Skyfire

by Michael Adams

  Her brother didn’t listen. Instead, he angled the bike, twisted the throttle and jumped the machine off the crash barrier into the busy lanes of oncoming traffic. The driver of a van yelled behind his windshield as their motorbike raced at him. But Mahmoud kept his cool, swerving skilfully, shooting them between the van and a speeding lorry in the next lane, with just inches to spare on either side. A split second later the deadly game of dodge began all over again. Looming ahead was a blue car. Its driver honked his horn furiously. But Mahmoud steered them out of harm’s way safely. He weaved in and out of the approaching traffic again and again before a bus forced him back close to the crash barrier. A furious torrent of vehicles followed, keeping them near the concrete divider.

  Yasmin’s heart sank. The cops must have cleared the card players as they were now racing along the barrier, gaining speed because they didn’t have to dodge vehicles.

  A cop was almost alongside Mahmoud’s bike. Jackal was right behind. But the other cop had jumped his bike off the divider and was chasing them on the road.

  ‘Faster!’ Yasmin urged Mahmoud.

  But his bike was going at full speed.

  Pow-zing!

  Sparks flew off the ground just ahead. Yasmin whirled. The cop on the road was riding one-handed and aiming his pistol at their tyres. He might not miss next time. She knew a blow-out at this speed would—

  An AutoDrive car abruptly veered out of its lane just after it passed them. Yasmin glimpsed the passengers’ surprised faces in the windows as they realised their vehicle was out of control. An instant later the sedan—

  Ba-crump!

  —smacked into the cop’s motorbike head on.

  The man didn’t have a chance. He and his motorbike were flung high into the air in a cloud of shrieking metal and shattered glass.

  Yasmin didn’t have time to feel sorry for him. Through her shock she saw the other cop was closing in along the crash barrier. Steering his bike with one hand, he had his gun in the other.

  Ba-bang!

  The bullet whizzed by Yasmin and ricocheted off the road with a loud ping. The cop grinned. He took aim again. Yasmin had to fight back. But with what? Then she remembered. Radha’s present! Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the vial of sand. Yanking out the cork stopper with her teeth, she shook it like a wand at the cop.

  The man screamed as the sudden sandstorm swept into his eyes. Blinded, he spun out of control, he and his motorbike tumbled off the barrier and crunched into the stationary cars in the eastbound lanes.

  Then, as if by magic, the road ahead cleared. Mahmoud swerved smoothly across empty lanes and onto a ramp that led down into another of Cairo’s riverside avenues. Yasmin saw Jackal stop on the crash barrier behind them. He was waving his badge and gun to halt traffic so he could continue the chase. Even with his men scattered, injured and likely dead, the corrupt detective wasn’t calling it quits.

  Brrrrt!

  Yasmin’s phone vibrated in her pocket. The network was back up. Road rushing by, holding Mahmoud with one arm, she pulled out her phone and saw the caller was Miss Chen.

  ‘Accept,’ she yelled.

  Miss Chen’s calm face appeared on the screen in her SmartGlasses. ‘Yasmin,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Not all right,’ Yasmin gasped.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Back of my brother’s motorbike.’

  Miss Chen frowned behind her SmartGlasses. ‘I sent some men to assist. Did they make contact?’

  For a terrible moment, Yasmin thought Miss Chen was talking about Jackal. Then she realised. The two men that were killed outside her family store had worked for Felix!

  ‘If they’re who I think,’ Yasmin said, leaning with the bike as Mahmoud zipped between cars, ‘they … didn’t make it.’

  ‘Are you saying they are dead?’

  Yasmin nodded.

  Miss Chen didn’t miss a beat. ‘I am tracking your phone on our computer system. Are you heading to the airport?’

  ‘Yes,’ Yasmin said. She glanced over her shoulder once more. A few blocks back, Jackal was racing off the bridge and down the ramp. The man was unstoppable.

  ‘Negative,’ Miss Chen said, eyes registering new info on her SmartGlasses. ‘Cairo Airport has just been closed. All flights are being diverted.’

  ‘Diverted?’ Yasmin said. ‘Where?’

  ‘Alexandria,’ Miss Chen said. ‘I can reroute your SpaceSkimmer and meet you there myself.’

