Change Agent

  Otto took a comb from a tray on the counter and began to carefully comb his slicked-back hair.

  “Sir, this is not the time . . .”

  “I’m the only one who needs to be concerned about the time, Corporal.”

  Otto removed a silver flask from his jacket pocket and placed it reverently on the stone countertop. He took a deep breath and then opened the unusually complex cap—unlocking its several different seals. He then poured out a clear liquid onto his hands and slicked the liquid into his hair, combing it in fastidiously.

  There were gunshots in the distance.

  “Sir, please!”

  “Unlike apaxi variants, lioxol is not a contact biotoxin—but an aerosol. Extremely powerful, and even more so as it evaporates.” Otto then rubbed some of the liquid on his neck and then again onto his hands.

  Confused, the corporal stepped forward, clearly having had enough. “Sir! We must—”

  He never finished the sentence. Instead he collapsed face forward, hitting the counter hard and rolling off onto the floor. The other two officers rushed to help him, but they themselves staggered—and then collapsed. One of them had a momentary seizure, then went largely still, his booted foot spasming as his last breath left him.

  Otto gazed at his own reflection in the mirror as he placed wireless earphones in each ear. He turned up the volume on Bach’s glorious Cantata BWV 19 and conducted the soaring arias with his hands. He’d only recently learned of it, and it filled him with joy. What humans were sometimes capable of always amazed him.

  Otto left the restroom and moved deeper into the Luk Krung clinic. He strode down the corridor with his hands held open and outward in surrender.

  A balaclava-wearing tactical officer guarding a line of zip-tied prisoners glanced up to see Otto approaching. The prisoners sat, weeping—middle-aged Brits, Germans, Chinese, French—well-heeled and well-dressed clients from around the globe.

  The officer raised his weapon at Otto and shouted, “You! Down on the ground! Now! Down on the ground!”

  At least that’s what Otto guessed the man said. He couldn’t hear him over the music. But Otto knew the drill. He complied immediately—hands still raised.

  “Hands on the back of your head!”

  Otto did so.

  Another tactical officer joined the first, and they rushed toward him, a thicket of zip ties ready on their utility belts. One grabbed Otto’s wrist with his gloved hand.

  But a moment later the officer staggered, then collapsed.

  Otto’s hand was suddenly released. Almost simultaneously the officer in front of Otto crumpled, twitching.

  Otto rose to his feet again—then stared at the shocked and zip-tied tourists. They started babbling at him in their native languages. Otto could see their mouths moving—some angry, others terrified. But Otto could not hear them. All he could hear were the blissful strains of the cantata.

  Otto walked alongside the dozens of zip-tied lab clients, running his fingers through their hair and meeting their confused expressions. An antisavior. He could feel their lives evaporating beneath his fingertips. He was convinced he could feel it.

  He walked onward, the line of dead growing behind him, leaning on one another, extending down the corridor.

  Otto walked on, conducting a soaring chorus.

  He turned a corner and almost immediately came upon a large breaching team with heavily armed tactical police with bulletproof shields, body armor, ballistic helmets—blinding light stabbing out from their guns. They led a dozen suited and zip-tied, tattooed Luk Krung gang members back toward the lobby.

  The moment the police spotted Otto, lights and guns focused on him. He raised his hands high. He couldn’t hear their voices over the music, but behind their black balaclavas, he could see their jaws moving. Shouting at him.

  Otto complied with commands he knew well. He knelt in the hall. Placed his hands on the back of his head as the team moved over and around him—grabbing his hands roughly. They soon surrounded him.

  And then he felt them slipping away. First one fell. Then five, then ten more, staggering as the long guns dropped from their hands. The last one hit the wall and slid down into a crumpled heap.

  Only a few molecules of lioxol in the olfactory channel. That was all it took. Death followed moments later as the central nervous system shut down.

  Otto calmly stood and approached a dozen handcuffed and kneeling Luk Krung members. Their faces were portraits of terror as he approached. They knew who Otto was. Some among the doomed men wept, praying to the spirits of their ancestors in Thai.

