by John McNally
They were on track to destroy a part of China’s heritage. To the pilot it seemed crazy, but there had to be a reason. “Duty. Action. Delivery,” was what it was all about.
“Go to green,” he said.
“Green confirmed,” came the response from both attack wings.
BEEEEEEEEPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
Suddenly everything was flashing at once, on the HUD, all over the cockpit. Screens were whiting out.
“Control, this is Red Leader. We are blind. We are blind. We are blind.”
On the Roof of the World, Bo demanded a report.
“The radar is jammed, sir. We can’t fire the missiles without it.”
“How?! Who is doing this?” he asked, and the moment the words left his mouth, he knew the answer. “Allenby …”
DAY FIVE 11:56 (Local GMT+8). Nine Harmonies Pagoda, Shanghai.
You were there …
Images and thoughts and memories spun in Finn’s mind like the reels of a fruit machine.
You were there …
How could it be true? It couldn’t be – no one just disappeared … and yet it felt true. It was perfectly unscientific and perfectly true at the same time. It was … his family.
Out of one mystery had come an even bigger mystery and Finn knew he could never rest on such an absurd answer, whatever time he had left he must find the truth about his father.
“How could I possibly have been there? I’d only just been born,” said Finn.
“I don’t know,” said Kelly, “but your dad said he saw you, he started yelling that he had to save you and then the whole thing blew.”
“Save me? From what?” said Finn.
SMASH! A tentacle suddenly snapped through the exoskeleton of the cockroach, its hook a millimetre away from Finn’s bleeding face.
“GO!” Kelly yelled.
And as they rose to drive forward again, the exoskeleton was ripped from their backs by several talons at once, and they were blinded by the light … blown by the winds.
They were no longer in the pit of the cluster but in the open, in the black rain, in the most extraordinary melee. Tentacles grabbed them from all sides, then let go, then grabbed hold again. Finn and Kelly reeled and fought, Finn ripping away with his spike, trying to make sense of what was happening. Then he saw something he recognised being torn apart – a wriggling insect, a thrip, a simple, ugly, stormfly that Finn considered – in this extraordinary moment – to be the most beautiful thing he had ever seenfn1.
They were everywhere, a black rain. Countless thousands driven by the downrush of air ahead of the storm.
The testudo of bots had collapsed under the onslaught. Ordered to attack all organic life forms, they were faced with thousands, and as the dispersed cluster writhed to slaughter the harmless thrips, a multi-coloured slick of bots and insect innards began slipping down the pagoda roof.
Still at war in the centre of it all, Finn saw something even more beautiful than the thrips.
“HAAAAA!” Finn cried out in joy as he beat aside a bot.
“Leave me!” said Kelly. “I’ll slow you down!”
“No – LOOK!” said Finn, grabbing Kelly and pointing to what Kelly saw only as a blue plastic bag.
BANG … POWACRACKAZINGSZZZT!
A shot. A magnum. Two-dozen bots in the path of the speeding bullet exploded and sent a golden spasm through the slick, parting it like the Red Sea and revealing Stubbs, rocking from the counterblast and still attached to the white line that had seen him and his balloon dragged out from the Shen Yu to the kite and then into the cluster.
“STUBBS!” Finn yelled, laughing with joy as he hauled the injured Kelly, disbelieving, through the gap. “Keep firing!”
Stubbs steadied himself. BANG … POWACRACKAZINGACSHSHSHSZZZT! He fired again before the bots could close in over them, Finn using all his strength to drag Kelly the last few nano-metres to Stubbs.
Finn and Stubbs then pulled in the white line to bring the balloon and its basket towards them just as –
SMACK … SMACK … The first heavy raindrops began to hit.
Finn took the Magnum and – BANG … POWACRACKAZINGACSHSHSHSZZZT! – fired a third shot as Stubbs and Kelly climbed in the basket.
SMACK … Finn copped a raindrop and was instantly soaked.
From the basket Stubbs yelled, “HANG ON TO THE LINE!”
