Hell to Heaven (33 page)

It was Emma sitting at the back of my mind—no, her mind. I was in her head. I was in her body.

I managed to raise my head. ‘I’ve possessed Emma.’

‘That you have, my friend,’ the Tiger said. ‘I didn’t know you still had that power in you. I thought you would lose it when you turned.’

‘I’m going,’ I said. ‘Look after her.’

I took down the wall between her and me and ran.

I
felt like I’d been hit by a truck. The Tiger kneeled next to me, his hand on my head, his expression full of concern. ‘You back, girlie?’

‘Three times,’ I said.

‘Deal,’ he said. I raised my head but he stopped me. ‘Do you know what happened?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ I flipped onto my belly, picked myself up and moved towards the ooze demon. ‘Tell me what you’re doing with this.’

‘But he took you over!’

I turned and glared at him, aware of the power in my serpent eyes. ‘I do not want to talk about it.’ I gestured with my nose. ‘Demon. Now.’

‘Damn, girl, he’s still in there,’ he said with awe.

‘Nope, this is one hundred per cent me,’ I said. I sharpened my voice. ‘Demon!’

‘Tell her,’ the Tiger said, gesturing towards one of the scientists without looking away from me.

A woman stepped forward holding her clipboard.

‘Lower the weapons,’ I said. ‘I’m no danger to you.’

The guards hesitated.

‘Do as she says,’ the Tiger said.

The guards lowered their weapons and moved back to their perimeter positions. The scientists gingerly moved around me, trying to be casual and failing. For a quick evil moment I considered smiling at them to completely freak them out, then decided against it.

‘We captured the ooze demon in the snow, it was incapacitated by the cold,’ the woman said. ‘Nobody could touch it, so we called up a couple of sons to levitate it. We’ve been studying it down here ever since. Cold makes it hibernate; but what we’re really interested in is its morphic nature. It can change form.’

‘Can it shape shift as well or is it always just goo?’ I said, slithering around the table and studying the demon. I ducked out of the way as its tendrils lashed towards me.

‘No, it’s always goo,’ the woman said. ‘They tend to hang onto ceilings and drape themselves over their victims. Nasty way to go, they’re so toxic.’

‘The most difficult thing about them,’ one of the male scientists said, ‘is that it’s impossible to judge their level just by looking at them. We want to find a way to ascertain that.’

I stared at both of them with admiration. ‘Any progress?’

‘We have a technique using shen energy that works. At the moment, any half-Shen like me can get a rough idea of the level from a distance of about two metres,’ the woman said. ‘I can judge them to within five levels.’

‘What level is this one?’ I said, ducking under another lashing tendril. ‘It’s feisty, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a small one, level forty-five,’ she said.

I backed up next to the Tiger and watched it from a safer distance. ‘Have you hurt it at all?’

‘Morphics don’t seem to feel anything; they’re not sentient, they’re just automated nastiness,’ the Tiger said. ‘It doesn’t even seem to know where it is. All it knows is that it wants us to die.’

‘Typical,’ I said. ‘Any leads on the gold demon essence the demon copies were generating?’

‘Uh, they haven’t studied them yet,’ the Tiger said. ‘We need your go-ahead.’

I turned to look at him. ‘You can study them but don’t cut them up, break them or destroy them. Preferably don’t cause them any discomfort either.’

‘How about pain equivalent to a hypodermic?’ one of the scientists said.

‘You’re going to stick needles in them?’ I said.

The scientists nodded, enthusiastic. ‘We want to see inside. We realise we can’t cut them up, but sucking out some of their juice would work a treat.’

‘Okay, but only if they give you permission after you’ve fully informed them of everything involved with the procedure.’

‘The two students have already told us we can basically do anything we like with them,’ the Tiger said. ‘They already volunteered.’

‘They were good kids,’ I said. ‘I think some of that has transferred across.’

The Tiger gestured towards the lift. ‘It’s getting late. We should go back down and take a look at the Snakemobile.’

One of the scientists hissed with laughter, and one of the guards smirked and quietly hummed the theme from
Inspector Gadget.

‘I hate you all,’ I said as I followed the Tiger to the lift.

The Snakemobile was a spherical hard spacesuit set on top of a wheeled propulsion unit powered by an electric motor and three car batteries. Panels sloped down from the sphere, over the motor and batteries to the wheels. I circled the vehicle with curiosity. Two rods stuck out from the front of the lower part.

