SWITCHBLADE (Choi Ziyi Book 1)

by Mike Morris

  The scanner skimmed along the wall in front of her once more, mapping everything. It paused for a moment over a dirty sheet covering a broken chair. Ziyi held her breath, ready to move. The drone beeped one last time and switched off the scanner. It shot back towards the main road and took a sharp right towards the heart of Wan Chai.

  Ziyi breathed a sigh of relief, and slowly got to her feet. Climbing back out into the open no longer seemed a good idea. There'd be more drones.

  Thirty yards down the walkway, she found a corridor leading inside the building. She cut down it, hoping to find an internal staircase or an elevator she could jack. If she could get up to Level Forty-Two, she could use the connecting roads to get back to the Central District and start looking for Xiao.

  The corridor was full of too many people for her liking but she kept her head down. In a city bursting at the seams, no one wanted to make eye contact with anyone anyway. Ignoring your neighbours was the only way to maintain any sense of privacy. Ziyi used that to her advantage. Past arguing neighbours and flirting teens. Past the bored with nothing to do. She picked up snatches of conversations about riots and bomb attacks in Kowloon but Xiao was the main topic.

  Ziyi turned a corner and found two men playing mah-jong in the elevator lobby. They looked close to her father's age, hard years etched into their skin. The sound of the shuffling tiles reminded her of late nights pretending to sleep while her family played game after game in the room next door.

  "Go back to your apartments," she said and lifted her head enough so they could see the dried blood splattered across it and the cut across her forehea. The men didn't need any further prompting to pack up and leave.

  She ignored the retina scanner and concentrated on the steel doors themselves. She pried her fingers into the gap between them. The doors resisted at first. The titanium locks grumbled and groaned as she applied more pressure on them, but the Empire's finest built her arms. The top lock popped first. Ziyi strained, feeling that weird mix of muscle and mek at work. Five years since the operations and she still wasn't used to it.

  The second lock snapped open.

  "You the one who told my granddad to fuck off?" The voice was young and full of arrogance.

  She hadn't heard them come up behind her. Not a good sign. She must have been more exhausted than she thought. Turning slowly, Ziyi found herself facing a bunch of kids trying to look tough, wannabe hoodlums with a point to prove. She was lucky that they weren't the real deal. She saw the surprise ripple across their faces as they recognised her.

  "You're..." said a girl at the rear of the group.

  "I'm the one telling you to go home as well. You don't want to do this." Ziyi kept her face blank, as if this was the most pointless conversation she'd ever had. She didn't want to appear threatening nor did she want to look weak. She just didn't want to give them any more incentive to attack. There was going to be enough blood spilled this day without hurting a group of bored kids.

  The boy immediately in front of her laughed. A fake laugh to impress his friends that carried none of the bravado he wished everyone to believe he had. "I do want to do this. No one trespasses on our level and gets away with it." He pulled out an antique pistol and waved it in Ziyi's face.

  The girl next to him put her arm around the boy's shoulders. "Go on Ren. Shoot her," she urged. "Fucking rich bitch."

  What followed could hardly be called a fight. Ziyi snatched the ancient weapon from the boy's hand, bending the barrel in one movement and that was enough to make most of them run. She slapped the boy with just enough force to redden his skin and lifted the girl off her feet by her collar. "What size are your boots?" Ziyi whispered in her ear.

  Three minutes later, she’d climbed hand-over-hand up the elevator cable to level Forty-Two. The doors were easier to open from the inside than they had been from the outside. A flick of a switch was all it took. Fluorescent light flooded in, blinding her momentarily. Her eyes quickly adjusted but Ziyi still wished she'd allowed the surgeons to replace them with mek after all. Infrared and telescopic vision. Automatic targeting. She'd not say no to any of them now. At the time, after so many operations and so much of her replaced, it seemed important that she held on to that one small part of her — an anchor to her humanity. All just vanity. Her duty was to the Empire, and to be the best she could be to perform that duty. She should've given her eyes just as willingly as the rest of her. After all, the terrorists had no qualms relinquishing their eyes for their cause.

