Heart of the Storm, page 17
For now, all he had to do was keep a perfunctory eye on the security cameras mounted on the exterior of the Guangzhou CCP headquarters, so any wreckers didn't do something foolish and paint a message on the side of the building. Anything humiliating like that might cost him standing, at least if they got away with it.
He patted the small pistol on his belt. Jun would not lose status, or the party's trust. Three generations his family had been in good standing. He was a princeling, doing what princelings did in this kingdom: the menial tasks assigned, knowing that one day, perhaps, he might even sit in the highest seats of power in Guangzhou. He may join the party congress at its meetings, have a say in the future of China.
It was all right there – and right here, where he sat, watching the monitors for any signs of trouble.
He glanced up from the pornography magazine he'd been perusing to find a strange sight. A woman and man, both with perfectly fine, Han features, middle-aged, standing out in front of the headquarters on the concrete. He watched them for a few moments, looked back down at his magazine, then back up.
They were still there, but starting to move off.
Jun pursed his lips. Calling his boss at this hour was tantamount to disturbing him, and Jun didn't care to do that. Becoming alarmed at ordinary foolishness like some skittish old woman was not a path to promotion.
But...a new general order had come in last week, from Beijing, and it had been very clear – report any suspicious activity. They'd even included a hotline – and an email address.
Jun chewed it over for only a minute or so more. This was probably nothing. But if it was more than nothing, then properly reporting it could result in something good for him. With that in mind, he took a quick moment to snip the footage and upload it, then sent it off to the email address in question, and turned his attention back to his magazine, only venturing a single solitary glance more at the monitor to find them walking away.
Probably nothing, then. But he felt good about reporting it anyway. And he would continue to do so, all the way up until he, very suddenly, felt differently.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Tan De
Guangzhou
1966
“Do you think yourself special?” Fen Liu shouted down at me, a mob roaring all around us. Her face was alight with the fury of a devil, a demon, a monster, of the type Chairman Mao always denounced as being among us. “Do you think yourself somehow more worthy than any of us?”
But the irony, of course, was that in the view of Fen Liu – and this mob surrounding me – I was the demon. I was the monster.
The jeers of the crowd as they shouted names and hurled abuse filled my burning ears. Capitalist roader, they shouted. Black gang element. All the insults of the moment rained down upon my shoulders.
A girl, no older than fifteen, with a visage right out of the legends of demons and monsters slapped me across the face, rocking my head back. Then she shoved an ink bottle in my mouth and I choked on the taste of it.
They descended on me, then, this mob of teenagers. I had been a prized lecturer and academic. A man of status. But in the uneasy days after the Liberation, after the famine, after the purges, and now, entering the time already pronounced as the Cultural Revolution, I had tap danced my way through so many changes and purges.
“Who helped you?” Fen Liu shouted as I took another blow to the back of the head from a girl young enough to be my daughter. Fen Liu's voice was barely audible over the screaming, the righteous fury of half a thousand angry middle school students.
For this was the Cultural Revolution promised. I hadn't been a Capitalist, not ever, but it didn't matter, I realized as someone struck me in the side of the head with a thrown shoe, and I fell off the stool upon which I'd been precariously balancing. I slammed into the floor and felt the last of the wind go out of me.
“The Revolution must be continuous!” Fen Liu shouted, and they roared, descending upon me. I saw the faces of children I'd taught, of my colleagues. I could have sworn I saw one of them mouth an apology even as he struck me full across the face with a length of wood rod.
They fell on me like pack animals, and I caught one last glimpse of Fen Liu through the numbing blows, as I was beaten to death by – mostly – children. Children raised by wolves, and turned loose on the previous generation for no reason other than caprice.
She was smiling with thin satisfaction.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Sienna
“We were lovers, you see,” he said wistfully, again, when he was wrapping up his tale. I did cringe, because it seemed like sleeping with Fen Liu was no guarantee of safety. Maybe the opposite, actually, since I'd now talked to two different men who'd been part of that not so elite fraternity, and both had died by her efforts. I tried to imagine if I'd put up similar numbers, and knew the press would have dubbed me the black widow or praying mantis or something. Another advantage of an authoritarian country; the press couldn't call you a murderous slut if you were in charge. “Fen Liu and I. We'd met when she arrived in Guangzhou. I was a true believer in the revolution. I believed in permanent class struggle.”
“Yeah, and I'm sorry this happened to you,” I said, “but you had to know that colluding with the CCP is like trying to keep hold of an angry dragon's tail.”
He looked at me with sad eyes. “But I didn't think it would happen to me.”
“So says everyone that joins the leopard face-eating party.” With a clap of my hands on my knees, I added, “Any idea where Fen Liu was from? Originally, I mean?”
His gaze flicked to me, confused. “What do you mean? She came here from the Anshun, and before that, she was on the Long March.”
“Yeah, I know it's probably hard for a Commie like you to conceive of a time before the revolution, but I'm talking about before that,” I said. “Where did she come from originally?”
