Ruse

by Cindy Pon

  Even though I had been expecting this, my adrenaline spiked, and I had to force myself to stop from running forward and punching the thug.

  Some pedestrians glanced at them but did nothing to intervene. Her Palm got kicked by a few people, before a kid who looked about twelve picked it up and slipped it into his pocket. The sedan jerked back into the street, but lucky for me, the traffic was terrible, and it crawled forward slowly. I ran along the scaffolding, hidden above them by the shadows of the tall buildings, easily following the car. I dictated a quick message to Iris and Arun, never letting my eyes off the black sedan.

  We were nearing the end of the first long block, and I was just considering my next move as the scaffolding was ending, when the car hummed. I knew that sound. It was an aircar and about to fly. There was no way I could follow it then. Just as I was trying to suppress my panic, some rich you kid glided past me on his airped. He looked about my age, with his indigo hair cut short and spiked. He sported some designer sunglasses and was grinning widely, enjoying the ride.

  “Hey!” I shouted. We were almost level, and he looked at me in confusion. It was long enough a pause that I lunged at him and tugged him off the airped, thumping him onto the scaffolding. He bounced off the bamboo, howling with surprise and pain.

  “Help! Thief !!”

  But I had already leaped onto his airped, feeling the strong hum of the propulsion system as I surged higher into the air, away from the you boy screaming at my back. The sedan Lingyi was in had already flown a short distance off, but my airped was fast, and I followed at a reasonable distance, flying higher than the aircar. There was enough traffic in the skies that I didn’t appear conspicuous, but I had no idea where our final destination might be, and as I followed farther from the city center, there were fewer and fewer air vehicles around us.

  I feared I would become too noticeable soon.

  As I decided what to do, the aircar glided back onto the street below. We hadn’t gone far, maybe ten miles or so, and were on the outskirts of Shanghai proper. Throngs of people pushed along on the streets below, and I saw canals, their waters a muddied brown. The sedan was caught in light traffic, but moving toward one of these canals. I followed above as it turned and drove along the water, past a few streets overrun with shoppers and tourists. A number of stone bridges arched over the dirty waters, and there were many sightseers on them, taking photos and videos.

  But the car kept moving, past the busy city center. Ramshackle houses emerged. I continued to tail the car at a safe distance, until I saw them pull into a narrow alleyway beside a run-down house farther along the canal, far from the shopping and crowds. Electrical lines crisscrossed above the low, dirty buildings, their facades thick with grime. I glided onto the flat concrete rooftop of one of the buildings nearby, which offered a bird’s-eye view. Soon enough, the sedan car doors opened. A driver wearing dark sunglasses stepped out; then Lingyi was pushed out of the car, followed by the thug who had kidnapped her. She was awake, and walked on her own, sandwiched between the two men. Jin probably didn’t want to risk knocking Lingyi out, wanting her to be able to work on Jany’s MacFold and give him access to the tech as soon as possible.

  They disappeared into the squat, two-story, dilapidated home—the last place I thought they would take her. But then, it made sense that Jin wanted this all done far from Jin Corp in Beijing, with no ties back to him if anything went wrong. As far as he knew, Lingyi was alone and vulnerable. My guess was there were a couple of more thugs in the house at most. Jin would think four or five goons were enough to keep Lingyi in line.

  I let Arun and Iris know where Lingyi and I were.

  “We’re almost there,” Arun replied. “Hang on, Zhou.”

  I waited another five minutes, watching for any movement that might suggest Lingyi and the men would be on the move again. But no one entered or exited from the old wooden door. A blanket was hung on the inside of the single window next to it, but the few windows on the second floor were uncovered.

  I steered the airped onto a side street a little ways behind the house and slinked my way toward it. There was a narrow back door hidden in darkness that faced an alleyway. I used the exposed pipe running along the corner of the house and climbed up, stepping onto the ledge of the second floor, which made it easy for me to navigate. An old air-conditioning unit hung out from one of the windows in the front of the house, appearing as if it would topple any moment. I peered inside. An empty room except for a dirty mattress on the floor and a side table.

