‘Where now?’ Connor yelled to Charley, lost without their guide.
‘I think I recognize where we are …’ she replied. ‘The embassy’s down … that road!’
In his determination to escape their pursuers, Connor almost missed it. He hit the left turn too hard and the motorcycle skidded round the corner. The handlebars were at full lock, but still the bike veered over the white line into the wrong lane. Connor had lost all control over the steering. The sidecar started to lift off the ground, threatening to flip the bike into the path of an oncoming bus.
‘We’re going over!’ cried Charley, throwing her body weight into the turn.
Connor leant with her, applying more gas to bring the bike round. At the last second the motorcycle righted itself, its tyres gripped the road and they shot back on to the correct side, clipping the bus and scraping the paintwork.
‘That was close!’ said Charley, checking her wheelchair had survived the encounter.
Now it was a straight run to the embassy. Connor could see the American flag in the distance, the stars and stripes rippling in the breeze. Throttle at the full, he weaved between the cars.
‘We’re going to make it!’ he said, gritting his teeth.
But halfway down Connor spotted the flashing lights of a police roadblock and he was forced to screech to a halt. Further back up the road the two Equilibrium agents made a quick exit before the police car behind braked and blocked any hope of a retreat.
Connor and Charley found themselves trapped. Armed police having them in their sights, they had no option but to surrender.
Connor stared at his reflection in the one-way mirror. He hardly recognized himself. His spikes of brown hair lay flat and matted, his fringe plastered to his forehead. His eyes were no more than dark hollows, their stare slightly wild. His cheeks were sunken, his lips cracked, and his complexion wan and smeared with grime and sweat. He looked, and no doubt smelt, like a runaway who could do with a decent meal and a hot shower.
The police officer who sat opposite him seemed to think the same. He eyed Connor with undisguised disdain, his glare as grim and unsympathetic as the over-starched uniform he wore.
Connor shifted position in the hard metal chair, its feet bolted to the concrete floor. The table was fixed too, its surface scratched and dented. Connor didn’t want to think how some of those dents had got there as he leant forward and rested his handcuffed wrists on the table. He hadn’t got a word out of the officer in the whole time he’d been cooped up in the dingy interrogation room. He hadn’t been given a phone call, the offer of a lawyer or even a glass of water.
Connor had asked repeatedly where Charley was but had been met with stony-walled silence.
He worried for her and prayed that she was being treated with appropriate respect. He himself had not been harmed since their arrest. But he’d been denied everything, including information.
He had no idea if Amir and Zhen had escaped, been arrested, captured or shot dead by Equilibrium agents. Their fate played on his mind, as did his friends in the shipping container. Every minute he was being detained in a holding cell was a minute less that Jason, Ling and the others had to live.
Connor decided to try one last time with the officer. He knew that Equilibrium’s tentacles reached far and were buried deep into every stratum of the country’s security agencies, but surely not every officer in the Shanghai police force could be corrupt or in the pay of Equilibrium. Now that he’d been captured and arrested on terrorism charges, Connor realized he had nothing to lose.
‘Please. You have to believe me. Equilibrium is holding my friends hostage. The organization is a mass criminal network, extending even up to government level. They killed the colonel.’ The officer continued to stare impassively at him. ‘We were trying to escape before they killed us too. You see, we have information that would expose them and bring the organization down. We’re not the terrorists. They are! Don’t you understand?’ Connor slammed his fists on the table, the officer’s complete lack of interest frustrating him to anger. ‘Lives are at stake here! You have to contact –’
A knock at the door interrupted him.
Another grim-faced policeman appeared. He spoke briefly to his associate, then looked at Connor as if he were something scraped off his shoe. ‘Translator here now,’ he said in English.
‘At last!’ Connor slumped back in his chair and breathed a sigh of relief. Finally he might be able to get through to someone – explain the situation and give his side of the story.
Then the translator walked in and Connor’s hope was crushed like a tin can in a compactor.
‘Hello, Connor,’ said Mr Grey, the greeting as warm and comforting as a shard of ice.
