Ember (5 page)

The haan removed a device from inside the drapes of her suit jacket and pressed a button on it with her thumb. A point of white light appeared in the air behind her, which grew brighter until the group cast long shadows across the factory floor. Then it expanded, forming a perfect hexagon that filled the air. Through the gate, I could see dim light and concrete walls, but I couldn't make out where it led to.

“It's okay,” the haan told the children. “Go through. I will follow.”

They looked a little leery but weren't about to stay in the factory. One by one they passed behind a row of machinery, then appeared on the other side and stepped through. The haan followed them, stopping out of sight behind one of the machines.

I risked leaning out a little further to try and see in. A sign was posted on a tiled wall behind the group of kids that I could just make out the tail end of.

UYUÁN
S
TATION

A metro station somewhere. I couldn't quite make out the name.

The man stepped toward her, out of view so that I couldn't see either of them. I crouched low and moved around toward the other side of my cover to try and target him again.

“Where does that lead?” he asked.

“That's not your concern.”

“It is if I say it is.”

“Lower your blade,” she said, her voice even, “and step away from me.”

“Or what?”

I heard a thud and thought he'd struck her, something which would shatter her bones and possibly even kill her. A soft electric whine followed, rising in pitch until it went out of range.

Before I could get to my new position I heard a loud, wet snap followed by a heavy splash. Something splatted down onto the floor and I saw a slick of water spread across the concrete from that direction.

I looked around the side of the machinery in time to see the haan step through the gate. She took the little girl's hand again, and then the portal collapsed behind them into the point of white light, which faded.

I stepped into the open, keeping my gun ready as I approached the spot where they'd been. Water splashed under my boots, but I saw no sign of the man at all. An empty shoe lay on its side in the puddle near the man's machete, but nothing else. He hadn't gone through the gate. It was as if he'd just vanished.

“No! Please no!” a voice shrieked, snapping me out of it. It wasn't the little girl, but someone else, a woman. It came from through the door on the other side of the factory. I ran, ducking through it and down the corridor on the other side. Whatever the haan had been doing there would have to wait. Xiao-Xing had been wrong. The scrappers weren't done for the night. They must have been off getting the cooker prepared for another batch, and were ready to butcher again.

dragan help please help please

A door up ahead swung open and two men stepped through. One carried a machete and the other had his arms wrapped around a big box. The one with the machete spotted me and jumped, alerting the other.

“Hey!”

The man fumbled for his pistol as I squeezed off the first round. It struck him in the shoulder, and he jerked back as the box he'd been carrying landed on its side and spilled a stack of empty vacuum-seal packages across the floor. He fired back as his partner ducked back into the room they'd come from.

The bullet slammed into my ribs and knocked the wind out of me, but the body armor stopped it from penetrating. I adjusted my aim and fired again, this time catching him right in the breastbone. He staggered to one side, then turned limp and went down.

I made it to the doorway just as the man with the machete pulled a shotgun from a row of lockers. I ducked back just as he turned and fired, tearing a hole through the mold-speckled drywall across from me.

The shotgun shell bounced across the floor as I ducked down low and leaned back through the doorway. He still had the shotgun pointed straight out in front of him and before he could react I'd fired twice, hitting him twice in the chest. He fell back against the wall behind him and slumped down onto the floor.

The room contained a row of lockers, a work table, a standing scale, and a smaller hanging scale with a bin caked in rust and dried blood. Next to a big industrial sink, three machetes hung on hooks. There were no other people inside.

“Don't! Please, don't!”

please hurry

I'm coming hang on

plz hur

Her connection dropped. It dropped so suddenly it cut her off mid-thought. She'd lost consciousness again.

Or she's dead.

I ran down the corridor, the air growing hotter and steamier as I went. Through the doorway at the far end I could see light, shining down on a slick concrete floor. Across the room a ramp sloped down into a circular pit in the floor that had once been used to store big spools of cable. There were people in it now, chained to the wall behind them by thick, padlocked collars.

As soon as I stepped through the door, a boom went off in my ear and something hit me in the side. I fell, the divot in my body armor still trailing smoke as a man to my right aimed his pistol toward my head to finish me off. I flicked the catch on my pistol to put it in burst mode, and fired a volley at him as I went down. One round hit him in the arm and his shot went wide. Shooting from the floor, I put the next group into the middle of his chest and he staggered back before collapsing onto his side.

Everyone began screaming then. There were more men in the room, shouting and moving through the steam while the captives all yelled to me at once, their voices cracking as they begged to be let free.

Another shot went off, a muzzle flash lighting up the mist ahead. I turned and fired, and a shadowy figure fell back.

“Hangfei Security!” I barked. “Drop your weapons and stand down!”

There were three men still at the top of the slope which led down to the holding pit. Two of them had machetes but none of them carried a firearm. When they saw me approach, the machetes clattered down onto the floor and they each raised their hands.

“Get over here!” I called. “Now!”

They stepped toward me, and I scanned them as they approached. One of them had a knife hidden in his belt, and I took it, slipping it into my pocket.

“Turn around and get down on the ground,” I told them. They did as they were told.

“This is bullshit,” one of them said.

“Shut up.”

“We're protected.”

Standing over them, I got a good look at the room. At the top of the concrete ramp, in full view of the people who were chained below, a big butchering table had been set up. Blood still covered its surface where deep notches had been cut with the machetes. A smaller table supported a big vacuum sealer, and an industrial-sized laundry bin on wheels sat next to it heaped with plastic, vacuum-sealed bags containing body parts. Behind it all two bodies, a man and a woman, hung from their bound ankles over a blood filled trough, their throats cut. The woman's body turned slowly at the end of the cable.

“What do you mean by ‘protected?' ” I asked the man.

“Shut up,” another man said to the first.

