by Agster, Joe
“Hey listen, let’s just stick to the plan,” Cassie urges him. “They are expecting you early on, in the first or second day. Let’s go back there tomorrow and take the ferry to Macau.”
“Yes, you are right. They would have all relocated to the bunker by then. This is great, maybe we can be engulfed by the tsunami again.” Friend becomes sarcastic at his own predicament.
“Tsunami?” Cassie asks in wondering curiosity. She wonders how a tsunami could be trigged even though the asteroid hits land.
Max overhears the conversation as he enters the room. “A tsunami makes sense. An asteroid striking Las Vegas would create gigantic seismic waves through the Earth, traveling around the world through the Earth’s crust before converging all at one at a single point, the antipodal point, the spot on the planet exact opposite from the point of impact.”
Cassie adds, “That’s somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Huge tsunamis will radiate outward from that point throughout the ocean.”
“Exactly. Hong Kong will be hit with a rising tide of water, hours after impact.”
Friend is momentarily intrigued as the two scientific minds discuss the geology of it, but he soon refocuses on their dire need to find the mastermind soon, before Foenix makes finding him impossible. Despite a possible second encounter, they prepare to return to Hong Kong to reach their next destination: Macau.
25
Iteration 47
The way the wind blew through her hair on that breezy, muggy morning gave Friend a moment of pause. Her hair is normally straight, but the dew and the wind turned it a bit wavy. No amount of fog can obscure her beauty, no, those low hanging clouds didn’t stand a chance. She leaned against the railing in silent contemplation, as Friend grabbed a hold of her, regaining his balance from the jolt of departure as the Princess Star ferry left the harbor.
That moment was the happiest moment of the trip, as it all went downhill from there. The arduous part was on the other side, once they made it to Macau. There was a greater sense of fear in the casino city where many of its residents were trying to cross into the Mainland, fearing a great tidal wave or tsunami was many are predicting. The city in many ways mirrored its counterpart in Las Vegas, with fear and despair paving the way for looters and criminals. Cassie and Friend were caught in it more than once during their two kilometer walk, but managed to evade it by staying out of sight and teleporting away from danger when needed.
The nearly empty city made it easier to locate and break into the apartment of Mara Liang, as there was hardly anyone there to stop them. Her apartment wasn’t large by any means, but inside she kept many fabulous goods, purses, shoes, nice coats, all clues that she has a benefactor or a wealthy suitor, undoubtedly providing her with access to the bunker.
Spending all that time in her apartment was enough for Friend and Cassie to make a plan to a sneak in and retrieve her device. And if the information provided by the two men from the club is any bit reliable, it will uncover her benefactor who may be linked to the mastermind. The key problem is if she discovers it missing they’ll surely remote lock it or even wipe it, so they intend to return it before she wakes early in the morning, estimated to be around zero six hundred in the morning.
During their time in the apartment, they discovered martial law had been in effect, and the anarchy had given way to a complete military occupation. They closed down all the ports and locked down the city. Friend and Cassie found themselves caught in the middle of it, as the apartment building they were in was also the target of a military response. Just as they were about to teleport away, they were killed by a sudden bombardment.
We got what we needed, Friend tells himself as he breaks from his meditation on those events from day three. He retrieves Cassie from her apartment and brings her back to the mansion where he reintroduces her to the plan, the one she herself concocted. He pulls up a map of Macau on the clearboard and shows her the location to the apartment. He describes her encounter with the two men who, influenced by her animated flirtatiousness, provided her all this info. She giggles at the idea, proud she was able to use her looks to cajole useful information out of someone, while questioning his immunity to jealously. He explains to her that jealousy is an emotion reserved for possessive mammals and unevolved humans.
This all leads to this moment where they need to sneak in and grab the device while she sleeps. They teleport to the outside of the building, in the back alley where no one will notice them. It’s not surprising no one comes back here as the rotten stench of stagnant, unclaimed trash is enough to drive away even stray cats. They head to the front where they can escape the horrid smell, and to visually observe her living room window to confirm it is dark inside and safe to enter. From what Cassie has gathered, she is an early riser, and most likely meaning she is asleep.
They retreat back to the alley as they hold their breath to bypass the smell, then grab hands as they transplant themselves into the living room. Cassie volunteers to go ahead as her thinner frame and her ninjitsu skills make it easier for her to sneak around. They soon discover that her door is firmly shut, so Friend decides to teleport her into the closet.
The closet space is cramped due to the abundance of shoes and clothes, and other accumulated material excesses. She creeps out of the closet keeping low and spotting the device on the end table on the opposite side of the bed. The older woman sleeps peacefully, wrapped fully in her blanket, exposing only her dark hair. Cassie rounds the bed one foot at a time until she comes within a meter of the device.
Suddenly it emits a long chime, indicating a phone call. A hologram protrudes above it, indicating the identity of the caller along with a picture. Cassie jumps back to duck under the front of the bed, watching as the sleep-bound woman peeks at the hologram with one eye before issuing a verbal command to ignore the call. Cassie takes a very quiet deep breath then goes in for a second attempt crawling closer and closer until she grabs it. The device firmly in hand she retreats to the closet where Friend awaits, teleporting away before it makes another sound.