Connor’s eyes widened in horror. ‘No, don’t leave me with him!’ he begged as the police officer vacated his seat and headed for the door. ‘He’s one of them. He works for Equilibrium. He’s an assassin!’
Mr Grey muttered something in Chinese. The police officer nodded, then left the interrogation room, locking the door behind him. With the click of the latch, Connor felt as if the whole outside world had been shut off from him. The room’s temperature seemed to drop several degrees. Now the only reality that existed was him and the devil that masqueraded as a man.
Mr Grey removed his suit jacket and hung it pin-straight over the back of his chair. Then he sat down opposite Connor, crossed his legs and neatly pulled the cuffs of his shirt into line.
Connor did his best to regain his own composure. With a grin of bravado, he said, ‘I see the colonel’s left his mark.’
Scowling, Mr Grey touched the cut above his left eye. ‘That will heal. Unlike his bleeding heart.’
Fury overruling sense, Connor launched himself at the assassin. Mr Grey didn’t even flinch as Connor’s shackles cut his attack short, barely reaching halfway across the table. Connor raged like a chained lion.
‘Save your energies,’ advised the assassin in a somewhat bored tone. ‘You’re going to need them for what I have planned.’
Realizing the futility of his efforts, Connor fell back into his chair, his chains jangling and his blood coursing hot and angry through his veins.
‘The Director is somewhat irritated by your rude departure,’ informed Mr Grey, as if Connor had run out of some tedious business meeting. ‘So she’s handed your care over to me.’ A fiendish smile now slid across his thin pallid lips.
Connor’s stomach twisted into a knot and his throat constricted to the point he found it hard to breathe. ‘Are you going to torture me? Like you did the colonel?’
Mr Grey gently shook his head. ‘No. Not you.’
At that moment, the door unlocked and the police officer came back in, pushing a wheelchair ahead of him.
‘I can do it myself!’ Charley protested, irritably trying to take control of her chair. ‘I said –’
She looked up and saw Connor’s horrified face, then the skull-like grin on Mr Grey’s, and her objections immediately died away. The police officer ferried her over to the corner of the room, spun her chair to face the table, flipped on the brake, then departed and locked the door once more.
‘No!’ said Connor, looking pleadingly at Mr Grey. ‘Not Charley. Leave her out of this.’
‘What’s going on?’ asked Charley, her sky-blue eyes flicking fearfully between Connor and the cold-hearted assassin.
Mr Grey rose from behind the table. ‘I’m presuming your associate Amir has the flash drive,’ he said, ignoring Connor’s impassioned protests. ‘The police report doesn’t list it in your possession.’
Connor felt a flicker of hope. Amir and Zhen must have escaped! But his elation was short-lived.
Like the Grim Reaper identifying his mark, Mr Grey laid an ashen hand on Charley’s shoulder. She shuddered under the assassin’s touch, then stiffened as he brushed aside her long blonde hair.
‘Is this where they inserted the neuro-chip?’ asked the assassin, running a skeletal finger along the small scar
at the base of her skull. Charley flinched.
‘Don’t you dare touch her!’ warned Connor, straining once more at his chains.
‘Oh, I don’t intend to,’ replied Mr Grey, pulling the Director’s neuro-controller out of his pocket. Charley stared in fearful apprehension at the device. ‘The doctor reliably informs me that this device has so much more potential than merely the control of a subject. I understand it can inflict pain. Immense pain. Now tell me, Connor, where’s Amir hiding?’
Before Connor could answer, Mr Grey pressed his thumb to the neuro-controller’s display panel. Charley suddenly went into spasm. Her whole body locked out as if she was suffering an epileptic fit. Her back arched, her arms splayed out, her hands turned to claws and her mouth opened in a silent scream.
‘STOP!’ cried Connor. ‘STOP! You’re killing her!’
Mr Grey released his thumb and Charley flopped back into her chair, limp as a rag doll.
‘Charley, speak to me! Are you all right?’ Connor asked desperately.
Gasping, she appeared lost in a white-out of pain, a sheen of sweat coating her deathly pale face.
