SWITCHBLADE (Choi Ziyi Book 1)

by Mike Morris

  Rui's face appeared in her mind. Laughing, and so proud of his treachery. How could they not have seen his real intentions? He'd been Xiao's closest friend and protector since they were children. Now he was going to destroy the glorious Empire. He had to pay.

  Xiao. I'm sorry.

  Darkness beckoned. So comfortable. Time to end the struggle.

  No.

  Ziyi took the reins of her panic, riding it like a wild stallion needing to be tamed. Whatever happened, she'd face it like a true servant of the Emperor, not a frightened schoolgirl. Her fate had been decided long before she'd even been born, and it wasn't to die amongst the trash in the ocean. And, with that thought, her hand moved. First, it was just her index finger. Then her thumb. Finally she moved her whole hand. She could feel sensation in her extremities - something where there'd been nothing. Both hands were back under her control. Her feet.

  She released some more oxygen from her lips to ease the pressure in her chest, wondering with how much life she lost with each fleeing bubble. Ziyi had no idea how long she'd been under water, how much longer she'd left on the clock. She forced her knee upright, turned over on to her front, and pushed herself up off the floor. She crawled like a four hundred pound baby towards the harbour wall, clambering through the garbage. Her fingers curled into the silt as she dragged herself forward another inch.

  Moving didn't get any easier as her body burned whatever air she had left. As more control returned to her body, her energy decreased in equal measure. The water pressed down on her, but she ignored that small, persuasive voice suggesting she stop and give in. It came down to just how much she wanted to live. And by all who'd come before her, Ziyi wanted to live.

  Visibility was non-existent. Two feet at most. The trash around her was her only real guide, growing as she got nearer the harbour's edge. When she could no longer force her way through it, she clambered up over it.

  The pressure in her lungs was beyond anything she'd ever endured. She wanted to scream, releasing all the air she had left — just do anything to ease the pain – but she knew that was death talking, and she concentrated on making one more yard, then another.

  She reached the wall without realising it. Dug her fingers into the concrete to pull herself upright. If not for the mek, she'd have just swum up to the surface but the technology was an anchor holding down. The irony was not lost that the very thing designed to save her life could end up killing her.

  She felt her way along the wall, groping for something she could use to climb out of the water, but she could feel herself beginning to not care. There was a sense of detachment from what was happening, as if she were a casual observer watching a fool stumble along. Give up. Keep going, she told herself in equal measure.

  Her hand hit something. She had to concentrate to work out what it was — a ladder — and even longer to force herself to take hold of it and climb. She'd never been so aware of how difficult it was to think. The murky waters had swamped her brain. Her hand hooked itself around the iron rung, and she pulled herself up so she could do the same to the next one.

  She looked up and saw lights dancing overhead, swaying this way and that with the water. The temptation crossed her mind to just let go and sink back into the comfort of the blackness behind her. It would be so easy to just give up. Release the pressure ripping her lungs apart. Rest.

  The darkness pulled her, so soft and comforting. Rui had won. What was the point? What would she do? The Empire was dead.

  She'd failed. She let go. Drifted back. Time to sleep.

  Time to stop running. Time to stop.

  She felt movement. A tug. A pull. An embrace. Drifting.

  Her head broke through the surface of the water, and Ziyi reeled with shock as the outside world assaulted all her senses. The lights, the sounds, the smells, were all too much for her after the smothered world she'd left below. She gulped air back into her lungs as quickly as she could. In and out, in and out. An arm was wrapped around her, holding her above the water. She had to stop herself from lashing out in a bid to be free. Somewhere she understood they were trying to help her.

  "Take it easy," said a man's voice. "We're nearly safe."

  Ziyi spat water from her mouth and sucked in more air as he pulled her gently to the harbour wall, not sure how she was still alive. She watched the sun creep out over the horizon, chasing the night away. Blood-red streaks danced across the oil slick water as sampans skipped towards the spaceport. Only twelve hours ago, she'd been getting ready to go to the party at the ICBB, dreading another boring function and the unwanted attention that came with it. It seemed like someone else's life.