‘What are the rods for?’ I said.

‘Visibility inside won’t be that great so we put them there as antennae to warn you if you’re about to hit something,’ the Tiger said.

‘Not “we”, “he”,’ one of the scientists said. ‘It was Dad’s idea, don’t blame us.’

The Tiger opened the lid of the sphere. ‘You sit in here and there are three control sticks for you to move it.’

I curled up inside the hard suit and pushed my snout against the view port. ‘This is even more ridiculous.’

‘You control it with your tail,’ one of the Tiger’s children said. ‘Can you push it hard enough?’

I touched the lever behind me with my tail; it didn’t shift. I gave it a better push and the sphere lurched forward on its wheels and stopped, slamming my snout painfully against the plastic.

‘The two levers on either side of the main lever are for steering,’ the scientist said. ‘We realise you can only push one at a time, so it’ll stop, then turn, then you can push it to go forward again.’

‘This would be much easier if you just learnt telekinesis,’ the Tiger said, his voice muffled by the fibreglass shell around me.

‘Can’t do it,’ I said.

‘Seems to be working well enough,’ one of the scientists said as I rocked forward, and turned left and right. ‘Let’s try it outside.’

They moved it outside on a standard box trailer, then rolled it off and opened it for me to climb inside. I slithered in and they closed the top above me. I pushed the lever and the wheels spun in the gravel, then bit into it and I moved forward. I spun to face the Tiger, then spun back again and moved towards the scientists.

‘Seems to work well,’ a woman scientist said. ‘Try it up the hill? You’ll be climbing in it.’

‘You know what you look like?’ the Tiger said. ‘Say it for me, babe, go on.’

‘Haven’t we arranged enough executions for you?’ I said.

He waved one hand dismissively. ‘Can never be executed enough, you know that.’

I faced the hill and hit the lever to go forward. The unit rattled to the bottom of the hill, then stopped, its wheels spinning in the gravel.

One of the scientists ran forward and fiddled with the settings. ‘Ramped it up. Try again.’

‘Say the line!’ the Tiger said.

‘No,’ I said, and pushed forward again.

The wheels bit into the gravel and I lurched forward. The vehicle tipped over and I found myself upside down inside the top.

‘You okay, Emma?’ the Tiger said.

‘Yeah,’ I said as they righted me. ‘What happened?’

‘May be top-heavy with your weight in it,’ one of them said. ‘You’re heavier than expected.’

‘Fatty,’ the Tiger said. ‘Say the line!’

I tried the hill again but the vehicle tipped over again.

‘Let’s try giving you a push up,’ one of the women said, righting me. She pushed me slightly up the hill.

‘How steep will it be?’ I said.

‘Fucking steep,’ the Tiger said. ‘Come on, say it for me. Do it.’

I pushed the lever to move forward and the unit tipped over again.

‘Can we weight the bottom?’ the Tiger said.

‘If we do that it’ll wear out the batteries before she gets there,’ the woman scientist said. ‘How far does it have to go?’

‘About fifty k’s.’

‘We’ll be lucky to get that much life out of the batteries we have now. Only way is if we can make the snake smaller.’

‘This is as small as I can go for any length of time,’ I said.

The Tiger shrugged. ‘Back to the drawing board.’

I turned the unit so it was facing down the hill, pushed the lever and it tipped over again, this time rolling down the hill. The Tiger moved quickly to stop me and pushed me upright again.

‘We’ll have to work something else out, but thanks for your time, everybody,’ I said.

The Tiger’s expression filled with mischief through the view port. ‘Say the line and I’ll let you out.’

‘Go to hell.’

‘Come on, Emma, do it for me,’ he said. ‘You know you want to!’

‘Oh my God, these rods on the front are just for show. They don’t do anything, do they?’

‘Couldn’t resist.’

‘Blame Dad. We thought he was being completely lame and tried to stop him,’ one of the scientists said.

‘Let me out!’

‘Just the word! Say the word!’

I took a deep breath and mumbled, ‘Exterminate.’

’Yes!’ the Tiger yelled, punching the air. He popped the lid so I could climb out. ‘Totally worth any number of executions!’

The ringing woke me up. I waved my hand over the bedside table a few times, then hit the alarm button on my clock. It didn’t work, so I hit it again, then realised it was the phone. I picked it up and blearily saw the time as I pressed the button: 1:24 am. ‘Hello?’

