But they know exactly where we are.
The government’s system of security cameras was designed to lock onto people just like us—people that are different—and exterminate us from the population.
“What do you need?” The young girl stands up, her stance halfway between defensive and terrified. She is no older than twenty years old and has beautiful, long, black hair that glows in the dim light of the candles hanging from the walls.
We pretend to ignore her.
Actually, we do ignore her, we both have no idea what she is saying, and run right past her into the hallway. She screams something unintelligible as we dash by.
She’s definitely angrier than she is scared.
I open the first door in the hallway, hoping to find a bathroom. Instead it is a storage closet full of backup kitchen supplies, cleaning supplies, and boxes of candles. Then, I open the next door.
It is a small bathroom that barely has enough room for a large man to pop a squat inside, but it will serve our purpose just fine.
“Stand against the door and make sure no one comes in,” I say. Jake eyes me and switches on the light. He already has an idea that I’m going to use the magical cube in my backpack to make something happen.
Except finally, this plan won’t end up with anyone dead—hopefully.
The bathroom floor is lined in pee stains, and the toilet itself is nothing more than a ceramic hole in the ground. The sink is a simple vanity with a small trash can next to it full of used toilet paper, tissues, and yeah, you get the idea—disgusting stuff.
It’s time for us to make our own paper.
I place my finger on the scanner and open the backpack. I place my hand on the Chimera Cube. “One-foot by one-foot wooden box.”
I double-tap the cube and grab the box from the air as it forms, the entire process one smooth motion.
Someone loudly slams into the door. The foundation of the bathroom shakes with the weight of their body. They scream something in Mandarin that I am unable to understand, but from the sounds of it, they are not happy.
Jake strains to keep the door shut against their force.
“C’mon, man,” he pleads with me. His muscles appear deflated, and I bet his eyes are bloodshot after over an hour of running around as fugitives with no food or water.
“Ten thousand one-hundred-yuan notes,” I say the command to the Chimera Cube and immediately double-tap it afterwards. I have never used the power of the cube to create this kind of wealth, but one million yuan sounds like a lot to me, even though I am totally clueless about Chinese currency.
What I hope the Chimera Cube produces ends up being very different from what happens. I wanted stacks of one-hundred-yuan notes to neatly appear in the air so that I could pile them into the box and use it to bribe the restaurant owner.
Instead, all the bills appear haphazardly in the air.
I have no clue if these bills are even valid—after all, there is no way this cube produced every one of those bills with a unique code on it. But as they fall to the ground, the bills each hitting the floor one by one, I am certain that they are believable enough to trick any human in the process of exchanging this currency that they are real.
That’s not my problem. My problem is hundreds of them are covered in pee stains, hundreds of others have fallen down the hole in the toilet at the center of the room, and to clean all of this up and hand it in a neat pile to bribe someone will take hours.
“What the hell, man?” Jake is losing his temper as the hinge of the door cracks. They are both pushing so hard against one another that the door might snap in between them.
Every second we lose is one second closer to the imperial soldiers raiding this restaurant before we can hide safely.
My palms are sweating as I tap the Chimera Cube again, my mind shifting gears to producing an object that will undoubtedly work.
“One-hundred-carat diamond.” I double-tap the cube to usher the diamond into permanent existence in this world. The object is made shockingly fast. I place my hand underneath it to catch it before it falls.
Even I am surprised by how perfectly the diamond was designed. It is dense for its size and extremely bright. The cuts around the diamond are perfectly symmetrical, the jewel more pristine than diamonds that took hundreds of thousands of dollars to make in a lab or hundreds of millions of years to make underneath the earth.
This must be worth millions.
Now, I have to get whoever is out there to believe it’s real.
I zip up the bag and sling it around my back, grasping the diamond that is larger in diameter than a quarter.
“Let them in,” I say.
Jake happily gives up the fight and steps to the side out of the way of the door that slams back against the bathroom wall. A number of tiles fall off the wall from the force the door hits it, while a large crack runs down the wall all the way down to the floor.
The two men who were pushing and screaming as they tried to break in stumble forward, their forward momentum not stopping anytime soon. One trips on a pile of money and the slippery bodily fluids on the floor and falls straight onto his face.
Even the younger man with wire-thin eyebrows can’t help but smirk for a split second at the fat, middle-aged man who toppled to the ground.
Then he sees the diamond I am holding in my hands.
“This is for you.” I hold it out in my hand but am careful not to give it to him yet. “Get us to safety. We have people after us.”
“Kàn, kàn!” the man screams excitedly. He looks to be in his late twenties, yet still has a distinctive baby face that could also peg him as someone in his mid-teens. He waves for the people waiting outside the bathroom to come in.
They all stare at it in awe.
This is likely the biggest diamond they will ever see in their life, myself included unless I try to summon the cube to create an even larger one.
From the man’s expression, I can tell he has no clue what I am saying. He doesn’t need to understand me to know that there are thousands of one-hundred-yuan notes lying on the ground as I hold a diamond worth millions.
