Silence of Ash, page 27
They stopped when they saw the lights of Admiralty Station. Like most of the metro stations in Hong Kong, it had automated sliding doors at the edges of the platforms as a safety measure. Zanzi risked a peek and spotted three Triads milling around in the middle, by the exit stairs. One was looking up the stairs, and the other two were flicking through a magazine full of glossy pictures.
Sofia waved them back, and they crouched.
“Avondale, what’s the stop after this?” Sofia kept her voice low, but her sharp tone gave away her concern.
“Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon.”
“Across the harbor?”
“Yes.”
“Should we go back?” Zanzi said.
Sofia scanned through her tablet, checked her map of the city, and shook her head.
A thumping sound reverberated down the tunnel. It sounded at first like a single kick drum before exploding into a whole marching band.
“That’s not a train,” Avondale said. His eyes flicked from Sofia to Zanzi. He tore off his rucksack and pulled his drone free. In less than a minute, he had the sleek black drone airborne and whizzing down the tunnel. Zanzi peered over his shoulder at the camera view as Avondale switched on the infra-red camera.
At first, she saw nothing but gray walls and the rails glowing a faint blue. Then hot pockets of red and orange blobs, moving fast. She gasped when she recognized the shapes as humans. There had to be dozens of them, possibly over a hundred. It was difficult to count the running mass.
“Two hundred meters and closing fast,” Avondale cried. He clamped one hand over his mouth as bullets peppered the glass doors above them.
“Go!” Sofia said.
Once again, Zanzi found herself running for her life. Now they had Triads and God-knows-what chasing them. As she ran past a small alcove, she spotted a weird-looking cart with two bicycles welded on top.
“Wait up,” she called out. “We can use this.”
Sofia turned and frowned. “How far, Avondale?”
“One-fifty meters.”
Zanzi, with Sofia’s help, hefted the strange contraption onto the rails and mounted one of the bicycles. Sofia sat in the other while Avondale crouched on the frame between them. The frame locked onto the rail line with small wheels, keeping the bikes upright. All they had to do was pedal.
Zanzi shrugged. Why this contraption was down here was beyond her, but she was thankful for it as they pushed off and gathered speed. She spotted more of the railbikes farther down the tracks, and hi-vis safety gear. A large sign adorned a kiosk: See Hong Kong like never before.
The tunnel under the harbor went downhill for several meters before rising at a steady incline. Zanzi gritted her teeth, fighting her exhausted muscles. She stood up on the pedals and pushed harder.
“They’re closing in. One hundred meters,” Avondale said.
Tsim Sha Tsui Station appeared out of the dimness like a shining beacon of hope. Hope that was short-lived. The sliding doors of the station whooshed open, and more bodies poured out. Men, women, and children. How many? Zanzi had no idea.
Sofia grabbed her arm and shoved her against a door marked Danger. “Hold them off.”
Zanzi handed Avondale her spare Glock and flicked off her safety. In the past, she had had problems with firing at humans. First Black Skulls, and the Siphons. But this new threat was different. They didn’t look anything like the Siphons. To all intents and purposes, they looked ordinary. That is, if you could forget the pure rage they were displaying. Eyes bulging, locked on. Mouths open and screaming. Spittle flying. It was like they had forgotten everything else. Their entire focus was to kill.
Zanzi sucked in a deep breath and prayed for forgiveness. She fired small bursts, picking out targets, aiming for the center mass. The front row of Ragers fell, tripping several others, but the tide of feral anger kept coming.
“Avondale. I need you to fire that weapon,” Sofia said.
He grunted and did as asked. Zanzi finished her magazine and jammed in another one.
Thirty meters…
“Sofia?”
“Nearly there.”
Twenty-five…
She kept dropping the raging humans, yet still more crammed themselves into the tunnel. A few stepped on the third rail and were electrocuted, their bodies convulsing where they stood before crumpling onto the track, only to jerk as more electricity flowed through them. They were quickly trampled by those following.