  Yasmin had been to Egypt’s second-biggest city for a beach holiday when she was ten. It was a three-hour drive from Cairo. There was no way they could ride all that way north. Not with Jackal on their tail.

  ‘Or you can wait until Cairo Airport’s open again?’ Miss Chen offered.

  ‘We can’t,’ Yasmin said. ‘The guy who killed your men is after us. He wants to kidnap me.’

  ‘We’ll get Yasmin to Alexandria!’ Mahmoud shouted. ‘Just be there!’

  Miss Chen nodded. ‘I will make su—’

  Yasmin’s phone screen went blank and then the words ‘No Service’ flashed up.

  She tucked her phone back in her pocket and clung tighter to her brother.

  ‘We have to lose Jackal if we’re going to get to Alexandria,’ he said loudly.

  ‘The Old City!’ Yasmin yelled.

  Her brother nodded and swung the motorbike off the main boulevard and onto a smaller road. From there, the streets cut haphazardly between tightly packed shops and markets, mosques and houses. Losing themselves in this maze might be their best chance of evading Jackal.

  With a series of sharp turns, Mahmoud took them along lanes that became narrower and more lost in the shadows beneath ancient buildings. But no matter how many twists and turns they made, whenever Yasmin looked around she saw Jackal, just a block behind or storming around a corner, always following relentlessly.

  ‘I can’t shake him,’ Mahmoud said, seeing the cop in his side-view mirror, ‘but I’ve got another idea.’

  Her brother twisted the throttle and pushed the bike to its limit. The burst of power put a bit more distance between them and Jackal, who’d been slowed down by a donkey cart and was shouting at the owner to get out of the way.

  Racing around a corner, Mahmoud skidded to a stop. He jumped out of his seat and held the bike so Yasmin could hop off.

  ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Give me the helmet, the jacket and the backpack!’

  Yasmin understood. She shook her head. ‘No, Mahmoud, we have to stick together.’

  ‘There’s no time,’ he said. ‘I can outrun him. Come on!’

  Yasmin did as he asked. Her brother let his precious bike fall with a clang so it looked like they’d crashed. He pulled on the red jacket, yellow helmet and threw the backpack over his shoulder.

  ‘Hide behind that,’ Mahmoud said, pointing at an old rusted car. ‘When it’s clear, get to the railway station. You can make it to Alexandria in a few hours by train.’

  Yasmin squeezed his shoulder. ‘Be safe, brother!’

  Mahmoud grinned. He almost looked like he was enjoying himself.

  ‘Take care, sister,’ he said. ‘Send me a postcard!’

  With that, he ran off. Yasmin ducked behind the rusty car just before Jackal rounded the corner.

  ‘I see you, girl!’ he shouted.

  For a moment, Yasmin thought their trick hadn’t worked, but then Jackal revved his bike and roared away. Daring to peek from her hiding spot, she saw her brother clambering across a rooftop, the bright colours of his jacket and helmet popping against the late-afternoon sky. From a distance, Mahmoud looked like her. Jackal certainly thought so, because the corrupt cop was off his bike and scaling a wall in pursuit.

  A minute later, they were both out of sight. Yasmin prayed her brother would get away and that his clumsiness wouldn’t betray him. She stayed crouched in her hiding spot, paralysed by fear, until she noticed that the sky above was beginning to blaze with sunset colours. Yasmin had to move. She had
to get to the railway station! She forced herself to stand up and brushed the dust from her clothes. But which way was it?

  Yasmin looked around and noticed the strange doorway next to her. Her heart skittered. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear she was standing outside … a tomb!

  That’s because it was a tomb.

  In fact, there were tombs everywhere. Then the realisation hit her.

  Yasmin might have escaped Jackal. But now she was lost, deep in the legendary City of the Dead.

  It was getting dark.

  Trying to control her panic, Yasmin starting walking through the eerie City of the Dead. While there were tombs everywhere, some ancient, others modern, almost all of them bore signs of … life.

  Yasmin had heard about this place. For centuries, Cairo’s poorest people had made their homes inside and around these tombs. All Egyptians knew about it but few ever ventured there, scared off by spooky stories of murderers and ghosts.