“Find us a hiding spot,” I plead with him, hoping that someone knows English. Even if they can provide us a sanctuary that the imperial guards won’t find for thirty minutes, Jake and I can start to plan things out instead of jumping from moment to moment. We can take a rest and eat and drink some water and try to think of a way that we can escape into rural China, where the cameras and police presence is less intense.
Then, we can plan our attack.
“Hiding spot?” A young woman who looks identical to the one tying bows on the table except she is wearing a red dress with white flowers on it steps forward. Everyone stands there, frozen. The initial excitement of seeing the diamond is gone, and now all the restaurant workers are wondering if we just robbed a bank.
The sirens echoing throughout the streets of the crowded suburb certainly do not help paint us in a better light.
The old man who fell to the ground stands up and pushes me. He can tell from the compression of the clothing I am wearing that I have no weapons on me, which makes him even more bold in his physicality. His only goal is to rip the diamond away from me and knock me out.
My back slams up against the ceramic tiles, his breath smelling of raw eggs as he screams into my face. He still has not gotten the memo yet that I have no idea what he is saying, but that doesn’t stop him from punching me in the jaw with one hand as he keeps his other arm pinning my chest against the wall. His facial muscles clench as the flab on his arm madly jiggles back and forth. He moves closer to me, his large belly threatening to envelop my body. He seems to have the natural fighting technique of a former sumo wrestler, and from his emotional issues, it’s likely he has taken one too many hits to the head.
Jake’s body slams him and the man’s foot falls into the hole of the toilet. I don’t even want to imagine how disgusting he feels as his face again collides with the floor, his f
lab doing a great job at cushioning his fall.
In the short time it takes for the former sumo wrestler to be forced off me, all the kitchen staff go on their hands and knees and begin picking up wads of cash off the ground.
“Stop!” I scream, hoping that someone in here takes my threat seriously—after all, Jake and I are both covered in black from head to toe.
No one listens. Everyone is frantically shoveling the money into their pockets, picking up wads of cash with no regard to what is around them.
Now I do the only thing that makes sense. With the diamond still in one hand, I unzip the part of the suit covering my face.
I know for a fact someone will recognize me from the news. The same girl that spoke at least a bit of English stares right at me when I reveal my face.
“Sam.” She looks shocked yet says my name as if she is an old friend that I have known for years. She stands in the same place that she did before, choosing to opt out in participating in the frenzied cash grab that everyone assumes is their only chance to get their share of a bank heist gone wrong.
“This is worth millions of dollars.” I have no idea if she is a fan of mine, but right now is certainly not the time for introductions. I hold up the diamond again for emphasis. The sumo wrestler on the floor is the only one to look up at it, but he is groaning in pain and in no shape to come after me again. “Get us the hell out of here. The government is trying to kill us. Everything here will be all yours.”
I gulp after the words leave my mouth. I figure at this point there is no point in trying to hide anything except for the Chimera Cube. All one point four billion people in this country will soon know that I am nothing short of the devil in the eyes of President Li Wang.
I have no clue how she will respond.
She bursts into tears.
“Is this real?” she asks and then hugs me. Her arms wrap around me, and I can’t help but hug her back. Feeling the warmth of another human feels great, and the sweet aroma of her hair and soft feeling of her skin brings me a momentary sensation of comfort.
“Ai! Ai!” sumo wrestler dude yells and pushes himself off the ground. He is calling her name. I end our embrace as soon as I see his gargantuan figure rising again. He is decidedly mad that I chose to hug her back.
The twin sister of Ai rolls her eyes at her.
She seems to know exactly who I am too, and she is not pleased to see me.
Jake eyes me, concerned; this situation is not going in the direction we ever desired it to. We thought working with other people would be what saves us.
But it could be exactly what ends us too.
“Stop taking the money!” Jake bellows, and this time everyone actually stops and stares at him. Jake has caught on to exactly what I am trying to do. He unzips his bodysuit around his head and takes a deep breath of air that smells of feces and sweat.
Before he can scare these people anymore, I butt in.
“We are both from America. And the Chinese government is trying to kill us.” From my first sentence it is obvious that I’ve lost nearly all my audience, but Ai keeps her eyes trained on me. “Li wants to kill hundreds of millions in this country. His family and people were a victim of the Silent Genocide over a decade ago, and he wants to get revenge on behalf of the Uyghur people. He wants to destroy the Party and kill every single person in this country who won’t subject themselves to his tyrannical rule. Since we know his secret, he now wants to kill us. And all we want is for you to help protect us for a little bit. All these millions will be yours, and then we can have the chance to stop him.”
I speak so rapidly that I’m afraid all my words slur together into one inaudible sentence. Unless this girl is fluent, there is no way she can fully understand me. But hopefully she can decipher enough to know that I am here to help.
She nods at me, her expression shifting from elated to serious. Then she turns to the sumo wrestler man and the group of people still picking up money off the floor and shoveling it into their pockets and clothes.
“Tíng!” she yells.