“Answer me,” I said. “What does that mean?”

“The people who deal our product are like royalty in this country, and they own this city,” the second man said. “You'll never know who they are, and we'll never see the inside of a detention center, bet on it.”

In Hangfei, “royalty” referred to the business elite and usually one of the three big corporate empires. I tended to doubt the trade went quite that high, but command
had
deliberately stopped us from going in. I had no doubt of that. Still, the man was wrong about being protected. They may have stalled us for some reason, but they hadn't shut down the operation or cleared out the site ahead of time.

“We had orders to take this place out,” I told him. “Even if what you say is true, you're a little fish they're cutting loose for appearances. No one's going to help you.”

“I'll take my chances.”

“Did they stall us because of the haan?” I asked him. “Did they know she was here?”

“What haan?”

“Were they waiting until she was clear before they let us come in?”

“I got no idea what you're talking about.”

The woman on the hook, her sticky, tangled hair dangling, turned so that I could see her bloodless face. Her eyes, empty and glassy now, were stuck open wide in horror.

I looked from her, down to the captives. They sat naked, nearly hanging from chained collars with their bony arms and legs sprawled. Some looked unconscious, or dead. The ones who were awake looked crazy with fear. I looked from them, to the body parts sealed in plastic, then back to the dangling woman.

“You're not getting away with this,” I told them.

“You can't stop it.”

“I can stop you.”

I flicked the catch on my pistol, setting it back to single shot fire. Then I aimed it at the back of the second man's head.

“Fuck you,” he spat.

I pulled the trigger, and he jerked once as blood splashed from the hole in his forehead. While the first man tried to turn, I shot him, too.

“Wait,” the last man said. “Wait—”

I fired the third, and, final shot. When it was done, I stood still for a moment while the pools of blood grew around their heads then merged to become one. I waited to see if some aftershock of emotion would come, but it didn't.

“Shao, get down!”

I turned as two shots went off almost simultaneously. One bullet grazed my neck, and would have punched straight through if I hadn't moved. The second struck a fourth man who had entered from an open door on the far side of the room. He stumbled, and fell into the wall. The pistol fell from his hand as he slumped, leaving a swatch of blood on the concrete behind him.

I looked back across the room and saw Liao, his weapon still aimed at the fallen man.

“Thanks, Liao.”

“You're crazy,” he said. “Straight up crazy.”

“Did command finally give you the okay?” He shook his head.

“Then thanks again.”

I stepped away from the bodies, and toward the ramp.

“Xiao-Xing are you here?”

In the pit below, eight people sat chained to the walls behind them. Each one had a plastic bucket to go to the bathroom in, and a water bottle with an inch or so of brown water in it. The bottles hung in wire baskets, a metal tube sticking out so they could lick a ball bearing at the end to let the drops out. I looked over the bony, ashen bodies. Three of them were young girls.

“Xiao-Xing?”

“Here,” an old man rasped. He gestured to the girl next to him. She sat curled in a ball, head lolling at the end of her chain so that her shoulder length hair hung around her face. Her ribs stuck out, with deep shadows between them.

I holstered my weapon and descended the ramp, approaching her.

“Is she alive?” I asked the old man.

“I don't know.”

“Help is coming,” I told the others. “We're going to get you all out of here.”

I knelt in front of the girl, and put one hand on her bony shoulder. Her skin still felt warm.

“Xiao-Xing, it's—”

She lunged, then, and pain lanced through my cheek. She pulled her hand back, tugging the length of sharpened wire she held back through and slashing my face as she tried to come around for another swing.

“It's okay,” I said, grabbing her wrist. The strength almost immediately went out of her. Her eyes were wild with fear, and I could see she thought I was one of the butchers and I'd come for her. With the little strength she'd stored used up, the wire, its tip bloody, fell from her fingers and landed on the floor next to her as tears welled in her eyes.

“Don't eat me,” she rasped.

“I'm not one of them,” I told her. “It's me, Dragan.”

Confusion flickered in her eyes. I pointed to my name patch.

“It's me.”

“Dragan,” she said. I could barely hear her.

“Yeah. Hold still.”

Her eyes flashed again when I drew my field knife, but she didn't have the energy to resist. I slipped it carefully into her collar and sliced through the material. I peeled it free, supporting her so that she didn't fall over when the chain fell away.

“You're okay,” I told her.

“Jesus,” Liao said from the top of the ramp.

I unzipped my armored jacket and shrugged it off so I could unbutton my shirt. I removed it and helped Xiao-Xing into it. The sleeves hung past her hands as I buttoned it back up and pulled the tails down to cover her before scooping her up in my arms. She hardly weighed anything at all.

“Can you call them in? Tell them it's all clear and get the rest in here to help these people?”

Liao nodded. “Yeah. Where are you going?”

“She needs help now.”

He nodded again and tossed me his airbike key. I carried her up the ramp as Liao headed down to help the rest.

“Shao,” he called back, “what did you find? Any clue why they held us up?”

I shook my head.

“No.”

I carried her back the way I'd come. When we got to the door, I put my mask over her face and pushed open the door.

Liao had parked the security airbike at the end of the row. I sat Xiao-Xing in front of me, keeping one arm around her for support as I started the engine. She flinched when we came up off the ground.

“I've got you,” I told her, and launched us back up through the swirling fog.

As we crossed back over the sea of gray, I wondered what would come of my actions. They might get rid of me, prosecute me, or they might cover their tracks and commend me. No matter what they did, though, they'd never tell me what happened. They'd never explain the presence of the haan. Maybe they didn't know themselves, but I doubted that. They'd known she'd be there. They didn't want us to see, and I had a feeling that when I checked into it later I would find no trace of those three kids in the records of Child Services. If I wanted answers, I'd have to find them myself.