Twenty meters…
Zanzi blew a hole in the head of a teenaged girl wearing a pink T-shirt. She flinched. Another image to add to her nightmares.
Fifteen…
“Wait! My drone!” Avondale said. He stopped firing and plucked it out of the air.
Sofia kicked the door open and hauled Avondale and Zanzi through. Together they pushed their backs against it as it rattled in its hinges.
“Kick that wedge over,” Sofia said, gesturing to the triangle-shaped piece of wood next to Avondale. Avondale sent it to her, and Sofia kicked it in with her heel. Then, with Zanzi’s help, she dragged a heavy Wet Floor sign to further reinforce the door. The raging people continued to slam against it.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Unintelligible screams accompanied the door rocking in its frame, but their barricade held. Sofia bent over with her hands on her knees, breathing hard. Sweat matted her black hair. Zanzi sat down on the floor and gulped some water. They were in a narrow electrical room. Cabinets lined one wall, lights blinking. Farther along was a clear door with servers. There was another exit at the far end.
“What the hell were those things?” Avondale said.
“Nothing but rage,” Zanzi said.
Sofia passed out spare magazines from her rucksack. “Maybe that’s what Killian was up to – that project you mentioned. Those people we saw them offloading at the convention center and injecting. It was to turn them into that.” She shook her head. “Just when we think we’ve seen the worst of what OPIS is capable of, we come across this. Using innocent civilians as their own army.”
“Killian must have injected them with new nanites. The old ones can’t be reprogrammed like that,” Avondale said. “It fits what I read in the data we took from The Eyrie.”
Sofia shook her head again and walked along the row of blinking lights. “We’ll figure it all out later.” She stopped in front of the main electrical board. “I’m going to turn out the lights. Avondale, use the drone to find us a way out of here.”
In answer, Avondale connected his phone to the drone and switched it on, scrolling through the functions on the screen before nodding.
“Zanzi?” Sofia said.
“Ready.”
Sofia opened a cabinet and flicked off the mains. The thin bar of light that had been showing under the doors blinked out. Using the night vision on the drone’s high-definition camera, they left the electrical room through the secondary exit and climbed a short flight of stairs. At the top, they found themselves in a corridor filled with pipes and cables. Zanzi took point and moved heel to toe. She stopped every couple of meters and waited for a few seconds, straining her hearing. Once she was satisfied, and Avondale gave her the okay, she moved on.
The corridor began to widen until she reached another caged door. This one was unlocked. Problem was, it opened onto the street. The breeze was heavy with moisture and laden with the pungent odor of mold and sewage. Zanzi risked a peek above the last step. Several silver Mercedes SUVs were parked in the middle of the street fifty meters away. Triads stood guard, cradling weapons, and joking amongst themselves. She glanced in the other direction and gripped her rifle tighter. Another three SUVs blocked the road. Zanzi backed up and shook her head.
“We’ll have to find another way. The street’s heavily guarded.”
The trio retreated a few meters and crouched down behind the hissing pipes.
“I could use the drone to distract the Triads,” Avondale said.
“Use the Ragers,” Zanzi said.
“Ragers?”
“Those things that were chasing us.”
“That could work.” Sofia tightened the strap on her rucksack. “Draw them out this way, right to the Triads.”
“Shouldn’t be too difficult.” Avondale flipped the drone over and removed the main battery, replacing it with a fresh one. He opened the cage door enough to slip the drone through, and flew it, a few centimeters above the ground, back into the station. The drone’s cameras showed why the Ragers hadn’t followed them onto the street. They were pressed up against the security barriers. Some were slamming their heads into the bars while others were reaching through, clawing at thin air. But all of them had the same expressions: pure hatred, nostrils flaring, eyes bulging, teeth clamped tight.
Avondale buzzed his drone back and forth along the length of the barriers. At first the Ragers ignored the machine. Then a few started to swat at it, flailing their arms. The security fence bulged as more Ragers pushed, trying to get at the annoying object. Some of the younger Ragers climbed over the mass of people and shook the top of the barrier, finally dislodging it from its flimsy guiding track.
