Chong: Gohan, we might have a problem.
Gohan: What is it?
Chong: She’s starting to figure it out. I don’t know where she’s getting her information from, but she knows the new station is powering something. She suspects the existence of the device.
Gohan: Just stall her a little longer.
Chong: I’ll try, but
The messages ended there. I started at the screen.
“He’s a gonzo,” I said.
Gohan must have either met him at his father’s company before he turned gonzo, or got to him after Chong got fired and recruited him then. Either way, when Vamp approached Chong the night I was in the hospital, he must have taken it straight to Gohan.
I cycled back through his message log and saw three other conversations stored there.
Chong: There might be another issue. It seems that Sam has had contact with one of the changelings. She also has been in contact with a haan named Nix.
Gohan: The haan can’t know about this. Did either of them indicate specifically that they knew?
Chong: Yes. They know, but not about our involvement.
Gohan: Is the plan still in effect, then? Are we still on schedule?
Chong: Yes.
Gohan: And the others don’t know about you?
Chong: No.
Gohan: Continue as we planned. I’ll try and find a way to take the haan who know out of circulation.
The next conversation had taken place later, after the first attempt when Ginzho had lost power.
Chong: Gohan, we have a problem.
Gohan: What sort of problem?
Chong: The Xinzhongzi substation that powers the project is interfering with our attempt to trigger the cascade failure.
Gohan: Are you certain? I saw the power fail.
Chong: Isolated failures. All of the work we’d done on this didn’t account for the extra power storage capacity. I can’t guarantee we’ll see a full failure while it’s online.
Gohan: I can’t just take it offline, it will look too suspicious.
Chong: Sam seems to think she can manage it if I can get her into the station.
Gohan: How?
Chong: I’m not sure, but she seems pretty confident.
Gohan: Let her take her shot then. Just stall her long enough for us to store a charge that can power Rapture once the blackout is under way. And make sure this doesn’t come back to us.
“Rapture,” I said under my breath. “Nix, any idea what he means?”
“His reference seems to indicate some kind of device, with Rapture being its designation.”
“You said before that the haan had developed some kind of failsafe,” I said. “Something they could bargain with if they were threatened. Could that be it?”
“Perhaps.”
The messages ended there. Anything older than that in the message logs had been erased.
I turned to Nix. “Why does Gohan want this?”
“I don’t know.”
“He didn’t just turn a blind eye… he wanted Chong to help us take down his father’s company.”
“It would appear so.”
“But this hurts the haan. Gohan worships them.” It didn’t make sense. We’d missed something. Had this all been an act on Gohan’s part? Could he have been planning to undermine the haan all along? “Okay, first things first. Let’s get out of here.”
I opened my Escher tablet to grab the remote, but I didn’t see it. “Damn it….”
I widened the field so I could see better into the space, and that’s when I realized. I’d dropped the remote into the shared space, not my personal one. It wasn’t in there anymore. In its place, I saw the bin had been spotted with blood.
Chong. Chong had taken it. He must have been hoping for a quick escape when Qian showed up, but he didn’t get the chance. Qian took him, and the gate remote with him.
“Damn it!”
I called Vamp, and as soon as he picked up, I spoke.
“Vamp, you need to hear this right now,” I said. “Chong is missing, a haan grabbed him.”
“A haan?”
“It was a haan, Vamp, I saw the whole thing. The thing is, I found his phone after the attack and found out he’s been in direct contact with Gohan Sòng, probably this whole time. I’m putting his phone in the Escher space so you can see for yourself.”
“Wait. If Gohan knew, then why wouldn’t he report it?” Vamp asked. “He could have had us all arrested by now.”
I dropped the phone into the field, and then closed it.
“I just dropped his phone into our shared tablet space,” I told him. “He wants us to succeed, for some reason, I have no idea why. Just let the others know. I’ve got to go, security is looking for me. I’m going to try to lie low until we can get that power station offline.”
“Understood…. I’ve got Chong’s phone. He said you thought you had a way to do it?”
“I can’t. My idea won’t work, we need to think of something else.”
“Come and meet me,” he said. “I know someplace you can stay off the radar, and we can figure it out. Can you use the gate?”
“Not the remote. Chong had it when he got grabbed. It might be gone for good.”
“They’re looking for you, Sam, big time. Don’t go back into the city right now. Just lie low until tonight, then meet me at a club called Phage Panic. I’ll send the location to you.”
“Then what?”
“I know where you can stay. We’ll hide out there until we can figure this out.”
“You’re the best.”
“Okay,” I told Nix. “Looks like we’ve got some time to kill. Can you get us back up onto the street?”
“Yes.”
“We need to grab a room, somewhere they won’t ask questions. At sundown, we’ll head out and meet with Vamp.”
“What about your friend?”
Qian had warned me. She’d told me that I wouldn’t be able to protect myself from her, or my family, or friends. It looked like she’d begun to make good on that promise.
“I don’t know. We can’t stay down here. If anyone can help us track him down, it’s Vamp.”
I looked down the darkened tunnel, though, and feared that there might not be anything left to track.
Chapter Nineteen
Phage Panic turned out to be in the blue district in the lower level of the Guanghuan mall. Under cover of darkness and the bustle of the night crowd, Nix and I managed to skirt security long enough to grab a bus to the Gong district. I gripped one of the rubber straps and stood with my chin tucked against my elbow, trying to keep my face at least somewhat hidden. Through the sliver of window I could see, I watched the city go by and tried to figure out what to do next.
Dao-Ming, are you there? The message floated in front of the window for a while, but she answered.
I’m here, Sam.
I know about the explosives, I told her.
She disconnected.
She’d bombed the gonzo rally. If I wasn’t sure before, I was now. She’d bombed the rally to try to kill Gohan, and almost blew up Alexei instead. All those people, a lot of them not even gonzos, and she killed them all.
Weren’t you about to do the same thing, though? A voice nagged.
It wasn’t the same, I thought, but I wasn’t so sure. Part of me was glad I didn’t get the chance to find out.
I thought about Chong’s texts, instead, trying to make them fit somehow.
Chong: There might be another issue. It seems that Sam has had contact with one of the changelings. She also has been in contact with a haan named Nix.
Gohan: The haan can’t know about this. Did either of them indicate specifically that they knew?