“I don't know,” he said. “I only know where she was headed afterward: Beijing. Straight to Zhongnanhai, I expect, given the job she did here.”
“Well, you got that much right,” I said. “I will do everything in my power to avenge you.”
“Thank you,” he said, and his face got misty, and then faded into oblivion.
“In spite of you being a dumb frigging commie,” I muttered under my breath. He was already gone; what did he care about my editorializing?
Wade had been loitering a few feet away, keeping watch. The streets in this part of the city were empty and quiet, the distant noise of automobiles the background to his question: “Just another jilted lover, then?”
“To say the least,” I said. “She really racked up the body count – in the worst way. I mean, at least I never killed my exes. I'm starting to wonder if there's a man left alive that she's slept with.” I shook my head, wishing I'd stayed on the mountaintop and taken at least a nap.
“No leads, then?” Wade asked, shuffling closer to me. He was keeping his voice nice and low, probably to avoid the surveillance cameras mounted all around from eavesdropping.
“Maybe one,” I said, frowning beneath the camouflage. “She seems to go where the power is – or where she perceives it will best work for her. After the Communist takeover, they sent her to Anshun, which is kinda in the sticks, but she goes there and does her thing. Then she moves up to the big city, Guangzhou. Now she's in Beijing. The only pattern I'm seeing is a continuous upward ascent of the ladder. Know what I mean?”
“She's a climber for sure,” Wade said, frowning. “But that doesn't really get us closer to where she's hiding now, does it? Unless she's sticking close to the ruins of her most recent palace, in Beijing?”
“Don't know,” I said. “Could be. Or she could have gone back to wherever she started from and built a bunker there.” I started to reach for my face but thought the better of it; we were potentially being watched, and all I needed was to have a bad interaction with my holographic camo to blow my cover. “It's really hard to tell. All I'm getting from her thus far is a thirst for power and a seeming succession of men who she used to comfort herself, or...whatever...while she was climbing, then promptly disposed of when she had no further use for them.” I frowned. “Or she got the last use out of them that she wanted by sacrificing them.”
Wade chuckled. “Talk about an old-world goddess.”
My frown deepened, tugging crease lines into my face. “What do you mean?”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, that's what old-world gods did, isn't it? Made the humans sacrifice to them? Animals in most cases, but in some – human beings. Fen Liu just seems to have taken the sacrificing into her own hands rather than leaving it to her worshippers, if any.”
“If any, indeed,” I said. “I wonder how long it's been since she had any worshippers?”
He blinked a couple times. “You mean like old school worshippers? With temples to her and stuff?”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “Think about it – she lived in the time of Lethe and Hades. And the Chinese religions, they were only truly ended during the Communist revolution. I remember Reed telling me about an interaction he had with a Chinese professor at some dinner party or something where he was asking him about ancient Chinese mythology and the guy just stared at him blankly. A professor, y'know? Well read, well informed-ish. Can you imagine an American professor not at least knowing the name Hercules, or Zeus, or, hell, Odin and Thor?”
“No,” Wade said, “but those were also turned into fictional characters, movies, et cetera.”
“That's the point,” I said. “When China did its Cultural Revolution, and even in the days before when the Communists took over, they had it in mind to purge old ideas, old habits, old culture, and old customs. And Fen Liu had a part of that, either because she wanted the old things and ways to be forgotten, or because she knew that this was the path to power in the future and was willing to pay that price.”
“I'd bet on the latter, but hey, maybe it was the former,” Wade said. Then he froze. “Do you hear something?”
“No,” I said, then paused to listen. I felt a chill trickle its way down my scalp. “Yes.”
It was a faint hum, one almost lost over the sound of the distant city traffic.
Drones.
And they seemed to be coming from everywhere.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Fen Liu
“There's an electronic signature around the two of them that looks light-based,” Public Security Minister Jianjun said. “Perhaps some sort of advanced holographic camouflage.”
Fen Liu stared at her screen, at the two – seemingly – Chinese people on it, a man and woman, their faces in the Skynet database identifying them as Liang Wei and Liang Mei, a married couple from the Panyu district of Guangzhou.
The problem? Liang Wei and Liang Mei had been most recently tagged by Skynet in Shanghai less than an hour ago. The tip from the security officer at the Guangzhou CCP offices had been good, and had vaulted up the chain in mere minutes, each step resulting in examination of the couple and turning up additional curious facts about them. Like that there seemed a strong EM pattern around their location suggesting someone nearby was using a satellite communication – and neither of them was carrying a conventional cell phone connected to the network. It was nearly impossible to make your way in a modern Chinese city without a cell phone, which by itself was a distinct flag.
“That's almost certainly them,” Fen Liu said. “Take them into custody or kill them.”
“It will be done,” Zhang said, voice crackling in her ear. He was already on the scene, deploying her forces. Other preparations were being made, too, though those were being handled by...others. “Drones are moving into position now to cordon them. They won't fly away. And our troops are moving in now. We have them.”
