Dr. Dabrowski’s footfalls echoed along the concrete walls of Olivia’s cell as she vanished around the corner. The two identical guards, though sunglasses hid their eyes, remained on either side of the heavy door and kept a close watch on Olivia. OK, fine, I won’t get up. I’m supposed to talk to some security guy named Mr. Walker anyways. She flipped her tail to her other side, stretching the opposite muscles. The retreating footsteps down the hallway came to a sudden stop.
A man’s voice, sharper than even Dr. Dabrowski’s and much louder, said, “Doctor. I take it you approve of the feral’s field trip?”
“Yes, I believe that everything is in order. Is something wrong?” she replied.
“Is there a reason you neglected to mention it was to an office on the top floor? The only reason I agreed to these face to face meetings in the first place is because of Clone and Ortega,” said the man, his drawl shifting to precise pronunciation for the last name. Clone? What does that mean? Olivia momentarily glanced around at the unmoved identical guards. Can they not hear?
Dr. Dabrowski said, “Yes, you have made me very much aware. They will be right outside. Dr. Sullivan insisted on her office, I assumed that wouldn’t be an issue. And Slinky’s team made no mention of any movement today.”
“No. You see, this is a bit of a boondoggle. We’re busy moving Slinky to its temporary enclosure for cleaning when I suddenly get an urgent message from your assistant asking where I am. This is leaving aside the fact that there is no way in hell I am letting a brand new feral up to the surface on a whim.”
“I think you are overreacting, Mr. Walker. I’ve spoken face to face with her, she is perfectly well behaved,” replied Dr. Dabrowski with a sigh. What did she call him? Mr. Walker? That’s the guy.
“Ma’am, my men are not prison guards. They’re not trained for that. You want us to keep people out and ferals in, that’s fine. With all due respect, I don’t believe letting another Slinky out of its cell is the right thing to do,” replied Mr. Walker.
“She has complied so far. After her first few attempts at the entrance she has given us no trouble,” said Dabrowski. “Unlike Slinky there’s no record of her hunting and eating people.” Olivia shivered. Eating people. Who is this Slinky? I guess he’s a feral.
“He was learning and biding his time. If you’re wrong, ma’am, people will die.”
“She could shed light on so many questions we’ve had since this institute was founded. If getting those answers requires an olive branch, so be it.”
“Maybe she takes your olive branch. Maybe she wants revenge. Maybe she just wants to get out,” suggested Walker. I would like to leave. But they’d try to stop me, even if I get past the noise thing. A pit formed at the bottom of her stomach. Is hurting someone right if I can get out? Maybe there’s another way?
“She only had three separate incidents over the course of a month. An entire month. Every other feral gets that many over the course of two or three days if they’re not captured or killed. Maybe four days for the herbivores,” said the doctor. “Have you had time to review the footage I sent?”
Olivia heard no response. Did he nod? Did he shake his head? After a few seconds Dabrowski continued, “Dr. Sullivan insisted on hosting her upstairs in her office. The theory is that the sight of the sky should set the feral at ease, but I will defer to your judgment.” Olivia jolted upright in her seat. Outside? Can I fly again?
“Yes, ma’am.” OK. I just need to be a person to this guy. Not a big scary monster. A person. Olivia pulled her wings in as tight as the bed she sat on would allow, curling her toes and fingers in to hide her claws.
Heavy footsteps approached at a rapid clip. A man marched into the room. Narrowed brown eyes, sandwiched between a drab green cap and an iron grey mustache, took in every detail of the cell. Olivia’s head tilted an inch to the side as he came to a stop out of reach, hands clasped behind his back and feet spread a few feet apart, back perfectly straight.
His uniform reminded her of a lighter version of the MHU’s, though green instead of urban grey. The sleeves of his shirt had been rolled up to his elbows, and the pant legs seemed to be tucked into his boots. That’s weird. That looks like a uniform, but I don’t see any patches. There’s always patches on those things. Don’t they mean something?
Once the sounds of the door closing died out, he cleared his throat. “She given you any trouble?” he asked the guards, meeting Olivia’s gaze.
One of the guards took in a sharp breath as if waking up. He looked to Walker and said, “No, sir. She hasn’t so much as twitched at the whitecoats.”
Walker twisted his neck to fix the guard with a look hidden from Olivia. “The doctors.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. The doctors.”
“So,” said Walker, his attention snapping back to Olivia. “Olivia, correct? You can call me Mr. Walker. The safety of this facility and its employees is my responsibility.”
“Hello,” said Olivia with a small wave.
“Will you be giving me any trouble?” he asked without further preamble.