  She stepped out into the corridor, ignoring the looks of the residents. She heard her name whispered. If she hadn't been famous enough before, the sight of a blood-covered woman climbing out of an elevator shaft was always going to get attention. A few of them followed behind as she strode toward the street exit. She doubted any of them had eye cameras but, in the periphery of her vision, she could see handhelds being sneaked out to get shots of her. She had maybe five minutes before either the police or the press turned up.

  The heat hit her once more as she stepped out into the street. It was around two AM and yet the temperature still hadn't dropped. Traffic on the main highway hadn't dropped either. Cars and bikes raced in both directions across the island, and up and down level. The only place the traffic slowed was at the level crossings, preventing unauthorised traffic going where it shouldn't. Any vehicle trying to break its way through was just as likely to get machine gunned instead of a ticket for the violation. Air traffic was also heavy as drones buzzed this way and that while police flyers hovered at various quadrants. But she’d expected no less.

  "Hey Ziyi," called out a man, stepping forward. He tried to grab her arm but she caught his wrist, snapping it back, and forced him onto his knees. She punched him with her other hand, barely more than a slap, but enough to knock him out. Another man came at her, and she brought her knee up hard into his solar plexus. He landed on his friend in a clump at her feet. She glared at the other residents, daring them to approach her, but they'd got the message and retreated back to the safety of their building.

  Ziyi ran along the sidewalk but she was drawing more attention with every step. Two men moved to intercept her but she swerved around them.

  "It's Ziyi!" one of them called out and that was enough to get every other head looking in her direction. They all surged towards her, hungry to be near her and taste the fame in the air. The only route still open was the highway.

  She jumped over the barrier, and immediately pressed herself back against it, as a car shot past at over a hundred miles an hour. Ziyi looked back at the mob waiting for her on the sidewalk and knew there was no going back. She counted the space between each car, regulated by their auto-pilots. Once she had the feeling for the speed of them all, she ran. She made it past one lane before stopping abruptly to avoid a truck hammering past. She tottered on her toes as she waited for the next gap before launching herself forward again. She almost reached the centre barrier when a car clipped her ankle, spinning her. Luck was with her once more as the force of the blow threw her onto the concrete divide instead of back into the traffic.

  She looked back at her pursuers. Three of them had skipped over the barrier onto the highway, following her. They watched the cars, waiting for an opening. A man stepped forward but a Mercedes smashed into him, sending body parts in every direction. It swerved on impact as the auto-pilot kicked in too late, taking out its neighbouring vehicle, flipping that too. Tires screeched as the autopilots of other cars performed emergency stops on both sides of the highway. The spinning car collided into car after car. Metal hit metal amid burning rubber. Ziyi jumped over the divide as a car crunched into the spot where she'd been standing seconds earlier. The concrete shuddered with the impact, but thankfully held firm.

  The cars on her side of the highway had been all stopped without incident by their auto-pilots. Scared drivers stared through their windscreens at the carnage on the other side of the highway, and at Ziyi huddled down in the centre of the road.

  The crash
es brought the drones down, zipping down like angry wasps, quickly followed by some of the police flyers, abandoning their positions and accelerating towards her. In a few seconds, there would be no getting away. Ziyi spotted a motorbike rider stopped on the far side of the road. She pushed off against the barrier, sprinted up the front of a Volkswagen cruiser and onto its roof. A drone pinged her as she leapfrogged the remaining cars, and landed in front of the biker while alarms blared from the drone. Ziyi ignored it and swung a roundhouse kick into the side of the biker's helmet, knocking him from his seat, and caught the bike before it could fall with him. She straddled the slick black Ducati, clicking off the safety. It was time to go hard and fast and she didn't need any inhibitors stopping her.

