Hunt for Jade Dragon (25 page)

“You'll all come out, or we'll shoot her, then open fire on you. We'll shred the entire room.”

“They've got machine guns,” Ian said. “Big ones.”

“We're dead either way,” I said.

“Seven, six, five, four . . .”

“Stop!” I shouted. “We're coming.”

“Hold your fire,” the voice said.

“What are they doing?” I asked Ian.

“They still have the gun to McKenna's head.”

“Michael Vey, before we open the door, let me be very clear. If you don't do exactly what we say, there will be no warning. We'll kill the girls first, then we'll blow the rest of you away.”

“We'll do what you say,” I said.

“Move the furniture from the door.”

I looked at Jack. “Do it,” I said.

Ian and Jack pulled the dresser back.

“Now open the door,” the voice said. “I want you in front, followed by Ian, Jack, and Ostin, in that order. All of you put your hands on your head. Do you understand?”

“We understand,” I said.

I opened the door. An Elgen captain in the requisite black-and-purple uniform was standing in front of the door.

“Vey, come forward and kneel. Put your hands behind your back.” I walked into the hallway, then knelt down in front of six guards holding guns and RESAT guns. Through my peripheral vision I could see the Lung Li in their solid black uniforms and helmets. Something about them sent shivers through me. They seemed almost nonhuman. Taylor was kneeling on the ground next to them. I hoped she would look at me, but she didn't.

A guard holding carbon handcuffs said to the guards next to me, “If he shocks us, shoot him, then the girls.”

“I won't,” I said.

A guard grabbed my wrists and pulled them up while another guard handcuffed me, then strapped a RESAT over my chest and turned it on. So much pain shot through my body that I fell to my side, unable to breathe.

“Stand up!” the first guard shouted. He might as well have commanded me to fly. The pain was so intense that I couldn't even answer him. He and the other guard lifted me and pushed me against the wall, but as soon as they released me I collapsed again.

“Stand up!” the guard shouted again.

I somehow forced out, “It's . . . too . . . much.”

They looked at each other; then the second guard pulled out a remote and adjusted my RESAT. The pain lessened. It was still high but not so much that I couldn't stand.

They followed the same routine with the others, strapping boxes on Ian, Jack, and Ostin. This time the boxes they put on Jack and Ostin looked different. They looked like RESATs but they were black and red. Ostin groaned when they turned his on.

“They figured it out,” he gasped.

A door across the hall opened and a middle-aged Chinese man looked out.

“
Ni gan shemma
?” he shouted.

One of the Lung Li fired something at the man, and he fell
forward unconscious at their feet. Two of them dragged him back into his room, disappearing for a few minutes before emerging back out into the hall.

The captain spoke into his radio, saying that the enemy had been secured, and then, with the Lung Li guards at the front and back of our procession, the guards marched us down the hall to a utility elevator. As we walked past Nichelle, Jack lunged at her. One of the guards caught him and slugged him in the stomach. He fell to his knees, gasping for breath.

“Get up!” the guard shouted. “Or we'll throw you out one of these windows.”

Jack struggled to his feet. He looked at Nichelle. “How could you do this?”

Nichelle's eyes narrowed. “Ian said it. ‘A leopard doesn't change its spots.' ”

As I walked by her I looked her in the eyes. “I believed in you.”

“Then you're an idiot, Vey. I don't even believe in me.”

“Shut up and keep moving,” the guard behind me said.

They were in a hurry to get us out of the hotel, so they crowded us into two elevators, with two guards holding each of us. Ostin was in front of me and Taylor was in front of him. I noticed she was leaning against the elevator's sheet metal wall. I leaned against the side wall and thought,
Taylor, nod your head if you can hear me
. She didn't move.
We're going to get out of this. Move your head against the wall
. Still nothing. The RESAT must have been sucking everything out of her.

The doors opened below ground level into a room with concrete walls, electrical panels, and thick floor-to-ceiling pipes. “Move with your guards,” the captain ordered. The Elgen took us out a back door to where four large vans were idling. The vans were tall and black with the sky-blue Elgen logo and the words
STARXOURCE POWER
written out in English below Chinese characters.

Ostin and I were taken in the first van, Ian and Jack in the second, and McKenna, Nichelle, and Taylor in the third. I hoped that Nichelle wouldn't torture them, but she didn't need to—the RESATs were doing it automatically.

They strapped me to the wall, then pushed some buttons on my RESAT, and the machine hummed louder as more pain shot through my body. I gasped in agony.

Ostin was strapped to the opposite wall. His shirt was soaked in sweat. “I liked the old RESATs better,” he said.

