WnW 4.21

I slowed my pace as I drew near to the partially built building B was in and began to hear the crows. I didn’t see very many perched on the outside of the building, yet the noises emanating from within would have been right at home in some witch’s house from a fairytale. They must have moved inside. 

We still didn’t know what was happening. It could have been a coincidence. The crows could have just decided this was their new roosting spot, except B and Terry had stopped answering. The timing was too convenient.

Zola caught up with me first, doing his best to quiet his breathing as we stuck to the shadows and crept closer. We made it to the side of the building and moved around it, looking for entrances. There was no sign of the Jiezhi. If it had really been an ambush, wouldn’t there be lookouts in case B and Terry weren’t alone? There was a startling burst of movement as a crow noisily erupted from a gap in the tarps that covered the scaffolding. I froze, heart pounding. It flew off, cawing at the night sky.

“The front entrance is a bad idea,” Zola whispered. “They might be waiting for us.”

I nodded and pointed to the scaffolding that hung above our heads, “I’ll jump up.”

Zola stared with wide eyes as I prepared my Shape, curling bones around my legs, then locking them into place as I began to build tension. It was a fine balance that I was refining with every attempt. Too much pressure would break the bones, even though they were stronger than they’d ever been. Too little and I wouldn’t get the height I needed. I judged the distance and decided I didn’t need to get close to the bone’s breaking point.

A beam of light swept over us, banishing our only protection.

I was stuck, crouched over like I was taking a shit. Releasing the Shape meant leaving Zola on his own, so I started to absorb the Shape back into my body. But that was too slow.

The figure split the beam of the flashlight with a machete, pointing it at us. “Don’t fucking move or I’ll gut you both.”

Zola and I stayed still.

Then the man reached for a walkie-talkie on his belt.

“Hey!” Zola hissed at him. His eyes were wide, almost manic. His mouth hung open, something I’d never seen him do before.

The man paused and watched him warily.

“You saw nothing, yeah?” Zola was speaking differently, chopped and feverish. A knife had appeared in his hand. He lurched more than he stepped towards the man.

The man dropped his flashlight and readied his machete.

Zola chuckled softly. “What the fuck is that gonna do?” He lifted his own knife up and slowly dragged it across his fingers. I winced, but Zola didn’t look like he was in pain. He held up his hand so it could be seen in the dark. 

“See?” 

His hand wasn’t cut. There was no blood. He took another step towards the man, dragging the knife across the wall, gouging a line. The man shouted something in Mandarin and Zola stopped, then raised the knife to his lips. The man’s grip on his weapon began to waver as he watched Zola drag the knife over his own tongue. No blood spurted. It was like he was licking a popsicle.

The man backed away, eyes wide in fear. Zola chuckled again, almost giggling. “You can’t cut me. You can’t.”

Arms shot out from darkness behind the man, wrapping him in a chokehold. The machete slipped from his already loose grip. The man struggled, clawing at the large forearms, drawing thin lines of blood. I found myself holding my breath for the few long moments it took before the man went limp. Graham slowly lowered him to the ground, as gentle as he was violent a second before.

Zola sighed in relief, sweat beading visibly on his brow. He gave me a weak thin-lipped grin. “Sorry you had to see that.”

I eased out of the Locust Legs stance as Nell and Richard showed up.

“Can you tell if there’s people inside?” I asked Nell. 

She closed her eyes and said, “There’s so many of them, I can’t really tell what’s a bird and what’s not.”

“There might be more Jiezhi on the way, we need to resolve this quickly,” Graham said, looking in the direction of the main Jiezhi force.

“I’ll climb the outside, maybe I can get the jump on them.”

“No,” Graham said. “That’s far too dangerous. We don’t know how many are in there.”

I gritted my teeth. “Doesn’t it get more dangerous the longer we dawdle?”

Graham studied the outside of the building, not meeting my eyes. “You risked enough coming into the Old Town with me on Sullivan’s demand. I can take it from here.”

“Really? I like Nick’s idea,” Zola said.

Graham frowned and Zola shrugged.

“He is offering to do something you cannot. Why not play to our strengths? In the meantime, we can take our time scouting the other entrances. Nell can definitely watch our backs, right?”

Nell nodded. “You can count on us.”

Graham closed his eyes. “Fine. Go.”

