Ck-chak.
The center stand bit into the soft asphalt. The Yamaha leaned. I stood over it. I looked at the street; it was wet, and crowded.
I squatted in the dirt. I glassed the corner of the apartment building with eyes that were wide and tired. The world before me flickered, it was as if the world was moving too fast for me to process.
〔 STATUS: SCANNING... 〕
〔 PERIMETER UNSTABLE 〕
〔 ENEMY ARCHETYPE: THE WASHERWOMAN 〕
A woman appeared on the third-floor balcony. She was hanging her laundry. Bright white sheets that slapped in the wind like the wings of a trapped bird. She looked down. I did not blink. I counted the seconds of her gaze. One. Two. Three.
"Ah? Another spotter," I whispered.
The girl stood beside me. She wore a pink backpack. The glitter on it was a waste of cheap plastic that caught the light and turned it into something jagged. She looked at me, her colleague, her father in this mission. She looked at the way my hands shook.
"She's just hanging her towels, Wei," A-Lan said.
"CODES," I said. "It's all codes. The way the fabric hangs. The fold of the linen. It's a high-frequency signal. It is a way to track us."
I stood up. The movement was a breakage. My knees popped like burning wood in a fire. I felt the glitching blue text in the meat of my brain, it was dimming away the world.
〔 ALERT: DATA CORRUPTION SPREADING 〕
〔 REMAINING CAPACITY: 38% 〕
We walked.
The road to the south was a ribbon of obsidian. Heat shimmers rose from the blacktop like ghosts of the dead. Every scooter that passed was a potential intercept. A high-decibel drone. I watched the helmets. Red. Blue. Yellow.
"The colors? They have some kind of pattern don't they," I said. "Are they tracking us? Trying to find our resonance."
A-Lan didn't answer. She was watching a black car parked near the Mazu temple. A car with tinted windows.
"Is it them?" she asked.
"The grey suit."
"The Shadow."
I felt my hand go to the grip of the Yamaha. I felt a sudden, heavy memory of papers, clipboards and pens, and a woman's mouth moving in a white room but no sound coming out. Just a low hush of the wind. A heartbeat pulsing in a dull glass bell.
"Let's go!" the girl said. She pulled my sleeve. Her hand was small and warm.
We mounted the CygnusX.
VROOMMM.
The engine was roaring. We moved. Past the tea shops where men sat in plastic chairs and watched the world pale away. Past the temples where the incense smoke rose to a godless sky. We were like pilgrims in some kind of fable, lost among the inward parts of some beast.
"Where are we going?" she asked over the roar of the wind.
"The salt air."
"The salt air??"
"Kaohsiung Harbor," I lied. I didn't know if there was a boat. I only knew that if the north was a wall of Grey Suits then the south was a possibility of blue.
I leaned the bike into a long, scoured curve of the highway. The ocean appeared to the right. A great, ancient lake, sightless as the eggs of spiders.
〔 GEOGRAPHIC UPDATE: EXITING TAINAN SECTOR 〕
〔 TARGET ACQUIRED: THE BRINE 〕
I felt the girl's head press against my back. I felt her breath, it was soft and precious. The only thing in the world that wasn't junk. I pushed the machine harder.
The road ahead was barren. Silent. I saw the salt fields of Qigu, looking like the eggs of giants. Alabaster bones cast up in shadow against the dying sun.
"Is this the e-extraction point?..." A-Lan whispered.
I looked at the salt. I looked at the white waste. It was a beautiful breakage.
"Yeah," I said. "This is it."
I killed the engine. The silence that followed was like a tolling bell. We stood in the white dust and we watched as the sun set and the light congealed over the land. Everything was paling away into the mist.
"Agent?"
"Yeah, Wei."
"I think I'm losing the signal," I said. I looked at my hands. They were pale. Translucent. I could see the beating heart in the pulse of my thumb.
"I know," she said. Her voice was thin. "I'm right here. I'm holding the lead."
"Don't let go."
"I won't."
I looked toward the sea. I waited for the Shadow to find us. I waited for the ending to come out of the dark, loping soundlessly across the white salt. I held the girl's hand and I did not move.
CRUNCHH.
The salt was a white crust. A rime of dry frost leached from the gut of the earth and left to bake under a godless sun. I walked into the waste. I felt the grit in my boots and the sting of the salt in the air.
Everything was paling away into the mist.
