The World After (4 page)

Out of the heavy rain and strong wind, they needed several seconds to adjust to the eerie silence. A winding staircase was heading downwards; they descended it as quickly as their battered bodies allowed. Jinhun was unable to walk alone, and Taylor had to support him despite the fact that his leg was still hurting a lot.

At the bottom of the stairs, a glass door that was unlocked and half-open led them into a long corridor with lots of identical glass or aluminum doors on each side. This was one of the many modern buildings in which office spaces were rented by thousands of different companies from all spheres of business. Luckily for the two of them, in pretty much every building of this type, nobody paid any attention or knew many people that actually worked in the same place as them.

Taylor and Jinhun separated. Jinhun was insecure for the first few steps when he had to support his own weight, but very quickly managed to hobble 'decently.' They headed down the corridor, walking as calmly as they could considering the circumstances and their injuries.

They reached the elevators undisturbed. There they found two Asian women in their thirties, both dressed in identical grey business suits that completely destroyed everything feminine about them. This was a very lucky coincidence, because they wouldn't have been able to command the elevator themselves as, once again, it was managed by a computer program that responded only to commands given via brain implants. The two career-chasing women stopped talking as they were approached. A few side looks revealed that they noticed their company.

Both Taylor and Jinhun were soaked after their roof adventure; their clothes were dirty and torn, not to mention the blood stains that both of them had.

“It's raining and very slippery out there.” Jinhun tried to cast a smile at the two women, who just turned their backs on them without honoring them with any comment or response. The elevator doors opened shortly after; all four of them walked in.

The two men hoped that their destination was the ground floor, because the only way one could command an elevator of such type was through a brain implant, and without the two ladies they didn't stand a chance. Their hopes came to an abrupt end. The moment the doors closed, the light indicating that the lift would take them to fifth floor lit up. The few-second journey wasn't disturbed by talk. When the doors opened, their group of four walked out. Taylor and Jinhun strategically fell in behind the two women, who hurried down an identical corridor to the one they just left on the top level.

They stopped in the middle of the long stretch. “Now what?” Jinhun asked. “In less than five minutes, the police will have this whole building surrounded and will start thermal scanning.”

“The exits are probably already blocked anyway. We must find another way out.”

They walked back to the elevators where there was a window facing outside. Taylor knocked on it just to confirm what they already suspected – all the windows of the building were armored and practically unbreakable. The longer they remained inside the building, the less their chances were to avoid being caught, and both men knew that.

Suddenly, Taylor looked at his companion and a broad smile appeared on his face.

“What?” Jinhun asked.

“You have a lighter by any chance?” Taylor asked while taking out of his half-ripped pocket a soaking map of Hong Kong.

“I like classics – I have a match.” He tossed a small box to Taylor, already knowing what he had come up with.

“I never thought I'd see one of these again.”

“I bought huge quantities of them when they stopped producing them worldwide. Every box I managed to find was mine until they completely disappeared from the market after a short period of time.”

While Jinhun was talking, a man appeared unnoticed from one of the offices. As he walked towards them, they soon heard his shout. “What do you think you're doing?”

A second later, the fire alarm switched on with a piercing sound. Taylor's stretched hand lowered the burning map that produced a lot of smoke after getting wet.

Water started pouring from the sprinklers all the way down the corridor. Sirens and flashlights came alive; but, most importantly for the two fugitives, all the doors to the emergency staircase flung open automatically.

Shimi Levy and William Grant had just landed at Sao Paolo's airport. As their status allowed, they simply walked out without being checked or asked any questions by the security officers. Shortly before the plane landed, they received a call confirming that Agent MacGeady's implant had been destroyed, although the technicians back in Dallas were still not sure if any information from it was retrieved prior to that.

The two men got into the indigo-colored limousine that was going to take them to the hotel where the attack had happened. Shimi Levy was still trying to regain his composure after the news that Taylor Swansea was so close to being finally captured and had managed to escape once again. Everyone in the Agency was aware of the long running mania of their boss to capture this particular individual. The Agency had spent millions of dollars on all kinds of unsuccessful operations for his tracking and capture, but they were nothing compared to the countless hours Levy himself had dedicated to try and finally find this particular man. In the Agency's corridors, all kinds of rumors were spreading about the maniacal desire of their director to catch Taylor Swansea, but no one knew the truth about why Levy was so obsessed with him.

When they were about halfway to the hotel, William Grant's phone started ringing. He picked up and listened carefully for about three minutes and, in the end, only said, “Understood. We'll be with you shortly. Over.” He hung up and, turning towards Levy, said, “Our team managed to identify the attackers from the satellite images.”

“The bloody Yuyuan.” Shimi Levy guessed correctly as Grant's nod confirmed.

This organization had been a painful thorn in the Agency's side for years. It was the last standing center of resistance, but more importantly, the men behind it had both the resources and the knowledge to make their threats reality. The last few months had been particularly dramatic for Levy and his men, because they received numerous threats from the Yuyuan to prepare themselves for the Biblical Apocalypse. Many looked at these threats lightly, but Levy knew better. He knew that if anyone could bring these threats to a conclusion, it was the men who created the Yuyuan over a decade ago.