  A glance up told her the police flyers were racing towards her. Why were they still chasing her though if they believed she was a captive of the Americans? None of it made any sense. All she knew was that it wasn’t wise to hang around to find out, She twisted the accelerator, felt the revs build. The back wheel squealed against the tarmac. A searchlight from a flyer illuminated her, followed by another. She dumped the clutch into first and pushed all her weight down over the front wheel to stop it kicking up. The bike screeched forward, climbing through the gears quickly. She hunched down over the engine, cutting the wind resistance.

  A flyer drew closer behind her but the road ahead was empty so Ziyi opened up the throttle. The speed shot up. Past a hundred miles an hour, one twenty, one fifty. An alarm went off on the bike, warning her she was passing safe and legal speeds. The bike hit one seventy as adrenaline coursed through her.

  The drones kept pace with her, buzzing around, attempting to cut across her. She had to catch up with the moving traffic, and get lost among other vehicles if she was to stand any chance of getting away.

  She swerved wildly, willing to lose some speed to avoid the flyers' tracking devices. If they got a weapons' lock on her, it was all over. The spotlights danced around her as they tried to keep her in their beams. Just as they closed in on her once more, Ziyi opened up and leaped ahead. She held onto the bike for dear life as the speedometer hit two hundred miles an hour. The bike's alarm and engine protested in unison.

  In the distance ahead, Ziyi saw the glow of car lights. Behind her, she heard a flyer's gun growl to life. A sign flashed past, telling her she was on level Sixty-Eight and rising as the highway climbed up to the upper levels, cutting across the front of Hong Kong towards Central and the Peak.

  She leaned down to her left, pulling the bike in that direction. The tarmac brushed past her knee. At that speed, Ziyi wasn't sure her mek would survive any mistakes. Her leg would more than likely be ripped from her hip on impact with the road.

  The machine gun spat bullets at her, tracing her path.

  Just before she hit the road barrier, Ziyi threw the bike in the other direction. The bike skidded to the right as the bullets pulverised the barrier. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the flyer shoot past. It banked just before it collided with a starscraper, and the pilot brought it around for another attempt while The other flyer hung further back, staying out of the way of its partner.

  The traffic in front of Ziyi drew closer, while on the other side of the road had turned into a parking lot as cars and trucks waited for the crash site to be cleared. She raced along the divide's edge, past the drivers' frightened faces.

  Any hope she had that the proximity of the civilians around her would stay the flyers' guns disappeared in another hail of bullets. Her bike was still too quick for them to get a lock, but the police didn't seem to care what damage they did in trying to catch her. The flyers' heavy calibre bullets shredded cars like paper. Their passengers disappeared in sprays of red. Her heart ached with very death but she reminded herself that Xiao was more important. She'd avenge them all when she caught the conspirators behind the night's events — hopefully that would appease their angry ghosts.

  A drone zipped down, trying to knock her from the bike so Ziyi slammed on the brakes. Her mek-strengthened arms stopped the bike from flipping as the tires fought to keep their grip on the road. Smoke filled the air around her as the tire rubber burned against tarmac. The drone smashed into the road, exploding in a fury of metal. Shrapnel shattered the bike's windshield, peppering Ziyi's face with shards of glass, but she ignored it, and accelerated once more, zipping past the debris.

  More bullets thundered into the road then Ziyi was amongst the ongoing traffic. She sped down the gap between lanes, the cars on either side mere inches from her legs. A Fiat roadster suddenly cut from one lane to another, forcing Ziyi to move along with it. She slipped into the hard shoulder, making the most of the gap to eat up more distance.

  In her wing mirror, a flyer zoomed down. She saw the flash of the gun and jinxed right, nipping back amongst the cars. Sparks flew as the bullets tore into the vehicles behind her. A van exploded and she lost sight of the flyer momentarily.

  The road curved around the Admiralty building, cutting up towards the Central district as Ziyi continued to weave in and out of the cars, looking for some way to shake the flyers and drones.

