Freedom. Freedom.FREEDOM!
She sucked in great lungfuls of air, while a dizzying numbness tingled in her extremities as she leaned over to snatch the rifle. She wrapped her hands around its wooden stock, felt the deadly weight of the weapon in her palms as she picked it up … and then she set it back in its place, and flopped onto the bed with her head swimming and her stomach twisted in knots.
She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.
Tears of frustration and self-loathing stung at the corners of her eyes, and her limbs trembled like leaves in a gale as alternating gushes of terror and fury at her own cowardice coursed through them. She gritted her teeth and ground her jaw with a severity of defeat and disgust she had never before known.
The guard stepped out of the bathroom and picked up his rifle with casual nonchalance, not even bothering to look at Adriana. Without any awareness of how close to death he had just come, he began whistling a jovial tune as he strolled out of the room. He slammed the door behind him, and the clicking of the lock from the outside was the sealing of her fate.
She broke down into a mess of wailing and weeping, beating her fists against the mattress and ripping hair out of her head in her unspeakable despair. After a while, though, she spent all of the darkness that had been raging within her, and then simply curled up in a foetal position and sobbed quietly into the pillows. Before long, though, she heard a key turning in the lock again. Through her weeping she looked up and saw an elderly man shuffling through the door. He was a Thai and was dressed only in fisherman’s trousers. His bare torso was heavily wrinkled, like a raisin left too long in the sun, and his posture was as stooped as a willow that had seen too many winters. In his gnarled, thick hands he was carrying a toolbox and a section of copper pipe to replace the one Adriana had broken. When he limped into the room, he did not look at her; instead, he simply hobbled over to the bathroom and set his tools down inside it, and then went back to lock the room door behind him.
It was then that she saw the old man’s back, or, rather, what was on it: his entire back was inked with an elaborate but badly faded tattoo, done in the Japanese style that was popular with local gangsters. It was a red dragon against a stormy sky.
As the old man shuffled into the bathroom again, he turned and stared at her, and then he subtly signalled to her to follow him. The Japanese woman’s words rang immediately in her mind.
A man will come to you – look for a red dragon in a stormy sky.
With a boost of new hope surging its caffeinated promise through her tired muscles, she sprang up from the bed, her heart racing, and hurried into the bathroom where the old man was waiting for her. He shut the door behind her and began to work on the pipe.
‘Well done, well done!’ he gnarled in his husky smoker’s voice, speaking fluent English. ‘You’ve never seen me before, but I’m always here. I’m the janitor of this section, you see. I was having trouble finding a way to get to you and I was becoming very worried about running out of time, but you’ve just provided me with a perfect excuse to get in here alone with you.’
‘Who are you? What’s—’
‘Shh my pretty, let me do the talking. It doesn’t matter who I am, but know this: I am Rebel, all the way. You don’t know what this means yet, but you will. I owe my own life and the lives of my wife and children to a man called Zakaria Alwa. He is like the Ice Bear – no, no, not like him at all,’ he added hastily as he saw fear flash across Adriana’s eyes. ‘What I mean is that, he, Zakaria, like Sigurd the Ice Bear, is not … not like you or me. He is one of them. A different kind of being, not a … human. But that is the only similarity he shares with the Ice Bear. As I said, he saved my life once, and the lives of many others, and this is the least I could do to pay him back.’
‘Zakaria Alwa? Not human?! I was told to listen for something to do with, um, William, William Gisborne. I’m sorry sir, but I really have no idea what’s going on here,’ she said, with a look of consternation crossing her face.
‘You don’t, yet,’ the old man replied, nodding in affirmation. ‘But things will soon start to become clear to you. It will seem terrifying and overwhelming at first, I’m afraid. You may well find yourself questioning your own sanity before you start to get to grips with everything.’
‘I don’t know how I can help you and, um, the Rebels, whoever they may be,’ Adriana said. ‘I’m not strong, I’m not brave, and I’m not a fighter. I’m a prisoner here, a helpless prisoner. I couldn’t even succeed in trying to … no, never mind…’
‘Couldn’t even what? Ah, that doesn’t matter anyway. You don’t need to be a fighter, nor do you need to be physically strong to play your part in this, but you will need a dose of courage.’
‘What kind of courage?’
‘The only kind there is, my dear; an unshakeable faith in the belief that you will succeed in your actions.’
Adriana broke down; she collapsed, sobbing, against the wall, with tears streaming down her cheeks, and it was all she could do to stop herself from wailing. The old man put down his tools and shuffled over to her and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.
‘I don’t know how you ended