‘Lady Emma, my apologies for waking you,’ said the demon, ‘but Lord Gold said that you would want to know. We’ve found the common thread in the data. We have the name of the central agency that all the missing people went to.’

I snapped awake. ‘Are you still at the office?’

‘Yes.’

I threw my legs over the side of the bed. ‘I’m on my way.’

‘Lord Gold says we’ll pick you up, and bring your Hong Kong ID card,’ he said, and hung up.

I quickly dressed and went out into the hallway. As I closed my bedroom door, I imagined for a moment that John was asleep in his room and I could give in to the temptation to go visit him.

I turned and headed out the front door.

Gold, Calcite and Zara were waiting in the lobby. The night sky glowed with the lights of Hong Kong, reflected in the low thick clouds that swathed the Peak above us.

Gold gestured for me to follow him to the family car. ‘We’ll drive you across the border, ma’am, it’s in Shenzhen.’

‘Who’s on duty?’ I said.

‘Sit and Lee. I notified them and I’ll stay in contact.’

‘Good job,’ I said, climbing into the front passenger seat. ‘Let’s go.’

‘It’s a mid-range employment agency, nothing special,’ Gold said as he drove us through the deserted Western Harbour Tunnel, the tunnel’s blazing lights reflecting on the car’s glass. ‘They have an office in Dongmen, near the main shops, very central.’

‘Do they know we’re on our way?’

Gold shrugged. ‘Hard to say. I hope not.’

‘All the people who disappeared had something in their records that was linked to this agency,’ Zara said. ‘Even something as minor as a phone number in their call records.’

‘Wait, the government had their call records?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ Calcite said. ‘So they can monitor who calls who and track down dissidents.’

‘That’s a gross invasion of privacy,’ I said.

‘Uh, this is China,’ Gold said. ‘Privacy is an interesting theoretical concept.’

‘Most people are so accustomed to living crammed in together that they don’t have the same level of respect for privacy that you spoiled Westerners do,’ Zara said.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Look at the way people refuse to talk to you on the phone until you identify yourself. And everybody has their phone number withheld on caller display.’

‘With the government keeping call records, can you blame them?’ Calcite said.

The streets of Shenzhen were nearly deserted, the building fronts lit only by the streetlights and minimal internal shop lights. Tired prostitutes in high heels and
huge wigs stared blankly at us as we passed, not seeming to care whether we stopped or not.

Two women were digging a large hole through the paving stones on one side of the road; they stopped and watched us as we drove past. They wore grey thick shirts and pants over their colourful floral clothes and worked under a single electric light bulb.

The agency was in the centre of the shopping district, surrounded by shiny new ultra-modern concrete shopping malls and white-tiled office buildings. Gold stopped the car under one of the office buildings. When we climbed out, he made the car invisible—easier than attempting to find a parking space to avoid being booked by the police. We went to the door of the building and Gold held one hand over it; it unlocked with an audible click. We opened the door, Zara checking behind us to ensure that nobody saw us go in.

We went up to the nineteenth floor, where a number of offices were located along a narrow corridor with white tiles on the walls and floor. The company names were all in Chinese. Gold stopped outside one of the glass doors and concentrated. He nodded, opened the door and we went in. The office floor was covered in shredded paper.

Gold groaned. ‘They knew we were coming.’

He went to one of the desks, picked up the monitor from the computer box and dropped it onto the floor. He removed the box’s external case, tossed it to one side, then held his hand over the hard disk.

He grinned and shook his head. ‘What an idiot. He deleted the data the old-fashioned way.’

‘It’s not gone?’ I said.

Gold yanked the cables from the back of the hard disk, then concentrated and made the screws holding it
into the chassis spin out. He pulled it free. ‘Take the hard disks, guys, we’ll scan them all.’

Zara and Calcite moved through the office pulling the computers apart and extracting the hard disks.

Gold held up the hard disk he’d just removed: a plain silver rectangle with sockets in the back to connect it to the PC. ‘They deleted the data, but they didn’t know what they were doing. The FAT—the file allocation table—sits at the start of the disk and tells the computer where to look for the data. When you delete a file, it just removes the reference from the FAT; it doesn’t delete the actual data. Just like throwing away the index card in a library—the book is still there.’ He turned the disk in his hand and focused for a moment. ‘All the data is still there. It’s fragmented but it shouldn’t be too hard for us to put it back together and find out where everybody was being sent.’