by Brian Nelson
But now this.
He pulled out his iSheet and gave an audible. “Tracking. Location of Hui Ying and Hui Lili.” The screen showed a map of the Great Lab, with thousands of moving ID tags. Meng saw one twin and the Americans, moving within the cluster of tags toward the exit. The other twin was by the containment tank. Dead? It was possible. The iSheet showed dozens of ID tags, congregated near the explosion, that weren’t moving. Clearly dead or dying. Then it moved. He could sort out the others later, but he had to stop that bitch from whatever she was doing to the containment tank.
He heard a pistol shot. Grabbing a Kalashnikov from one of the guards, he turned to Captain Xi.
“Find the Americans and Hui Ying. If they give you any resistance, any resistance at all, kill them.” Then he took two guards and began running down the wobbling catwalk toward the fire.
* * *
Hui Lili had hoped that the explosion in the feeder room would be enough to blow open the containment tank. When she first emerged from the smoke, she was sure it had. The whole tank had been knocked off its support beams and was creaking and moaning as it gnawed into the concrete floor and ceiling. She went to the terminal and killed the program she had made to cover up the real diagnostics. “Tā mā de!” She banged on the desk in frustration. The chamber was still sealed.
She had to act fast, not just because of Meng but also because her body wasn’t working right. She didn’t know quite what was wrong, but the explosion had hurt her … badly. She suspected she was bleeding internally. She had been far too close when the bomb went off. That hadn’t been planned. But then again, she hadn’t counted on the guard escorting her to the feeder room, either.
She’d had to improvise. Alone there in the feeder room, she had done the first thing that occurred to her: she came on to him, opening her blouse and sticking her tongue in his mouth. “Finally, I’ve got you alone.” A devilish smile. She’d seen him around, noticed him looking at her. At first, he had seemed startled by her advance, but only for a second. Then he had risen to the occasion, so to speak. She got down on her knees, unzipped his pants, and took him in her mouth. He had let out a moan and pushed his hands into her hair. She had unbuckled his belt and let his pants fall to the floor. She reached for his balls with one hand, and his sidearm with the other. He looked down when he felt the cold tip of the pistol on his undercarriage. “I’m afraid this isn’t going to end quite the way you imagined,” she had said. “So sorry, but I need you to do exactly as I say, understand?”
And he had. But it all had taken too long, so she’d had to cut the timer. She couldn’t risk that Chu might send Mei and her sister away. If they weren’t together—the girls and the Americans—when the explosion went off, it would all be for naught. She had changed the timer to thirty seconds; then doused herself in the thick syrup she had concocted to protect her from the flames. She told the guard to close his eyes and count to sixty, knowing he would never get there.
She had made it into the corridor and just past the giant mural when the timer reached zero. Much too close. The blast tossed her twenty feet, and she had lost consciousness for a few seconds, but she fought it off, determined to finish her job.
Now Lili stood before the containment sphere. The smoke was getting heavy. Sprinklers were dousing her with water. She turned the pistol toward the circular window and fired twice. The bullets ricocheted away with a high-pitched zang-zang. Just as she suspected. Shrugging the satchel off her shoulder, she pulled out a heavy metallic saucer the size of an Olympic discus and stuck it to the glass.
She was just about to set the timer for ten seconds when the bullet tore through her forearm. It hit at the elbow, traveled through the tube of her forearm, and exploded out her palm. She almost collapsed to the floor in agony, but she knew she had to move. She staggered a few steps before her leg muscles coordinated well enough to run. Through the smoke, she could make out three hazy figures standing on the catwalk. Even through the goggles, Hui Lili recognized the silhouette of General Meng. She dashed to the left to draw their fire, then turned and ran back to the timer, pausing just long enough to jab SET with her good hand. The timer beeped and displayed the count. TEN. But that brief pause cost her a bullet to the leg. NINE.
Adrenaline got her another four steps before the leg gave out. EIGHT. With one arm and one leg, she scrabbled to get around the curve of the containment sphere and out of the line of fire. SEVEN. The bullets zipped around her. SIX. She finally reached the back alcove, where the sphere met the wall. FIVE. Chest heaving, arm and leg screaming, desperately pulling oxygen in through her nose, she tried to make her body as small as possible while the bullets continued to ping around her. FOUR. But there was another problem: the sphere itself. It was still tipping, chewing up the floor a few inches at a time and slowly pushing her into the line of fire. THREE. She put her back to the sphere, as if she hoped to push it back. TWO. She curled up her legs, her toes now entering Meng’s line of sight. ONE. She stared at her toes, expecting them to explode with the impact of a bullet.
Booom-BOOOOOOOOOM!
The small bomb had been given to her by a soldier, who explained to her how it worked. Modeled on a clever antitank weapon known as a sabot mine. It was the weapon of a physicist, not a general. It had very little explosive—not much more than a rifle round—but that was all it needed. The idea was to punch a very small hole in a tank (or other armor) with a thin dart that was denser than the armor—in this case, tungsten carbide. It caused a piggyback explosion.
