Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

The flat they were in was very similar to the one they had left but more run down, with even less furniture. There was a woman living here. She had opened the door to let them in and Scarlett recognized her. It took her a moment to work out where they had met but then she realized – it was the fortuneteller from the temple. She was standing by the door, blinking nervously. Her three birds were in their cages on a table, hopping up and down, frightened by all the noise.

Lohan hadn’t stopped moving. He was heading towards a second door and the kitchen beyond. “This way, Scarlett,” he called out.

Scarlett followed him into a room with a fridge and a cooker and little else. A large hole had been knocked through the wall. The sides were jagged, with old bits of wire and pipework sticking out, but this was the way out. They climbed through the brickwork and into the next-door flat and then into the one after. Each one had been smashed through to provide a passageway that couldn’t be seen from the corridor. The last two flats were completely abandoned, with dust and rubble all over the floor. They came to a window with a steel structure on the other side. A fire escape. Lohan jerked the window open. They climbed out.

Scarlett found herself standing on a small, square platform with a series of metal ladders zigzagging all the way down to street level, about twenty floors below. It was very cold up there, the air currents rushing between the buildings, carrying with them a driving rain. She looked down onto the sort of scene she would normally have associated with a major accident. There must have been at least a dozen police cars parked at different angles in the street. They might have turned their sirens off but their lights were flashing, brilliant even in the daylight. Barricades were still being erected around the building and all the traffic had been stopped. Men in black and silver uniforms were holding the crowds back.

They couldn’t go down. The fire escape led into the middle of all the chaos and the moment they reached the bottom, they would be seized. Worse still one of the policemen had seen them. He shouted out a warning and pointed. At once a group of armed officers ran forward and began to climb up.

Lohan didn’t seem worried. “We don’t go down,” he muttered. “We go up.”

There were just three flights of stairs from the platform to the roof and, aware of the policemen getting nearer all the time, Scarlett made her way up as quickly as she could, keeping close to the wall in case any shots were fired. Draco and Red followed up behind and a minute later they had all reached the roof and were squatting there, catching their breath in the shelter of a rusty water tank. The rain was slicing down. Scarlett was already drenched, her hair clinging to her eyes.

Lohan had taken out a mobile phone. He pressed a direct dial button and spoke urgently into it, then folded it away. The other men hadn’t said a word but they seemed to understand what had been agreed. Then Red muttered something and pointed. Scarlett looked up, wondering what he had seen. And shuddered. She had thought their situation couldn’t get any worse… but it just had.

There was a cloud of what looked like black smoke in the distance, high above the tower blocks of Kowloon. It was travelling towards them, against the wind. Scarlett knew at once that it couldn’t be smoke. It was the swarm of flies. They had come back again. They were heading directly for her.

“Move!”

Lohan set off at once, running across the roof, no longer caring if he was seen or not. He had hung the jade pendant around his neck and Scarlett realized that as long as he was wearing it, the flies would know where he was. But that was his plan. It was the reason he had taken it from her. He was protecting her, making himself the target in her place. He leapt over stacks of cable, moving towards the back of the building. Scarlett followed. She still had no idea where they were heading, how they were going to get down.

They reached the other side and came to a breathless halt. Once again, Scarlett was completely thrown. There was no fire escape, no ladder, no window cleaner’s lift. The next apartment block was about twenty metres away and there was no possible means of crossing. Lohan was standing at the very edge of the building. For a moment he looked like a ghost or maybe a scarecrow with his pale skin and his dark clothes, drenched by the falling rain. His black hair had fallen across his face. The scar seemed more prominent than ever.

“Follow me,” he instructed. “Don’t look down.”

And then he stepped into space.

Scarlett waited for him to fall, to be killed twenty storeys below. Instead, impossibly, he seemed to be standing in midair, as if he had learned to levitate. More magic? That was her first thought – but then she looked more closely and saw that it was just an incredible trick. There was a bridge constructed between the two buildings, a strip of almost invisible glass or Perspex… some see-through material strong enough to take his weight. Nobody would have been able to see it from the street or from the air, and even now she might not have been able to make it out but for the rain hitting it and the faint coating of grime that covered the surface. It still looked as if Lohan was suspended between the two buildings. He had walked some distance from the edge of the roof and was standing over the road, the toy cars and people far below.

It would be Scarlett’s turn next.

A door burst open on the roof behind her. A staircase led up inside and their pursuers had finally reached them, pouring out onto the roof, nine of them, human from the look of them but with dead eyes and pale, empty faces that might have spent years out of the light. Their hair was ragged, their clothes mouldering away and they wore no shoes. Some of them carried long, jagged knives. Others had lengths of chain hanging down to the ground and wooden clubs spiked with nails. Slowly, they began to fan out.

“You – go!” Red pushed Scarlett forward, propelling her towards the glass bridge. “Draco…” He finished the sentence in Chinese.

There was no time to argue. The creatures were already getting closer. Red moved towards them, away from the safety of the bridge, his own gun raised in front of him. Scarlett looked down. The bridge had no sides, no safety rails. The surface was wet and slippery. Worse still, because it was transparent, it felt completely insubstantial. She could imagine herself falling through it or losing her balance and plunging over the side. And she could see where she would land. The road was there, waiting for her far below.

Red fired a shot and the sound of it propelled her forward. She couldn’t look back. She couldn’t see what was happening behind her. All her concentration was focused on what she had to do. She took one step, then another. Now she was in mid-air with the wind buffeting her. She felt Draco behind her, urging her on, but fear was paralysing her. Lohan had told her not to look down, but if she didn’t, how could she be sure that her foot was coming down in the right place? The rain sliced into her face, half-blinding her. She could feel it running down her cheeks.

There were two more shots but then they stopped and she heard screaming and knew that Red had been caught, that terrible things were being done to him. Scarlett hated herself for doing nothing to help him. He had stayed behind for her, to give her the time to cross, and she was literally walking out on him. All these people were risking their lives for her. The whole apartment block with its knocked-through walls and this incredible glass bridge had been prepared for the time she might need it. And the crazy thing was that she still didn’t know who they were or why they had decided to help.