They arrive at the safe house condo back in Hong Kong, where she can safely and quietly get to work on it. Cassie ruled out the idea of returning to the mansion, as the device being tracked outside the country would send an alert to any tracker apps, possibly putting his hideout at risk. She sets the device on the empty table before her, taking a seat and inspecting its entire silver exterior, the rounded rectangle being no more than five millimeters thick. She requests for him to take her to her apartment, where she can get her tools, enabling her to turn her device into a full-fledged desktop computer.
Seated back at the table, she takes a deep breath for a moment, explaining the situation to Friend. “Back in the day we could have done this remotely with just a phone number or MAC address, but device security is so pervasive that now it is impossible. But devices do have a backdoor so that the governments of the world can spy on us. So all we need to do is knock.”
She puts her device in full computing mode, where a holographic image projects from the screen, and a keyboard illuminates on the table in the safe house kitchen where they work. She discovers the phone has two factor locking, requiring both an iris scan and a password to unlock. She plugs a cable into the stolen device, then runs a program. The program opens, indicated it was written specifically for the FBI. Friend looks with a bit of surprise.
“An FBI program?” he asks in curiosity.
“Yeah. Found it of all places on a torrent node. Whoever said torrenting was dead, right?” she replies, Friend not understanding a word she just said. She then further explains. “This app is not really from the FBI, but hackers love to pretend they are from the government. I guess they feel if the FBI can legally hack whatever they want so can they.”
Through a few keystrokes on her holo-keyboard, the app runs. The screen showing a dizzying array of letters and numbers, scrolling fast through a window on her screen give the impression it is working hard on something. Moments later she claps in sat
isfaction as the phone display illuminates.
“We’re in. That was easy.”
She picks up the device and looks through her contacts and call logs, all in Chinese. She admits that although she can converse in Cantonese, reading the traditional Chinese characters requires steeper knowledge that she barely grasps.
“I’m going to download these emails, message, and contact data, and translate them. This should be fun.”
The process takes under a minute. They start with the emails. It’s mostly junk, shopping notifications, phishing scams. But one by one, they translate and read until they come across something useful. They scroll and scroll until they come across something.
It reads:
Still working on your chair. Bear.
“What does this mean?” she asks. She looks at the email address origin, but finds nothing in her contacts that match. She looks through her contacts to see nothing out of the ordinary, a husband, children, relatives, friends.
Cassie cross checks the email address and finds nothing. Then she tries something else, searching for the word “bear,” then realizing it’s not a word, but a Chinese symbol: 熊. So she searches for that symbol, and finds countless emails and messages. That’s when things turn scandalous. Endless bantering back and forth, a wave of jealousy, envy, and possessiveness are what they see.
Did you tell your husband?
I saw you with that whore again.
My children will never forgive me,
but I want to go with you
underground.
All of this is connected to this person called “Bear.” They read each message they can find, working their way chronologically backwards, concluding one thing, this woman desperately clings to this so called Bear person so she can escape the asteroid, even leaving her husband behind.
“Wow, this woman is all kinds of nasty!” Cassie remarks.
Friend responds in a dour tone, “It seems the survival instinct can bring out the worst in people. Based on these messages, they’ve been preparing for some time. It’s not a coincidence. This Bear is well connected in Huludao, having enough influence to be allowed to include her in their plot.”
“So we need to find out who Bear really is?” Cassie suggests.
“What is it with the word ‘bear’ anyway to describe a male relationship partner? I feel that I am still grasping to understand your society’s linguistics.” Friend sighs, thinking back to when Lucia referred to Steve as “Oso,” the Spanish word for bear.
Cassie mostly ignores the comment, and her attention is solely focused on her work, but she pauses for a moment to respond to him. “Wait! What if it isn’t just a silly pet name?”
She taps away on her holo-keyboard, searching through the rest of the device, but there is nothing more than that one symbol, translation Bear. Seeing that it is a dead end, she looks at different areas of the device. There are some work documents that she looks through one by one.
That’s when she discovers something interesting. The Chinese character pops up again and again, but as an official name, someone’s surname. Bear, it seems, has a Chinese word: Xiong. And from what she sees, this name is being referenced all over the place.
“Bear is not bear. Bear is Xiong. And look, here is this name over and over, Xiong Li. Do you think they are one in the same? It sounds like a cute little pet name, but what if she is calling him by his real name?”
Cassie searches the web for “Xiong Li,” and what she finds seems to be a pot of gold. Cassie reads it out loud to Friend.
“Xiong Li, committee member of the Central Military Commission of the People’s Republic of China. Mr. Xiong was a founder and early investor in Huludao Holdings, a multinational investment corporation dedicated to furthering technology with a focus on space exploration. He currently sits on the board of directors, helping to guide the company as the world leader in technology investment.”
Friend interjects, leaning against the kitchen counter as he watches her work hunched over her equipment on the small round dining table. “Okay. This is definitely promising, but how can we be sure he is the mastermind?”