Finn gripped it – Stubbs kicked out the counterweight – and the next thing Finn knew he was being yanked upwards on the line, rising like a rocket …
The bots fell away. The jettisoned dragon charm counterweight tumbled past. Lucky after all.
Kelly reached down the foam edge of the basket and grabbed Finn’s arm, pulling him up.
Euphoria surged through Finn as the world suddenly expanded around him. After so long trapped inside the Shen Yu, trapped inside the cluster, it felt amazing to suddenly be able to see the temple, the river, the city, the sky …
The storm. A terrible clap of thunder boomed. The clouds burst and fat rain hammered the balloon. They instantly lost height.
Beneath, the slick of bots reformed in the tumult on the pagoda rooftop, sucking itself back into a testudo, leaving the flood to wash away the corpses of a thousand thrips … exposing something that had lain hidden at the heart of the cluster …
“THE BUG!” Finn screamed as the rain drove them down towards it. “IT’S THE UGLY BUG!”
It was lying on its side, beached by the chaos. Washed and waiting. A prisoner of the bots since it had been seized in midair the day before.
Finn felt strength surge within him, and for a moment he dared to hope that they were saved.
Then the deafening roar of twelve advanced fighter-bombers screamed overhead at attack height, like angels of death.
hen Carla finally regained consciousness, she was in such head-splitting pain she wished she could fall away into blackness again. It was as if a thick spike had been driven into the back of her skull.
She was being dragged up a slope out of the roaring stormwater of the sewers. She could hear the sounds of the carnival above and the rain thundering on to the roof of the haunted house and …
Yap!
Baptiste stopped. Looked back. In the sewer was a filthy panting animal in a harness. A creature from the underworld. Inside his mind, EVE. could make no sense of it. Baptiste altered his grip on Carla’s neck and dragged her further up the slope.
In the nDen at Yo-yo’s collar Delta cried, “CARLA!”
Yap!
“Go, Yo-yo! Jump! Jump!” She prayed he’d have the strength left after his epic run.
Yo-yo crouched on Baptiste’s abandoned motorbike then gave his back legs all he’d got and sprang up on to the edge of the breech in the sewer pipe, just clinging on to howl and click and claw and scramble his way over its muddy edge.
Baptiste saw him coming up the slope and raised a boot.
“Yo-yo!” screamed Delta.
The boot swung and cruelly clipped the dog’s jaw. He was sent howling back down the slope. Delta almost passed out in the nDen as Yo-yo’s head whipped around. He howled in pain and incomprehension, and only just managed to claw enough of the muddy slope to stop himself from falling back into the sewer.
Delta cursed. She should have held Yo-yo back. As soon as they were out of the sewer they would be back on the comms net and have the entire resources of the G&T and the Chinese state at their disposal. Instead she’d been impulsive.
“Stay, Yo-yo! Stay!” she urged.
Too late. The words made no sense to the wounded beast. The big man had hurt him. The big man had hurt the girl.
GWWRRRRRRRR! Yo-yo shot up the slope.
Baptiste raised his boot for a second time, this time too late. Yo-yo snapped his jaws firmly into the meat of his calf muscle on impact.
“ARRRRGH!” screamed Baptiste, thrashing and flailing, but Yo-yo only clung
on harder.
“CARLA!” Delta cried from the dog’s collar, desperate to make herself heard.
Baptiste pulled himself up on his good leg, then swung the leg with the dog attached around in a huge arc.
Yo-yo was dashed against the concrete at the top of the tunnel and hit the slope yowling and vibrating with shock as his whiplashed spinal cord sent every muscle it controlled into spasm. Six of his ribs were broken.
Baptiste saw the gun strapped to the stricken dog and yanked at it. As the harness was ripped past Yo-yo’s head, the nDen clipped to his collar broke off and fell to the ground. Baptiste took the gun and discarded the harness.
Inside the nDen, Delta slipped into unconsciousness.
DAY FIVE 11:58 (Local GMT+8). Temple Hill, Shanghai.
