable joke. “People have been living in Citi for over a decade. We’ve turned the place inside out. You’re saying we were sitting on the LOTUS broadcast station that whole time and no one knew about it?”

  “Someone knew about it.”

  Julie’s indignation freezes. Her demeanor shifts. “What do you mean?” she says in a low voice.

  Abram sighs. “Look, I’m not Executive. I’m not even Management, I just fly cargo and watch prisoners, so it’s not like I’m invited to the smoky room where the plots are hatched. But from what I’ve heard, about two months ago someone spliced a new message into the Feed.”

  Julie stares at him.

  “It was crude, obviously rushed, but whoever sent it knew the code, and so did we.”

  “What did it say?” she asks quietly.

  “That your stadium was under attack and we should come here to protect it. Because you had what we wanted.”

  Julie closes her eyes. She takes the realization like a martyr taking a bullet, barely flinching, and I suppose after watching her father try to kill her and then surrender himself to be eaten, this desperate final act may come as no surprise. But the betrayal that preceded it . . . the years of knowing what they had and choosing not to share it . . . that part cuts through. I can see it digging deeper the longer she contemplates it.

  Nora notices this and tries to change the subject. “By the way, Abram Kelvin”—she taps his headrest—“since you seem so eager to get to know us . . . my name’s Nora.”

  Abram smiles dryly. “Right. Names. We don’t use them much where I’m from.” He glances at Julie, but she’s looking out the window, traveling dark paths in her mind, so Nora fills in for her.

  “That’s Julie. She and your brother were a thing.”

  Abram’s smile fades into a distant blankness. He seems oddly uninterested in pursuing that topic, so I take my turn in the introductions.

  “I’m R.”

  “Art?”

  “R. Just the letter.”

  He glances me up and down as if having an unusual name suggests physical defects. “Who has a letter for a name?”

  I shrug. “I do.”

  He holds my gaze for a moment in some kind of trust-testing ritual, then grunts and returns his eyes to the road.

  “Who names their kid ‘Sprout’?” Nora says, and we all jump a little when Sprout herself answers:

  “I do.”

  It’s the first time we’ve heard her voice.

  “We named her Murasaki,” Abram sighs. “Then one day I said she was growing like a bean sprout and for some reason she latched onto it.”

  Sprout’s face flickers into a grin, showing both rows of teeth and a few gaps, then lapses back into worry.

  “Where’s her mom?” I ask, and Julie emerges from her brooding to shoot me a stern glance. I recall a lesson she taught me early in my rehumanization: if a family member is conspicuously absent, never ask where they are. You know damn well where they are.

  To my relief, Abram ignores me.

  “Thank you, by the way,” Julie says to him, still subdued but recovering. “Never got a chance to say that.”

  Abram looks back at her. “Thank you? For what?”

  “For getting us out of Goldman. Considering this was happening by our third day”—she flashes her bandaged stump—“I’m guessing we wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”

  He turns back to the road, shaking his head, but Julie continues.

  “I know you said you had other reasons for ditching Axiom, but you still took a big risk to break us out. If you’d just left quietly you might not be a fugitive right now, so . . . thanks.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” he says with a note of disgust. “Why would I risk my life for some strangers in a jail cell? You had information about my family, Management was about to kill you, it was a good time to make my move.”

  Julie lowers her brows. “Hey asshole. I’m not saying you’re a hero. I’m just saying thanks.”

  Abram chuckles darkly. “I throw you in jail, watch you get tortured, then drag you out into the wilderness to probably get killed by my employers, and you say thanks.” He shakes his head again. “I shouldn’t have interfered with natural selection. You’re clearly not meant to make it.”

  My mind drifts out the window and into the darkness, away from this turbulent chatter. I picture M wandering alone in the forest, gripping his head and groaning as his old self tries to dig a nest in his brain, maybe throwing himself off a waterfall to end the confusion, and a scared, selfish part of me envies him. The simplicity of his struggle. One man fighting one fight: his own. I understand inner conflicts. But to fight for and against other people, to engage with the world outside of me . . . this is a lot more complicated.

  I look at Julie in the rearview mirror, hoping to make some kind of meaningful contact, to share a glance that says, What a mess we’re in! but she’s busy glaring out the window, stunned into silence by our driver’s impenetrable shell. I stare for a moment, trying to catch her eyes, and then I notice something in the window behind her head. Two points of light floating in the trees. They blink and flicker, disappear for a moment, then flicker back. Fireflies? Fairies? A memory creeps into my consciousness, not something from the forbidden basement of my first life but a dusty relic from the beginning of my second. I am wandering in the woods alone, dragged on a leash by the hungry brute inside me. I am trying to piece together the nature of reality—what trees are, what animals are, what I am—but reality keeps changing. There are strange things in the woods. Hovering hands and shadows that glow and faces peering from holes in the air. These lights in the window seem to belong to that dream. Floating eyes. The Cheshire Cat. Then they accelerate, they draw closer, and the whine of an engine erases all this whimsy.

  Headlights.

