He turned and saw a woman in a white mask sprinting out of the stairwell toward him. She was so fast. Ko vaguely remembered the sight of a similar mask on the face of a driver, crossing the Tsing Ma Bridge; then she was on him, a hammer blow punch spinning him around. He turned into the impact, feeling his teeth rattle and slid away down the flank of a parked vehicle. She came at him with a kick that stove in an ambulance’s fender, popping the headlight out like a glass eye.
Belatedly, Ko wished he’d asked Fixx if he could borrow his crossbow. In his pocket, his fingers traced the shape of something and on reflex he threw it at the guardian, moving and taking cover by the van’s open doors.
The woman caught the missile out of the air and examined it quizzically. “Tarot card,” she said, without a hint of exertion in her voice. “Knight of Wands.”
Ko came at her at full tilt, dragging a heavy fire extinguisher from a snap-clip on the wall. The red cylinder swung into the masked woman’s head and Ko heard something break. She staggered and fell over. He followed up by letting the thing off into her face, great gouts of white chemical foam smothering the guardian. She batted at the acidic stuff like an animal with tar on its fur.
“Mine,” he grated, recovering the card. Ko tossed the extinguisher and vaulted into the ambulance’s cab. He didn’t even need to hotwire it; the motor was already in standby mode. The thief stamped the accelerator pedal into the floor and the hydrogen engine snarled. Automatically, a two-tone siren started wailing and the blue lamps dotted over the vehicle strobed wildly.
In the wing mirror, Ko saw the woman in the white mask getting to her feet as he launched the ambulance out on to the street. She had her head cocked, like she was talking to someone.
Ko turned on to Princess Margaret Road and headed south, watching the accelerometer needle drift up the dial. He hoped that would be the last he’d see of the Masks, but somehow, he doubted it.
From the spidercopter’s window, Tze saw the spread of Wyldsky and he was pleased with it. The sprawling mass of the concert crowd moved like wheat in a breeze, rocking as they threw themselves into the music. The noise from the towering speaker stacks was so loud that the ’copter’s approach was hardly noticed. The flyer crossed behind the stage and turned to land in the statue park behind it.
Tze felt a definite spring in his step as he came down the gangway. His hands threaded together. Outwardly, he was maintaining an air of calm, but inwardly he felt almost giddy with anticipation. Tonight, the things he saw only as vivid dreams would be made flesh. Ahead, the band on stage were coming to the climax of their final number. He knew little about the group, cared even less. All that mattered was that the lead singer, the oily man who had been there that night at the tower, that he had greed and desires that the Cabal could easily turn to its advantage. Tze had seen the anti-corporate banners in the crowds, heard the flaming rhetoric in the songs. It was ample window-dressing for the main event. For Juno Qwan.
He turned, playfully tracing the face of a terracotta soldier and found her behind him, walking like she was approaching the gallows. “That won’t do,” he told the singer.
Juno’s face was tear-stained, her eyes frightened. “Am I going… to die?”
“You’re going to sing,” said the executive, tapping the hilt of an ornate ceremonial sword on his belt. “And it will be perfect.”
“Why are you dressed like that?”
Tze laughed. “I have a penchant for the theatrical, dear girl.”
She’d been watching him all through the flight from the castle. “I know you. I’ve seen your face. In my head. Sometimes.”
“They call that meta-engram imprinting.” He nodded. “An echo, if you like, from the donor.” Tze leered a little. “There’s some of me in you.”
“Are you my father?”
“In a way. Along with a thousand others.” He sighed. “It’s all terribly complicated.”
Juno looked at the stage. She seemed like a child now, lost and afraid. “I don’t want Heywood to hurt me any more. Please don’t let him. He… There are things in his eyes.”
Tze frowned. The simple honesty of the girl’s statement rang a warning note within him; but he dismissed it. This was no time for distractions. “He has business elsewhere, child. Monkey King will escort you.” The Mask loomed.
Juno hesitated. “I… I can’t remember the words.”
Tze nodded to the guardian. “Help her.”
Monkey King produced the leather case with the injector device and Juno’s eyes flashed with panic. “No, no! Just give me a moment…”
The Mask ignored her and shot a dose of Z3N into her jugular. She staggered and he picked her up, carrying her forward.
Tze let out a laugh and raised his hands to the sky. “Let’s rock!” he told the black clouds.
They caught up with him as the ambulance was crossing the Hung Horn interchange. Up ahead, past the toll booths and the spread of evening traffic, the black mouth of the Cross Harbour Tunnel yawned. Ko saw a blink of silver bonnet in the rear-view and knew it was the Vector.
Two pale masks were visible through the windscreen. The driver had the ram plate deployed from the bumper and slammed the ambulance hard, trying to force a skid. Ko took the bite out of the attack by chopping the throttle and drifting off the axis. The Mercedes sideswiped a motorcycle and the bike flew away like a fish jerked on a line.
The roar of engines turned hollow as they entered the tunnel, and the Vector came at him again. This time, one of the Masks was out of the window, crawling on to the roof, swarming over the dented hood. Ko swore as he lost a second of concentration, barely missing a snake-bus filled with clubbers. The masked man threw himself at the ambulance and caught on, clinging to the driver’s side. He used clawlike fingers to advance up the outside of the vehicle.
In the wing mirror Ko saw a chilling, expressionless face in blinks of reflected blue light. He threw over the steering wheel, hard. The screaming ambulance bounced off the inside of the tunnel with a blast of sound and tearing metal. Ko did it again, seeing the Mask disappear for a second into the shower of sparks and glass. The wing mirror tore away as he pressed the ambulance into the tunnel wall and held it there. Panels sheared off, and a crimson wash streamed over the tiles.
Behind the vehicle, the distended and broken body of Qin Hui spun away, bouncing up off the bonnet of the Vector and landing behind. The robot bus rode over the guardian, grinding meat, porcelain and arcane metal implants into the road.
White Snake activated the lasers in the headlights and opened fire.
Fixx was not happy about the place he found himself in. Looking for somewhere to make a stand in a hospital was never going to be a good idea. Too much chance of collateral damage, too many civvies. For a second he smelt the toasting flesh from the ferryboat massacre, saw Cajun Pork Cathy’s dead, dead eyes. Fixx blinked the thought away, and rested his hands on the edge of the nearest cot. There were ranks of bassinets in tight rows filling the ward. Each crib was cooing quietly to the sleeping babies within, monitoring them, turning them with piezoplastic paddles to keep the children content and prevent cot death. Fixx felt uncomfortable here with the SunKings in his hands, and when the door opened to admit the woman in the blue mask, it was almost a relief.
She carried a flecher, a Krupp by the looks of it, with a fat snail drum magazine. Two seconds of pressure on the trigger would murder every newborn in the room, should she wish it. The Mask nodded slightly. Fixx guessed she was listening to a comm-link.