They slammed the van's back doors and the vehicle immediately lurched forward, rocking us from side to side. The only light in the back of the van came from the green and amber LEDs on our RESATs and from my glow, which was dimmer than usual, affected by the RESAT.

“Something's not right,” Ostin groaned.

“No kidding,” I said.

In spite of his pain, he continued to puzzle. “If Nichelle led them to us, she would have told them who was with us.”

“She did,” I said.

“Then they would have known Taylor was with us. Why weren't they wearing those mind helmets?”

“Because they had guns,” I said. “And they outnumbered us five to one.”

“That's never stopped them before. And the light on her RESAT wasn't even on.”

I had no answer.

“Remember at the night market when you asked Taylor about her roommate, and she acted like she didn't know who it was? After we left did she do anything else out of the ordinary?”

I thought about how strangely she had acted when I went to kiss her. “Yes, but she had that headache. She said she wasn't feeling like herself.”

Sweat was dripping down Ostin's face and he groaned out in pain. Then he said, “Maybe that's because she
wasn't
herself.”

“What are you saying?”

“I don't think that was Taylor.”

T
he only thing Taylor remembered about being captured at the night market was seeing Tara, her twin sister. For a second she thought she was looking at her own reflection in a mirror until Tara squinted, and paralyzing horror filled her so completely that she collapsed. Then someone powerful, someone she never saw except for the black material of their shirtsleeve, held a cloth over her nose and mouth. When she woke she was lying on the floor of a dim concrete cell, wearing different clothes, her head throbbing. She was wearing a RESAT, but it didn't seem to be on. The whole situation was like a nightmare except she wasn't asleep.
Where am I?

As she lay there, something moved in the shadows on the opposite side of the room. It took her a moment to realize that it was a child.
What is a child doing in my cell?
Then the thought came to her—the girl was Jade Dragon. She looked even younger than nine
years old. Her black hair was cut in bangs, cropped short above eyes that were so dark her pupils were invisible. She had full, pouty lips and her nose was slightly turned up.

Taylor stood, steadied herself against the wall, then slowly walked over to her. The little girl watched her curiously, but avoided eye contact.

Taylor crouched down in front of the child so they were about the same height. “You're very pretty,” she said.

The girl said nothing.

“You should meet my friend McKenna. She looks like you.”

The girl stood as still as a statue.

“You can't hear me, can you? Can you read my lips?” She thought of what Chinese she had picked up in the few days she'd been in Taiwan.
“Ni hau.”
The child looked at her and blinked. Taylor walked closer and reached out her hand. “I heard your name in Chinese. I think it's Yoo Loong.” The girl stared curiously at Taylor's glowing skin. “It's okay. It won't hurt you.”

The girl reached out and touched her, then retracted her hand. Taylor nodded. “It's okay. You can touch me. I came to help you.” Taylor moved forward and started to put her arms around the girl, but Jade Dragon stiffened and groaned.

Taylor immediately released her. “I'm sorry. You don't like that.” She tried to remember what she knew about autism. For several weeks they had studied autism in her health class. She remembered learning that some autistic children were hypersensitive to touch.

“I'm sorry,” Taylor said. “This whole thing must be so awful for you.”

The little girl looked at her for a moment, then, to Taylor's surprise, stepped forward and touched Taylor's arm again. This time she grabbed on to it and something peculiar happened. Taylor was drawn into the girl's mind, as if the girl had hijacked her power. It was unlike anything she had experienced before. She couldn't understand the Chinese words in the child's head but she could understand the meanings and feelings that accompanied the language. It was the difference between the letters
A-P-P-L-E
, and biting into the crisp,
red fruit. She was communicating better than she ever had before, understanding without words—something Taylor had not even known was possible.

She now knew, without a doubt, that this was the child they called Jade Dragon. She was inside the child's brain, a participant of her past and present, in a way she'd never experienced with anyone before. Usually when she read someone's mind she caught glimpses of their thoughts—language and symbols appearing in her brain like text messages. But now she felt as if she were standing in the middle of a theater and seeing the child's thoughts and memories on screens around her. Was it the autism? Or was it the power of the child's mind?

She could see the Elgen guards, the Lung Li, dressed all in black, grabbing Jade Dragon, taking her from her home accompanied by feelings of fear and confusion and curiosity. She saw her parents on the ground. Motionless. She could feel the prick as the Lung Li put a needle into her arm, then the mind-numbing drug spreading through her body as everything went dark. She could see, on another screen, thoughts poured out in numbers.

Suddenly math problems she hadn't understood made sense. Except now they weren't just numbers and equations, they were patterns and colors. Calculus, geometry, and trigonometry were easy to understand, simple as a game, like shooting balls at a basketball hoop that was a hundred feet wide. Then a specific sequence of numbers, letters, and symbols started running through her mind.