I can’t smell any fresh air to lead me out of here. You’ll probably shoot me a bunch, and the last time the MHU shot at me I actually bled. I’m not entirely sure I’d be willing to murder my way out unless there’s no other way. That sonic thing really hurt.
“I hope not.”
Walker did not visibly smile. Indeed, only barely could Olivia spot the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement. “That’s my hope as well.” Any trace of his amusement vanished, even if the tension in his shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. “If I have learned anything from twenty years in the Army and another seven in the Texas Rangers, trouble finds its way everywhere sooner or later.”
Olivia asked, “What kind of trouble?”
He finally broke eye contact with her. Hands still clasped behind his back, Walker spun precisely ninety degrees, took three steps to the left, and came to a stop holding the exact same pose he’d addressed her with. His vision rose a few degrees, as if looking out at a distant horizon instead of a deeply boring concrete wall.
“All kinds. All kinds. We must always be vigilant. Failure is like water, it will seep in anywhere there are cracks. In an ideal world we would never lift our arms against each other, but such is not the way of the world we live in.”
Walker spun on his heels precisely one hundred and eighty degrees and took three more steps to the right, exactly back to where he’d stood before. He still stared off into the nonexistent distance. Should I say something? I don’t think so. He’s kind of just going for it. Olivia glanced at the identical guards to find them slouching against the wall in poorly disguised boredom.
“Do you agree?”
Olivia blinked. “Yes.”
One of the guards jerked upright. Walker caught Olivia’s startled reaction out of the corner of his eye, turning around just in time for the guard to announce, “Slinky’s acting up, we need to get over there.”
Walker marched over to the door, Olivia forgotten. “Open her up, let them know we’re on the way.”
“Need to focus, boss,” said one of the guards. The man disintegrated. Olivia stared in horror as his body, equipment, clothes, everything turned to fine white powder, itself dissipating to nothing a second later. Walker and the other guard, utterly unfazed by the scene, hurried from the room.
Olivia’s gaze was torn between the open and unguarded door, and where one of those guards once stood. Is he OK? What was that? She heard a thud from outside her cell and raised voices. Can I just leave? Maybe I can escape. There’s no one else here. She got up, but paused at the threshold, with a wary gaze in the vague direction of the sonic emitters. With no piercing shriek coming, she stepped out of her cell.
She found herself in a sparse corridor, the concrete walls plastered with the occasional workplace safety poster or an anatomical diagram of some animal. To the left of Olivia’s door were brand new ones of a shark, crocodile, and komodo dragon. A few feet past those lay a dead end. To her right lay the rest of the facility, and with it alarmed shouts from guards. They only grew more alarmed and urgent as she crept as best she could along the wall towards the top of a T intersection.
The hall directly ahead of her held another door and dead end similar to her own cell. As she rounded the corner, she caught sight of the commotion. Several guards, Walker and Olivia’s non disintegrated one included, ringed a pair of pallet jacks carrying a twisted mass of metal most of the way out of a cell identical to Olivia’s own. She spotted a couple orderlies pulling at straps binding the mass and realized some of the metal moved.
Concentric matte grey bands twisted like a colossal serpent. About twenty feet long and twice as thick as a man, it pushed against the straps holding it in place, giving room for other parts of its body to wriggle free. Through its sluggish and slow writhing Olivia could barely spot a humanoid silhouette. Feral? Is that the one that hunted people? Some bands formed only a half circle like a rib bone, others, towards the center of the feral, a full hoop. She glanced at the poster on the wall for any clue, only to realize it was literally just a giant bold red question mark.
One of the hoops lashed out, twisting out from the column of its body and pulverizing a guard as he moved to help one of the orderlies. Instead of a scream, or blood, or anything else Olivia expected, his body exploded into white powder. Now free of the straps, the shambling mound twisted towards the rest of the people. Are they going to be able to stop it?
“Fire!” shouted Walker. With that order, the guards and orderlies abandoned all attempts to wrangle the feral and either dove out of the way or followed his order, opening fire with the heavy rifles every guard save Walker carried.
The feral made no sound, save its body scraping against surfaces, but it curled tighter around its center of mass, flinching away from the gunfire. One bullet caught a solid blow on a thinner band, cracking it. Pale green blood oozed from beneath the metallic flesh. The feral lunged forward with its thick center, bowling over one guard and turning another into powder. Not all of those guards are powder copies. Neither are those worker guys.