  I quickly scanned the main street and my surroundings. There was no one in view, but I felt better when I turned the far corner into another alley so I was not exposed on the main street any longer. There was a window on this side of the house too, and I glanced inside, but quickly leaned back again. A man was standing right next to it, his back turned to me. The same man who had dragged Lingyi off the street, if his thick shoulders were an indication. Lingyi sat at a table in the center of the room, typing away on a MacFold.

  She didn’t look frightened—more so determined—her eyes narrowed in concentration. But her face was pale under the single lightbulb hanging overhead, casting a harsh light in the cramped room.

  Seeing her like this, trapped, elicited a visceral reaction, and I forced myself away from the window, pressing my back against the rough wall. I slipped down the pipe easily and went back to where the airped was parked, reporting to my friends what I had seen.

  “What are our odds?” Iris asked.

  “Better than good,” I replied. “Probably four at most securing the property. You could take them out yourself.”

  Iris gave one short laugh, but it was humorless.

  “I’ll stay outside as lookout and backup,” Arun replied. “Stay put. We’re headed to you, Zhou.”

  Not five minutes later, I saw Iris’s familiar lope farther down the alleyway, followed by Arun’s bright orange hair behind her. Iris and I nodded at each other, and Arun bumped fists with me. We quietly discussed our plans in the shadowed alleyway; then Iris and I set out together. I watched her climb onto the second floor of the house as easily as if she were walking up stairs. I navigated it almost as swiftly, since this was my second time. We had agreed that we’d enter from the second floor so we could reach Lingyi immediately, but that would also give us the element of surprise.

  When we returned to the narrow window looking into where Lingyi was, nothing had changed. The thug still stood near it with his back to us, and Lingyi was working on the laptop. Iris and I situated ourselves on either side of the window. Our eyes met, and Iris nodded once.

  I rapped on the glass pane hard and heard the deep voice of the guard cursing. We had both sidled back from his view, so the guy, just as we had guessed, lifted the window open and stuck his head out. He saw me first, and I grinned. “What the—” But Iris jabbed a sleep spell injection into his thick neck before he could finish his curse. He roared but went limp immediately after, half slumped over the windowsill. I didn’t have enough leverage to haul him out or push him back into the room, but then Lingyi was there, dragging the man back in by his legs.

  “You’re here already,” she said, and sounded out of breath.

  The thug had barely bounced onto the floor before Iris had climbed into the room, giving Lingyi a quick hug. “We’re here,” she said. “Now let’s disappear.”

  Lingyi ran toward the table to get Jany’s MacFold.

  But heavy steps were already thumping up the wooden stairs. “What was that noise? Shortie, what’s going on?”

  Without a word, Iris was across the room, pressing herself against the wall behind the narrow door. I palmed a knife, loving the perfect balance of it in my hand, when the door burst open. A man stood in the doorway, stared at Shortie knocked out on the floor, then lunged straight for Lingyi. There was nowhere for her to run in the small room. He put her in a choke hold and was so much taller than her, Lingyi’s feet lifted off the ground. She grabbed at his thick arms, her face
reddening as he squeezed. “Drop your weapon,” he growled.

  I kept eye contact with the thug, trying to assess how much of him was exposed that I might be able to get a good stab in.

  “Who else is with you?”

  “No one,” I lied. Iris was still hidden behind the door. I slowly circled around the small table toward the open window, to draw his attention away from her.

  But whether it was from instinct or luck, the thug twisted halfway so he could keep me in his view and spotted Iris pressed against the wall behind the door, which stood ajar. She had a sleep injection ready in one hand—but it was tucked behind her palm, not visible to Jin’s henchman. I’d seen her use this grip a hundred times.

  “Stop,” he said. “Or your friend dies.” He tightened his squeeze around Lingyi’s neck and lifted her entirely off the floor. She struggled, kicking her legs, and it took all my willpower not to rush him. But I wasn’t fast enough. He could snap her neck before I could stop him.

  Fuck.

  “I’m sure you’ve been instructed not to hurt her,” I spoke loudly to distract him.