  "Can you climb?" She saw the man for the first time — African, in his mid-twenties, with a beautiful smile. He looked like an angel. "Can you climb?" He asked again pointing to the ladder next to him.

  "Yes," she replied but if she was honest, she wasn't sure. She'd been too close to death too many times that night and her reserves of strength were all but gone.

  Climbing the three rungs was the hardest thing she'd ever done. Each one a mountain. She felt the man pushing her up, but even with his help, it was too much. He climbed past her eventually and hauled her out of the water like a sack of potatoes.

  Grateful to be on dry land again, she lay on the ground, exhausted. The early morning sun warmed her through her wet clothes, but did little to take away all her aches and pains. The cuts across her body and face, not to mention the gaping wound where her ear had once been, stung with a ferocity that at least told her she was still alive.

  In the distance, another shuttle took off from Lamma. It cut through the sky like a silver bullet, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. The fury of its engines arrived seconds later, a physical force that shook Ziyi to her gut and rattled the windows around her. She envied the people on-board, escaping to the stars. They were enjoying a freedom she'd never experience — the ability to choose one's own destiny. Her life had been mapped out for her almost since before she was born. And she'd failed in that destiny. Failed Xiao.

  She couldn't stop the tears from coming. Great sobs shook her body as she tried to think of a world with him. She didn't care that she was shaming herself in front of the man. It was nothing after what she'd allowed to happen.

  High up from the other side of the harbour, the sound of sirens broke through her thoughts. It took a moment to spot the police flyers darting towards the American's layer. Smoke billowed out from the building above, providing an easy target for them to find. There were only two for now, but Ziyi could hear others in the distance. And the flyers meant ground troops were sure to follow.

  The man sensed it too. "Come on — time to move. I'll take you somewhere safe." He slipped his hands under her arms and pulled her to her feet. Ziyi staggered with the effort, but stayed on her feet with his help. He led her down the pier, their pace no more than a shuffle but at least they were moving.

  Above, the flyers slipped into a holding pattern over the harbour. It wouldn't be long before ground troops arrived.

  "Who are you?"

  "My name is Robert. I saw you fall."

  "Where are we..." said Ziyi but even talking was hard. "The police..."

  "Not far. Just ahead."

  Ziyi looked up and saw the typhoon shelter and the Floating City. "Not there. Not safe."

  The man smiled. "Safer than here. Safer than the police I think."

  Ziyi was too weak to argue. And what better place to lose oneself than amongst the forgotten refugees of Hong Kong?

  A fence, topped with sprawls of razor wire, cut off any approach from the docks and continued into the water, blocking the entrance from the harbour. Judging from the general decay, no one had been near the wire in decades. Even so, a rusted sign warned that any unauthorised personnel would be shot on sight. Robert was undeterred and punched a code into a very new padlock which secured a gate. It opened with a thunk and he pulled her through before relocking it.

  "This is my home," he explaine
d.

  Fifty levels high, the Floating City swayed and groaned in the water. One illegal construction pilled on another, built out of anything that came to hand. The inner homes swallowed by everything that came after them, sentenced to perpetual darkness by desperate people looking for cheap living on the edge of the world's most expensive real estate.

  It had become a focus for illegal immigrants some seventy years ago. People fleeing the conquered lands, hoping that some of the Empire's wealth would eventually fall into their pockets, headed to the Floating City. Death, disease and crime came with them. By the time the Government reacted, the City was a rabbit warren too hard to invade. The first troops who went in never came out. Nor the second or third.

