Chapter 43
“Do you see it?” hissed Ming-na.
“It” was hard to miss.
Alice gripped her axe handle tighter and pressed her back to the wall.
It can’t be. It must be an illusion, a—
“It’s him. It’s Qin Shi Huang,” said Ming-na. “What do we do?”
How the fuck should I know? Alice wanted to scream. A week ago, I was trying to describe a particularly succulent dumpling for the blog. Oh, “succulent.” That was the word I was …
“How should I know?” she hissed back.
Christ! A hive of terrorists was one thing, but an undead, immortal, mercury-addled emperor?
Focus. Focus. You have to stop the attack. Nothing else matters.
She looked again. Each screen had a map of a different part of the world. But the same countdown.
Four minutes and fifty-four, -three … -two …
She knew enough about computers, about the internet, to know that rushing forward, swinging their pickaxes, and smashing the equipment and the people, or even that monstrosity, would not stop the attack. They had to get into the computers, they had to stop the countdown.
Four minutes and thirty-eight, -seven … -six …
But if her old computer at home was password-protected, if she needed codes to get into her TV streaming, there was a pretty good chance the launch of the final attack also needed a code.
If not to start it, then definitely to stop it.
They had four minutes and … sixteen, fifteen, fuckteen seconds …
One thing was certain, Qin Shi Huang might know ancient warfare, but he would not know how to organize a missile attack using adaptive predictive artificial intelligence. Someone else in the necropolis was in charge of that. Someone in that room had set it up. Had started it. Could stop it.
She peeked around the corner again. She counted.
One, two, three, four people. That was it?
It made sense that Pangu would have wanted to keep the circle small.
Too many people would risk the secret getting out.
She regarded them carefully. There was a young woman at a laptop typing furiously.
Two other men were sitting across from her, also looking at screens.
Who? Who? Who was the evil genius who programmed this?
Him. That man. The small older man. He sat alone off to the side, hunched over a laptop.
Not a terminal like the others, but something he could carry with him.
On his screen, she could see a map of the world.
With different capitals highlighted. About to be lit up.
Beijing, yes, but also London, Paris, DC …
Three minutes and fifty-seven, -six, -five …
“We have to get to the man at the laptop,” she whispered to Ming-na.
“The old guy?”
He was no older than her, but “Yes, the old guy. He can stop it. He has the control.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. Best guess. You have a better idea?”
“I want this to end,” said Ming-na. “I want to go home.”
It sounded childish at that moment, but Alice totally understood.
So did she. She wanted to put down her axe and walk away.
She wanted to turn back time, to her brunch with Vivien at the hotel in DC.
Over blueberry pancakes and puddles of maple syrup, she wanted to ask Vivien about her life.
And actually listen. Really listen. She wanted to tell Vivien about her life. Her cares and triumphs.
She wanted to go to that White House meeting and not see the coconut bun in Liam’s hand.
But none of that was going to happen. At least not in this lifetime. Maybe the next. Where her mother was likely waiting for her. She suspected that Vivien would not have long to wait.
“If I distract them,” said Alice, feeling as though she was taking an irrevocable leap off a cliff, “can you grab that man and his laptop? And drag him away? Make him tell you the codes to stop the attack.”
“How?”
Alice remembered those gruesome scenes from gangster movies. “Use your axe. Cut off his fingers.”
She could see Ming-na about to protest; then she stopped herself, steeled herself.
“No. I don’t know enough about computers. You do. You need to do it. I’ll distract them.”
“Sure?”
“Quick, before I change my mind.”
Three minutes and forty-three, -two, -one …
“On three,” said Alice as her aunt gripped her axe handle tighter. “One, two…”
“Sir,” shouted the Secretary of Defense, through the locked door. Then she pounded. “Mr. President! Let me in! The ICBMs are preparing to fire. They’re powering up.”
“Christ,” snapped Pardington and stepped toward the door.
“No, Mr. President!” said Kathleen, stepping away from the door. “Don’t trust her.”
He turned to her. “I thought you said…”
“I changed my mind.” Kathleen looked panicked. “She has the codes, she could do it all. She’s a friend, my best friend. I didn’t want to—”
“Let me in!” growled Secretary Clavelle, as though possessed.