The sound of the barricade collapsing rang through the empty station with a Crack!
Zanzi, keeping an eye on the Triad guards milling around their SUVs, saw their heads snap up in unison. Handguns and Uzis appeared as they looked around, confused by the noise. Avondale backed the drone off from the safety doors, buzzing around to rile up the Ragers. Seconds later, they were stampeding up the stairs and escalators. Avondale parked the drone on top of the street awning and grinned. “Mission accomplished.”
The Ragers spotted the stunned Triads and, as one, attacked with unbridled hate. A couple of the guards took off up the street, sprinting. The braver ones stood their ground and fired indiscriminately at the crowd, the pops of handguns soon drowned out by the rapid-firing Uzis and the Ragers’ shrieking. One Triad, a man standing apart and dressed in a black suit and red tie, furiously pressed the screen on his smartphone. Some of the Ragers nearest him calmed down and stood placidly but were soon overwhelmed by the maddened mob behind. The closer the Ragers came, the harder the Triad smashed his finger against the screen. Eventually, shouting, he threw the phone at the horde and dived into the SUV.
The remaining Triads continued to fire on the mob until their guns ran dry. Then, to the last man, they cried out and piled into the SUVs as the Ragers swarmed the vehicles, some smashing their heads into the windshields and pounding on the bodywork. One SUV managed to drive a couple of blocks, but the dozens of Ragers flooding the street impeded its flight. In desperation, the driver swerved from side to side, crunching bones and mashing flesh into the pavement.
Zanzi observed it all with morbid fascination. One Rager, a small Chinese woman wearing a bright blue cheongsam, dragged herself along the road, her legs crushed by the fleeing Triads. She kept crawling after them until she bled out and collapsed.
The other SUV barely made it one hundred meters before the Ragers broke through the glass and tore into the Triads inside.
Sofia grabbed Zanzi’s arm. “This is our chance.”
After checking their immediate vicinity was clear, Sofia led Zanzi and Avondale around the station, down several blocks, and into an apartment block clad in black glass. She pressed them hard up the stairs, finally stopping on the twelfth floor outside a bright green door. Sofia reached above it and felt around. As Zanzi watched, she appeared to push a hidden catch, and a panel on the door frame popped open, revealing a key. No one was home, but Sofia seemed to know her way around the furnished apartment.
Zanzi sank into the couch and stripped off her rucksack and weapons. Her body ached from the exertions of the last few hours. She looked east over Hong Kong Island as the sun peeked above the horizon. “That was crazy,” she said, glancing up at Avondale and Sofia. When no one answered, she added, “How do we find Ryan?”
“I can track his alpha nanite,” Avondale said. “Or if that fails, I can track the nuclear football.”
“Get some rest, you two. I’ll take first watch,” Sofia said.
“As tired as I am, sleep is a long way off,” Zanzi said. “Whose place is this?” She looked around the apartment, paying more attention. It was cluttered with objects from different countries. African masks hung on the wall. Babushka dolls sat next to books in different languages. And photos of an Asian woman next to famous landmarks were on the mantelpiece.
“An old friend of mine. She trained with us at the Lodge, but the interrogation module proved too much. She came home to Hong Kong and became a detective.”
“So where is she?”
Sadness crossed Sofia’s face. “She didn’t make it.”
Zanzi grimaced and shifted her weight to get more comfortable. She shut her eyes and prayed that her father was okay.
Twenty-Eight
Vortigern Tower, Hong Kong
In a city of skyscrapers of every height and design, Vortigern Tower blended into the landscape. It wasn’t any higher, nor did it have any wackier design elements, than the others. The only difference Ryan noticed was the sheets of colored glass on the ground, fifth, tenth, fifteenth, and, strangely, the twenty-third floors. It also had a vast array of communications equipment on the roof. Above the twenty-third floor, the glass was black and appeared to absorb the light around it.
He nudged Cal with his elbow. “What’s with the colored glass?”
“No idea,” she said, staring straight ahead.