  Despite that the Emperor, Di Xin, the father of Dao Yu, gave the order on his deathbed that the inhabitants were not to be killed, or the City destroyed, as an act of mercy. The fence went up instead, cutting the City off from the rest of Hong Kong, and any new would-be citizens were stopped from joining with extreme prejudice. Soon the bodies of the dead were piled high enough to stop any other refugee from seeking out the Floating City. Opinion inside the Government was that eventually, cut off from all resources including food and water, the City would die of its own accord, thus not counteracting the Emperor's last command but dealing with the problem all the same. It was to everyone's consternation that the City continued to survive and, though this was never publicly acknowledged, thrive.

  The dock surrounded three sides of the typhoon shelter, but dotted along at various intervals were gangplanks leading into the City. The water itself was filled with every type of refuse; almost to the point the gangplanks seemed unnecessary.

  The gentle hum of generators filled the air and electrical cables dangled everywhere like spider's webs. Ziyi wrinkled her nose as the stench of decay and human waste grew stronger with every step they took.

  The man took her down the first gangplank. The wood was slick with oil and grime, and bent and swayed under their weight, but they made the open doorway. The interior was pitch black, and her eyes took a moment to adjust to the lack of light but Robert didn't wait. He pulled her along with a growing urgency.

  The corridor was barely wide enough for two people but the man kept them moving deeper and deeper into the City. The ceiling brushed Ziyi's head as she advanced down it, passing locked gates protecting closed doors. Spy holes peeked from each one but she didn't get the feeling she was being watched. Every sense told her they were alone.

  They came to a fork and turned left. A crackling light overhead did little except attract flies and mosquitoes, and illuminate the damp staining the walls. The generators created a blanket of white noise all around her as she went deeper and deeper, occasionally interrupted only by the creaks and groans of the City itself as it rolled with the current.

  Ziyi stumbled as exhaustion threatened to overwhelm her. How far would they go before she could curl up and giver her body a chance to recover? She used the wall for support, wondering all the while if it would have been better to face the police outside.

  It took three more turns down the corridor before she saw light in the distance. It was no more than a dirty orange hue that clawed away at the edges of the darkness but light all the same.

  Three more steps further, she saw the cage. "You've got to be kidding," said Ziyi, stopping. She checked behind her, expecting a trap — and finding only an empty corridor.

  "It's just an elevator to the lower levels."

  She allowed Robert to lead her on. He opened the gate and they both climbed inside. It was as basic as it could get — the man pulled a lever and chains stirred to life. The cage dropped with a lurch and slowly moved down level.

  They passed more corridors, all looking more or the less the same — minimal lighting and pipes and wires going in every direction. The sound of air conditioning joined the generator's hum and a faint chill pushed back the humidity from above. The only person Ziyi saw was a little girl, clutching a one-armed bear, who watched the elevator pass for two heart beats before running off into the darkness behind her.

  They were six floors below sea level before they stopped. Ziyi blinked at the sudden brightness from a multitude of lights strung down the corridor. Instead of the dirt and chaos of the other floors, everything was organised and almost clean.

  Robert opened the cage and stepped out into another corridor. A steel door waited for them three turns later. He entered a nineteen-digit code into a combination lock, too quickly for Ziyi to remember the numbers. The door, thick enough to stop a tank blast, swung open, revealing a balcony overlooking a massive chamber.

  The man stepped aside to let Ziyi past, and this time she didn't hesitate. She stared at the room beneath, full of people from every nation, and alleyways of stalls. A cacophony of voices mingled with the rustle of mah-jong tiles and the hiss of kitchen stoves. Dim Sum, Kimchee and Roast Duck filled the air with mouth-watering fragrances, reminding her of how long it had been since she had eaten or drunk anything.

  The cavern spread as far as the eye could see, stretching far from the borders of the Floating City and under Aberdeen itself. She was shocked how it could exist without everyone knowing about it. She couldn't even guess at how many people there were.

  Robert led her down some stairs into the heart of the room. People stopped talking as they approached, dropping their eyes just enough so they could follow the party with their peripheral vision, and once Ziyi and the man had passed by the whispered buzz of excited gossip sparked up behind them. She had no idea if it was because they recognised her or if it was because she looked like death warmed up. At that point she didn't really care.