  As Otto moved through them, continuing down the hall, he rubbed their bald, tattooed scalps.

  He did not wait to see the bodies drop.

  There would be no witnesses. No living evidence. No outward sign of the outrages here. Only the dead.

  And Marcus Wyckes would be among them, putting to rest, once and for all, the search for the leader of the Huli jing.

  Otto continued down the corridor—toward the concealed rooms that he knew Vegas kept.

  • • •

  Durand and Frey followed Kimberly and Vegas down a narrow utility corridor lined with power and HVAC conduits.

  Vegas glanced back, urging speed with a flurry of his hands. “You and I will depart, Khun Marcus, while Dr. Frey and Kimberly remain behind.”

  Frey shouted, “The hell I will!”

  “There is only so much room. You will see!”

  Kimberly shouted, “You promised me!”

  “Kimberly, you are a six-year-old child. They will not punish you. You can pretend to be a simpleton.”

  She punched him in the ribs ineffectually. “I think that might prove easier for you.”

  Vegas glanced back at Durand. “The girl will be sent to a foster home. We’ll have her back immediately.”

  Durand stared darkly. “Dr. Frey is going with me. You stay behind.”

  Vegas looked horrified. “But I can be of great help to you, Khun Marcus! I can do so much to assist you if I am not captured by the police.”

  They reached the base of a metal staircase. Durand vaulted up the steps, passing Vegas and emerging in a small warehouse with a painted concrete floor.

  A small helicopter sat in the middle of the room on a marked helipad—though there was no obvious exit. The chopper was made of a white chitinous material—probably a grown shell—with a bulbous tinted windshield. Outboard on each corner of the craft were dual counterfacing propellers, about a meter in diameter—eight in all.

  Frey moved alongside Durand with Kimberly and Vegas. Frey nodded to himself. “I’ll be damned. An Ehang.”

  Vegas nervously motioned to it. “Very complex. You’ll need an experienced hand to get it working.”

  Kimberly pouted and folded her arms. “He’s lying. It’s autonomous. Programmed for a preplanned escape route.”

  “Damn you, child!”

  Durand had seen vehicles like these flitting over Singapore in small numbers—a commutation option for the well-off. As he approached, the interior lit up, followed by the passenger doors opening.

  A synthetic voice spoke: “Please enter and fasten your safety belts.”

  Frey looked inside. “I think we can manage that, Tang.”

  Sirens could be heard through the nearby corrugated metal walls.

  Vegas shouted hopefully, “We need to leave, Khun Marcus!”

  Frey nodded. “Yes. And we will.”

  Durand walked around to the far side of the Ehang. “Where will it take us?”

  Vegas’s eyes lit up. “A place only I know. I can—”

  “Can I use it to get back to my headquarters?”

  “In Myanmar! Oh, no, Khun Marcus. Naypyidaw is much too far—and the waypoints and exchange sites are already programmed.”

  “Exchan
ge sites?”

  “The escape all preplanned. You really should take me with you. Dr. Frey is—”

  “Dr. Frey has the knowledge I need.” Durand glanced up at the ceiling. It wasn’t much over ten meters. He entered the chopper anyway.

  Frey climbed in on the other side and began strapping himself in.

  “Can this thing really maneuver in here?”

  Frey shrugged. “It got in here somehow.” He noticed a leather satchel secured between the seats and unzipped it. Inside were thick wads of Thai baht. “Vegas’s go-bag, apparently. He really did think of everything.”

  Just then the synthetic voice returned, saying pleasantly, “Stay clear of the doors. Stay clear of the doors. Launch sequence commencing . . .”

  Vegas shouted over a whining sound that kept increasing, “Please, Master! Take me with you!”

  Kimberly stood nearby and rolled her eyes dramatically.

  Durand shouted, “Don’t worry, you’ll be taken care of!”