Olivia rushed forward as Walker pulled one of his men out of reach of the feral by the collar. She grazed against the back of one of the identical guards with her shoulder, knocking him to the side before she could intercept the other feral. Alarmed shouts filled the air as she collided with it. Despite its lack of facial features or normal body language, its spasm registered as shock.
Olivia dug her hands into the metallic mass and hauled it off the ground. Free hoops ground against her fingers, either to sever them or at least make her release it. She dug the claws of her feet into the ground to brace and chucked the bulk of the feral back into its cell. One of its ends managed to hook itself around her wrist. She swatted it off with her free hand, breaking something. Behind her, someone started to pull the pallet jacks out from the doorway. The feral untangled itself and began to coil and twist itself towards the door and Olivia.
She spread her wings, covering the entire entrance, and screamed, “Back off!”
The metallic feral, instead of the mindless hungry charge of the mantis feral she’d meet in the fighting arena, hesitated. After they sized each other up for a moment, it curled up once more, hoops ready to strike if Olivia pushed forward.
“Close it, now!” ordered Walker. The heavy door, eight inches of solid steel, slammed shut, leaving the feral trapped in its cell.
Olivia let out a relieved sigh, folding her wings and claws back up, and turned around to find rifles pointed directly towards her. Beyond them, the orderlies carted off the pallet jacks, careful not to turn their backs on her.
Walker, unarmed and directly behind the line, barked, “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Olivia flinched back and slowly held her open hands to her side. “My door was open.”
“That does not give you free reign to walk around wherever you want!”
“You guys left it open. And it sounded bad.”
Walker removed his cap by the brim and ran a hand through sweaty iron-grey hair. “I am going to be spending a lot of time explaining this failure. Stand down,” he ordered his men. You just gave me a little speech about how important it was to avoid failure.
“Me? I’m sorry.”
He eyed the bullet casings on the ground for a moment. “Not just that.” Shooting the bad feral was bad? He had to. Right? “No visiting the upper floors today. We have to clean this up. Let’s get you back.”
***
The next day, Olivia awoke to find a change of clothes, normal clothes, neatly folded. Thank god. They’re not bright orange. They’re even kind of my size! She enjoyed the shower with no one talking to her or aiming guns at her or prodding at her. Just silence and running water.
After getting out and cutting the requisite holes into her new shirt, she threw herself face first on her bed. Tired. It’s so quiet. Usually, Amanda’s muttering to herself at about this time. Or Ben is harassing her. Or Miya is cursing to herself out back. Or Chris is reading some history book. Olivia fought back a tear. I can’t give up. I’m going to get out of here.
This place is weird. Are the security people and science people even talking to each other? Is there any single person in charge? Dabrowski and Walker seem to be in charge of some stuff, but I don’t think they get along.
Lunch passed before the green light above the door lit up. In walked four familiar guards as Olivia got up. The lead guard reminded her of Miya, or at least the skin she could see that wasn’t tattooed. The other three smelled and acted exactly the same. He mentioned Clone and Ortega. Those guys are all the same, so I’m guessing they’re Clone. Clones? Whatever.
“Are you ready?” asked the lead guard, who by process of elimination must have been Ortega. “You’re heading up to the top floors today.”
“Hello,” she said, with her now customary small wave. “Yes.” OK, I know I’ve said this every time before, and every time the other person goes off on some crazy rant, but this time I’m going to have a normal conversation.
“This way,” he said, Clones standing to the side to let Olivia out. His eyes locked onto her and flashed for a moment. What was that? Cautious of the firepower they carried, she followed him and headed out to the concrete hallway.
“So, you’re Ortega?” she asked the back of the lead man’s head as they walked.
“Yep.”
After a moment with no elaboration, she turned to one of the Clones. “And you’re Clone? Or all of you?”
“Yep,” one replied after a moment, ignoring the second question.
She inhaled deeply and sighed. A whiff of something pleasant caught her nose. She tracked it to the Clone to her right.
“What?” he asked.
“Something smells really good. Why do you smell like burgers?”
Ortega noticed their looks. His eyes flashed again. “She smells the grill.” Can he smell what I’m smelling?
“Oh. It’s Friday, I run the grill for the staff lunch.”
“It smells really really good,” Olivia admitted. “Way better than normal burgers.”
Clone cracked a smile for a moment as they passed Slinkey’s cell and into unfamiliar territory for Olivia. “I would hope so. I was a sous chef at some high end restaurants years ago.”
“Sew?” People like talking about themselves.
“Second in command for the big chef.” He shot a mocking look at Ortega. “Finally, someone who actually appreciates good food.”
“She ain’t even ate it! It’s just the smell,” Ortega shot back with a laugh.