The Mercedes SUV they were traveling in skirted the tower and entered the underground parking garage. It pulled up to a bank of elevators, where more Red Shield commandos waited. They acknowledged Cal with quick salutes and opened her door. Rough hands grabbed Ryan and hauled him out and into the open elevator. It zipped upward at an incredible speed. When it stopped, the doors opened, and Ryan was shoved down a darkened corridor and into an empty room. He was left alone, cuffed, and the lights were switched off. The darkness was so complete it enveloped him, squeezing at his sanity.
Using his foot, Ryan felt for the wall and sat down with his back against it, facing, he hoped, the door. Minutes passed, maybe an hour. With no way to tell the time, he had to rely on his body clock. It was deathly quiet as well, which left him with only his own thoughts screaming at him – and he didn’t like those.
Blinding white lights flicked on, searing into his brain. The door opened and dark shadows appeared. They dragged three objects, scraping metal on the cold, concrete floor with screeches that were annoying as hell. Strong hands hauled him to his feet and released him from the handcuffs. He blinked and shielded his eyes with his hands, allowing them to adjust to the brightness. More Red Shields entered, putting trays of food and a pot of tea on the table. They too left without saying a word.
Ryan shrugged, took a seat, and helped himself to the refreshments. He lifted the lid on one of the bowls and inhaled the scent of Pho, a Vietnamese beef and noodle soup. The odors were intoxicating. He devoured it in no time.
As he was drinking his tea, Cal arrived and sat opposite him. He wanted to scream at her but kept his cool and continued to sip the hot drink. Cal moved her hand toward his, and Ryan flinched away. “Don’t.”
“Do you remember our conversation on that Osaka motorway?” Cal asked.
“Most of it. Why?”
“I meant what I said about the world. How it was broken. How only OPIS could fix it.”
“By killing billions?”
“Yes.” Cal sighed. She poured herself a cup of tea and refilled Ryan’s. “When I first found out who my father was, it felt like something out of a fairy tale. A neglected child being rescued by her real dad and whisked away to a castle to live happily ever after.”
“How old were you?”
“Ten. Alastair would come and pick me up from school in a flash car – I think a Jaguar. He always came on a Friday and took me to one of his estates, where the staff treated me like a princess. He bought me anything I wanted, clothes, music, computers. Anything. But on Sundays I had to leave it all behind and go back to my mother and our shitty council flat. I never understood why.” Cal’s eyes glazed over and, uncovering the other bowl of Pho, tucked in with chopsticks and soup spoon.
“Why are you telling me this, Cal?”
“I want you to understand.”
“Understand what? That you betrayed us. Not once, but twice. Did our marriage mean nothing to you? The kids?” Ryan pushed back his chair and leapt up. His eyes flicked to the door. He half expected guards to burst into the room, but it remained closed. “Was any of it real?”
“Of course it was. When I first came to America and was adopted by the Price family, my life was normal. I went to school and did teenage-girl things. The day after my sixteenth birthday, it all changed, and my training began. Not just weapons and survival, but academic studies. I had the best tutors to help me get into Stanford. Like anyone, I had dreams, but after ten years of nothing, Alastair showed up again and told me my real mission.”
“And rather than follow your dreams, you decided to embark on this?”
“I’m not like you and Booth, Sofia, Lisa. You all chose this life because of your sense of duty.”
Ryan paced the room, letting his wife’s words sink in. “We chose this life, yes. Maybe the world was broken and overpopulated, but you saw the shift as well as I did. You were present when we discussed it with the leading experts. More and more people were realizing we needed kindness and help, not greed and war.”
“You just don’t get it. After Liam died, I knew Alastair was right. Until then, I had dragged my heels with his demands, only feeding him snippets.” Cal tossed the ceramic soup spoon at the wall, shattering it. “I was with you, Ryan. With LK3. Believed in what we were doing. But when I saw…” Cal’s head dropped to her chest. When she lifted it back up and gazed at Ryan, tears stained her cheeks. “Liam died because of the system. He died because everything was broken. And Prendergast, OPIS, they want to fix that.”