“… three!”
Ming-na, axe held high, raced from cover, screaming and heading straight for the terrorists at their terminals. The sound of her shriek, fueled by rage and fear, was harrowing. It reverberated off the walls, lodging in bone and marrow.
It scared even Alice, who was expecting it.
And it did the trick. Everyone in the room, including the ghoulish emperor, turned in her direction while Alice ran in the other, toward the man at the laptop. Unfortunately, he was much more alert than the others and saw her coming.
When she was still a few paces away, he snapped the laptop shut and took off.
“Fuck,” she sputtered, and tried to pick up her pace. But her legs were wobbly from all the running and climbing she’d already done. And the pickaxe felt heavier and heavier with each step.
Come on, come on.
She chased him down a wide corridor. He was getting farther away. Behind her, Alice heard shots and understood why the rod in Qin Shi Huang’s beefy hand looked familiar. It was a sort of rifle. Not modern, but the original gun, created by his armorers two thousand years earlier.
And just as lethal.
Ming-na, Ming-na … was she now in Kai-wen’s arms?
But Alice had no time to grieve. It fell to her now.
She dropped the heavy axe and picked up her pace. She was gaining on the man when he suddenly stopped and stood straight up. His feet left the ground. He turned in midair, a look of astonishment on his face.
And then he fell. Arrows in his chest. Dead before he hit the ground.
Alice also hit the ground, as more arrows flew over top of her. She could feel them ruffling her hair. She shimmied forward and grabbed the laptop out of the man’s warm grip. Lying on her belly, as flat as she could, she opened it.
Three minutes and fifteen, fourteen …
She stared at the keyboard. There were no letters. Not even in Mandarin. Each key held just dots and slashes. Each slightly different.
What was she supposed to do with that?
She put her cheek to the cold floor and looked at the board sideways, to see if maybe she could tell which keys had been struck the most. Maybe she could make out the code from the finger marks. But she could not. And even if the keys gave themselves away, she wouldn’t know what order …
Three minutes and four … three …
And yet the slashes looked familiar.
She rifled the man’s clothing. Elderly, slightly addled people could be forgetful. Could he have written down the … Nothing.
Nothing!! Just the photograph of a child. No doubt his grandchild. But the photo was in black and white and appeared quite old. Her name was written on the back.
Nüshu.
But this wasn’t, she realized, the first time she’d seen this picture. Rifling her own pockets now, she brought out the photograph she’d taken off the dead woman in the terracotta village.
The same child. Same picture. Why? She turned it over, and there, again, was the name: Nüshu.
Was it the child’s name? If so, it was no name she was familiar with. A nickname maybe?
The little girl was holding a piece of embroidery with … dots and slashes in a circle around another figure, less visible.
Alice brought the photograph to the keyboard.
Two minutes and forty-one … forty …
The markings on the embroidery matched the keys. It must be the code, she realized. And the photo an aide-mémoire. If found casually, it wouldn’t inspire a second look.
But there was a problem. On the embroidery, the symbols formed a circle. There was no way to tell where to start. Which one to put in first.
Nüshu? Nüshu. If she had internet, she could look it up on her phone. But …
Those huge servers must provide, well, service. This laptop must be connected. She didn’t dare move off the screen with the countdown. In case she could never find it again.
Pulling out her phone, she went to settings.
There was a hot spot. Clicking on it, she watched, watched.
Two minutes and nineteen, eighteen …
She was in. Alice immediately typed “Nishu.” Fuck. “Musku.” Fuuuuuck.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Focus. Steady.
“N U S H U.” Go.
“My God…”
Nüshu wasn’t a name, it was a language. A secret code invented centuries ago in China by women. For women. They were forbidden to learn how to read and write, so they created their own. They’d defied the authorities. Just as Pangu was doing.
One minute and fifty-three, fifty-two …
Alice stopped reading about the language and started putting words to translate into Nüshu. Likely words that might have been used by those running Pangu. Not men at all. Women.
What would they have chosen as a code to start the apocalypse?
“Apocalypse.” Up came the dots and squiggles. She put it into the laptop.