‘I can only imagine that it must be like molten iron being poured into your spine,’ said Mr Grey, his pleasure apparent. ‘Or perhaps razors slicing through your nerves?’
He depressed his thumb again and Charley convulsed once more. Her eyes bulged and she seized the armrests of her chair as if she was being electrocuted. Connor yanked on his chains, fighting to free himself. But he was powerless to do anything. He could only sit and stare as she writhed in her chair.
Mr Grey grinned, evidently enjoying the look of torment on Connor’s face as much as the agony he was inflicting on his victim.
‘Enough! Enough!’ cried Connor, unable to watch Charley suffer any more. ‘You win … you can have the drive. Just leave Charley alone.’
The victory his, Mr Grey slipped the controller back into his pocket and Charley collapsed into her chair. ‘See? I didn’t even have to torture you.’ The assassin narrowed his eyes at Connor. ‘Although I still have that pleasure to come.’
Connor was no longer even listening. Hot tears ran down his cheeks as he sobbed, ‘Charley, are you OK?’
But Charley was unresponsive, the excruciating pain having caused her to black out.
Mr Grey coughed impatiently. ‘Where’s Amir?’
Defeated and distraught, Connor replied, ‘In a warehouse. In the –’ His smartband vibrated.
Mr Grey grabbed his wrist and read the message:
Call me now.
‘Is that from Amir?’ he demanded.
Connor weakly nodded, no longer having the strength to resist.
‘Then you’d better call him,’ said Mr Grey, pulling a mobile phone from his pocket.
Taking the phone, Connor dialled the number in the message. It rang only once before it was answered.
‘Amir?’ asked Connor. He listened to his friend, then, frowning in puzzlement, he passed the phone over to Mr Grey. ‘Amir wants to speak to you.’
A neon nightscape of dancing lights and towering LED screens, the Shanghai skyline glittered in all its glory. From nearly five hundred metres above the ground, the hexagonal-shaped Sky Walk on the hundredth floor of the Shanghai World Financial Center afforded the most breathtaking views over the endless starlit city. To Connor, the skyscrapers of Pudong – that had looked like steel giants from the river level of the Bund – now appeared like a flashing forest of toy Christmas trees.
He stood close beside Charley upon the vertigo-inducing glass floor of the Sky Walk, only a few inches of glazing separating them from the abyss beneath their feet. Charley had recovered from her torture, but was still somewhat subdued, the invasive control over her body having unsettled her to the core. Connor held her hand, but there was no strength to her grip.
The Director and Mr Grey waited with them, flanked on either side by a requisite pair of guards, guns concealed and blank innocuous expressions on their faces so as not to draw any undue attention. Whatever strings had been pulled and pockets lined, Connor and Charley were no longer in police custody. They were the property of Equilibrium.
In his phone call Amir had demanded an exchange. The flash drive for Connor and Charley – eight o’clock sharp at the top of the Shanghai World Financial Center. Connor could now see why his friend had chosen that specific location. The Sky Walk was busy with tourists gazing at the views and taking photos of themselves, revelling in the optical illusion that they were floating in mid-air above the gleaming city. It was a very public place with obvious CCTV cameras and conspicuous security guards. If the Director tried anything here, she risked exposing herself and Equilibrium.
‘Your friend best not be playing any games with us,’ snapped the Director, glancing impatiently at her watch. ‘Otherwise you two will be taking the express elevator down.’
Connor guessed that she didn’t mean the lift behind them. Three floors beneath their feet was the lower observation level of the building’s world-famous trapezoid structure, the reason the skyscraper was called the ‘bottle opener’ of Shanghai. Then beyond that was a vertiginous drop to the street, precisely four hundred and seventy-four metres below. It would be a swift and permanent exit.
Yet Connor hoped that Amir wouldn’t turn up. That he wouldn’t attempt something so foolish as to trade their lives for the flash drive. The Director was not a person to be trusted or bargained with. He understood why his friend was trying to save them, but the contents of the drive were too important to be given away in a hostage exchange – an exchange that risked Amir being captured too.