“What are they feeding you?” Clone asked her. You don’t know? The different parts here really don’t talk to each other.
“Meat. I think beef. They’ve tried other stuff too. It’s all good.”
“I bet.”
“I wish I didn’t have to cut out all those fatty bits though,” said Olivia.
Clone’s back stiffened. “What? No. Fat’s got that flavor, man. Nothing but fat sucks, but a well marbled steak? That’s what you’re there for.”
“But it’s kind of tough. Sometimes I get stringy bits caught in my teeth.”
“Oh, sounds like they’re giving you cheap cuts with gristle. Ask for a good ribeye, you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
They came to a low, narrow door. Olivia had grown used to having to duck under most doorways, but the hallway that extended beyond was exactly the same height. That was, about six inches lower than what her wings cleared. Olivia stopped, and looked at Ortega.
He noticed her exasperated look and shrugged. “One of the real big ones gets loose, they can’t get to anyone in here too easy.” He motioned for her to go through.
She sighed. Fine, whatever. She ducked down and hunched over, spreading her wings out a few feet to keep the tops from grinding against the ceiling. Thankfully, this didn’t go on for too long, and they came to an open elevator. Her escort motioned for her to get in, not following themselves.
Ortega said, “Interior controls have been deactivated. It’ll take you two levels up to the white coats’ offices. We’re taking a different elevator up and will be waiting for you at the top. Don’t fuck with it.”
Olivia eyed the small, grey metal elevator with its welded patches on the walls and dim lighting. Just me? “Can I not go in?” asked Olivia. “Or walk?”
“It’s the elevator or back to your cell,” he replied.
She crammed herself into the elevator as a Clone hit a button on the wall. The door closed behind her. Olivia stood in silence for a moment. Then another moment. Right as she thought something bad was about to happen, the elevator jerked to life, moving upwards. It went up. And up. Oh, maybe I can go outside. All these rooms are too small. The elevator slowed to a halt, and the doors immediately opened. The warm air that rushed in somehow stuck to her skin. She felt the air as she breathed.
“This way,” said Ortega.
“What is that?” she asked as they walked, feeling her new clothes stick to her body with sweat.
Ortega was quiet for a second before asking, “Oh, never felt humidity?”
“Warm as a momma’s hug, without the smell of whisky,” joked Clone.
“No,” replied Olivia as Ortega’s laughter died down. Her nose wrinkled. “It doesn’t feel good.”
“Where did you live before?”
“Westward City.”
“Man, never managed to get out there. I always wanted to learn how to ski.,” said Ortega. As they chatted, the guards seemed to relax, grips on weapons loosening and postures slacking. Normal people! Finally! And they seem happy just talking.
“Welcome to Houston, worst weather in the world,” added Clone. “It’s the end of May, it’s only going to get worse. At least the hurricanes usually don’t make it this far west.”
“Humidity, you said?” asked Olivia
“Yeah, this is normal.”
Olivia paused for a moment. “Why does anyone live here then?” Ortega and one Clone nearly doubled over laughing for a moment. The other two Clones marched on like clockwork. It’s only ever one Clone talking or reacting at once.
“You get used to it,” said Clone.
“Really?”
“Nope!” he replied, chuckling as her shoulders slumped.
“Eggheads here are all pissy, can’t stop bitching about it. This is where their careers go to die and they’re bitching about humidity,” said Ortega.
“Not you guys?” You two don’t seem upset. You’re the only ones talking to me like a normal person.
“Nah, we’re heroes of the people, keeping monsters locked away.”
“Sorry,” Olivia mumbled.
“You’re fine,” said Clone. “You should see some of the nastier critters. I get torn in half or melted in acid all the time. There’s a bunch of ferals with acid, don’t know why.” What! Oh, Clone, right.
“Clone might have been a chef, but I got sick of hiking around in the desert my whole career. This place is heaven,” added Ortega.
“Oh, were you in the army too?” asked Olivia.
“Sort of. Walker was an officer. I was enlisted. Found out I wasn’t a fan of shooting people,” he said with a shrug. Before Olivia could reply, Ortega brought the group to a stop. “Here’s the psychologist.”
“Isn’t she a psychiatrist?” asked Clone.
“What’s the difference?”
“I don’t know, do you?”
“Fucking I don’t know, man.” To Olivia he said, “Shrink’s inside. We’ll be on watch outside.” Ortega knocked on the door to announce their presence.
A deeply tanned middle-aged woman in a stark white tank top matching her teeth beckoned Olivia in with a wide smile. “Come in, Olivia! Take a seat!”
Stone Burners 