  “You know nothing.” He sneered, showing stained teeth. And as if to prove his point, he squeezed his arms harder around Lingyi’s throat. I watched in horror as her eyes rolled back, and then her head lolled against the man. I didn’t think she was dead, but if he kept that clamp on her neck, she soon would be.

  Enraged, I charged, a primal shout erupting at the same time. He held Lingyi like a rag doll and protected himself with her body. It gave me limited choices as to where I could strike. Desperate, I depressed the button on the bottom of the knife hilt. A dead man wouldn’t be able to keep a choke hold.

  The thug was twisting this way and that, trying to keep an eye on both me and Iris; Lingyi’s legs swung loosely in the air, and the sight of it was horrifying. I charged again, and he jerked my way. It gave Iris enough time to leap on the man, stabbing him in the side of his neck with her sleep injection. She then wrapped her own arms around the brute’s neck, forcing his head back. He swayed, and his grip loosened around Lingyi. She slipped to the wood floor, thunking against it like a corpse.

  I rushed to her side, my heart in my throat. The thug dropped to the floor then, and Iris shoved his body aside, running to crouch on Lingyi’s other side. “Shit, shit, shit,” Iris kept saying without even realizing. Her hands hovered over Lingyi, too afraid to touch anything. I pressed my hand against Lingyi’s wrist. Her pulse was weak, but there. And her face was slowly returning to a normal hue.

  “She’s alive,” I said. “She’ll be all right.”

  “How do you know?” Iris turned her wrath on me. “She almost died. He could have”—she seemed to struggle for words—“broken her neck. Her face was purple.”

  I was sick to my stomach but had to pretend to be calm, for our survival’s sake. I spoke into my dummy Palm. “Arun, are you there?”

  “Yep,” Arun replied immediately. “One of the goons tried to run. He was about to report to Jin on his Palm, but I knocked him out and dragged him back into the house. All clear down here. Let’s head out.”

  I tried my best not to sound panicked. “The thug got ahold of Lingyi. She’s out.”

  “Coming up,” he said. Within moments, we heard stomping on the stairs. Both Iris and I tensed, but Arun appeared in the doorway.

  He immediately went to Lingyi, checked on her pulse, then peeled her eyelids back. She groaned when he did that. “What happened?” he asked. Iris told him, describing the scenario with her eyebrows drawn in anger. But I knew it was fear and panic that fueled her rage—those were easier feelings to deal with.

  “Lingyi?” Arun said softly, cupping her face. “Are you awake?”

  She opened her eyes and winced, as if the room was too bright. “What happened?” she asked, echoing Arun.

  “You lost consciousness for a bit,” Arun replied. “You’ll have some bruising on your throat and feel sore, but it’ll be okay.” He glanced toward Iris. “Could you get some water for her?”

  Iris ran down the stairs and returned in a few minutes carrying a small pot. “There weren’t any glasses.”

  Arun gently helped ease Lingyi into a sitting position, and Iris tenderly lifted the pot to her mouth. Lingyi drank, but we could all see how much it hurt for her to swallow. “Are we in the clear?” she managed to ask after several slow, painful sips. “For now,” I said. “Do you think you can stand on your own and walk?”

  Iris helped Lingyi to her feet. She swayed a little, but then gripped Iris’s arm and nodded. “I can manage.”

  Arun grabbed Jany’s MacFold off the table and slipped it into his backpack.

  “We better clear out,” I said.

  Lingyi stepped over the brute who had choked her and Iris followed, a hand clutching Lingyi at her elbow. I patted the men down, finding a Palm in the pocket of the goon who had kidnapped Lingyi. There was a message on there from someone simply dubbed “Boss”: Is everything on track?

  It had been sent recently, right before the fool stuck his head out a window. I considered the message, then scrolled through previous exchanges. Nothing incriminating, but I got the language that was used by both men. Yeah, boss, I dictated. The girl’s working hard.

  Good, came Jin’s immediate reply. I’ll stop in tonight.

  I left the thug’s Palm on the ground beside him. They’d be knocked out still when Jin showed up, but the exchange had bought us some time.