They’d had a moment to decide.
As the balloon was driven back past the pagoda roof by the rain they had one chance to jump and try and reach the Bug. Stubbs and Kelly just weren’t going to make it.
“Go! Raise the alarm. We’ll land this thing and wait,” Kelly ordered.
“Are you crazy? I’m coming back for you,” said Finn.
“No time! Get help! Get the girl!” Stubbs insisted.
Finn’s thoughts rushed back to Carla. “Where is she?”
“I saw him take her into the sewers,” said Stubbs.
The sewers. Finn remembered how they’d got in. He knew where she would be.
“NOW!” shouted Kelly.
Finn jumped from the balloon before the pagoda roof disappeared beneath them – BOOF! – hitting the tiles and letting the force of the water carry him down the slope towards the Bug.
“GODSPEED, KID!” he heard Kelly yell behind him.
Beside him in the basket Stubbs muttered, “Lord mercifully hear us …” And meant it. They would lash the balloon to their landing point and wait for the cavalry to arrive. Finn was on his own.
Finn angled his body as he slid down the tiles, steering himself into the path of the Bug – WHAM. He hit it – but dislodged it too. As he clambered into the open cab, it was sliding off the roof – fast. He reached the controls just as it tipped over the edge and hit the ignition.
There was the slightest delay as the world fell away, then –
SSSHHHSHSHSHSHSHHRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOT!
The turbines burst into life, the engine lighting and thrusting the craft, like a dart, through the thick tropical downpour, windshield splitting the air. Flight – blind white flight – because all Finn could see was a shockwave spray of white water.
He slowed, but the force of rain filled the open cab and drove the craft towards the earth. He hit the gas again – SSSHHHSHSRRROOOOT!
Get to the river, he told himself, just point and shoot. He had to find this circus.
He slowed again and tried to get a better view. Through the hammering rain, Finn could just make out the distant blur of a crystal city.
Get to the river.
He pointed the Bug towards the heart of Shanghai and hit full power.
DAY FIVE 11:59 (Local GMT+8). Shanghai.
The Flying Leopards passed over Shanghai, payload intact as Al was being arrested on the orders of Bo Zhang and bundled into the back of one of the police cars, Hudson protesting all the while – “Chill! Chill! Let’s talk about this!”
A moment later, when they were both under arrest in the back of the squad car, Hudson asked, “Think that was enough?”
Al leaned forward to check the time on the dashboard clock.
DAY FIVE 11:59 (Local GMT+8). Shanghai UFH Hospital.
Beep … beep … beep … beep … beep … beep … beep … beep …
Repeated electric shocks had restarted Scar’s heart but the situation was desperate. A doctor called for a ventilator, he was about to perform a tracheotomy – cutting directly into the windpipe.
The moment the scalpel blade touched the flesh of Scar’s throat – the moment he punctured the skin – her body erupted …
The doctor cried out, dropping the scalpel. Nurses screamed as bots spouted out of Scar’s body, Exodus Hive 1, concealed beneath her skin and packed into her abdomen, suddenly exploding to life. Rashes and blisters across the surface of her skin burst. Blood spattered the walls as a million bots shredded and fired and flew out of her. Thousands of them, sparking a primal panic.
The staff ran.
The bots flew after them, searching for the exits and the air-con vents, an expanding, deadly, hissing swarm.
DAY FIVE 11:59 (Local GMT+8). Roof of the World, Shanghai.
Reports rained in and the implications ran through King’s mind.
Soon the bots would be in every processor in the city block. The girl on the gurney had been loaded with bots in the Forbidden City then sent into the heart of Shanghai – a Trojan horse. Who knew how many more infected Tyros were out there? They had fallen for a classic distraction. The battle had been lost.
Bo Zhang looked crushed.
The strike wing called in progress of its second attack run.
“Descending attack height five hundred feet …”
Bo had to make another decision. Was there any point in the attack now the bots had broken out in Shanghai itself? They would already be unstoppable.