  A moment later the doors eased shut, and conditioned air filled the cabin.

  Frey looked around at the cultured leather seats. “This is rather nice.”

  The electric motors whirred to life, and an integral glim displayed AR gauges and maps into their retinas—none with any apparent inputs. They were merely passengers.

  Then the twin quad-mounted rotors spooled up, a roar and a wind building in the hangar.

  The AI voice said calmly, “Prepare for combat takeoff.”

  “What’s a combat—?”

  Frey didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. The Ehang lifted off the floor and nosed downward all in one fluid motion—and started hurtling toward the corrugated metal wall.

  “Shit!”

  The wall slid aside in two sections as if on explosive bolts, and the autonomous chopper roared into the sunlight—and then down.

  Frey screamed, and Durand felt his stomach drop as they hurtled toward a street choked with emergency vehicles and flashing police lights. Then it pulled up, rotated violently, and roared down the narrow city street at an angle—just centimeters away from a tangle of utility lines.

  Frey pressed his arms against the cabin wall. “Jesus H. Fucking Christ!”

  The chopper lurched upward, soared through an open atrium between hotel towers as tourists ran screaming for cover. The chopper then streaked out over a decorative pond, then down over a rail line, emerging beneath power lines, and then up and out across a vast container yard, dodging between construction cranes.

  “No, no, no, no, no . . .”

  Durand shoved back against Frey’s clawing hands. “Would you stop grabbing at me?”

  G-forces again slammed Durand and Frey into their seat backs as the machine kept accelerating, dodging around buildings, under power pylons, and around cranes.

  “I’m going to be sick . . .”

  “Don’t you dare, Bryan.” Durand gritted his teeth against the g-forces.

  A glance to his left, and he noticed a lawn-mower-sized police drone on their tail as the Ehang arced in a steep turn. The police drone’s camera array gleamed in the sunlight. “Police drone!”

  Frey sucked in a breath, still pressing with all his might against the cabin wall. “What the hell do you expect me to do about it? I’m busy trying not to shit myself!”

  They began curving out across the harbor front at what seemed like a meter above the water—literally dodging between pleasure boats and floating restaurants. Tourists dove into the water as the chopper roared toward them.

  “Oh god!”

  They turned sideways, zipping between the faux funnels of an imitation steamboat-themed restaurant.

  They then rocketed between autonomous container ships, under rope lines, and finally in a curving trajectory that crushed Durand back into his seat, air expelled unwillingly from his lungs.

  Frey shouted, “I should have let Vegas go with you!”

  • • •

  Vegas stood in the hangar, watching the open doors and the police drones hovering beyond. Humid heat began to invade the room. He could hear sirens and shouting voices on the street below.

  Kimberly poked him in the ribs. “Were you really going to leave me behind?”

  Vegas sighed. “I would never leave you behind, daughter. At least not for long. You are my treasure.”

  But then Vegas felt a disturbing sensation—as though a bad spirit had come near. He turned toward Kimberly.

  Tears were running down her cheeks, and her mouth stuttered. She visibly trembled.

  Despite his fear, Vegas moved to hold her. “What is it, child? What’s wrong?”

  She sucked for air amid terrified sobs. “The Mirror Man is here.”

  Vegas turned to see a face he did not recognize rise slowly up the staircase behind them. Each step on the metal staircase echoed. Vegas’s heart began to thunder in his chest. Even though Vegas knew what Otto was, he still felt a primal dread that went beyond reason. Some things humans have evolved to fear.

  Vegas held Kimberly close, her sobs now uncontrollable. “We helped the Master escape, Otto. He is safely on his way back to Myanmar. I gave him my own chopper.”

  Otto stood still five meters away—the humid breeze blew in past Vegas from the open hangar doors. The man’s slick hair did not move. Neither did his grim expression change. “Then he is gone.”

  Vegas nodded. “Khun Marcus is gone. Yes. He is gone home.”

  Otto did not respond immediately.

