“Maybe she got that idea from someone else,” her lover said. “And was just confused. Just thought it was from your Friend.”

Zhi nodded. Maybe that was it.

Lu’s staff cleared the dinner away and then disappeared.

Zhi and Lu made love on the luxuriant mink rug in the middle of his living room, the curtains of the windows peeled away entirely, so Lu could see the giant face of her on the skyscraper across the street as he pleasured the flesh and blood reality here with him.

How she did indulge her lover.

After, as they lay naked, side by side, covered in sweat, the breath slowly coming back to them, Lu spoke again.

“My guy did say something weird,” her lover said. “He talked about fighting for freedom. He talked about taking up arms against oppressors. About how right I was about that.”

Zhi suddenly felt that chill again. She rolled on her side, to face him.

“I thought,” Lu said, “that he was trying to quote my lines from Riders of the Gobi, and just messing them up.” He shook his head. “But now I’m not so sure.”

68
Exfiltration

Friday 2040.12.21

Colonel Wang Rongshang ascended the stairs to his mistress Ma Jie’s flat, a smile on his face. Thoughts of surgery and medical responsibilities to the soldiers of Dachang were fleeing.

Ma Jie’s touch, her smile, her voice. They could chase any toil away.

He knocked at her door. It opened, and there she was, looking as radiant as ever. There was something in the smile. Something… wicked almost. Something he seldom saw.

Anticipation stirred within him.

“Come in, my love,” she beckoned him.

Wang Rongshang entered, closing the door behind him.

Then a strong hand clamped itself over his mouth.

He lashed back, reflexively, with an elbow to where the torso would be, hit something like steel. He kicked backwards, low and hard, to snap a man’s knee. His foot met empty air.

Something cold pressed itself against his neck, followed by the sting and hiss of a hypersonic injection.

He thrashed again, tried to scream, found it stifled by the hand over his mouth.

The injector fell at his feet, an ampule still loaded in it, empty now, but with a residue of something silvery, metallic.

Two strong arms gripped him, arms far stronger than his own.

Ma Jie watched him with eyes that were fascinated and without pity.

What was in that ampule? What sort of drug or poison was silvery and metallic?

Then he felt it entering his brain, felt Ma Jie’s thoughts brushing his own, and he knew.

For good and ill, he knew.

What followed was beyond Wang Rongshang’s wildest dreams, beyond his worst nightmares.