I quickly returned to building up tension. The covers flapping in the wind hindered my view of the metal bars of the scaffolding. I triggered the Shape’s release and shot into the air. The sudden acceleration stung my eyes as I tried to make out my landing point. My angle was good, but I had too much speed. I hit a horizontal bar on the outside frame with a clang. The air whooshed out of me on impact. Nearby perched birds scattered from the noise. 

Clinging to the bar tightly, I waited and listened for any sign that I’d been heard, struggling to breathe quietly. I could hear some faint sound, but it sounded like it was coming from higher up.

I took a longing look at the solid platforms of the scaffolding and resigned myself to climbing up the outside, which meant gripping bars through the tarp covers. It took me a moment to even find where the first bar above me was, but once I grasped the distances, I managed to climb decently quickly. 

A grin played across my lips as I realized I felt more comfortable precariously scaling a building at night rather than interacting with my own friends in an arcade.

My hand slipped off a wet part of the tarp. I spun away from the building, white knuckling my remaining handhold and got a dizzying view of the ground. I hung for a second before carefully wiping the sweat off of my hand and reasserting my grip. Maybe a little too comfortable.

I began to hear voices above me. It was hard to make out how many and there could be more who weren’t talking. I climbed up to the level the voices were emanating from and slid softly from the outer frame onto the metal platforms that came before another the tarp wall that shielded the inside of the incomplete building from the elements. I stopped and listened to the group speak to each other in Mandarin. The cawing of the crows around me made it harder to single out individual voices. One spoke calmly amid the two or three voices that were more agitated.

Abruptly, the calmer voice switched to English, “-or your friends. Do they know about the shipment? Tell me.”

A voice replied. “I told you. I’m not a part of the Rings. Do you see a fucking ring tattoo?”

That didn’t sound like Terry, which meant this must be B. I pressed my ear against the tarp to hear better.

There was a muted thud. I could only imagine it was a boot hitting a body. “Bring back the drone,” the voice demanded.

B sounded more subdued than before, “It hit a bird.”

The next thing the man said was drowned out by the cawing crows. I flinched as something moved in the corner of my vision, but it was just a crow emerging from a gap in the tarp. It wiggled free and took off, leaving behind a black feather. I would have to be careful I wasn’t seen through one of those gaps.

Another thud. B coughed heavily for a few moments before regaining their breath. “Fuck! I don’t know!”

The man responded calmly, despite the violence he or one of his colleagues was inflicting. “The shipment is here soon and I’m wasting my focus on you and your friends downstairs.”

“I don’t know them. I came on my own,” B insisted.

The man ignored them. “They don’t have guns. We will shoot them and you unless you unlock the computer and show me what you used the drone for.”

A discussion broke out in Mandarin between the calm man and one of the others. I tried to think of a way to get B away without alerting the Jiezhi. I had to act fast. It sounded like they hadn’t requested backup from the building where the shipment was happening. Another crow flew past me and into the gap in the tarp. That could work to my advantage. A little rustling and movement likely wouldn’t get noticed.

I heard some footsteps and something brushed against the other side of the tarp I had my ear against. The footsteps were getting further away, they were going downstairs. That was likely the others, making their play on the main floor. This was my chance, I just had to-

Inside, the voices had fallen silent. Had they all left? Something brushed against the tarp again. None of the footsteps had been that close…

B’s voice rang out, shrill and clear in the quiet night. “Move!”

I dropped and rolled away from the tarp. Gunshots crackled to life like fireworks, with flashes of noise and light. I fell straight off of the platform, grabbing hold of the outer metal bar as I did. Bullets struck the scaffolding and sparks spun away. I swung and landed on the platform below. Not stopping for a second, I sprinted down the catwalk, abandoning stealth for a moment. Startled crows flew chaotically in and out of the scaffolding, black blurs in the night. The gunfire halted, leaving echoes in its wake. I stopped as well, not wanting to give away my new location on the loud metal platforms. I panted quietly. How had they known?

They were talking above me. I suddenly wished I could travel back in time and learn Mandarin. The fact that I didn’t know what they were saying was agonizing. There were some ripping noises and then someone stepped out onto the scaffolding above me. I resisted the urge to Shape my armour. It likely wouldn’t do me much good against bullets and it would stand out like a white bedsheet in the dark.

The footsteps started to come towards me. Coincidence? There’s only two ways to go on a catwalk. I quietly grew a thin branch from my forearm, making sure it was straight so it didn’t crack and make noise. I stuck the branch underneath my jacket to mute the noise and broke it off. The footsteps were almost on top of me. I threw the branch back the way I’d come. It struck the metal with a loud clang and the birds erupted into noise again. An arm holding a handgun lowered down into my field of view and fired at the noise. I was momentarily blinded and deafened, but I had begun to move before the gun fired. My fingers found the arm, I seized it in both hands and jerked it downwards.