  “I thought we’d have a bigger lead,” Abram mutters, and guns the truck to speeds that wouldn’t be safe on a major highway, much less this leaf-strewn backroad. I hear the click of seat belts behind me.

  Our pursuers gain steadily until I can make out the contours of their much newer, much faster vehicle: a nearly mint Porsche SUV.

  “Why do they have a fucking sports car?” Nora squeals. “You’ve worked for them all these years and you’re driving this piece of shit?”

  “I need you to shut up now,” Abram says through gritted teeth as he struggles to maintain control of the old Ford. Its creaky suspension fails to soften the constant barrage of potholes, and I feel my jaw rattling. The engine roars like a sick bear.

  The Porsche pulls up directly behind us and flashes its high beams, a friendly notice from a concerned fellow driver: Hey buddy, you’ve got a taillight out. Then it rams us.

  It’s only a warning bump, nudging us into a momentary skid, but at this
speed the sensation is terrifying. Sprout begins to cry in short, panicked bursts, and Julie wraps an arm around her.

  In the glow of the Porsche’s headlights reflecting off our tailgate, I notice a long steel tube mounted to its hood, with two hoses running back into the trunk space. I turn to Abram, who is concentrating fiercely on the road ahead of him. I don’t know how to break the news gently, so I just say it: “They have a flamethrower.”

  A chuckle bursts out of him. He closes his eyes for a moment, gathering himself, then veers to the right and slams on the brakes. The Porsche rushes past us. He tosses a pistol into my lap and I stare at it like it’s alien technology, an exotic ray gun.

  “I can’t.”

  “The hell do you mean you can’t?”

  “I can’t shoot.” I reach a shaky hand back to give the gun to Julie, but she’s busy trying to calm Sprout and doesn’t see it. The Porsche is pulling around. Nora grabs a rifle off the truck’s gun rack and climbs out the rear window into the bed. She drops to one knee and takes aim as the nimble Porsche whips a U-turn and comes up behind us again. She gets only one shot off before they ram us, knocking her on her back, but the driver’s side of the windshield is suddenly red. The Porsche stops. Abram hits the gas, and the Porsche starts to recede behind us before its driver is replaced and it comes to life again.

  “Nora, get inside!” Julie shouts.

  “Just a minute,” Nora says, taking aim. “I’m really good at this.”

  She fires. One of the Porsche’s front tires hisses and starts to flap . . . then seals and re-inflates itself.

  “This is so unfair,” she grumbles.

  “Nora, get in! They’re going to—”

  Another collision knocks the words out of Julie’s mouth and sends Nora toppling against the tailgate. As she climbs to her knees, she finds herself staring into the barrel of the flamethrower, its pilot light guttering in the wind like a tiki torch. She scampers to the window and wriggles inside, and Julie slides it shut just as the rear of the truck erupts into an orange blaze.

  Such things have a way of ending an exciting car chase. As the window seals melt, as the women scream and press themselves against the front seats to escape the hair-curling heat, I see an ancient service station ahead, a place for weary travelers to grab some beef jerky and top off their tanks before continuing on into the wilderness. Both the rear tires burst. The truck careens out of control, and as I see the gas pump’s barrier post rushing toward us, I have just enough time to think, Good thing I buckled up, before we hit the post and my seat belt rips free of the truck’s rusted chassis and I hurtle headfirst through the windshield.

  I AM FLYING.

  I am flying in a plane. I am flying in an armored plane and there are old men in all the seats and one of them is grinning at me from across a table and explaining something about necessity and something about ends and means and justification because he thinks I still require justification, that I still want to believe I’m good; he thinks no one so young could grasp the truth of the world so quickly, but he is wrong. I sip my whiskey and listen to him drone—

  The old men are gone and I am on a smaller plane and this one is crashing. An ocean of evergreens spreads out below us, and a blond woman gives me one last look, perhaps a good-bye—Julie screams my name—the trees tear into the plane—

  The gravel tears into my shoulder and I roll over and over until my body slaps against a dumpster. I immediately rise to my feet, ready to fight enemies and protect friends, but then I remember: I feel pain now. I am soft and sensitive. I am human. And I have just flown through a windshield. Blood trickles into my eyes and my head is beginning to howl. I feel every inch of my injuries, but I fight my way through them. I stagger toward the burning truck.

  Abram crawls out and opens the rear door on Julie’s side. I feel a twinge of unpleasant emotion as he reaches in to rescue the woman I love while I stumble toward her, a dizzy, useless mess—but he reaches past Julie and lifts his daughter out. He sets Sprout in the grass a safe distance away and by the time he looks back at the truck, I’m there. Julie and Nora look unharmed but dazed by their impact with the front seats. The rear window is a stovetop and the air reeks of burnt hair. I pull Julie out and Nora scoots out after her and as we run toward the service station to hide from the imminent explosion, a man in a beige jacket steps out of the darkness with a fire extinguisher. The reproachful glare he gives us as he smothers the truck in white foam says we should be ashamed for causing all this trouble.

  Julie, Nora, and Abram pat themselves down like they’re checking for keys and wallets before leaving the house. But the guns are in the truck.

