TAI FUNG
The dragon was moving towards Hong Kong, closing in with deadly precision, gaining strength as it crossed the water. Scarlett had summoned it and it had heard. Even she couldn’t turn it back now.
It had begun its life as nothing more than a front of warm air, rising into the sky. But then, very quickly, a swirl of cloud had formed, spinning faster and faster with a dark, unblinking eye at the centre. By the time the weather satellites had transmitted the first pictures from the Strait of Luzon, it was already too late. The dragon was awake. Its appetite was as big as the ocean where it had been born and it would destroy anything that stood in its path.
The dragon was a typhoon.
Tai fung.
The words mean “big wind”, but they went nowhere near describing the most powerful force of nature; a storm that contained a hundred storms within it. The typhoon would travel at over two hundred miles an hour. Its eye might be thirty miles wide. The hurricane winds around it would generate as much energy in one second as ten nuclear bombs. To the Chinese, typhoons are also known as “the dragon’s breath”, as if they come from some terrible monster living deep in the sea.
Since 1884, the Hong Kong Observatory had put out a series of warnings whenever a typhoon had come within five hundred miles and each warning has come with a beacon, or a signal, attached. Signal One was shaped like a letter T and warned the local populace to stand by. Signal Three, an upside down T, was more serious. Now people were told to stay at home, not to travel unless absolutely necessary. Later on came Signal Eight, a triangle, Signal Nine, an hourglass, and finally, most terrifyingly, Signal Ten. Perhaps appropriately, this took the shape of a cross. Signal Ten meant devastation. It would almost certainly bring wholesale loss of life.
And that was what was on its way now.
But there were no warnings. Nobody had been prepared for a typhoon in November, which was months after the storm season should have ended. And anyway, no typhoon could possibly have formed so quickly. It would normally take at least a week. This one had reached its full power in less than a day. The whole thing was impossible.
Nor was there anyone left to send out the signals. Hong Kong Observatory had been abandoned. Many of the scientists had left. The others were too scared to come to work as the city continued its descent into sickness and death.
Unseen, the dragon rushed towards them. The skyscrapers were already in its sight. Suddenly they seemed tiny and insubstantial as, with a great roar, it fell on them. By the time anyone realized what was happening it was already far too late.
The chairman of the Nightrise Corporation was wondering how many people had died in the last twenty-four hours and how many more would die in the next. He could imagine them, sixty-six floors below, crawling over the pavements, begging for help that would never come, finally losing consciousness in a cloud of misery and pain. He himself would leave Hong Kong very soon. His work here was almost finished. It was time to claim his reward.
The Old Ones were going to give him the whole of Asia to rule over in recognition of what he had achieved. Even Ghengis Khan hadn’t been as powerful as that. He would live in a palace, an old-fashioned one with deep, marble baths and banqueting rooms and gardens a mile long. The world leaders who survived would bow in front of him and anyone who had ever offended him, in business or in private life, would die in ingenious ways that he had already designed. He would open a theatre of blood and they would star in it. And anything he wanted he would have. The thought of it made his head spin.
He was behind his desk in his office on the executive floor of The Nail and he was not alone. There was a man sitting on the same leather sofa that Scarlett Adams had occupied just a week before. The man had travelled a very long way and he was still looking crumpled from his flight. He was elderly, dressed in a shabby, brown suit that didn’t quite fit him. It was the right size but it hung awkwardly. The man was bald with two small tufts of white hair around his ears and white eyebrows. He looked ill at ease in this smart office. He was out of place and he knew it. But he was glad to be here. It had been a journey he was determined to make.
His name was Gregor Malenkov. For many years he had been known as Father Gregory, but he planned to put that behind him now. He had left the Monastery of the Cry for Mercy for good. He, too, had come for his reward.
“So how do you like Hong Kong?” the chairman asked.
“It’s an extraordinary city,” Father Gregory rasped. “Quite extraordinary. I came here as a young man but it was much smaller then. Half the buildings weren’t here and the airport was in a different place. All these lights! All the traffic and the noise! I have to say, I hardly recognized it.”
“A week from now, it will be completely unrecognizable,” the chairman said. “It will have become a necropolis. I’m sure you will understand what that means, a man of your learning.”
“A city of the dead.”
“Exactly. The entire population has begun to die. In just a matter of days, there will be no one left. The corpses are already piling up in the street. The hospitals are full – not that they would be any use as the doctors and the nurses are dying too. Nobody even bothers to call the cemeteries. There’s no room there. And soon things will get much, much worse. It will be interesting to watch.”
“How are you killing them?” Father Gregory asked. “Would I be right in thinking it is something to do with the pollution?”
“You would be entirely correct, Father Gregory. Although perhaps I should not call you that, as I understand you are no longer in holy orders.” The chairman stood up and went over to the window, but the view had been almost completely obliterated by the mist which swirled around the building, chasing its own tail. There was going to be a storm. He could just make out the water down in the harbour. The water was choppy, rising into angry waves.
“There has always been pollution, blowing in from China,” he continued. “And the strange thing is that the people here have tolerated it. Coal-fired power stations. Car exhausts. They have always accepted that it’s a price that has to be paid for the comforts of modern life.”
“And you have made it worse?”
“The Old Ones have added a few extra chemicals – some very poisonous ones – to the mix. You’ve seen the results. The elderly and the weak have been the first to go, but the rest of the city will follow if they are exposed to it for very much longer. Which they will be. An unpleasant death. We are safe, of course, inside The Nail. The air is filtered. We just have to be careful not to spend too long in the street.”
Father Gregory pressed his fingers together. His sty had got much worse. The eyeball was now jammed, no longer able to move. Only his good eye watched the chairman. “I have to say, I’m disappointed,” he said. “I was looking forward to meeting – to actually seeing – the Old Ones.”
“The Old Ones have left Hong Kong. They have a great deal of work to do, preparing for a war that will be starting very soon. As soon as they heard that Matthew Freeman had been taken, they went.”
“I don’t understand why they don’t show themselves to the world,” Father Gregory said. “You have two of the Gatekeepers. So surely nothing can stop them…”
“It’s not the way they work. If the Old Ones told the world that they existed, people would unite against them. That would defeat the point. By keeping themselves hidden, they can let humanity tear itself apart. That is what they enjoy.”
There was a moment’s silence. Father Gregory licked his lips and something ugly came into his eyes. “I want to see the girl,” he said. “I still can’t believe that she managed to break free when I had her. I had plans…”
“Yes, that was most unfortunate,” the chairman agreed. “Well, right now they are together. The boy came all this way to find her, so I thought it would be amusing to let them spend one day in each other’s company.”
“Is that safe?”
“The two of them are locked up very securely and nobody knows where they are. The boy has certain abilities which make him dangerous. But as for the girl…”
“What is her power?”
“It seems that she drew the short straw. I’m afraid Scarlett Adams is not quite the superhero one might have imagined.” The chairman smiled. “She has the ability to predict the weather. That’s all. She can tell if it’s going to rain or if the sun is going to shine. As she will never see either of these things again, it will not do her very much
