Undercover - In China - Book 7

Part 2 - Gravity Shear

It was cooler up here over the city and peaceful, almost relaxing. And then I realized I was wearing only my pyjamas. I figured I was dreaming when a Canada goose came flapping heavily alongside but then it said, 'Ziff, yeh gotta go back. The time nexus is shutting down.'

The goose was my uncle Dunc, enhanced, incubated, hatched and educated by my Grandfather. I tried to slip away from the overpass but the gravity shear began to fade. Dunc zoomed across in front. 'Turn around. Use your pinky fingers. The way ah taught yeh.'

I banked into a left turn with the sensation Hong Kong was tilting and I was sliding slowly down a slope back toward Kowloon. 'Ah'm going to find Ondy,' Dunc honked as he peeled off leaving me to land on a pedestrian overpass at the edge of the harbour. I saw two men looking at me so I sprinted away from them but there were four of them blocking the overpass exits. I was trapped. Two of them grabbed me and there was a lot of chatter and a cell phone conversation as they wrapped sticky tape over my mouth. I recognized the language, Cantonese, without understanding what they were saying. 

 They rushed me across the road into a large hotel, dragged me across a marble-floored lobby and barged through a crowd of people waiting for the elevators. An elderly lady was explaining something in broad Australian to a younger Asian man. 'Oy coyme 'ere to die,' she said. The man looked very concerned and it was several seconds before I worked out that she meant, 'I came here today.'

My captors bulldozed their way to the front of the mob and commandeered the first elevator to arrive. As the elevator door closed, one well dressed Asian woman hissed contemptuously, 'Crazy mainland tourists! Too much money for their own good.'

The men carried me off the elevator at the top floor, through a door marked staff only, and up a flight of concrete stairs to the roof where a helicopter was in the process of landing. It was noisy and windy. I put my head down and closed my eyes against the dust and seconds later found myself handcuffed and strapped into a seat in the helicopter behind the pilot. The co-pilot slapped earphones on my head. The rotor was still wind-milling and the pilot was adding power steadily, as he prepared to take off, while the co-pilot resumed his seat.