  Two more Axiom soldiers emerge from the smoke, rifles drawn. The first one drops the extinguisher and joins his comrades, and I notice a gray tie underneath his coat, incongruous with the rugged utility of his uniform.

  The tie is rank. The color is function. Together they show—

  Shut up, I snap, throttling my thoughts into submission. You don’t know these things.

  Gray Tie draws his pistol but doesn’t bother raising it. We are already thoroughly covered. “Well?” he says impatiently. “Hands up?”

  We raise our hands. I feel the wetness behind my head. My blood is not yet hot, but it’s at least higher than ambient temperature. Warm blood, cold comfort.

  “Parker,” Abram says. “You’re making a mistake.”

  Parker is younger than Abram, mid-twenties, with a slouching stance and a lazy smirk. He looks bored. “These three,” he says, pointing from me to Julie to Abram. “We take them back to the dome.” He points at Nora. “We can kill this one.”

  “What?” Nora blurts. “No you can’t! The TV said ‘Find them and bring them back.’ ”

  “It showed cages for these three,” Parker says. “That means capture. Fish tank for you. That means kill.”

  “A fish tank is a cage, you idiot! You’re supposed to capture all of us!”

  Parker glances at his comrades. “I’m pretty sure fish tank means kill. You know, like, ‘sleep with the fishes’?”

  “Oh my God your code sucks,” Nora groans.

  Parker shrugs. “If I’m wrong, I’m doing you a favor. You don’t want to go where your friends are going.”

  “Parker, listen to me,” Abram says, taking a step forward. The other soldiers raise their guns but he ignores them. “Axiom’s a runaway train. You need to get out while you can.”

  “Shut up, Kelvin,” Parker says, finally raising his gun. “And step back.”

  Abram steps forward. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the change since the hiatus. We’re spreading too fast, taking territory we don’t need and can’t hold, and you never hear a word about an endgame.”

  “An endgame?” Parker scoffs. “You’re a fucking transport pilot, Kelvin; leave the ‘endgame’ to Executive.”

  “And where is Executive? Who’s on the board and who put them there? Do you even know who the president is right now?”

  Parker glances to the side, thinking.

  “We get our orders from our bosses and they get theirs from their bosses but you ask who’s at the top and you get blank stares. You ask these fucking ‘pitchmen’ anything and you get blank stares.”

  Parker shrugs. “Okay, yeah, those guys are a little spooky. New training techniques, I hear.” He squints. “But what’s your point?”

  “My point is it’s not safe here anymore!” He takes another step forward, but the desperation in his voice tells me this is no ploy to distract Parker. He means every word. “Who are we working for? What is our product? There’s no security in a company where you can’t answer that. What if there is no one at the top? What if Axiom’s a headless chicken just following leftover impulses, scratching the dirt while it bleeds to death?”

  Parker stares at him for a moment, then bursts into laughter. “Wow, Kelvin. I’ve heard some bullshit come out of your mouth but that’s a fresh pile. Is this how you managed to work here half your life w
ithout even making Brown Tie?”

  “Parker—”

  “What a waste. If you could’ve learned how to shut up and do your job, you would’ve been Upper Management by now.”

  “Parker, listen—”

  “Nah, we’re done here.” Parker waves his gun toward the Porsche. “Go ahead and get in the car before I misinterpret the code again and decide birdcage means kill.”

  Abram grinds his teeth. He doesn’t move.

  Parker lets his gun drift from Abram’s head to Sprout’s. “You know, your kid wasn’t mentioned in the broadcast. Guess it’s up to me to decide what happens to her.”

  “Daddy?” Sprout whimpers, staring into the pistol’s barrel, and Abram’s body stiffens as if flooded with electricity.

  “Get that away from my daughter,” he says in a level growl.

  “Or what, Kelvin?”

  “Or I’ll walk through every bullet in the clip and snap your neck while I bleed out.”

  Parker hesitates, then snorts to mask the concession as he moves the gun away. “Will you just get in the fucking car? This is boring.”

  Abram grabs Sprout’s hand and pulls her close. “You’re a fool, Parker.”

  “And yet I’m the one with the gun and the tie and the guaranteed housing in Manhattan, and you’re the one going to jail.”

  Abram spits on the ground and moves toward the Porsche.

  Parker waves his gun at me and Julie. “You too, kids.”

  We take a few halting steps. The other two soldiers go with us, keeping weapons trained on our heads. Parker jabs his pistol into Nora’s back and says, “Into the ditch, please.”

  “Just let her go!” Julie shouts, her eyes beginning to glisten. “They don’t even want her, she has nothing to do with this! Just take us and let her go!”

  “You’re . . . new, aren’t you,” Parker chuckles. “Axiom doesn’t let go.”

  Nora steps down into the ditch, into the congealed muck of the gas station’s oily runoff. Parker goes around behind her, perhaps to keep his eyes on us, perhaps to ensure that we get an unobstructed view. Julie stares at Nora, speechless, helpless. Nora’s face is stone, but she gives Julie a small nod, as if to absolve her of responsibility for what’s about to happen.