The countdown continued.
The captain of the USS Ronald Reagan watched in horror as the missiles on board her own ship armed themselves and prepared to launch.
“Stop it,” she commanded.
“We’re trying, ma’am. We can’t. We can’t break the connection with the APAI.”
“Scramble the fighters on the other aircraft carriers. Tell them to be prepared to intercept.”
“Yes, ma’am.” They’d been through this. If the worst happened, this was their only hope, though a slim one. The missiles took off at such a speed, by the time the fighters could lock on and fire, the warheads would be long gone.
Still, it was worth a try. It was their only chance.
Though … there was one other option.
“Delay that. Tell them to lock in on us.”
“Ma’am?”
“Do it! Tell them to fire on my command.”
“On us? But that would…”
“Yes.” The captain looked at her second-in-command. She knew exactly what it meant.
The officer, pale, relayed the message, and within moments, they heard the whoosh of jets taking off.
“Sound the abandon ship,” ordered the captain, and the siren wailed. “With me,” she shouted and sprinted through the ship, shoving crew members toward the boats.
It would be too late, the sailors would never get far enough away from the ship, but it was worth a try.
In the missile room, she met chaos. Orders were being shouted. The most highly trained arms technicians in the world sat at terminals, pounding keys. Refusing to leave. Desperately trying to stop what now seemed inevitable.
“Shit, shit,” muttered the captain.
The massive doors above the missile silos had come alive, opening up, with the missiles exposed. They now stood straight up, ready to head into the atmosphere. To their destinations.
No one had put in the coordinates. They’d just appeared. The intruder was virtual. The ghost was in the machine. It would not be stopped. Just as they got close, it slid away. It was, the chief engineer said, like trying to grasp hold of mercury.
Their only hope was to destroy the missiles. And that meant destroying the ship itself, and everyone in it.
The captain stood still, head high. Staring straight ahead.
One minute and thirteen, twelve …
“Death,” Alice tried. The countdown continued.
This was ridiculous. She was putting in words at random. She’d never get it.
What, what? What did those women want so long ago, who’d created this way to communicate? What deep desire did they share with Pangu?
Not death. Not destruction. Something positive.
Democracy? But more than that.
“Freedom”? She tried that. Nothing.
“Nüshu”? But there was no translation for that.
Think. Think!
More shots were fired. She could hear footfalls. Slow. Heavy. Deliberate. Terrifying. The emperor was coming for her.
She looked down at the photograph. At the little girl. Beyond her somber face, there seemed to be, in her eyes, a look of calm. Something even slightly mischievous. And that embroidery. The markings. It was a long word. Actually, it seemed there were many words. The symbols were broken by spaces.
Fuck.
“Nüshu, Nüshu,” she said out loud. “Nu—”
This wasn’t the first time she’d heard that word. That sound. Where? Where?
The plane. The elderly woman next to her whose face had cracked into a thousand lines when she looked at the li bien ball.
“Noooshoooo,” she’d said. And pointed. Not at the cookie, Alice now realized, but at the photograph on her phone. The design on the ornament.
Alice brought up the photos …
There it was. Liam’s final message wasn’t the photo on the boat, it was the li bien ball. The image of Peach Blossom Spring. The river. The mountain. And hanging in the air, something not on the original. Something not painted on the inside but drawn in indelible ink on the outside.
Alice had thought the marks were dirt, or mistakes by a slapdash artist needing to make the cheap ornaments by the hundreds. But no.
With trembling hands, she enlarged the image. It was actually one mark, over and over.
Fifteen, fourteen …
She looked from the li bien ball to the embroidery. There, in the middle of the circle, almost invisible like the women themselves, was another mark. A single one. Larger than the rest. Encircled, embraced, by the rest.
Could the code to start, and stop, a catastrophe really be a single keystroke?
Eight … seven …
Alice scanned the keyboard. Where was it? Where…?
There.
Her finger hovered over the key. Making sure to hit it square on. Her fingers were shaking so badly she wasn’t sure if she’d miss it or hit two keys at once.
Four … three …
Alice clenched her shaking hand into a tight fist; then, taking a deep, steadying breath, she hit the key.