Zhen held his gaze. ‘Equilibrium know my name. They know where Lăolao lives. Of course I’m scared of being caught by the police. But I’m more scared of Equilibrium. If they’re as powerful and evil as you say, they must be stopped at all costs. You’ll never make it out of the country without my help; you still need a guide.’
Connor released his grip on her arm. ‘I’m sorry we got you into this.’
Zhen smiled. ‘Don’t be. I was the one to approach you first.’ She wriggled through the gap on to the roof.
Amir glanced at Connor. ‘She’s tough, that’s for sure,’ he said admiringly, then followed their guide out.
Connor pulled up the ladder and closed the loft hatch before crawling through the hole and kneeling beside the others. Zhouzhuang spread out before them, an undulating sea of dark grey tiles criss-crossed with gleaming ribbons of canals. Below, oblivious to the fugitives on the roof, the armed police unit prepared to launch their assault.
‘Will your grandmother be all right?’ whispered Connor, glancing anxiously down into the small courtyard to see her beating back the sham dumpling seller with the broken broom handle.
Zhen nodded. ‘Lăolao’s afraid of no one. Not even the police.’
Leading the way, she traversed the roof to the adjoining building. Despite the shallow slope, loose tiles made the going treacherous. But the next house after that presented even greater problems – it was separated by an alleyway.
‘We’ll have to jump across,’ said Zhen as she backed up to take a running leap.
‘What?’ hissed Amir, peering over the edge with horror at the ten-metre drop on to the hard stone pavement below.
But Connor was more concerned about the second squad of police hiding further along the alley than any possibility of falling.
Zhen threw herself across the gap and landed cat-like on the opposite roof. She waved for them to follow.
‘Here goes nothing!’ said Connor. Sprinting towards the edge, he leapt into the air. Beneath him the police officers waited for the green light to commence the raid while, unbeknown to them, their targets were literally above their heads. Connor touched down on the other side, landing as lightly as possible on the balls of his feet. There was still an all-too-loud scrunch of tiles and he winced at the noise. Luckily a burst of police radio chatter masked his landing.
Amir now worked himself up for the jump. Sucking in several deep breaths and shaking his limbs out, he took a practice run-up, carefully counting his paces. Then with a final intake of breath he went for it … and stopped, teetering on the lip of the roof. His eyes, shiny with panic, flicked between the precipitous drop and his friends.
I can’t do it, he mouthed.
Connor and Zhen silently and frantically urged him to try again. Amir backed up as far as he could, then dashed headlong towards the gap. Arms flailing and legs whirling, he soared over the alley and landed on top of Zhen. The two of them hit the roof in a heap of entangled limbs, their heavy collision disturbing a nearby roost of pigeons. Connor, Amir and Zhen all froze as the birds flapped away in a cloud of feathers and cawing. Below in the alley they heard a hushed exchange.
Zhen whispered, ‘It’s OK. They think it’s just the pigeons.’
Connor helped extract his friend from their guide. Amir smiled shyly at Zhen as she dusted herself off. ‘Thanks for catching m–’
All of a sudden Amir’s foot went from under him as a tile broke loose. Connor grabbed his friend’s jacket and yanked him back from the edge, preventing him from plummeting to the ground. But the tile couldn’t be saved. It tumbled through the air and smashed on to the stone pavement, fragments flying in all directions.
The unit of police officers all looked up, guns trained on their newfound target.
‘Go!’ cried Connor, pushing Amir up to the ridge of the roof as a burst of bullets tore into the sky.
There was an angry shout and more gunfire. The three of them fled across the roofs, leaping from building to building. No longer did they care about making a noise or kicking more tiles to the ground. They simply ran for their lives. Below in the network of alleys and lanes, the police relentlessly pursued them, their necks craned for a sighting of their quarry. A detachment of four officers scaled the walls and began to give chase over the rooftops too.
‘Canal!’ warned Zhen as the roof ahead came to an abrupt end.
‘Keep going!’ Connor cried, spotting a lower building on the opposite bank.
