‘What’s this now?’ She got down on her knees to peer at the anomaly her fingers had brushed over beneath the basin, and saw that it was some sort of lever. ‘Why’s this hidden back here?’ She got up and stared at the sink for a moment as curiosity and caution traded blows in the boxing ring of her mind. ‘I’ve gotta try it … I have to. If something happens, well … I can just say that I bumped it while washing my face, can’t I?’ She drew in a deep breath and held the air in her lungs, and then after one quick glance over her shoulder at the door behind her, she pulled on the lever. There was some resistance on its part, but as she progressively applied more force the lever began to move, and then with a brief shudder it clicked into place.
Something groaned and rumbled behind the wall, and Margaret bit her lower lip as a flood of panic began to boost its raging torrents through her entire body. Puffs of dust suddenly began spurting from the walls, and with a pained, deep moan, the stones themselves started shifting.
‘Oh Jesus! Oh shit! He’s gonna kill me!’
She lunged forward and grabbed at the lever with fumbling, panic-clumsy fingers. With an exponentially increasing fervour she tugged and pulled at it, huffing and whimpering with desperation and fear, but despite her efforts the lever would not budge; whatever reaction she had triggered seemed to have become unstoppable. She fell back in terror, tripping over her own feet as she saw what happened next … for the wall itself began to open up.
‘What the hell is happening?!’ she shrieked.
The walls continued to shudder and rumble, and a gaping black maw opened up before her as the stones disappeared inwards. All Margaret could do was lie on the floor where she had fallen, and watch with fear-bulging eyes and panic-laden heaves of breath as the process of whatever it was that was happening played out before her.
After what seemed like an eternity the walls stopped groaning and vibrating, and silence returned to the room. Now, however, there was a huge hole in the wall. It seemed that it was large enough for an adult to pass through.
‘Is this … is this what I think it is?’ Margaret gasped. ‘Could it really be a … a secret passage?’
She scrambled up to her feet and dusted herself off, and thought right away about the guard posted outside her door. The girl must have heard all the noise, but why hadn’t she come in to investigate? Margaret hurried over to her door and pressed an ear to it.
Nothing.
She then dropped down onto her hands and knees and peered under the door. There didn’t seem to be anyone there, as far as she could tell. Perhaps they thought that since she was locked inside her room, there was no need to post a guard outside, or maybe the girl had just gone off for a bathroom break. For whatever reason, the soldier wasn’t there, and apparently nobody had heard the sound of the shifting wall.
Margaret breathed out a deep sigh of relief and took a few moments to sit on the bed to calm her pounding heart and buzzing nerves. After a good few minutes there had still been no reaction from anybody, so she stood up and squeezed her forehead, and then breathed out slowly and massaged the back of her neck to release some of the tension from the earlier moments of panic.
‘Well, isn’t that convenient for me,’ Margaret said to herself. ‘Looks like nobody noticed that. Ain’t nothing left to do but see where this tunnel leads.’
With every nerve ending alive with a tingle of fear, excitement and trepidation, she pulled one of the candles from the wall and set off into the inky darkness of the tunnel.
PART EIGHT
27
MR MA
5th October 2020. MANMO-M Technologies Company Product Development Headquarters, Shenzhen, China
The meeting room was abuzz, sprayed with shrapnel fragments of excited conversation, each blasting outwards from the object of everyone’s attention: a small glass vial containing a few gleaming chrome capsules.
The chattering ceased abruptly as two figures entered through the main doors: the frail figure of Mr Ma cut a disproportionately imposing silhouette as he shuffled in, followed by his brawny interpreter and bodyguard, Mr Wang. The suits all hurried to their prescribed seats at the ornately carved agarwood table, standing in silence until Mr Ma had taken his seat at its head. For a few tense moments the old man stared at all of them with icicles in his eyes, after which he gave a curt nod, permitting them to sit. Mr Wang took his seat to the right of Mr Ma and beamed a warm smile at each person sitting at the table before clasping his hands and speaking.
‘Welcome everyone! Mr Ma is eagerly awaiting the demonstration of the new product. As we are all well aware, the MANMO-M Kestrel RS failed to make the projected impact on the smartphone market, while the sales graph has yet to come even close to touching the projected curve at any stage of this financial quarter. Furthermore, we all know that the MANMO-M Peregrine TZ-787 failed even more spectacularly in the tablet market. In short, Mr Ma is very displeased, and so are the shareholders. What’s more, there’s the ongoing lawsuit from the families of the seventy-seven workers who died in the collapse of one of the factories last year, and another attempted lawsuit on the part of a couple of annoying little piss-ants who are upset about MANMO-M poisoning their precious drinking water. Our court and, er, other actions to deal with these irritating plebs have eaten into our profits. In light of all of this, and because we have seen a