  “He said we would be taken care of. I cannot go to jail. My daughter needs to be cared for.”

  “You will not go to jail. None of you will.”

  Otto started walking toward them. Vegas noticed what looked like beads of sweat over Otto’s face—though he had only been in the tropical air for a few moments.

  “Wait! Otto, you know that we would never betray the Huli jing. We are loyal servants. We will tell the police nothing!”

  “You won’t have the chance.”

  “No, please!” Vegas found himself hoping for the police—for the Arintharat 26 to come rushing up the staircase and gun down the otherworldly Otto.

  But that did not happen.

  Kimberly trembled, gripping Vegas’s arm, sobbing, “I’m afraid! I don’t want to die!”

  Otto stood next to them. “Then you are one of the lucky ones.” He ran his fingers through her hair. “Most who I visit beg for death.”

  Vegas and Kimberly collapsed onto each other in the middle of the concrete floor. Their dead eyes stared at the ceiling.

  Lingering just a moment, Otto looked out the open hangar doors, nodded to himself, and descended the stairs again.

  • • •

  Frey gripped his armrests and stared in terror as the Ehang chopper roared between three-story strip malls, under flyways. Each time the chopper seemed a split second away from crashing headlong into a wall or colliding with light poles or wireless towers, it turned away with stomach-churning suddenness.

  To their relief, the Ehang finally raced out across the countryside, past temples, chedis, stupas, and long rectangular rice paddies. Only here did the chopper finally relax its crazy zigzagging flight path and instead soar in a beeline across the fields, barely a meter above the tips of the rice stalks waving in the wind.

  Durand looked around them through the bulbous, tinted canopy. An AR display also provided a virtual rearview mirror. “Looks like we lost the police drones.”

  Frey still gripped the armrests. “I don’t think even they could keep up with this thing.” He nodded toward the windshield. “Any lower and we’ll be harvesting this goddamned rice.”

  They whizzed past farmers, who shook their fists and shouted.

  Frey’s face dropped as he turned forward again. “Oh god, no . . .”

  A raised berm between rice
fields approached. Numerous scooters traversed its length—but the Ehang roared toward it at three hundred kilometers per hour.

  “No, no, no!”

  The chopper streaked through the gap between scooters, and they raced out over the fields beyond.

  Frey closed his eyes. “Why the hell do I even look? It’s only going to upset me.”

  Durand gazed at the rice paddies unfolding before them. It was going to be difficult for anything except fixed-wing aircraft to catch up to them now. And those would take a while to scramble.

  The Ehang gained a bit of altitude and began to curve rightward.

  Frey groaned. “What now?”

  The chopper flared back, bleeding off speed with its rotor wash as it descended—then pitched forward to fly straight through the opening doors of a nondescript, corrugated metal warehouse.

  The chopper rotated before setting itself down in a marked space alongside a second Ehang chopper—this one red with yellow stripes instead of clean white.

  “Thank god . . .” Frey unbuckled his safety harness.

  The doors to the second chopper opened—beckoning—and its electric motors began to spool up.

  Their own chopper rotors whined down only slightly as the doors opened. A synthetic female voice said, “Second vehicle waiting. Second vehicle waiting.”

  Durand jumped out, shouting, “It’s an exchange. Grab the go-bag and get moving!”

  “Goddamnit . . .” Frey took the bag and practically fell out of the first chopper. He ran on unsteady feet toward the second.

  “Looks like Vegas programmed vehicle changes into this journey.” Durand got into the waiting aircraft.

  Frey crawled in on the far side. “We don’t even know where we’re going!”

  The doors closed.

  “Anywhere’s better than back there. And Vegas clearly seems to have planned for the worst.”

  The rotors whined up, and the new chopper lifted off the moment Frey fastened his safety harness. It nosed through the doors that opened on the far side of the warehouse.

  Looking back, Durand could see their original chopper racing back the way they’d come, gaining altitude in an apparent effort to attract attention and lead away any pursuers.