  She didn’t see either. Instead, from inside an open crypt, she saw the flicker of a television, while lilting music drifted from another. She smelled cooking fires and heard children laughing. Washing hung from lines above gravestones. Power cords looped across the tomb roofs. Despite the sprawling cemetery’s foreboding name, this was very much a city of the living.

  ‘Hello, miss, pen?’

  Yasmin spun around, startled, and saw a skinny boy holding out his hand. Her heart melted even though she was no stranger to beggars—Cairo had more than its fair share. She wished she had a pen to give this little boy. But all she had were the clothes on her back and her phone and passport.

  ‘Sorry, I have no pen today,’ she said. ‘But can you tell me which way to the railway station?’

  The boy blinked. Yasmin wondered whether he understood. She didn’t know whether children raised in the City of the Dead even went to school. And she felt sure they didn’t take trains very often.

  ‘You know, trains?’ she said. ‘You know, choo-choo?’

  The boy nodded eagerly. ‘You come. This way, OK?’

  Yasmin followed him as he skipped through a nearby archway that led into a courtyard. They walked across and down a lane that wound between crypts, chickens scattering ahead of them. A scrawny dog ran alongside for a while, before realising she had no food to offer. Then the boy led her into another alley lined with shadowy doorways, rough walls and wooden shutters. After a while, everything looked the same. Yasmin’s sense of direction was all mixed up and she feared this boy was taking her ever deeper into this maze.

  She steeled herself against the fear that he was being used as a lure by people who meant her harm.

  ‘Is this the right way?’ she asked nervously.

  The boy stopped. He nodded and smiled as he pointed at the entrance of a tomb. It was just like dozens of others they had passed.

  ‘My house,’ he said. ‘You come.’

  Yasmin tried to control her frustration.

  ‘Choo-choo?’ the boy said and made an eating motion. ‘You are hungry? Chew-chew?’

  Yasmin wanted to scream.

  ‘You look lost,’ said a witch-like woman with a walking stick who’d appeared from the shadows. ‘Do you want to come in and have some tea?’

  All Yasmin wanted was to get to the railway station.

  ‘Yasmin!’

  She stiffened. It was his voice. Jackal. Somehow he’d realised he was following Mahmoud. Now he sounded close. Just a few courtyards away. ‘Where are you?’ he called. ‘I am going to find you!’

  Suddenly having a cup of tea in a tomb house seemed like a very good idea.

  ‘Shukran,’ Yasmin said, nodding. ‘You are very hospitable.’

  Yasmin followed the woman and boy into a small dark room. At its centre was an old stone coffin, being used as a table to hold pots, plates and glass jars of rice and beans. Along two walls were rolls of bedding.

  ‘Please, rest,’ the woman said, pointing to cushions and mats around a low table.

  Yasmin sat farthest from the door, trying to melt into the shadows. But if Jackal poked his head in, there was no doubt she’d be trapped. They didn’t make tombs with rear exits. Grinning, the boy plonked down next to her and buried his nose in a comic book.

  ‘My name is Sybil,’ the woman said, pouring cups of tea from a steaming pot.

  ‘I’m Yasmin.’

  ‘I know.’

  A shiver danced up Yasmin’s spine. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Sometimes I see things that others cannot,’ Sybil said, chuckling as she sat with their drinks. ‘But in this case I saw the look on your face when that man called your name.’

  ‘He’s a—a bad cop, trying to kidnap me,’ Yasmin blurted out. ‘Please, help me.’

  Sybil nodded. ‘I will. You are among friends here.’

  With Daniels at the wheel, the squad car crawled through Los Angeles. Andy and Dylan sat in the back, feeling like common criminals.

  ‘Did you really have to confiscate our phones?’ Andy asked.

  They’d been stuck in nightmare peak-hour traffic since they left the house so they hadn’t been able to call the others.

  ‘Your dad’s orders,’ Daniels said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I really need to make a call.’

  Daniels shook his head.

  ‘Please, Jake,’ Andy said. ‘It’s urgent. I’ll be sixty seconds, tops.’

  ‘On one condition,’ Daniels said.

  ‘Anything,’ Andy replied.

  ‘Dylan, can your parents sign a photo for my wife? She’s a big fan.’

  The Aussie boy nodded. ‘Yes, sure. I give you my word, I’ll make it happen.’

  ‘This is our secret, OK?’ Daniels said, handing Andy’s phone back. ‘Sixty seconds.’