‘Are you crazy?’ shouted Amir.
But, driven by fear and the police, Connor, Zhen and Amir leapt from the eaves. Two storeys up, their legs bicycling madly, Connor realized he was mad for attempting such a foolhardy jump – they were dropping like stones and didn’t look as if they’d make it!
Beneath them a boatman stared up in frog-eyed shock as the three teenagers soared over his head … to crash-land atop a waterside restaurant. By some miracle they’d cleared the canal but, hitting the tiles hard, Zhen’s legs went from under her and she rolled down the slope out of control. Diving for their guide, Connor and Amir caught her trailing arm just before she tumbled over the edge.
‘No time for swimming,’ said Connor, dragging her back from the brink.
They scrambled up the slope to the next ridge. Behind, the four police officers on the roof reached the drop-off into the canal. Not nearly so desperate or reckless as the, three fugitives, the heart-stopping leap gave the officers pause for thought. They drew their guns but were too late to take aim, the fugitives having vaulted the ridge and slithered down the other side. Then, ordered by their superior to give chase, the four men were forced to take a running jump.
Connor and the others didn’t wait around to see if they made it. Scurrying across to the adjoining building, they began to scale the wall to the upper roof. As Connor helped push Amir up, he heard a yell followed by a loud splash. At least one officer had failed to make the distance.
In the streets below, the police squad on the ground had been compelled to take the long way round, going north to the nearest footbridge before they could continue the pursuit.
‘What’s our plan?’ panted Amir, as the three of them fled up and over roof peaks, dodging power lines, skirting gaps and avoiding broken tiles.
‘Keep running!’ Connor gasped, ducking beneath a telephone wire.
‘But where to –’
Their guide came to an abrupt halt. A wide waterway cut them off from the next set of buildings. There was no way they could make that leap.
‘Back! Back!’ she cried. They retraced their steps, returning to a building that connected to a different row of houses. However, by the time they reached the roof’s junction, the three policemen who’d cleared the canal had caught up. The lead officer drew his gun and ordered them to stop. As the two other officers cautiously advanced, Connor grabbed Zhen round the throat.
‘What are you doing?’ she exclaimed, her eyes rings of shock.
‘What’s the word for “hostage”?’ Connor demanded in her ear.
‘Err … rénzhì,’ she spluttered.
Connor shouted at the police: ‘Rénzhì!’
The officers hesitated, an apparently innocent victim now under threat.
Amir sidled close to his friend. ‘Connor, please don’t make the situation any worse for us!’
‘I’m not,’ he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. ‘I’m giving Zhen an alibi that we kidnapped her.’
One of the policemen edged closer, cutting off their only escape route. Connor shouted ‘Rénzhì!’ again and stamped his foot to make his point.
Amir looked wildly around. ‘Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I think we should surrend–’
In that instant the roof beneath them gave way and the three fugitives dropped through the hole on to a bed below. The metal bedframe collapsed under the impact, the mattress taking the brunt of their fall and saving them from broken limbs. Still beneath the covers, a startled couple stared at them, eyes and mouths open wide like emojis.
/> ‘Sorry to drop in on you uninvited,’ said Connor. He helped Amir and Zhen to their feet as dust and debris continued to rain down on their heads. ‘You all right?’
Zhen nodded, but Amir winced. ‘Hurt my knee but I’ll be fine.’
Above, the three policemen peered through the hole in the roof. ‘STOP!’ commanded the lead officer. But Connor, Amir and Zhen were already running out of the bedroom. They darted down a creaking staircase, through a sparsely furnished living room and out of the front door.
‘Which way?’ Connor asked their guide.
Zhen glanced up and down the narrow street lined with poky little shops crammed full of plastic gifts and souvenirs. ‘Well, not that way!’ she said, glimpsing the ominous black uniforms of several armed police officers charging up the street.
