41
Four of the six men were already in position by the time Li Na returned to the mall entrance, including Lam. They waited by the door nearest the cameras that had spotted her.
They hid in the waning shadows or behind objects, eyes fixed on the entrance. When Li Na appeared, Lam recognized her immediately.
Through a small handheld scope, he could see her father’s characteristics in her. The shape of her eyes and nose were the same. Even the way she moved.
“Wait,” the leader breathed, standing several meters away. “Until she’s inside.” He raised a small hidden microphone closer to his mouth and whispered for the last two men to continue around the building to the opposite side.
The rest of the team continued watching until the teenage girl reached the set of double doors and pulled one open.
As soon as it closed again behind her, Lam was in motion.
The line for food this time was longer, now with over a dozen others waiting in front of the same kitchen. The seating area also had more people, few of them speaking, and the same eerie feeling she’d had the night before.
But there was something else. As Li Na approached the line, something felt very odd. More than just eeriness. More than the city’s dark mood. This was stronger.
It was a feeling… or a smell. A strangely putrid sense that quickly grew into something even worse: fear.
Suddenly, the hair on Li Na’s neck and arms stood up, and the very air around her seemed to stop. It was her last thought before she saw the flash of yellow and felt the air flutter past her face. She turned instinctively to see something large stuck into the shoulder of the man standing in front of her. The man staggered and turned, before abruptly collapsing onto his knees.
Time slowed, and Li Na watched with confusion as the man fell forward, hitting the marble tiles like a sack of meal, folding at the waist and pushing himself onto his side — his last movement before his frightened eyes went blank.
The next sensation followed immediately: panic.
Li Na whirled to see another yellow blur just before it hit her above the clavicle. She stumbled back, squinting at the group of men running toward her.
She reached down and felt the fibrous yellow tuft. It was a dart. The end was soft, and she plucked it from her skin, unable to feel the sting.
The momentum of the dart’s tiny steel ball had already pushed the entire dose of vecuronium into her bloodstream, where it immediately began to spread. The first traces instantly reached the closest skeletal muscles.
The men drew nearer as the teenager’s arms and legs began to tremble and slow. The neuromuscular agent was now binding itself to receptors on the motor nerve cells to block the conduction between cells, rendering Li Na’s muscular functions inoperable.
A manic Lam was now almost to the girl with the larger Peng only steps behind. But realizing he wouldn’t reach Lam in time, he immediately reached under his shirt to withdraw his pistol.
Once firmly gripping the weapon in his hand, Peng slid to a stop and raised his arm, aiming squarely at Lam’s back. “STOP!”
Lam slowed and looked back at the very moment Li Na collapsed to the floor in front of him. The dark barrel of Peng’s QSW-06 semiautomatic trained directly upon Lam, who glanced at him and then down to the girl.
“Get away from her.”
Lam watched Peng intently, inching to within a meter of his target before the soldier’s finger snaked through the trigger guard.
“Don’t touch her.”
The shorter man’s eyes narrowed, moving yet again toward the girl. No. He was so close! He had to have her. He tried to step closer. It was so easy. His dream was within reach. Literally within reach!
“Get… away,” Peng repeated.
Lam didn’t move. He couldn’t step back. Not now. Instead, he angled himself away, hiding his own gun on the other side of his body, and slowly raised his hand toward his hip.
In a flash, Lam whipped the gun from his holster and fired three rounds at Peng, who remained motionless. Screams erupted around them with the deafening cracks of the gun, leaving the two men motionless and staring into each other’s eyes.
But Peng did not fire back. He swayed slightly before finally surprising Lam — by smiling.
“Get down, or I will kill you.”
Over the screams, Lam’s face grew nervous, and he stared at the gun in his hand. Blanks. His eyes returned to Peng’s finger now beginning to tighten around his own trigger.
Without a word, Lam complied and lowered himself onto his knees.
Li Na lay still on the floor, the paralytic agent having reached over eighty percent of the teenager’s muscle receptors.
But something was different.
The synaptic conduction between Li Na’s muscle cells was in overdrive. And the binding strength of the agent was already beginning to weaken far more quickly than its normal twenty minutes. Moreover, as the bindings decreased, the stalled conduction between the cells began to re-accelerate. The result was that the girl’s muscles were already beginning to respond again. Catching up to her brain cells, which never slowed and were now fully processing what had just happened.
They had found her.
Motionless in front of her, Lam was turned away, facing Peng. His eyes seethed at the officer behind the pistol, who was now flanked by two more of his men.
“Stay down.”
Lam did as he was told, not moving. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, he was interrupted by a sudden commotion behind him.
Before anyone could reach her, Li Na was back on her feet. She glanced at the men, and seeing one aiming a strange gun, she sprang forward and ran hard for the far exit. Hearing another dart blow past her, she accelerated, driven by two legs surging with renewed strength.
Another dart caught the corner of her shirt, but the needle found nothing except air on the other side.
Li Na was now running at full speed, headed for a short hallway ending with double doors. And then she felt it. Again. The same tingling under her skin that had given her the first warning.
Someone was on the other side of the doors.
Instead of slowing, Li Na raced even harder and lowered her head. She hit the horizontal release with all of her might, sending one of the doors slamming open and squarely into the face of Peng’s man.
The impact was a complete surprise, knocking his head against the wall behind him then crashing to the floor.
Through a short corridor and another set of doors, she reached the cool air outside with only a singular thought.
Run!
42
The most surprising realization upon reaching the garage was how strong she felt. Li Na’s legs carried her with a speed she’d never experienced before. And it wasn’t just the speed. It was the endurance — in her lungs, and more importantly, in her heart.
It was all driven by sheer panic. The adrenaline releases she had read about in fight or flight situations. But how did they find her? And how did they manage it so fast?
Li Na was barely winded when she reached the third level of the garage and spotted the cars again. This time she ran straight for them, without hesitation, and opened the first one she found unlocked. She prayed desperately that if the owners worried so little about locking their cars, then perhaps at least one also left the keys behind.
And they had. In the second to last car, Li Na found a set of keys under the center console. She grabbed them and looked for an ignition but found nothing. No key slot like she’d always seen before. Instead, there was only a round, gray button.