Suddenly I was holding a great weight that was pulling me down. I dropped to my stomach and hung on tight to the arm. They swung and banged against the floor below me and the gun flew out of their hand and dropped down to the ground below. I leaned back and hauled the man up to my level. He’d been dazed by the fall, his head lolled and he looked at me through half-closed eyes. I pulled his walkie-talkie free and then I let him drop to the floor. 

More shouts sounded from above. I turned and ran down the catwalk again, dropping the walkie-talkie off the side of the building. After covering some distance, I ripped a hole in the tarp with my antlers and climbed inside the building. They didn’t have a perfect idea where I was, so they didn’t have a camera trained on me. Perhaps there was a lookout outside giving them verbal orders. My chances looked better inside.

The interior was a literal concrete jungle, large stone pillars standing at set intervals with wooden frames outlining the beginning of rooms and hallways. Crows darted and weaved around these obstacles, filling the dim space with moving shadows. The floor above appeared to have a light source that made the staircase on one end of the room the easiest thing to spot. Human shadows moved across the opening and I quickly moved to hide behind a large supporting pillar, being careful to not disturb the stacks of wooden planks around my feet.

Three distinct voices spoke to each other and then grew quiet as they moved down the steps. I waited. They were closing the distance. I could only benefit from it. I flinched as a crow grazed my face. Their talons were sharp enough to cut me. The steps grew louder, closer. Two people, separating to sweep the floor. Where was the third? I realized that they would end up coming up on both sides of the pillar. They know where I am. I was sure of it. I was pinned down.

I bent down and picked up a plank of wood. They wouldn’t get close enough to swing at them. These people were smart, coordinated. I formed my jumping Shape around only one of my legs and closed my eyes, focusing on the sound of the footsteps creeping closer. When they paused, I rolled out of cover and held the plank in front of my Shaped leg. Release. 

My makeshift projectile spun into the darkness in the direction of a silhouette. The board hit the vertical pieces of a wooden frame and fragmented, spraying the man with shards of wood. I charged him and as I rounded the pillar, the other man opened fire on me. Bullets thudded into the wood and sent plumes of concrete dust into the air. I dropped into a slide and crashed into my target, taking out his legs. He dropped on top of me and I stabbed his arms with antlers. His dark grimace loomed in front of me. 

Then I felt his body shudder as a bullet hit him.

These guys were willing to shoot each other to get me.

He muttered something unintelligible before his body went limp. The other assailant stopped firing and I shoved the man away and crawled behind a stack of building materials. I moved along it while crouching. Another crow darted past me, scratching my face. The crows were in a frenzy, yet they weren’t leaving, despite the gunshots. I darted to another nearby pillar and peered around the side. The man wasn’t looking at me, his gun was pointed at where I’d disappeared on him. The crows were loud enough that I could sneak up on him.

A shadow appeared on the steps to the higher floor. A warbling whistle sounded out, echoing across the building and back. The constant cawing and flapping of the crows stopped. The new, complete silence settled over the building. It was a damning silence. I had my answer to how they were finding me. The crows had stopped to listen. He was controlling them.

I dashed out from my hiding place just as another piercing whistle was blown. The murder descended on me with unified intent. Talons and beaks slashed, pecked and pulled at my clothing, skin, and hair. I couldn’t see. What little vision I had in the darkness was taken, filled with a wall of moving shadows. I tried swiping at the crows with sharp antlers, but I couldn’t tell if I hit anything. 

My armour rose around me to protect me. This only seemed to enrage the crows and they bombarded me with blows. Which way was I heading? I had to get out. Crows threw themselves at me, their small bodies delivering forceful blows that knocked me this way and that. I was being battered down. I stumbled over an object I couldn’t see and my arm cracked against a beam. A piece of armour broke and I felt the sharp sting of beaks at the new weakness. I shored it up and forged on, tripping and falling forward, then crawling on my hands and knees.

My hands met the blocks and edges of the stairs. I climbed them, desperate to escape. I reached the next floor and crawled forward. A whistle sounded behind me. The crows dispersed and light filled my vision. Something tapped against the back of my head.

“Don’t move or I test how good your helmet is against bullets,” an impassive voice said. “Checkmate, gwailou.”