They raced off in the opposite direction. Connor heard a shout from behind but didn’t look back. They sprinted along the road, weaving and barging their way between the shoppers. Yells of complaint and disgruntled glares pursued them. But they didn’t care – not with a whole unit of armed police on their tail. Exiting the cobbled street, they came to a canal and turned sharp right. Amir, hobbling on his injured knee, accidentally bumped into a tourist taking a photo of his wife at the waterside. Losing his balance, the man toppled head first into the canal.
‘Sorry!’ cried Amir as the man flailed in the murky waters. His wife, however, was more furious that her silk dress had been soaked than at the fact her husband had been dunked.
With no time to stop and help, Connor careered along the canal side with the others. People scattered as Zhen yelled for them to move out of the way. But it was the shouts from behind that had greater effect. Connor glanced over his shoulder to see three officers chasing them down. They had their guns drawn but were unable to fire due to the presence of so many tourists. They yelled for everyone to drop to the ground. Then up ahead two other policemen appeared and blocked the path.
‘We’re trapped!’ Zhen gasped, skidding to a stop.
Connor looked desperately around. The two shops on their right offered no escape route, the nearest bridge was a couple of hundred metres beyond the police officers and the only alley was on the opposite side of the canal. The policemen slowed their pace, confident of capture at last.
Then a boat glided by, the little man at the tiller watching the chaotic scene with open-mouthed astonishment.
‘Leapfrog!’ said Connor to Amir and Zhen as he jumped off the path on to the passing boat. Using it as a mobile stepping stone, he bounded across to the other bank. Amir and Zhen both followed suit, the boatman too stunned to even complain.
Furious their quarry had escaped, a police officer ran up and leapt into the boat after them. But, weighed down by his weapon and tactical equipment, his feet went straight through the flimsy wooden hull. Floundering up to his waist in the murky canal, the officer was subjected to a torrent of abuse from the tiller-man as the boat rapidly began to take on water. Their crossing point now sinking, the remaining officers were forced to run back to the nearest bridge.
Safe on the other bank, Connor, Amir and Zhen darted down the opposite alley. But their frenetic escape was starting to take its toll. Zhen was gasping for breath and Amir was limping badly, his knee worsening with each step he took. Connor felt his own pace flagging too.
‘We have to find somewhere to hide,’ he panted.
They burst from the alley into a bustling square. Connor looked frantically around. Tacky gift shops, paper lantern stores, sweaty dumpling sellers and countless restaurants ringed the paved square. The old-style curved-roofed wooden buildings, complete with a towering white-and-red pagoda in one corner and a huge stone gateway decorated with carved dragons at the entrance, attracted sightseers to the ancient water town’s centre like bees to a honeypot. The place was literally swarming with foreign tourists.
Where better to hide a tree than in a forest, thought Connor.
He grabbed three baseball caps from a gift shop and handed them to his friends. Donning the caps – Zhen scooping her long hair up into a bun – they did their best to blend into the crowd.
‘We can’t stay in Zhouzhuang,’ said Zhen, her eyes darting left and right. ‘The police will close the roads and search every house.’
Amir grimaced. ‘And I can’t run much further.’
A uniformed tour guide was waving a pink flag. ‘This way! On to the bus. Quickly now.’
‘Then we need transport out of here,’ said Connor, steering Amir and Zhen into the heart of a bunch of Western tourists. The group was shepherded across the square, under the stone gateway and over to an awaiting bus. Keeping their heads bowed, Connor, Amir and Zhen climbed aboard with the other tourists. They were not a second too soon. As they took their seats at the back of the coach, armed police officers charged into the square. They hunted through the crowd, making a beeline for any foreign teenager with their parents. Just as the order was given to close the entrances, the tour bus pulled away from the kerb and merged into the town’s traffic.
Connor, Amir and Zhen sank into their seats with relief. They kept low and quiet, trying not to draw attention to themselves while they recovered their breath and the tour bus continued to put distance between themselves and the police.
As the coach reached the outskirts of Zhouzhuang and joined the main highway, Amir whispered, ‘So what now?’
Connor peered over the windowsill at the passing houses and rice paddies. ‘I guess we find out where we’re going first.’ He leant forward and tapped the immense rounded shoulder of a rosy-cheeked man in the seat in front. ‘Where’s the bus going next?’
