Undercover - In China - Book 7

Part 7 - Sumac

'Hey! What about Oppy/Mandia's daughter programs, Yonnie and Treeka?' I asked.

Despite Dr Zhang's efforts to keep his time travel experiments secret, he had attracted the attention of Yonnie and Treeka who claimed to be computer entities from the future looking for their mother. They had discovered that Dr Zhang's super computer, Oppy, was their mother and had renamed her Mandia.

Triple Oh shook his head. 'I suspect some trickery. We can find no historical trace of them. If they are what the claim, they are better at hiding from us than is Toktakunov.'

Toktakunov was either Murga's boss, or his assistant, or his computer.

'But they helped us escape from the Bunglers!' I protested. 'And Yonnie was flying the helicopter. And they keep showing up on our computers.'

 'Alas, they do not appear on ours,' Triple Oh rumbled.

The Bunglers were a gang of security agents who claimed to work for the U.S government. 

 'Now, I must away. Fear naught. Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage. Then lend thy eye a terrible aspect. Fare thee well Master Ziff.' 

 I followed as Triple Oh and Kozak slipped out of our apartment without a sound. I had a lingering feeling that it was all an elaborate recurring dream but they left very real footprints in the deep snow on rue Sumac Street.

Pacman sniffed at my ankles and yawned, revealing his piranha-like mouthful of teeth. I was standing on the porch wearing only pyjamas. After all that excitement, there was no way I could go back to sleep. Instead, I looked at today's reality. The overnight snowfall was not a record but everything was covered with about ten centimetres of the stuff. Plumes of vapour congealed in the frigid air above the houses. And the sun, rising into a brilliant blue sky, cast long black shadows on the snow. I shivered and closed the door.

It was 7 am. I thought about waking my grumpy Grandma but decided she would not believe I had been abducted. Instead, I got dressed and carried Pacman upstairs to apartment 3 to see if I could scrounge a boiled egg for breakfast. Ever since Murga had abducted my parents, I had lived with my Grandma in apartment 1 of the old house at 69 rue Sumac street in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 

 The upstairs apartment was occupied by our landlord Mr Bragg and two of Grandma's dotty friends, Emma and Beryl. I found them sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading the National Post. Emma quickly provided rye toast and two fried eggs which I shared with Pacman as I completed the Post's soduku puzzle. 

Then it was time for school. The street was deserted but there were tire tracks in the snow, the only sign of life in the white wilderness. The city plows had not yet pushed the fresh fallen snow into the windrows that had been accumulating for the past few weeks and already half-filled rue Sumac Street. Presumably, the City managers were hoping it would all melt soon. I waded through the snow blocking the sidewalk until I figured it was easier to trudge along the tire tracks on the road, at the risk of being run down by an ice encrusted car. 

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