At least he had a parking space for this thing now.
The scraping of the damaged wheel echoed angrily against the ramp walls as he steered the airbike towards the space reserved for him. He tried to forget his fury over the loss of his car, and grant priority to Yoyo’s wellbeing. In a mood of selflessness he extended his concern to Daxiong, as he hurried through the car park, hoping no one would see him with his soot-blackened face, but there wasn’t even anyone in the lift. There was a uniform light on the walls, the unit hummed gently. By the time he finally slammed the door of his loft behind him, he was certain no one had caught sight of him.
He sighed with relief and ran his hands over his face and through his hair.
He closed his eyes.
Immediately he saw the corpses, the boy with his face shot away, the dying, spinning girl with bright red fountains shooting from her shredded shoulder artery, her severed arm, saw himself freeing the gun from her clawed fingers – what was up, what had gone wrong? Hadn’t he wanted to lead a peaceful life? And now this. Within a few days. Abused children, mutilated young people, he himself more dead than alive. Reality? A dream, a film?
A film, exactly. And popcorn and something nice and cold. Lean back. What was on next? Quyu II, the Return?
Impressions came chasing after him like rabid dogs. He mustn’t let it all get to him. He would never be able to get rid of it again; from now on the images would visit him on sleepless nights, but at the moment he had to think. Stack up his thoughts like building-blocks. Make a plan.
Scattering T-shirt and trousers carelessly around the sitting room, he went to the bathroom, turned on the shower, washed soot and blood from his skin, took stock. Yoyo and Daxiong had got away. A hypothesis, admittedly, temporarily elevated to the status of fact, but then he had to have something to go on. Secondly, Yoyo had been able to save her computer, which was now in his possession. Of course Zhao wouldn’t be so naïve as to believe that all the data were on the hard drive of a single, small device. The control room hadn’t been destroyed on a whim, it had served the purpose of annihilating the group’s infrastructure and possibly all the other devices that Yoyo had transferred the data onto. On the other hand Yoyo’s bluff might have achieved the desired effect when she suggested to Zhao that she’d left her computer at the control centre. Zhao must have believed he’d solved that problem at least.
What would he do next?
The answer was obvious. He would of course ask himself the question that had been troubling him ceaselessly for days: Who had Yoyo told about her discovery, and who out of them was still alive?
I know about it, he thought, as the hot streams of water massaged the back of neck. No, wrong! I know that she’s found something out, but I don’t know what. Zhao, on the other hand, knows that I know precisely nothing. Nice and Socratic. I’m not really an accessory, I’m only a witness to a few regrettable incidents.
Only? Quite enough to get him second place on Zhao’s hit list.
On the other hand, what were the chances that Zhao planned to kill him as well? Very high, looking at it realistically, but first he might hope that Jericho, the dewy-eyed twit, would lead him to Yoyo a second time.
Jericho paused, his hair a foam sculpture.
Then why hadn’t Zhao followed him here?
Very simple. Because Yoyo had actually been able to get away! Zhao assumed she was still in Quyu. He had preferred to continue with the chase. And in any case he didn’t need to follow Jericho, since he knew exactly where he would find him.
Still. He’d gained some time.
How much?
He rinsed his hair. Black trickles ran down his chest and arms, as if new dirt were constantly emerging from his pores. A stinging pain testified to some of the grazes he’d got when he crashed in the converter hall. He wondered how Yoyo was at that moment. Probably traumatised, although her big mouth hadn’t seemed to be in a state of shock. She’d still been capable of producing a reliable torrent of insults, suggesting a certain mental balance and, at the very least, a degree of resilience. The girl, he guessed, was as tough as sharkskin.
He turned off the tap.
Zhao would show up sooner or later. It was quite possible that he was already on his way. He reached for a towel, ran, still drying himself, through the sunlit expanse of his loft, which he would have to leave again almost as soon as he’d moved in, slipped into fresh clothes, tidied his hair very slightly. Next on the agenda was the flight of Owen Jericho, Inc., which consisted of Jericho himself, Diane, and all his technical equipment. He disconnected the hard drive, a portable unit the size of a shoe-box, and stuffed it in a rucksack along with the keyboard, a foldable touchscreen surface and a transparent 20-inch display. Along with that he packed his ID card, money, his spare mobile phone, a small hard drive for backups, Yoyo’s computer, headphones and Tu’s hologoggles. He stuffed underwear and T-shirts in with it, a spare pair of trousers, slippers, shaving materials, some pens and paper. The only things left in the loft were his control console and large screen, a few bits of hardware and various built-in drives, all of which were, without Diane, as useless as prosthetic limbs without anyone to wear them. No one who managed to get in here would find a bit or a byte; they wouldn’t be able to reconstruct Jericho’s work. The flat was more or less data-free.
Without turning round again, he went outside.
In the underground car park he strapped the rucksack onto the pillion seat of the airbike and examined the bent jet. With both hands he forced it back into its position. The result didn’t look very convincing, but at least it could be adjusted now. Then he fiddled around with the tailfin, drove the bike up the ramp and, with a certain satisfaction, noticed that the sound of scraping had gone. The ball wheel was turning again. He had swapped the car for an airbike, not voluntarily, but it was still a swap.
Outside the sun poured its light down like phosphorescent milk. Jericho narrowed his eyes, but Zhao was nowhere to be seen.
Where to now?
He wouldn’t have to go far. In a city like Shanghai the best hiding-place was always right around the corner. Instead of heading for the notoriously jammed Huaihai Donglu, he took less frequented alleyways that connected Xintiandi with the Yu Gardens, to the Liuhekou Lu, known for a long time as an authentic residue of the Shanghai that had stirred the imaginations of incorrigible colonial romantics. But what, over the passing centuries, did authenticity consist of? Only what existed, the Party taught. There had been a covered market here, scattered with flower stalls, echoing with the scolding of all kinds of animals, chickens jerking their heads back and forth to demonstrate their edible freshness, crickets tapping away against the walls of jam jars and bringing consolation to their owners, whose lives were not all that different in the end. Then, three years ago, the market had made way for a handsome shikumen complex, full of bistros, internet cafés, boutiques and galleries. Diagonally opposite, a few last market stalls were asserting themselves with the defiance of old gentlemen stopping in the middle of the carriageway and threatening approaching cars with sticks until friendly fellow citizens walked them to the other side and assured them of the utter pointlessness of their actions. They too were still a piece of ‘authentic’ Shanghai. Tomorrow they would have disappeared, to make way for a new ‘authenticity’.