‘Haven’t you read the itinerary?’ drawled the red-faced man, a grin stretching from ear to ear. ‘Shanghai, of course.’
Connor slumped back against his seat. Amir screwed his eyes tight shut and cursed under his breath.
Zhen, her own face mirroring the two boys’ disheartened expressions, sighed. ‘Like you English might say, out of the wok and into the fire!’
‘Charley’s a very determined subject,’ remarked the weasel-faced doctor as he and the Director studied their young patient through the lab’s observation window. ‘She’ll let absolutely nothing stop her from trying to walk again.’
Crystal-blue eyes fixated on their target, jaw muscles straining, slim biceps bulging and hands clamped to the parallel walking bars, Charley shakily dragged a leg forward in a superhuman effort to take an excruciating first step towards the other side of the room. Her leg moved in fits and starts, her jerks inelegant and awkward; nonetheless she moved unaided. With her T-shirt plastered to her body in patches of dark sweat, Charley worked up the willpower to shift her other leg. As she prepared to take the next step, her slender face contorted with focus, fury and frustration. She bit down on her lower lip to the point of drawing blood. Her arms began to tremble uncontrollably. However immense the internal exertion, though, her rear leg seemed to fail her and eventually she collapsed on to the bars, panting and in pain. A couple of technicians rushed to her aid. But after a moment’s recovery she shoved them away. Then she lifted herself back on to the bars and began the agonizing process again.
‘She’s been at this for over an hour.’
‘Impressive,’ said the Director with a nod. ‘But what I want to know is how the neuro-chip is performing.’
The doctor grinned like a rat who’d discovered the way into a locked larder. ‘One hundred per cent. The neuro-chip is successfully communicating with the motor cortex and bypassing the spinal injury. The graphene receptors implanted in her lower spinal cord are receiving the wireless signal and triggering nerve and muscle responses.’
The Director subjected him to a sidelong glare. ‘Then why isn’t she walking?’
The doctor stiffened at his boss’s scathing tone, then ran a hand over his balding pate, smoothing flat a few loose strands of hair. ‘The neuro-chip is only one factor in her recovery. The patient needs to retrain her brain to send the correct impul
ses to her leg muscles. The motor cortex has millions of neurons and only a few thousand are being utilized at this stage. However, with continued practice, greater control will be achievable.’
The Director reconsidered their patient. ‘And you’re convinced this technology can be utilized to enhance a person’s natural abilities?’
The doctor nodded. ‘Combined with the right steroids, the neuro-chip’s signals can be amplified to generate a faster and stronger muscle response. Any modified subject would benefit from extended endurance, greater physical power and increased reaction times.’ The doctor turned to the Director, a conniving glint in his narrow eyes. ‘You could even hijack a subject’s body by overriding the wireless signal. Immobilize them, torture them or compel them to do anything you require … such as assassinate a target.’
A whisper of a smile passed across the Director’s face. ‘Excellent. Be sure to keep me updated with your progress and let me know when we can have our first trial.’
The doctor gave an ingratiating bow of his balding head and retreated back into the lab. As the Director observed Charley make another punishing attempt at walking, Mr Grey’s skull of a face appeared like an apparition in the tinted glass’s reflection.
‘I can see why Connor admires her so much,’ said the assassin. ‘She’s … tenacious.’
The Director turned sharply to Mr Grey. ‘And where is Connor? More importantly, where’s the flash drive?’
The assassin stepped into the light, his face no less skull-like close up. ‘The police were tipped off before your agents got there. It seems a local boy discovered their whereabouts by chance.’
The Director swore an oath in Chinese, then suddenly exploded into anger. ‘Why didn’t WE know about the tip-off?’
Mr Grey took a step back, distancing himself from the Director’s erratic behaviour. ‘Unfortunately, Agent Yuan is no longer with us,’ he explained in a low even tone, ‘so the information wasn’t passed on.’
The Director scowled at the implied criticism of the agent’s execution.
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