She largely ignores him as she uses her finger to navigate through the holographic screen projected from her device. She pokes and prods at a dizzying pace, moving through different views to try to discover more. The silence becomes increasingly uncomfortable for him until she suddenly stops.
“Come look at this,” she barks out. An image of a man identified as Xiong Li stands next to a Caucasian man. She explains, “It’s an older picture. The caption reads: Xiong Li of China, with AstroShuttle CEO Patrick McAllister. Isn’t AstroShuttle the company that owned the other asteroid, KM91?”
“Huludao controlled both asteroids?” Friend stunningly questions, eyes wide open looking at her screen. This guy must be the mastermind. His handprints are everywhere. He implores her to look further, to confirm the relationship between Xiong Li and Mara. She digs and digs and appears to find nothing at first, but one message surfaces.
Meet me in the hotel lobby in five minutes.
The message itself is innocent and innocuous, if not for the fact of where the device was located at the moment it was sent. The device has a log of every place she has visited, and she extracts this data and loads it into a mapping app. At that exact moment in time, two weeks ago, it was sent from a hotel in Hong Kong. A search reveals the hotel name as Hotel Mei.
“In the Art of War, it teaches that one must always find and exploit their opponent’s weakness. Whenever there’s a mistress that’s usually it,” Cassie remarks with a hint of facetiousness. Friend prides himself on his strategic mind, but realizes she’s got him beat there too. Even so, he is still unsure of the connection.
“This still doesn’t connect Xiong the bear to Xiong Li,” he sighs in exasperation.
“What if he is there now? I can call the hotel,” she states, grabbing the device and verbally ordering it to find the contact information for Hotel Mei. She charges ahead, not even waiting for a nod of approval from Friend before she gets an answer, and proceeds to ask for Xiong Li, speaking Cantonese. After a silence, she tells the person that she is Mara Liang. There is a pause, then he answers. She listens intently for a few seconds, then hangs up. She puts the device down slowly with a look of adulation.
“Do you know what he said?” he wonders.
“Yes. It was Cantonese.”
「美慧，不要叫我脫離這行。」
“Translation: Mara, don’t call me from this line.”
Immediately the device rings, alerting to a phone call. The identification reads the single Chinese symbol of Xiong.
“It’s him! Are you happy?” She jumps up in excitement as she slaps his hand. “You see, behind this sexy, exotic exterior is a geeky princess at heart.”
“A geeky princess?” He snickers at the description. She joins him with a sensual, flirtatious laughter. He recalls her referring to herself as a ‘geeky princess’ more than once, and he doesn’t tire of hearing it.
“Let’s return this device,” he suggests, adding, “Then let’s explore this Hotel Mei.”
He teleports back into the Macau apartment bedroom to drop off the device at the end table, then immediately zips out. Back at the mansion they strategize on the next task, infiltrating the hotel to confront this supposed mastermind, Xiong Li. They visit the hotel, finding that it is not far from the Dragon X nightclub. Not wanting to attract the attention of Foenix, they don’t stay long. But in the process they witness the strong security in place, with triad bodyguards stationed throughout the lobby. They watch scantily clad women walk into the hotel lobby on more than one occasion, asking for his room.
It seems his lust for women has no bounds.
26
Iteration 48
Once the gang is assembled in the mansion, Friend pulls out the clearboard to bring everyone up to speed. He is filled with glee at the thought that they are close to finally confronting the mastermind. As they
situate themselves on the couch and chairs, their unfamiliar minds once again learn of Max’s secret, Space Onyx, and Huludao and everything in between. Friend then leads in to the next stage of his presentation, opening the page on the clearboard that visualizes this topic.
“We have uncovered the identity of the mastermind. His name is Xiong Li. He is a Chinese state official and a committee member on the People’s Republic’s Central Military Commission. He was an early investor in Space Onyx, and then later became an investor in Huludao Holdings. This guy has been in the background since the beginning, manipulating events starting with the accident on Icedragon. They purposefully dissolved Space Onyx to bury the trail.
“We also discovered that Huludao, through an intermediary, acquired the assets of AstroShuttle, who held the claim to KM91. They must have used their claim and knowledge of that asteroid when they deployed the gravity tractor. Ironically, AstroShuttle is an American company. Huludao has had their hand on all sides.”
Friend uses his finger to draw circles around Xiong Li’s picture as he concludes, “This is a planned, coordinated attack, orchestrated by this man.”
“So China is behind this deliberate attack!” Max stands up, reiterating what he’s just heard. “I need to notify my superiors at NASA.”
Friend gestures calm, holding out his hand. “No, wait. That won’t do any good. We already know where to find him. If we can capture him soon enough, like within the next couple hours, then we can figure out his location the moment I awake in the desert. We can find out more, and possibly undo the asteroid by influencing his past.”
“So where is he?” Fisher asks.
“He’s in his hotel suite at the Hotel Mei, in Hong Kong,” Friend responds.
“That’s it?” Fisher asks.
“There’s more. His room is supposedly heavily guarded. Unfortunately, I don’t know which room he’s in yet, but once I get in, then I can teleport back there at any time.”