For the first time in her life, Kyra had seen pure, unrelieved bitterness. It was hatred so intense she couldn’t understand what could cause it.
Then he looked at her again and she knew that she was not the target. They were the target of his anger, whoever they were, the ones who had driven him to choose this life. They had led him to this moment when he had to abandon his homeland or die. Kyra Stryker had no idea exactly who they were, but in that moment she hated them as much as Pioneer did, and then she understood.
She looked back at him. They’ll have to kill me to stop me from getting you out, she thought. Kyra hoped that he understood.
Pioneer eyed the young woman. She was still smiling, but it was a facade. There was a hard look in her eyes that sent him a very different message and, in the instant he saw it, he trusted her. She couldn’t speak Mandarin, which perplexed him for a second. Why did they send someone without that skill? Something was wrong. But this girl had come for him anyway, and that meant she was a bold one. He hoped it would be enough. His options were limited at the moment.
“I remember. Let me get my coat. It’s very cold outside,” he said in his native tongue. He saw that she tensed up as he started speaking. She clearly didn’t understand a word he’d said, but she relaxed when he turned away, walked to the closet, and retrieved a thick jacket. Then he indulged in a moment to look around home. It had never been a beautiful place, but it had been his shelter. The dishes were undone, food was still on the table. His books were lined up neatly on the shelf by a small television where he spent most of his nights watching party-approved foreign movies. The bed was unmade and his dirty clothing would now sit in the basket until the MSS took it away, searched it, and then burned it. His desk was neat at least. It was a writing desk built by his father for his mother from light brown Chinese elm with a matching chair. It was one of the few gifts that his parents had been able to leave him. He’d committed much of his treason sitting at that desk as he typed out reports on his laptop for the CIA. There was not much here that he could live without, but the desk he would miss. He prayed that rather than destroy it, some MSS officer might appreciate the craftsmanship and take it for his own. He thought for a moment that it might have been better to burn it, but in truth he wanted it to survive even if he couldn’t be there to own it. He’d known for years that he wouldn’t be able to take the desk to the United States were he ever exfiltrated. It was far too large and he’d known there wouldn’t be enough time to pack it up and ship it out of the country.
The CIA had not confirmed that they would be getting him out, so he had packed nothing. He did have a few photographs of his parents in a small envelope; he slipped them into his pocket. His parents were dead. It was the first moment that he was grateful for the party’s one-child policy. He had no siblings, so there was no one else to leave behind. No wife, no children, no lover, not even a pet. He’d only allowed himself a few friends at work, who would wonder tomorrow morning where he was. The party would almost certainly never tell them the truth about his disappearance. Perhaps the MSS would feed them a lie about his being killed in an automobile accident. He hoped they wouldn’t stage one and kill someone to provide a plausible foundation for the story.
He put on his coat and took his last look around his home. Thank you, he thought. He had suddenly become a sentimental fool, but this once he could not bring himself to care. A man who couldn’t be sentimental at such a moment didn’t deserve to live.
He looked at the young American woman and smiled. “I’m ready. Lead on,” he said. He motioned with his hands so she would understand.
Kyra took him by the hand and led him out the door. He turned, locked it, and they walked down the hallway toward the stairwell.
The stairway shaft leading to the first floor was filthy beyond anything Kyra had ever seen. She refused to touch the handrail and prayed that she wouldn’t fall, more out of fear of touching some organism that she’d never be able to clean off than for physical safety. She was unsure that the builders had ever painted the walls, much less repainted them over the years. Years of grime covered the steps, and the smell rising from below was ugly enough to be nauseating.
Kyra held Pioneer’s hand as they took the stairs by twos as fast as she thought was safe. They’d covered less than half the distance to the ground floor when she heard a noise from above. Several pairs of feet struck the metal stairs. She took a short moment to judge their direction of travel by the volume and decided they were descending the steps at least by threes. Kyra grabbed Pioneer by the arm and led him down the next flight to the sixth-floor exit. She tested the knob, found it unlocked, and no one was standing on the other side. Kyra pulled her charge through the door and closed it as quietly as she had opened it. She scanned the hallway and looked around the corner for any alcove deep enough for them to hide. There were none. The choice was to remain in place or run around the curved hallway to the opposite stairwell. Kyra judged the distance and decided they could not get out of sight before the men on the stairs would reach their level. She pushed Pioneer against the wall next to the door hinge so the opening door would give him some cover. She stood on the opposite side and set her balance for a strike to the face of anyone who came through.
The feet on the stairs reached their level. The men on the other side did not test the door. They continued down and Kyra counted to thirty before cracking the door. Without it closed and impeding her hearing, she took another moment to judge their distance and direction. The men were nearing the bottom and still moving.
She had focused on sounds in the stairwell too much. The MSS officer came around the corner, his feet silent on the worn carpet, and he caught Kyra across the face with a stiff forearm, pinning her against the wall. Pioneer grabbed for the man’s head. The attacker kicked backward into Pioneer’s stomach and knocked him to the ground with a hard grunt. It was a moment’s distraction that he couldn’t afford, and Kyra made him pay for it.
She kicked her own foot back against the MSS agent’s knee, and the man’s joint bent in the wrong direction almost to the point of breaking. He cried out and staggered back, unable to keep his weight against the woman to pin her to the wall. Kyra threw a hard elbow, caught him square on the nose, and she felt the crunch against her arm. The adrenaline killed the pain from the unhealed wound in her triceps; she felt nothing but the hard hit of the man’s face against her elbow. Her attacker fell back further, his hands over his face to hold back the blood that started to flow from his damaged nose. Kyra drove her foot into his stomach, but the officer was too close to the wall and Kyra’s kick compressed his solar plexus enough to drive the wind and vomit out of him. He started to double over. Kyra pivoted, stepped forward to close the distance, grabbed his hair, and pushed down as she drove her knee against his face. The bones she had cracked before shattered this time. The strike knocked him backward against the wall. Kyra finished him with a forearm across his throat. The officer fell to the floor, curled into the fetal position, unable to make a noise other than a rasping gurgle as he tried to suck in air and tasted his own blood for his trouble.
Kyra led Pioneer around the bending hall to another stairwell. She had planned to cross over to the building’s other side at some point, but Mitchell had left it to her discretion when to make the move. They entered the second shaft, as filthy as the first, and she listened. There were shouts from far above and below, but Kyra started down anyway.