Over the years, the Agency had invested enormous human and technological resources to find the main base of the organization, but all that was achieved was to figure out that the most likely location for it was the border region between China and India. Even the ultramodern satellite images were not very helpful. The sheer size of the region meant that they were looking for a needle in a haystack and, up to that day, the area hadn't been narrowed much.

Shimi Levy was dragged away from his dark thoughts by the sound of his phone. He saw that it was one of his agents in Hong Kong and hurried to answer. “Director Levy.”

“Good news, Director, we just located Taylor Swansea here in the city. He was identified a few minutes ago in the company of one of the founders of the Yuyuan – Jinhun Sun. The local police are on their tail as we speak, and we're ready to join in.”

“Do it immediately. I want them both!” Shimi Levy cut the connection, squeezing the door handle. Gritting his teeth, he shouted at the driver, “Turn the car. We're going back to the airport.”

* * *

Carolina was sitting in front of the ancient radio transmitter. The briefcase-size, black box was last used during World War II; but, apparently, the simplicity of the design made conversation on it practically untraceable. The blond woman was sitting on the edge of a soft bed staring at the machine in front of her with a tense expression.

She was in a small apartment in one of the many concrete blocks in Athens. The busy street below her small balcony was bringing all manner of sounds to her room, but Carolina was deaf to the world. She was desperately waiting for a call.

After her earlier conversation with Fabio, she quickly excused herself from her father and left with the promise that they would have dinner together in a few hours. She used her official work as a pretext. For years now, the fact that Carolina was co-owner of the environmental organization
Future for the Amazon Jungle
helped her to cover her real occupation.

In the last hour since her return to the safe-house, Carolina had a series of conversations on the old radio. The last one with the main base of their secret organization had confirmed that the plane carrying her fiancée, best friend Fabiana, the captured agent and several other friends was on its way. The plane was owned by
Future for the Amazon Jungle.
This provided great cover for its actual use – to transport Yuyuan members around the globe.

Just ten minutes ago, Carolina had talked with Itanagar explaining the situation. She received reluctant permission to bring Ademar Gamejro with her on the plane. Now all she was waiting for was a call from the flight crew to confirm the exact time they should be at the small private airport about twenty miles north of the city. She knew that the hardest part of her urgently mustered plan was still ahead. She had to convince the Minister, her own father, to join her on the plane.

Carolina was aware that the days of him seeing her as a harmless environmental activist were gone, but she definitely preferred to reveal her real occupation once they were safely on the plane and on their way to India. She knew that Ademar Gamejro was actually one of the supporters of the new order of things, but she knew him better and had always been living with the belief that, one day, he would do the right thing when the time was right. Well, the time had come.

The other big issue that worried her even more than revealing her secret to her father was why the Agency for Tracking the Untraceables had targeted her father for elimination. To try and disperse these worries, she walked to the tiny kitchen and quickly made herself a cup of coffee, keeping one ear alert for a call coming from the other room.

Carolina had to prioritize. After drinking her coffee out on the balcony, staring at the hectic traffic below, she walked back in. She knew that she needed to be very persuasive to convince her father to come with her. She also knew that Fabio wouldn't be happy to have on board a man with at least five or six implants in his body that, at any time, could give away their location; but she had no choice.

She was dragged away from her worrying thoughts by a crackling noise coming from the old radio. She jumped from the bed and quickly answered, “I'm here.”

“Hi, love. In about four and a half hours, we'll be landing to pick you up.” She recognized Fabio's soft voice even through the constant crackling of the signal. “I was told you'll try to bring your father. Please, be very careful.” She was pleasantly surprised that there were no protests or detailed advice what should be done and what shouldn't.

“I can't leave him here.”

“I know. I love you. See you very soon and, once again, be very careful. Bye.”

Carolina also pledged her love, then the ancient radio-transmitter went dead again.

It took her about ten minutes to take a quick shower, jump into a pair of comfortable jeans and be ready to leave the small apartment after putting on a pair of light pink running trainers that matched her T-shirt.

She walked out of the building and, in no time, a taxi responded to her waving. After annoying several drivers, it pulled off to pick her up. After the taxi rejoined the traffic, an indigo-colored vehicle pulled out of the parking slots a few feet behind and followed it.

* * *

The rain had stopped about half an hour ago, just as the darkness of the night and artificial lights overtook Hong Kong.

Jinhun and Taylor dragged themselves from behind the heavy dustbin where they spent the last few hours after their escape. The last police siren they heard was about twenty minutes earlier and, as Jinhun suggested, it was about time for them to press on.