“He’s been playing with us,” said King, speaking Bo’s mind. “The computers aboard the International Space Station are the only ones that can be absolutely trusted now. Bots will soon be inside this building.”
“Targets acquired and locked-on,” reported Group Captain Bingxin.
Bo needed to make the call. To attack or not to attack.
“Approaching three kilometre mark. Warheads armed …”
The President of the Chinese People’s Republic stared at King. “What would you do?”
King gave his stock response in moments of supreme crisis.
“I trust my people,” said Commander King with a glance at the clock.
Al was listening in via the police radio.
12:00:00 MIDDAY
At that very moment simultaneously, on the roof of the Nine Harmonies Pagoda, in the corridors of the Shanghai UFH Hospital, and on the rear seat of National Highway Lines coach #635KD, in the hearts of twelve million bots – the most dazzling and sophisticated machines ever created by mankind, each boasting a quantum dot worthy of the spark of life itself – told themselves the same, last, ineluctable truth:
Xn + 1 = ∞Xn (1 – Xn)
And a simple double switch caused a short circuit that – at the speed of light which binds all thingsfn1 – discharged all the power stored in the bots’ frail bodies at once into their circuitry causing massive heat and –
BARARARARARARARARARARARARAR
AOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!
On Highway G60, Spike’s body was shredded by expanding fire, as the Exodus Hive 2 bots packed beneath her flesh combusted – the explosion ripping through the rear section of the coach and causing a multi-vehicle pile-up.
The bots on the tiled roof of the pagoda exploded in formation, as if in collective shock, blasting a hole in the roof and boiling the rain as it fell.
Bots throughout Shanghai UFH Hospital ripped through the circuitry they’d attached themselves to, through the crevices and cracks and wiring in which they had sought sanctuary, starting a thousand small fires that would sweep through the buildings around them over the course of the next six hours.
All of them, each and every one, obliterated.
The first reports reached Bo Zhang 2.6 seconds after the explosions occurred.
“Red Leader! Abort Strike!”
Commander King waited for the response from Group Captain Bingxin as the reports of the mass bot self-immolation were pouring in.
“Copy. Abort strike,” came the confirmation.
The Commander allowed his eyelids to droop momentarily over his sleep-deprived eyes.
He could hear Allenby and Hudson going wild in the back of the
police car.
DAY FIVE 12:03 (Local GMT+8). Temple Hill, Shanghai.
In the distance beyond the smoking pagoda, the fast jets ripped through the sky as the last of the thunder died away and the heaviest of the rain abated.
It fell on the platoon of troops that leapt from a helicopter to investigate the blast that had just destroyed the roof of the Nine Harmonies temple complex.
It also fell on the blue hydrogen balloon descending rapidly into the path of their commanding officer.
To attract his attention, Kelly shot him right between the eyes.
DAY FIVE 12:04 (Local GMT+8). Song Island, Taiwan (Disputed).
Silence.
The chamber was at three metres below the waves. Exotic fish dabbled in the waters, sharks circled the base of the sugarloaf.
Grandma was at last silent because she was not only bound to her chair but also gagged.
Kaparis was trying to ignore what had just happened (what would later only be referred to as ‘the unfortunate business on the Yangtze’). He dwelt instead on more general misfortune and particularly upon betrayal.
He took a deep breath and looked out.
“It was a mistake to bring you here, Mrs Allenby. All I wanted was for us to get on. But you had to be tiresome … Your daughter could have had all this and so much more …”
Grandma made a noise.
“Heywood …” Kaparis indicated for the butler to remove Grandma’s gag.
“I wondered why you were being so nice. Were you playing at being the son-in-law I never had?” said Grandma. “You poor thing. Maria had so much you couldn’t possibly know, or even feel. You have been nurturing a grudge, not living your life. You have been deluded, and now you must forgive yourself and move on.”
“Ethan Blake stole her! Then he abandoned her!”
“All we know for certain is that he loved her. And love grows. Hate can only die.”
Grandma didn’t just say it, she asked him to believe.