“We shall see,” she whispered. Because they would, and shortly.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Sienna
There were exploding suicide drones everywhere above us. They seemed to be in a pattern, no more than a few feet between them, lined up diagonally with the next, only a small gap between their quadcopter rotors. They descended like a falling net, to a hundred feet above us and stopped there, blanketing us and separating us from the sky, the only gaps the massive, neon-flashing skyscrapers around us.
“We try and plow through, they'll blast us out of the sky in pieces,” Wade said, assessing the shit we were in – accurately, I thought.
I looked left, then right. “Looks like they've blanketed us in both directions, all the way to the river,” I gestured toward the body of water a hundred feet to our left across a square of concrete without a single tree, “and I can't see behind the buildings. Maybe there's a way out over there?”
The sound of boots thudding against pavement from a street away gave me another little chill. “Uh oh,” Wade muttered.
“Maybe we dive into the river, fly through the water, and see if we can punch our way through using it as a shield against the exploding drones,” I said. “Their bombs aren't going to be nearly as penetrative under water.”
He chortled. “You said 'penetrative.'” His face turned serious. “We can give that a try. But whatever we do – aw, shit.”
A half dozen streams burst out of the river, and with them came an aquatic legion of Chinese soldiers. They seemed to rise up on pillars of solid water, lifted up and delivered onto the embankment as though dropped there by Scott Byerly himself. Damned Poseidons; they'd cut off our retreat.
“Okay,” Wade said, staring at them. Behind us, troops were moving into position around the buildings, and fast. “We kill them all, then exit through the river.”
The soldiers in front of us were hardened, but unarmed, wearing slightly damp uniforms. Shiny belt buckles gleamed in the neon, and their eyes looked dark, their expressions pure malice, like they were steeling themselves to fight and die. Which was not an unreasonable expectation.
“Yep,” I said, “that's the winning plan. How do you want to kick things off?”
He looked me in the eyes for just a second, smirking. “Batter up.”
The entire line of soldiers grunted and jerked as Wade drew out a hand and pulled on their belts with magnetism. They slid into a line, shoes scratching against the pavement as they spasmed and jerked, each fighting against his hold on them.
He yanked them right toward me, their eyes wide and panicked. Being grabbed and dragged by a disembodied force that you can't punch or fight against is a disorienting feeling; it's like God seizing you bodily and pulling you this way and that. Half of them or more had succumbed to panicked disorientation and hadn't realized that the source of their problems was their belt and their belt alone. They came ripping at me, struggling and jerking like someone had implanted a taser up their asses and flicked the on switch.
And it was just then that I realized what Wade had meant when he said, “Batter up.”
I extended the energy blade out of my right hand and it struck the pavement with a hiss, vaporizing about an inch of asphalt and turning it into a molten liquid. Raising my hand as the first soldier reached me, I swung the blade to greet him as I stepped aside, and it cleaved him across the chest just below the shoulders.
He ran three more through the hissing, crackling energy of my blade without any difficulty, the screams of the dying Chinese soldiers starting to be drowned out by a couple blasts of green, purple, and red energy from behind us.
“Time for Operation Human Shield to commence,” Wade said, and he smoothly glided sideways, his feet less than a centimeter off the ground, and he bumped into me, wrapping an arm around my waist and lifting me off the ground. We glided around the last few Poseidons as they all warred with their belt buckles, finally having tumbled to the nature of their predicament. They seemed to rip them free almost as one, but by then they started catching blasts from their cohorts across the square, and things were getting a little more scary.
One of the Poseidons Wade had dragged around was becoming swole, and fast. He grew to twice the mass he'd been moments before, becoming distinctly Guy Friday-like. Two powers, then. Neat. Wade winked at me, throwing a white-glowing energy whip around the big guy's neck. The soldier grunted, grabbing the end, his flesh blackening as it crackled against him, and he set his feet as though he were about to try and throw Wade and, by extension, me, since I had his arm wrapped around my waist.
Wade glided us sideways into the big guy's shadow as a burst of red, purple, and green all combined to strike him in the back a moment before he could get his feet set to pull on the whip. His jaw fell open, and a green glow shone through his teeth for a moment before it burst out of the front of his face and he started to topple.
Still, he'd shielded us for a crucial moment. Red eyebeams knocked him over, sending him forward onto his face as we kept gliding, using the other Poseidons as human shields and noting similar, lethal results to them. The last couple of them turned to scream for mercy to their own soldiers, who'd surely received a “Kill them no matter what!” order.
They didn't get mercy.
“Friendly fire is such an oxymoron,” I said as Wade drifted us down. I pivoted in his arms like we were two figure skaters, rolling my body in front of his in a delicate dance that left him holding me like a human shield. I pulled his arm back, away from the front of my body, gripping his hand in mine as I cleared the field of fire.
Hundreds of soldiers in front of us, and here we were, on our sides, drifting along, spooning, inches above the ground, me just showing my face to the entire Chinese army.
Then I cracked the gates of hell.
