Frank Schätzing - Limit

He was so many people. So many things.

High up on his chimney Xin, the planner, started wondering what he had to do to make Yoyo come to him of her own accord.

For a while, Owen Jericho rode his bike under the elevated highway that separated Quyu from the real world. Below him, the traffic headed noisily westwards, counterpointed by the boom and roar of the CODs on the freeway above him. He was trapped in a sandwich of noise. When two police skymobiles came chasing over with their sirens wailing he took refuge between the sand-coloured skyscrapers that typified the urban desert around the central district of Shanghai, and followed the course of the main road to Hongkou. As he did so, he tried to stay as low as possible in the canyon of buildings. He assumed that he was flying below the permitted altitude, but he didn’t feel at ease on the battered airbike. And he didn’t want to experience a sudden engine failure high above the rooftops. Trying to compensate for the leftward tilt of the vehicle, he wound his way between façades, pillars, traffic-light poles, electric wires and elevated road signs, looking alternately straight ahead, into the rear-view mirror and towards the sky as he waited for Zhao. It was only when he had crossed Hongkou and flown the bike out towards the river that he started to think he might have shaken him off. If Zhao had even wanted to follow him. He plunged into the busy shopping streets behind the colonial façade of the Bund, landed to the west of Huaihai Park and dragged the airbike to the Xintiandi underground car park. The left rear wheel got stuck and scraped noisily over the asphalt. For a moment he wondered where to park it, until he remembered what had happened to his car.

At least he had a parking space for this thing now.

The scraping of the damaged wheel echoed angrily against the ramp walls as he steered the airbike towards the space reserved for him. He tried to forget his fury over the loss of his car, and grant priority to Yoyo’s wellbeing. In a mood of selflessness he extended his concern to Daxiong, as he hurried through the car park, hoping no one would see him with his soot-blackened face, but there wasn’t even anyone in the lift. There was a uniform light on the walls, the unit hummed gently. By the time he finally slammed the door of his loft behind him, he was certain no one had caught sight of him.

He sighed with relief and ran his hands over his face and through his hair.

He closed his eyes.

Immediately he saw the corpses, the boy with his face shot away, the dying, spinning girl with bright red fountains shooting from her shredded shoulder artery, her severed arm, saw himself freeing the gun from her clawed fingers – what was up, what had gone wrong? Hadn’t he wanted to lead a peaceful life? And now this. Within a few days. Abused children, mutilated young people, he himself more dead than alive. Reality? A dream, a film?

A film, exactly. And popcorn and something nice and cold. Lean back. What was on next? Quyu II, the Return ?

Impressions came chasing after him like rabid dogs. He mustn’t let it all get to him. He would never be able to get rid of it again; from now on the images would visit him on sleepless nights, but at the moment he had to think. Stack up his thoughts like building-blocks. Make a plan.

Scattering T-shirt and trousers carelessly around the sitting room, he went to the bathroom, turned on the shower, washed soot and blood from his skin, took stock. Yoyo and Daxiong had got away. A hypothesis, admittedly, temporarily elevated to the status of fact, but then he had to have something to go on. Secondly, Yoyo had been able to save her computer, which was now in his possession. Of course Zhao wouldn’t be so naïve as to believe that all the data were on the hard drive of a single, small device. The control room hadn’t been destroyed on a whim, it had served the purpose of annihilating the group’s infrastructure and possibly all the other devices that Yoyo had transferred the data onto. On the other hand Yoyo’s bluff might have achieved the desired effect when she suggested to Zhao that she’d left her computer at the control centre. Zhao must have believed he’d solved that problem at least.

What would he do next?

The answer was obvious. He would of course ask himself the question that had been troubling him ceaselessly for days: Who had Yoyo told about her discovery, and who out of them was still alive?

I know about it, he thought, as the hot streams of water massaged the back of neck. No, wrong! I know that she’s found something out, but I don’t know what. Zhao, on the other hand, knows that I know precisely nothing. Nice and Socratic. I’m not really an accessory, I’m only a witness to a few regrettable incidents.

Only? Quite enough to get him second place on Zhao’s hit list.

On the other hand, what were the chances that Zhao planned to kill him as well? Very high, looking at it realistically, but first he might hope that Jericho, the dewy-eyed twit, would lead him to Yoyo a second time.

Jericho paused, his hair a foam sculpture.

Then why hadn’t Zhao followed him here?

Very simple. Because Yoyo had actually been able to get away! Zhao assumed she was still in Quyu. He had preferred to continue with the chase. And in any case he didn’t need to follow Jericho, since he knew exactly where he would find him.

Still. He’d gained some time.

How much?

He rinsed his hair. Black trickles ran down his chest and arms, as if new dirt were constantly emerging from his pores. A stinging pain testified to some of the grazes he’d got when he crashed in the converter hall. He wondered how Yoyo was at that moment. Probably traumatised, although her big mouth hadn’t seemed to be in a state of shock. She’d still been capable of producing a reliable torrent of insults, suggesting a certain mental balance and, at the very least, a degree of resilience. The girl, he guessed, was as tough as sharkskin.

He turned off the tap.

Zhao would show up sooner or later. It was quite possible that he was already on his way. He reached for a towel, ran, still drying himself, through the sunlit expanse of his loft, which he would have to leave again almost as soon as he’d moved in, slipped into fresh clothes, tidied his hair very slightly. Next on the agenda was the flight of Owen Jericho, Inc., which consisted of Jericho himself, Diane, and all his technical equipment. He disconnected the hard drive, a portable unit the size of a shoe-box, and stuffed it in a rucksack along with the keyboard, a foldable touchscreen surface and a transparent 20-inch display. Along with that he packed his ID card, money, his spare mobile phone, a small hard drive for backups, Yoyo’s computer, headphones and Tu’s hologoggles. He stuffed underwear and T-shirts in with it, a spare pair of trousers, slippers, shaving materials, some pens and paper. The only things left in the loft were his control console and large screen, a few bits of hardware and various built-in drives, all of which were, without Diane, as useless as prosthetic limbs without anyone to wear them. No one who managed to get in here would find a bit or a byte; they wouldn’t be able to reconstruct Jericho’s work. The flat was more or less data-free.

Without turning round again, he went outside.

In the underground car park he strapped the rucksack onto the pillion seat of the airbike and examined the bent jet. With both hands he forced it back into its position. The result didn’t look very convincing, but at least it could be adjusted now. Then he fiddled around with the tailfin, drove the bike up the ramp and, with a certain satisfaction, noticed that the sound of scraping had gone. The ball wheel was turning again. He had swapped the car for an airbike, not voluntarily, but it was still a swap.