Without pausing to wipe the knife, she retrieved her gun and kept both weapons in hand as she sprinted for the stairwell. She had to get out of the building before reinforcements arrived. Her only hope was her carefully laid escape route, which, if she delayed further, might be in jeopardy.
After Granada, Zawadi had realized that, in an arena where Daiyu was able to provide tactical support to Jianyu, Zawadi was no match for the twins. New York was just such an arena. In fact, Dr. Corwin had left Columbia University for that very reason. The Ascendants owned the city now. Andie’s only chance to get in and out of the Museum of Natural History alive—whether Zawadi was present or not—was for someone to destroy Daiyu’s network and cut off Jianyu from his support system.
Sever the head of the snake.
Zawadi made it to the stairwell and burst through the door. As she knew from a careful study of the building schematics, Daiyu’s office was on the tenth and top floor. Zawadi took the stairs three at a time. Pale-gray moonlight and smog-choked air greeted her as she darted through the emergency exit and onto the roof. All around her, in stark contrast to the high-tech interior of the building, Zawadi saw a skyline of warehouses, semi-abandoned manufacturing plants, and pitted concrete buildings.
She had no time to spare, but she took a moment anyway. After replacing her boot knife, she whipped out her cell phone and sent a text to the phone she had given Andie.
Get out. Now. Jianyu is in the museum.
Had Zawadi accomplished her goal in time? She had the sinking feeling she had arrived too late, but there was nothing to do about it now.
Dammit! Why hadn’t the foolish girl listened to her?
At least Zawadi could take satisfaction in having killed Daiyu and destroying her communication equipment. Though the Ascendants had plenty of other computer experts, Daiyu was the best, an absolute savant, and had long been a thorn in the Society’s side.
Commotion on the stairs. It was time to complete her escape.
Zawadi stuck the phone in her pocket and holstered the gun, sprinted to the western edge of the roof, and used the running start to launch herself into the air, fifteen feet clear of the building. After letting herself free-fall below the roofline, she jerked on the two backpack straps, releasing a mini parachute.
Meant for short distances, the quick-release chute had a very small diameter and did not slow her down as much as a full-size chute would. Using the straps, she guided it to the roof of a warehouse eight stories below. She had scoped this in advance also. The warehouse was abandoned, but the schematics had not warned her about the broken glass littering the roof. When she landed, her momentum caused her to lurch forward and put her hands on the ground. Jagged shards pierced her hands through her thin gloves. Without glancing back—either they had seen her or they hadn’t—she sucked in a breath, shook off the pain, bundled the parachute as she raced along the roof, and strapped it to her back again. Easing her long body off the northern lip of the building, she hung by her fingers before dropping to the deserted alley two stories below.
Zawadi dispelled the kinetic energy of the fall by kicking once off the wall as she dropped and rolling on her shoulder when she hit the ground. It took a moment to regain her wind, but she had landed only ten feet from the dumpster concealing the Jialing motorcycle she had stashed. Not bad.
She raced behind the dumpster, picked up the helmet, and released the disk brake lock. A six-foot-tall black woman was a fairly conspicuous target in Shanghai, so for the last piece of her plan, she extracted a canvas bag she had duct-taped beneath the rear fender. She opened the bag and pulled on an ankle-length silk dress, a latex face mask, and a smog mask to further aid the disguise. While the latex mask was not as advanced as the model the Ascendants had fitted to the simulacrum corpse at Dr. Corwin’s funeral, it would do the trick while she was speeding down the freeway at eighty miles an hour. She gunned the motor and peeled out of the alley, another pollution-phobic Shanghai woman cruising through the city on a local motorcycle.
Her first task accomplished, Zawadi set her mind to the next leg of her two-part mission, and the principal reason she had flown to China instead of New York.
Zawadi had a lost scientist to find.
Lars Friedman had developed the prototype for the Enneagon at Quasar Labs. But there had been a third scientist, Xiaolong Chen, involved as well. Zawadi didn’t know the details, but James had mentioned his name on numerous occasions.
Xiaolong had disappeared from his lab in Beijing around the same time as James and Lars. Zawadi had assumed the worst. Yet two days ago, Xiaolong had contacted her on a secure channel to which only Dr. Corwin could have given access. Xiaolong claimed he had gone into hiding before the Ascendants found him, made his way to Shanghai, and had extremely important information to relay to Zawadi—and Zawadi alone.
She wasn’t sure she trusted him.
She would have to take precautions.
But if the information might help Dr. Corwin, she was damn sure going to investigate.
24
The rotation