  Andy and Dylan put their heads together and called Isabel. She and Mila appeared on the screen.

  ‘We can’t talk long,’ Andy said. ‘Fill me in quick.’

  Isabel explained everything they knew—including that no-one had been able to contact Yasmin.

  ‘We could’ve stopped the attacks,’ Andy whispered angrily, ‘if we’d decoded the First Sign in time.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Isabel retorted. ‘There’s no way we could have figured it out before they happened.’

  Mila nodded. ‘It only makes sense after, yes?’

  Andy shrugged. ‘I guess.’

  ‘But what’s the timer counting down to now?’ Dylan asked.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Isabel said. ‘But answer something for me—why are you in the back of a police car?’

  Daniels pulled the squad car up in front of the Los Angeles Police Administration Building on First Street. The huge steel and glass structure reflected the city’s sunny sky. ‘Time to hang up,’ he said.

  ‘We’re not sure yet,’ Andy whispered to Isabel. ‘We’ll call you back when we can.’

  Yasmin sipped her second cup of tea. She was grateful for its warmth and the shelter Sybil had given her from Jackal. But now she needed to keep moving. ‘I have to get to the railway station and get a train to Alexandria,’ she said.

  Sybil whispered to the boy. He jumped up and ran from the house. Yasmin shivered when she thought that maybe the woman had sent him to find Jackal in the hope of a reward.

  ‘Finish your tea so I can see the leaves,’ Sybil said.

  ‘You are a fortune teller?’ Yasmin asked.

  With her white hair and hazel eyes, the woman certainly looked the part.

  ‘Here we do what we can to survive,’ Sybil said, taking Yasmin’s empty cup. ‘My husband looks after tombs for a little money. I read leaves and palms to help buy food.’

  Yasmin felt guilty. She’d been raised in luxury and comfort compared with how Sybil and her family lived. And yet she couldn’t offer the woman anything. ‘I’m sorry, but I have no money to pay you.’

  Sybil waved away the apology and stared at the tea leaves. ‘You have left your money behind today,’ she said. ‘But there is great fortune ahea
d for you.’

  Yasmin’s eyes widened. Was this woman using magic powers to tell her she’d be getting a million dollars? Or was she just a trickster who’d recognised her from a newspaper article? ‘What else do you see?’ she asked.

  ‘A desert dog chases you,’ Sybil whispered. ‘He is not easy to escape.’

  Now Yasmin shivered. A jackal was a desert dog!

  Her heart thudded as a dark shape appeared in the doorway. For a moment she thought the boy really had brought Jackal. But the shadow belonged to a different beast—one with long ears and a mane. The donkey snorted and brayed.

  ‘Hello, Sybil,’ said an old man, poking his head through the door. ‘Someone needs a ride?’

  The fortune teller nodded. ‘This young girl has a train to catch. But she can’t be seen by anyone.’ Sybil hobbled to the door, Yasmin jumping up to follow her. Outside, the donkey was hitched to a cart filled with watermelons.

  ‘You’ll have to hide among those,’ the man said. ‘It may take a while because the traffic is so bad and my donkey, he is slow.’

  Yasmin nodded. She didn’t care if it took all night, so long as she left Jackal clueless about where she was.

  ‘Shukran,’ she said.

  She turned to Sybil and took her hand. ‘And thank you. I will repay your kindness one day.’

  The fortune teller nodded. ‘I know you will, child.’ As she moved her hand down to lean on her walking stick again, Yasmin noticed the decoration on top of it was a carved spiral. ‘Sybil, what is that design?’

  ‘This? It is called a lituus,’ the woman said. ‘Ancient priests used it to watch how birds flew through the sky. They predicted the future from what they saw.’

  Yasmin pulled out her phone and showed the spiral symbol to Sybil. ‘Is it the same as this?’

  The old woman peered at the screen. ‘Not quite.’

  Sybil traced her finger around the spiral on her stick. ‘See, mine goes clockwise. That means it foretells what will be created. Yours goes the other way. It predicts what is to be destroyed.’

  Fear spiked Yasmin’s heart. Destruction! That’s what she’d witnessed today. That the symbol was part of the First Sign seemed to confirm her fears it had foretold the terrible events in Egypt.