Behind me, the salt mountain of Qigu rose like a dead star.
I squatted in the shadow of a rusted gantry. The blacktop was a thin ribbon of obsidian cutting through the blank world.
〔 ALERT: SYSTEM OVERHEATING 〕
〔 NEURAL BUFFER: CRITICAL 〕
〔 THREAT LEVEL: RED 〕
"They're here, it seems," I said. My voice was dry.
The girl stood in the white dust. She looked at the road. She looked at the dust cloud rising in the distance. A single car. Black, and it was moving with a slow and precise intent.
"It's just a car, Wei," she said. But she held her pink backpack tight against her chest.
"No.. That's a tactical pursuit vehicle," I whispered. "The Grey Suit. She's tracked the transponder in my hip."
"You don't have a transponder."
"That's what they tell the initiates," I said. I reached for my iron spoon. I felt the cold rime of the salt on my skin. "Stay behind the rime-bank. If the breakage happens... if I go dark..... y-y-you run for the sluice-gate. You hear me?"
"Wei."
"Do you hear me, Agent?"
A-Lan looked at the car. It was closer now. The windshield caught the light and flared like a dead white eye. "I hear you."
VROOM.
SHUDDER.
The car slowed. It stopped fifty meters from the salt-mound. The door opened and the woman stepped out. She wore the grey suit and she held the clipboard like a shield. She looked at me kneeling in the salt.
"Wei!" she called out. Her voice was thin. It carried over the white waste like a low moan. "S-Stop this.. Please! You're out of your territory. The girl needs her stabilizers! You're hurting her!"
I felt a spark in my brain. The bell tolling.
〔 ERROR: UNAUTHORIZED INTERROGATION 〕
〔 INITIATING COUNTER-MEASURES 〕
I stood up. I did not run. I moved across silently with grace. My shadow was cast up against the white mounds. I held the spoon low. To me it was a serrated blade. A jagged piece of the Agency's heart.
"The Asset stays with the Agency!" I barked.
The woman in the suit backed away. She looked at me with eyes that were sightless with fear. "What do you mean an asset?? She's not an asset, Wei! She's your daughter! Her name is A-Lan! Look at her!"
I stopped.
I looked back. The girl was standing in the salt. She was small and pale. A tiny sunflower in a world of ice. She wasn't holding a comm-link. She was holding a tattered stuffed rabbit by its one remaining ear.
〔 SEARCHING DATABASE... 〕
〔 NAME: A-LAN 〕
〔 RELATIONSHIP: ... 〕
〔 DATA CORRUPTED 〕
"Wei, look at me," the girl whispered.
The world dimmed. The blue text in my eyes flickered. It stuttered. It died.
The breakage.
I looked down. I didn't know the man wearing the dirty fishing vest. I didn't know this white world. I looked at the woman in the grey suit and she was a stranger. I looked at the little girl and she was a ghost. I stood in the absolute silence and I felt the minutes of the earth tolling in my ears. The void was total.
"WHO.....???" I rasped.
The woman in the suit stepped forward. She reached out a hand. "It's okay. We're going to the hospital, Wei. Just give me the girl."
A-Lan moved then.
She didn't run to the woman. She ran to me. She grabbed my hand—the hand holding the spoon—and she squeezed it. Her grip was warm. Real. A living pulse in the white murk.
"Agent Wei!" she yelled.
"The Shadow is using a mind-warp to control you! It's a trick! Initiate Evasion Protocol!"
I felt the snap of the signal. The blue text flared back to life.
〔 REBOOT COMPLETE 〕
〔 MISSION: EVADE AND EXTRACT 〕
The fog cleared. The girl was my handler again. The woman was the enemy. The spoon was a weapon.
"Hehe! Nice try, Shadow," I said. I spat into the salt.
I grabbed the girl's hand and we sprinted back toward the Yamaha. The woman in the grey suit was screaming something behind us but the wind took her words.
I hit the starter. The CygnusX roared.
We threw white salt into the air as we tore away. Moving south. Always south. Toward the harbor. Toward the end of the road.
"You okay, Wei?" she shouted over the wind.
"Signal is weak," I said.
I looked at the road.
"But I'm still operational."
"Good," she said. She pressed her face against my back, and she didn't look at the car in the rearview mirror.
Behind us, the salt fields were silent. Barren. Godless. And the road stretched out long into the darkness of the coming night.