  An off ramp appeared and she swerved towards it at the very last moment. She cut across the front of a BMW saloon, as she tried to make the exit. The front of the car clipped the edge of her rear wheel, and Ziyi fought to keep the back upright and on track. She stuck her right boot down, felt the rubber sole shred against the concrete as her leg steadied the bike, and then she pulled back on the accelerator and took the ramp.

  The road twisted down, and under the highway, taking her back down several levels but she didn't care. She entered a tunnel and the noise of pursuit dropped off. She knew the pilots above would be desperately trying to reacquire her, shouting at Control to find out where the tunnel exit was.

  Two drones entered behind her. Ziyi slipped through the traffic, doing one ninety, shooting past car after car. Too fast for the drones to catch but they'd be relaying video back for all to see. She could imagine the flyers manoeuvring into position, ready to machine-gun her the moment she reappeared on the other side of the tunnel.

  The exit was twenty seconds away. Nineteen. Eighteen. Ziyi could make out the curve of the road, turning in front of Swire House. Fifteen seconds. Fourteen. A flyer dropped down, hovering on the other side of the barrier. Ten seconds. She accelerated once more. Six. Five. Four. The bike hit two hundred miles an hour. Two. One.

  She burst from the mouth of the tunnel, ignoring the bend. The machine gun whirled as she headed straight towards the flyer. Time slowed as it fired its first few bullets towards her.

  Ziyi lifted the front wheel as the bike hit the curve of the barrier, riding up it. The bike launched up into the air toward the flyer. She could see the shock on the pilot's face as she flew towards it.

  She leaped from the bike, kicking with all her mek to thrust herself higher still. She landed on the nose of the aircraft and hooked her fingers into the gap between the edge of the nose cone and the windscreen.

  Separated only by the plexi-glass, she could see the pilot screaming into his mic for help as he tried to shake her off, eyes fixed on hers, and saw only his death staring back. He jerked left, then right on the joystick, but he'd no hope. Too much government time and money had gone into her arms and hands to ensure an unbreakable grip.

  She let go with her right hand and punched the windscreen. The plexi-glass shattered easily. Little splinters of glass got sucked away into the night as she thrust her arm though the hole and grabbed the pilot. She yanked him through the window and threw him out into the night. He was wearing a standard flight suit so he should be able to glide to safety. Even so, she didn't bothering looking to check. If she'd killed him, she didn't really want to know.

  Pilotless, the flyer dipped down. With no time to waste, Ziyi slipped inside the flyer. She jumped into the pilot's seat, pulling up on the joystick to level the flyer as she did so. An alarm squealed to her right, announcing someone had a weapons lock on her, but she had t
o stop the craft from crashing before she could worry about that. She all but tore the joystick from the control panel as she hauled on it for all she was worth. For a moment, she thought she was too late as concrete and steel loomed in front of her, but then she felt a shift. The nose began to pull up. She screamed with the effort as the flyer climbed back up, the underside of the craft scraping the wall of a building with a heart-wrenching screech.

  She aimed for the stars, spinning the flyer as she did so, scanning the skies for the other flyer. The alarm's banshee wail filled the cockpit, telling her there was incoming. She fired the chaff as the alarm hit a crescendo. A heartbeat later, she saw the missile cutting through the defence measures. She spun the flyer around to meet death head-on.

  14

  Wing

  "What the fuck you doing, man?" hissed Wing. Maybe he was tired, or freaked out by everything that had happened but his mind refused to cooperate. Why did his dealer have a gun on him?

  "You've been a very naughty boy, mate," replied Jim. The gun, a nasty snub-nosed looking thing that belonged in a museum, wavered slightly in his hand, but Wing had no doubt it would still make a sizeable mess at such short range, even if the man's aim wandered a little. "A lot people out there looking for you, offering a nice bit of cash to whoever finds you."

  "I thought we were friends," said Wing, but even to his own ears, the words sounded pathetic.

  "Fuck friends, man," said Jim. "You've only ever been easy money to me." He showed Wing a row of nicotine-stained teeth.

  Song rose from her seat. "I don't know what's going on but this has got nothing to do with me."