But dead on eight o’clock Amir appeared at the other end of the Sky Walk. Separated by over fifty metres of glass walkway and a throng of tourists, their eyes briefly met, a look of apprehension shared between them before Amir smiled in an effort at reassurance. His friend was alone and apparently unarmed. He put a phone to his ear, and a moment later Mr Grey’s mobile rang. The assassin answered, switching it to speakerphone.
‘Send Connor and Charley to me,’ demanded Amir, sounding impressively in command.
The Director cupped a hand to her ear. ‘Sorry, didn’t quite catch that. It’s too noisy in here. Let me sort that out.’
She clapped her hands twice, sharp and loud, cutting through the noise and chatter. The tourists all stopped what they were doing. Then in a disturbingly quiet and orderly fashion they filed out of the exit doors at each end and down the stairs. In a matter of seconds the Sky Walk had cleared of people.
As if he was dropping in an elevator, Connor felt a plummeting sensation in the pit of his stomach. Just as he’d feared, Amir had played straight into the Director’s hands. The Director laughed at the shocked look on Amir’s face, her laughter echoing off the glass walls of the transparent and now-empty Sky Walk.
‘I bet you thought this was a secure place to make your exchange,’ said the Director. ‘But Equilibrium owns this building.’
Lowering his phone, Amir replied, ‘It changes nothing. Release Connor and Charley, guarantee our safe passage out of the country, then I’ll hand over the flash drive.’
With her hands planted on her hips, the Director glared scornfully down the walkway at Amir. ‘You’re in no position to make such demands.’
Amir stood his ground. ‘If you don’t, I’ll release the files online.’
Connor was proud of his friend. He could tell Amir was nervous but he hadn’t allowed his nerves to enter his voice.
‘Go ahead then,’ said the Director with an indifferent shrug. ‘Release the files. Equilibrium controls the Chinese internet. Any mention of Equilibrium will be automatically blocked and deleted. Nothing will get past the government’s Great Firewall.’
‘That may be true,’ replied Amir. ‘But I’ve created a program to dump the files en masse via ghost servers and phantom VPN tunnels. All Equilibrium’s nasty secrets will be leaked on to the web. At the same time a multiple denial-of-service attack will overload the f
irewall’s defences. Something sensitive is bound to get out. It always does.’ He held up his smartphone, his thumb hovering over the screen. ‘All I need to do is give my associate the command.’
The Director let out a derisive snort. ‘You’d first have to break the mutating encryption key and there’s no way a little runt like y–’
‘I already have,’ Amir replied.
The Director stiffened. ‘Prove it,’ she spat.
‘OK,’ said Amir blithely. ‘Liu Yan, Chairman of the Politburo Standing Committee, is one of Equilibrium’s agents. So too is Zong Li, the vice-president of the Xinhua News Agency; Chen Feng, the CEO of China Investment Corporation; and even the Minister of National Defence, Ren–’
With each name mentioned, the Director’s temper grew until she stamped her foot furiously on the glass floor. ‘Enough!’ she shrieked. ‘I’ll kill every last one of my IT security team! They told me the encryption was unbreakable! I’ll have every bone in their puny little bodies broken for this –’
‘Before you do that,’ interrupted Amir, holding his phone threateningly in the air, ‘let Connor and Charley go.’
The Director clenched her fists and glowered at Amir. ‘Here, have your precious friends!’ She shoved Connor in the back.
Connor exchanged a doubtful look with Charley. Had Amir really outsmarted the head of Equilibrium?
‘You heard the Director,’ said Mr Grey, kicking off the brake on Charley’s chair. ‘You’re free to go.’
Slowly Connor made his way down the Sky Walk, Charley at his side, her wheels squeaking over the polished glass floor. The financial district of Pudong twinkled far below them, the rear lights of taxis flowing like blood cells along the veins of the city. At any moment Connor expected a bullet in his back, the Director merely toying with Amir, distracting him with their release so that one of the guards could shoot him before he initiated the command to release the files.
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