  I rose and swept my eyes across the barren room, before following my friends down the cramped stairway.

  I abandoned the airped I had stolen. There were no taxis near the crush of old houses where Lingyi had been taken, so we made our way toward the city center. I learned we were in Qibao, an ancient water town on the outskirts of Shanghai proper. It was late afternoon, and sweltering, so hot that I could smell the stench of the water rising from the canal we walked along.

  Arun was leading the way, followed by Lingyi and Iris. I brought up the rear, my hand resting against one of the knives Daiyu had given me just a few days ago. It felt like my entire world had changed since our last morning together. Although I knew Jin didn’t realize yet that his target had escaped along with the design he so desperately wanted to get his hands on, I still scanned our surroundings, leery. From my experience with Jin, I knew you couldn’t underestimate him, and when he struck back, he did so without a second thought or mercy.

  Instead of taking the smaller side streets, Arun led us straight into the heart of the shopping area of Qibao. Mobs of people moved like cattle along the narrow streets, between stores offering everything from steamed buns shaped like panda and pig faces, to dried goods ranging from fruits to meat, and cheap trinkets and souvenirs. The storefronts were made to look like architecture from past dynasties, with curved tiled eaves overhanging the two-story buildings, and redwood panel windows thrown open in the oppressive August heat. I bumped into people as they meandered through the crowded street and stopped frequently to buy food or inspect wares. Vendors enticed potential customers with samples and shouted about the unique deliciousness of their noodles or braised tofu. I kept my eyes on my friends, easier to do with their bright hair colors. It seemed like an older crowd enjoying the tourist town today, wearing large sun hats and caps, their faces covered by masks.

  Arun dropped back when Iris stopped to buy an iced tea for Lingyi. “I thought it’d be safer to go through the crowds.”

  I watched as Iris bought a bag of small fried buns, probably also for Lingyi. “I think we have a few hours before Jin finds out. I’m glad Lingyi seems all right now, but she could have died.”

  “I know.” Arun’s tone was as morose as I felt.

  Lingyi turned right then and glanced back at us. Her face was pallid in the glaring daylight. We began walking again, side by side, as Iris and Lingyi had moved on to another storefront. “We got damned lucky,” Arun said.

  We could have easily lost her—anything could have gone wrong in the heat of th
e moment. We had succeeded in our task, but it wasn’t a triumph. It didn’t feel like a time for celebration or relief. Lingyi’s life was still in danger—all of our lives were—as long as we had what Jin wanted. We were walking targets in a different country without any resources. And even though we spoke the language, we still stuck out like foreigners. We did not fit in; not in our mannerisms, nor the way we talked or dressed.

  I was damp with sweat by the time we had pushed through the crowds to finally emerge onto a main boulevard where we hailed a taxi. Brown haze hung over the skyline and the air reeked of exhaust, even through my face mask. Aircars were few this far from Shanghai proper, so we sat in the congested traffic instead, mostly in silence, unable to discuss anything until we had privacy. Arun was in the back with the girls, and I sat on the passenger side up front. The driver’s seat was blocked off from me and the back with thick, clear plastic, something I had never seen before. When I asked about it, the driver joked that the screen made it harder for anyone to mug him.

  When we finally arrived back at our hotel, I was antsy, eager to discuss what we needed to do next before we flew back to Taipei. Eager to put plans into action and move. The suite was as we had left it, and after Iris and I swept through and made sure it was safe, it still didn’t feel safe.

  “How soon can we book flights back to Taipei?” I asked when everyone regrouped in the sitting area.

  “Jin’s flagged me to prevent me from leaving China. I can change my identity as much as I’d like, but he took my retina scan. His thug told me I couldn’t leave the country unless Jin allows it.” Lingyi sank back into the sofa, and Iris wrapped an arm around her. Lingyi looked exhausted, worn. Dark bruises stood out on her pale throat. “To bypass that would take more work than I have time for right now. Our priority is to keep Jany’s design safe.” She coughed, her voice rasping. “I’ll work on securely transferring her data, then wipe this device. It’ll take at least a day.”