  Everything seemed to be on sale at the stalls. Crates of chickens squawked away at the feet of a butcher quartering the carcass of a pig. A variety of fish swam around in enormous tanks while crabs sat in boxes of ice. A woman haggled over the price of some children's clothes while next to her a man sold antique clocks. Ziyi couldn't help but stare at everything around her. It could have been any market in the provinces of Empire. So very different from the world she inhabited.

  Holoscreens were spread throughout the hall, with huge crowds surrounding each one. She saw the carnage caused by the bombs across Hong Kong, and also reports from riots in the Zeros caused by her escape earlier. Then the pictures changed. More destruction followed but this time it was overseas. America. A nuclear blast had destroyed the White House and half of Washington. To Ziyi's left, a Western couple cried in each other's arms, wailing about lost family. Seeing their pain so close made it hard to think of them as enemies. They were no different from the victims in TST. Waves of guilt swept over her. In the hours since Xiao had gone missing, chaos had overwhelmed the Empire. Somehow, it felt like it was all her fault.

  Exhaustion rushed over her and she would've fallen if not for Robert's supporting arm. "How much further?" she asked. She needed rest.

  Ten armed men surrounded them before the man could answer.

  20

  Wing

  The irony was not lost on Wing that he used to spend his days in the Pod clock-watching, and now time slipped through his fingers far too fast.

  He wanted to scream in frustration as he siphoned through the data stream. There had to be some clues to find. No one was a ghost.

  The news reports mixed into their feeds, adding extra impetus to their work. Beijing was gathering troops to be flown into the States within the next twenty-four hours, and the curfew in the U.S. had been extended from the major cities to cover every urban settlement. Thousands of drones had been launched into the skies to add extra eyes to the CCTV network already in operation, but all they revealed were a frightened population who knew there was worst to come.

  Every now and then, he'd catch sight of another operator trawling the networks, but they all seemed to be searching for the obvious - scanning terrorist channels, and analysing possible targets. A couple of times, he was struck by the absolute certainty that they were searchi
ng for him, a reminder if he needed one that he was still wanted in the real world and they'd kill him on sight. His only hope was to discover who was behind the conspiracy.

  Bao Yu was the easiest to cross off the list. Her body was in the morgue. A bullet in her brain. DNA confirmed. Even if she'd been involved, her murder meant at best she'd only have been a lackey — he needed the masterminds.

  They moved onto Rui, flashing through his records quickly, hoping for something to stand out.

  Rui had been born in Harbin, in Heilongjian province, in the same year as Xiao. His father, unnamed, had been a casualty in the Kazakhstan border wars, so Rui had been sent to the Imperial Protection scheme at the age of five. The boy was introduced to Xiao three years later, and the two became the best of friends. The only time they have really been apart was while Rui had his mek inserted. The operations lasted two years. Two years of pain and misery. Wing's own enhancements had taken a mere six months and that had almost been more than he could bear.

  Wing pulled up Ziyi's file and ran a side-by-side comparison of the two agents' enhancements. "Both were operated on simultaneously in a series of matching surgeries. Rui, due to sheer body mass, is stronger and faster than Ziyi. Wait a minute… Rui had one further surgery after Ziyi had completed all hers, but I can’t find any record of what was done," he told Song.

  "Why the secrecy? He's definitely been weaponised," she replied.

  "The surgical team was led by Doctor Win Li. He, and all his staff, were executed a month after the final operations. The death notice was signed by his Imperial Highness, Dao Yu, himself. All were awarded the status of Heroes Of The Empire Eternal."

  Not that would bring them much comfort in the afterlife. He was amazed that they'd all gone willingly to their deaths. Wing had always thought himself a loyal and dutiful servant to the Empire, but he wouldn't have made the sacrifice.