Over half a dozen people turn to face her. Everyone is crammed into the bathroom. Someone’s butt is rubbing against my knee while another person’s hand scrapes against my ankle.
The second she yells, her voice echoing off the walls, a loud echo sounds from outside. They storm into the shop next door.
We are next.
And once they are here, we will have to run again. But we can’t keep running forever—it will only delay the inevitable.
Ai speaks extremely fast. I don’t think I have ever heard someone utter a string of words together so quickly. I can decipher words here and there like the word America and Li Wang, but besides that I’m completely clueless as to what she is saying or if she understands me.
Everyone stops piling money into their pockets at her words. They glance at Ai and then at us, all with expressions of surprise.
“Dude, I don’t know about this.” Jake glances at everyone standing up at attention. Some of them look excited that we are here and want to shake our hands, while others are already yelling back at Ai.
The same young man that first burst into the door with sumo wrestler guy speaks up. He puts his arms on my shoulders. “Here.” He pulls me in his direction. Everyone is dispersing out of the bathroom now.
“Here.” He says it again, this time spit flying in my face from his lips. Now, I know that he is referencing the diamond. He wants me to give it to him. In most transactions like this, I would wait to give it to him, but material wealth has lost any meaning to me.
If this will get them to help us faster, I have to take the risk.
I place the diamond in his hand, and he slips it into his pocket while smiling. He looks satisfied.
He yells a command to all of the workers. Sumo wrestler man yells in return and grabs my shoulder, trying to pull me back into the bathroom. Then he grabs Jake and wraps his arms around him.
He can easily suffocate him if he wants to.
Things are moving so quickly, that before I even react, the boy with the thick eyebrows yells at sumo man. I assume he says something hurtful and full of curse words, because the sumo man stops strangling Jake.
Jake lets out a dramatic sigh upon finally regaining control of his airways. The entire kitchen staff is running about the restaurant. One dashes to lock the door while another unties the curtains and rolls them down so that the windows are blocked from any outsider’s view.
Ai whips out a ring of keys from the same supply closet I opened up earlier and opens another door. It’s another closet full of miscellaneous objects and boxes full of colorful dishes.
Bushy-eyebrow guy who pulled me in his direction walks ahead of me and helps the two people already working to move all the boxes out of the way. At the bottom of the pile of boxes is a wooden floor, and above it lies about three feet of space, which is barely enough for Jake and me to fit into while sitting down.
But then Ai rips off a few of the wooden planks. None of them are nailed into the foundation beneath them.
I am pushed forward by an older woman behind me, her short, skinny body a lot stronger than I ever would have thought. Jake’s body follows close behind me. Then, bushy-eyebrow guy grabs my shoulders and tries to usher my body into a closet underneath a rack of shelves that have hundreds of pounds of materials on them.
“Hide down there.” Ai points to the floor of the closet, but with the dim lighting of the closet and pure darkness inside the hole, I can’t even imagine what is down there.
There is a loud knock on the door. The barking of attack dogs pound against the glass windows. I can feel the presence of this restaurant being surrounded by imperial soldiers.
We have no way out.
I heed to their commands. Ai’s soft touch guides my body down through the opening in the floor. Then, I feel my body free-fall through the darkness. I grab the straps of my backpack, instinctively searching for the Chimera Cube, but I will never be able to find the zi
pper in this blackness.
This fall could mark the end of me.
But then I hit the ground.
Well, that’s obvious, eventually I’d have to hit ground unless this is a literal hole to China from America, which would be impossible. What’s good is that I am still able to say it to you without being in an unbearable amount of pain.
I roll my body over on the cool, dry dirt beneath me, bracing for Jake to land somewhere right next to me.
I watch as his silhouette descends through the blackness, a crown of light surrounding his figure from the minimal rays of light that manage to protrude into the darkness of the large hole. He hits the floor next to me, groaning in pain.
Then, the wooden planks that were ripped out to open us up to the twenty-foot-deep hole in the earth are put back in their place. Jake and I sit in silence, the darkness so thick that I can feel it weighing down on me.
The rock walls are close enough that I struggle to stretch both my arms without coming into contact with the walls of the prison-like hole we are now trapped in.
A sharp scraping noise echoes into the hole as the boxes once sitting on the planks are returned to their normal spot.
Then the closet door slams shut.
There are dozens of soldiers that are now going to raid the restaurant. Meanwhile, the people who work here will get to walk away with a diamond worth millions.
I sigh, and although I can’t even see Jake, I can feel the hopeless energy emanating off him.
I don’t know what just happened.
But I can’t help but think that we got tricked.
They screwed us over.
Chapter 18
“We are gonna die.” Jake sighs and leans his body against the jagged rock face behind him.
“Eventually, we will, yeah,” I respond in a casual tone. I have lived my entire life running away from things in fear. Whether that be my emotions, or the Syndicate, I have always lived with an undercurrent of fear dictating my actions.
I don’t fear anything anymore—not even death. It’s not that I want to die, no, I would very much fear death if I thought it was imminent, but I know I have the power to ensure I will live.
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