The glass blew inward, then right back out as the pressure of more than a tredecillion nanosites rushed forth. They emerged with the deafening howl of a hurricane wind, shrieking and whistling. They were invisible, yet their coordinated flight carved beautiful swirling patterns in the thick black smoke. She felt them run over her, blowing up her clothes and hair.
She heaved a great sigh. She had done it. She had really done it. They were out! And there was nothing that General Meng or the Central Committee or even the ghost of Mao could do about it now.
Her body was spent, bleeding out in four places. She didn’t even want to look. There was no need. She would be dead soon, but she was ready for that. Now that she had accomplished her goal, she welcomed it. Here in these final moments, she thought of her husband, in prison twelve years now for defending human rights victims. A lawyer, he had been sentenced to only three years, but he had continued to work from prison, sending detailed reports of his torture and humiliations, which were published in the Western press. In retaliation, his sentence had been increased to fifteen years. Like many other convicts, he had been sentenced to hard labor in Africa—a slave, sent to harvest the natural resources that fueled China’s boom. Now, as she lay on the tile floor, she tried to push back the pain long enough to imagine his face, to take it with her into the dark. It had been so long (or else the pain was so great) that it was hard to see him. So instead, she thought of the pictures she had of him: a shot of him lying in the grass during the summer of their courtship, a selfie he had taken while making a goofy face, a picture of the two of them smiling together at their wedding. She thought of their intense intimacy. The way they had loved when they realized he was going away. And how she had prayed that she would become pregnant with his child, but never did. Thank God for Mei, she thought. For Mei had, in so many ways, become her daughter, too. It was because of her sister and Mei that Lili felt she could let go. One twin would survive today, and in that, and in Mei, a part of her would survive, too.
There was one final act—a violent act, but a crucial one. A way to find peace, but also a way to ensure that Meng didn’t piece together the truth. She said a final prayer: for her sister, for Mei, and for the soldier who had helped them, and reached for the pistol. Then she uttered a moan of hopelessness, realizing she must have dropped the weapon when she was shot in the arm. She wanted to cry then, for she knew what would happen if Meng found her alive.
> Defeated, she slouched to one side until her cheek was flat against the cold tile floor. She prayed that death would come quickly. With any luck, the bullet to her leg had nicked her femoral artery; then it would just be a matter of minutes. She closed her eyes and tried to will the darkness closer.
She felt a hand grip her hair, and she was savagely yanked from her alcove and dragged out, flailing. She clawed reflexively at the fist with her good hand. No use. She was flung across the floor, sliding, her head smacking the wall. Then she was seized again. A hand forced her head back, and she looked up to see General Meng’s furious blackened face. “Why?” he snarled. “Why?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sleepers
Tangshan Military Laboratory, China
The nanosites rushed free. A cold wind of more than 1042 microscopic machines, spinning, spreading, exploring. They swarmed and spun, a whirlwind of life, flying, searching. Immediately, they began to perform thousands of intricate operations. They bonded together, created devices, exchanged information, broke apart, received new instructions, combined again, created another system, then spun apart once more.
All in the flutter of an eyelash.
Ninety-five billion—an airborne particle of dust—formed a single microcontroller, a brain, communicating, coordinating, and directing the other nanosite pods. Forty billion began mapping the entire complex. One point four trillion began a census of every living human being in the complex, searching them out the way a mosquito does, smelling concentrations of carbon dioxide. Once identified, nanosites entered each body through any available opening: through the eye and into the cranium, down the throat and through the lungs, or into the ear and through the porous choroid plexus capillaries. Once inside, they left dormant “sleepers” in the spinal cord of every person. Next, seven hundred million came together to transmit electromagnetic radiation at 800 MHz.
Four minutes later, Admiral James Curtiss’s phone rang. It was just after midnight in Washington.
“Curtiss here.”
“Sir, they’re out! They began transmitting just a minute ago.”
“What? Say again?”
“They’ve done it, sir! They’ve really done it.”
Curtiss felt a wave of relief wash over his body. It had been so long since they had any news. Now this. At last. Without another word, he set the phone back onto its cradle. Then he made a decision. It was an impulsive decision, impractical and dangerous.
He picked up the phone again.
“Sawyer?”
“Yes sir.”
“Wake the boys and get them over to Andrews. We leave in an hour.”
* * *
The alarm woke Jane from a deep sleep. At first, she didn’t recognize the sound—it was like a muffled siren. It wasn’t her alarm clock or a smoke detector. It was coming from the iSheet. Then she remembered.
She scrambled out of bed, went to the table, and pulled up Curtiss’s diagnostic readout. His heart rate had just jumped. But not from exercise or sex. It was too fast. Something had given him a sudden jolt. She turned on the audio and heard Curtiss’s call to Sawyer. Then she ran it back to the phone call that had woken him.
This is it, she thought. It has to be.
Chapter Thirty
Panic
Tangshan Military Laboratory, China
They ran and stumbled and pushed and coughed along with the rest of the stampede. It was all they could do to stay together. Eric carried Mei clutched to his chest, her legs squeezed tight around his hips. Ying was in front, gripping Eric’s belt with superhuman strength, guiding them as best she could. Eric couldn’t see Ryan. He just hoped he was still connected to them somehow.