After they joined the panicked crowd exiting the business building, they walked quickly with the thick flow of people for about two blocks, then slipped in this blind alley, away from the CCTV and police officers scanning the crowd. The two men spent the entire time crouched behind the container, hoping that the inevitable thermal scanning of the whole neighborhood wouldn't detect them under the metal lid. To help even more, Taylor had fished out of the garbage a few big pieces of aluminum foil which were enough to cover at least the upper parts of their bodies.

Thermal scanning was first introduced back in 2019 and quickly proved very effective at detecting and capturing people without brain implants. The high success rate quickly made the equipment widely available to almost every police force around the world. This method definitely proved to be the biggest curse for those willing to remain unchipped. The method was actually very simple and, for that reason, ingenious. Very soon, it was established that people with brain implants naturally have a two degree higher body temperature. Doctors explained this by the brain trying to fight the invasive object, but this fact was soon exploited by lawmakers. In no time, thermal scanning became widespread.

“Now what?” Taylor asked as the two of them walked out of the alley to rejoin the flow of people rushing as usual. The coastal avenue of Hong Kong was a magnet for most working people in these hours. The two of them had little problem mixing in with the colorful crowd despite their dirty clothes and traces of dry blood. The injuries they had sustained during their crazy escape felt better and, apart from Jinhun's obvious limp, they walked almost normally.

“Don't worry. We still have enough resources and options,” Jinhun said, staring at the dark waters of the bay as they made their way slowly down a street bustling with people from all corners of the world.

“So,” Taylor took his companion out of his thoughts, “are we going somewhere, or will we wait for reinforcements?”

“How about we go change our clothes and grab something to eat.” Jinhun smiled as he turned left at the crossroad they just reached.

They walked down a much quieter side street for a while before Jinhun stopped in front of one of the many identical residential buildings. Despite the close proximity of the area to the bay, the main attractions of Hong Kong and all important transportation links, this remained one of the poorest quarters of the metropolis where only laborers and people on benefits lived.

The door in front of them was small; it was the entrance to a one-story concrete building. All the way down the narrow street as far as Taylor could see, every few feet, there was an identical door; it seemed to go on forever.

“It used to be a factory for canning tuna up until 2016.” While talking, Jinhun knocked on the metal door in a specific sequence that Taylor would have struggled to repeat if asked. “You know up until the tuna disappeared from the oceans. After it closed, it was transformed into small flats for those who worked here.”

A few seconds later, the door half-opened and a white hand covered with wrinkles and brown dots waved them in. The two men squeezed through the narrow gap. Their host quickly closed and locked the door behind them.

Their mysterious host led them down a narrow corridor towards two doors. Despite all his efforts, Taylor couldn't make out a face while peeking over Jinhun's shoulder. When they reached the doors, the person that welcomed them quickly disappeared behind the door to the left while Jinhun invited his companion in the other room.

They entered a small and very modestly furnished bedroom that had an amazing view towards the harbor through a small window. A bed and two wooden wardrobes shared the limited space with a single wooden chair and a small school desk. The top was covered by a massive radio transmitter with lots of wires and cables spread around it.

Jinhun noticed the puzzled expression on Taylor's face when he spotted the radio and explained, “We're using World War Two radio transmitters in our organization. They're actually the most successful untraceable device you could dream of.”

“What do you mean?”

“The frequencies and Morse Code we're using were last used in the 1960s. They're practically untraceable because the message either reaches the other end of the line or just disappears. No clouds, no memory, no trace.” Jinhun started taking off his dirty clothes before adding, “Plus, our technicians created a small device that would disrupt the connection the moment a person with a brain implant comes near any of these radios. So even if one is captured, they can't use it, not even to try and listen to the frequencies we're using.”

During the next half-hour, the two men took a quick shower in the tiny bathroom attached to their room and changed into clean underwear, identical brown linen shirts and khaki trousers before putting on comfortable tourist boots. Jinhun used the time while his companion was in the shower to bandage his wounds. Once they were changed, he was walking almost freely again.

“Will you collect all our dirty clothes in this, please?” Jinhun threw a big plastic bag to Taylor, “I need to make contact with our Main Base.”

While Taylor was busy, Jinhun sat on the chair, turning the big buttons of the radio. It crackled awfully for about a minute, but finally he found the searched frequency. A strange metallic sounding voice came from the big phone-like earphone Jinhun pressed to his face.

“The Base listening.”

“Hi, Calvin, it's Jinhun. As you probably know, we came up against some obstacles here in Hong Kong, but we managed to make it to the Hollow in one piece.”

“Glad to hear that. We just began to worry. Any serious injuries?”

“Nope, just a few scratches and bruises.” Taylor had finished collecting the clothes and sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the conversation. “You have something for us?” Jinhun asked.

“All arrangements are made. Your transport is waiting for you near HK6, three miles into the fields west of the sixteenth mile.”

“That's brilliant. We'll be heading that way after a short rest. How is the other part of the operation going?”

Calvin made a short pause, busily talking to someone else in the background before he answered. “All is well there. They just left Brazil, but a stop in Europe is planned to pick up the Princess. We expect them home safe well before you make it to the Base.”