It was complete chaos, three thousand people fighting for survival, desperate to get away from the smoke and flames, the collective panic infecting them all. Eric stepped on a body, felt the soft give of meat as his ankle rolled, but he didn’t stop. When they reached the outer hallway, it was packed with bodies, backed up and barely moving as everyone pushed and shoved for the staircases and elevators. That was when he heard a voice call out—a soldier, searching for them. Ying tugged hard on his belt, jerking frantically. Eric used his greater body mass to make room, but he could still only inch forward. The exit light over the stairwell was only fifteen yards away, yet it seemed impossibly far.
A shot rang out, earsplitting in the constricted hallway. A warning? People jumped and screamed in fear. “Soldiers!” Ying cried. They heard the voice again, angry now.
They pressed on, enveloped on all sides by panic-stricken people. Every step meant they were being squeezed tighter and tighter as they approached the bottleneck of the stairway doors.
Then a burst of gunfire thundered in the tight space. Eric felt the spray of warm liquid across the back of his neck. The crowd surged in a mad frenzy to get away. People punched, clawed, and kicked. The woman next to him stabbed at the man in front of her with a pen; over and over, the pen plunged into his back. It seemed that everyone was shouting and screaming. They were now squeezed so tight that Eric’s rib cage was having trouble expanding. Mei cried out in pain. Another burst of fire. More screams and frenzied pushing.
Eric had had enough. He shifted Mei to his back hip, dug in, center of gravity low, quads straining, and began to shove with all his might. Finally, with a tremendous compression that bent every rib in his chest, they squeezed through the doorway and into the stairwell.
They all gasped for breath, and Eric began to lead them up with the rest of the crowd, but Ying stopped him. “No!” she shouted. “Down!”
They scrambled down the steps, shoes squeaking as they went. Seven, eight, nine floors, past the prison level, until they emerged into a dim hallway and ducked into a bathroom.
Ying locked the door behind them, and the others collapsed, gasping and panting on the floor. “We have to act fast,” Ying said, turning to Eric, “Take off your shirt.” He gave her a befuddled look. “Just do it!”
He obeyed, and she produced a generic iSheet and a scalpel. She ran the iSheet over his shoulder. “There!” she said. “Now, hold still.” And she began to cut.
Eric jerked away. “What the hell!”
“Let her do it,” Ryan said. “They chipped you.”
Eric acquiesced, leaning against the wall and gritting his teeth. A minute later, she produced a bloody metallic chip. Ryan was next; then Ryan dug the chip out of Ying. They flushed all three chips down the toilet. “That should confuse them for a while,” Ryan said.
Then Ying went to a heating duct in the corner, laced her fingers through the grill, and pulled it away. Inside was a backpack.
“Now what?” Eric asked.
“We wait,” Ying said.
“You must be joking! They’re already looking for us. With or without tracking chips, they’ll find us sooner or later.”
“We wait,” she repeated.
Ryan said, “If he doesn’t do it soon, we’ll have to risk it.”
“He’ll do it,” Ying said.
It seemed all wrong to Eric that they should be still, but they obviously had a plan. He gave a sigh and sat on the floor. Then he noticed that Mei was weeping. She was trying to hide it, her face buried in her hands, but her shoulders trembled.
Her mother noticed it, too. “I told you, nān nān, that you have to hide your emotions. I’ve been telling you for months. Now, bury them away so that you don’t lose your wits.”
“I want my auntie,” she whined.
“You’ll see her tomorrow,” Ying lied.
Mei kept weeping. Ryan pulled out a generic iSheet and unfolded it. “Hey, Mei, I have the new version of Wizard Wars. Do you want to play?”
She shook her head.
Ying said something to her in Chinese, and the little girl reluctantly slid over to Ryan. Within a few minutes, they were both absorbed in the
game.
“Why did you bring her?” Eric asked, softly enough that the girl wouldn’t hear.
Ying’s eyes made a circle of annoyance, as if debating whether the American’s stupid question merited an answer.
“I brought her because this was the only way to protect her. If I had changed my routine or hers, if I had tried to smuggle her out, they would have suspected something. Then they would have snatched her up, and my sister up, and me up, and then your plan would never have worked.”
He didn’t seem to understand, and that annoyed Ying even more. “My daughter is going to live,” she said vehemently. “She is going to have a life. A real life. I took the risks. I spied for you, for her. She is not going to live under a government that will brainwash her every day. That will throw her in jail for going to a protest, or kill her for speaking out against the wrong people. You’re American; you don’t get it. You’re all so spoiled. But if you could, you would see that everything in this country is fake. Fake democracy, fake human rights, fake environmental protections, fake building codes, fake earthquake-proof buildings, fake innovation.” She snatched the generic iSheet from Mei and tossed it across the floor in disgust. Mei scurried after it. “Even fake equality.” She let out a caustic laugh. “They couldn’t even get that right. I live in a Communist country, where I have to pay for my own healthcare and my child’s education. It’s all a farce, all propaganda and lies. All done so the party can stay in power.”
Ying looked ready to continue her rant when he spoke. “You’re right. A few months ago, I wouldn’t have understood that.”