DING - DONG.
I stood at the threshold and I watched the glass doors slide apart. The doors moved with a HISS. Like the pressurized seal of a laboratory. Inside the air was dry and dead and it smelled of ozone and refrigerated plastic.
The Cold Chain.
〔 SECTOR: RELAY STATION 7-11 〕
〔 STATUS: SECURE 〕
〔 MISSION: LOGISTICS RESUPPLY 〕
I walked inside. It was entirely white, and the light leached the color from my skin. It made my hands look like basalt. Hard. Grey. Stone. I felt the grit of the road in the creases of my palms. Beside me the girl moved like an experienced operative.
"Rations," I whispered.
"It's in Aisle four," A-Lan said.
"Near the heat-lamps. We need the thermal units."
We moved past the shelves. Brightly colored wrappers that contained no soul. Only chemicals and salt. I watched the clerk.
A young man with eyes that were sightless with boredom. He wore a striped uniform that was a camouflage for the soul. Another Operative, a sleepy one at that.
I reached the cooler. The glass was covered in a circle of frost. It was cold. I pulled a bottle of Pocari Sweat from the rack and the plastic felt like ice against my knuckles.
〔 ALERT: BIO-STABILIZERS LOW 〕
〔 ACQUIRE: ELECTROLYTE FLUID 〕
I took two. And a triangle of rice wrapped in black seaweed (San Jiao Fan Tuan).
"Wei," the girl said.
She was standing by the digital display near the coffee machine. The screen flickered. It was a bell tolling in the silence. It showed a map of the Tainan sector and then a face. A face with pale skin and heavy eyes that looked like white eggs.
〔 INTERNATIONAL RED NOTICE 〕
〔 SUBJECT: CHEN WEI 〕
〔 CAUTION: DISORIENTED / ARMED 〕
I looked at the screen. I felt a hum in my teeth. A vibration in the marrow.
"They've published the dossier," I said.
A-Lan looked at the screen and then she looked at the clerk. The clerk was staring at a handheld device. He was tuned to a different frequency. He didn't see me standing three feet away.
"It's an intercept," she whispered.
"They're trying to flush us into the open... We gotta move now!"
I turned my back to the screen. I felt the room dimming. The white tiles were a grid, a map of a war I was losing. I walked to the counter and I laid the rations down. I pulled a crumpled note from my pocket.
The clerk scanned the Fan Tuan. Beep.
The Pocari Sweat. Beep.
"Forty-nine dollars," the clerk said. His voice was a flat dross.
I didn't speak. I pushed the note across the basalt-black counter. My hand was shaking. Just a little.
"Keep the change," I said.
"For the information."
The clerk blinked. "Information?"
"The Cold Chain," I whispered.
"When does the heavy transport arrive?"
"The... the delivery truck?" The clerk looked at the clock.
"Five minutes. Same as every night."
I nodded. I grabbed the bag. I grabbed the girl's hand.
We walked out into the night. We stood in the shadows and we waited. The air was thick with the scent of exhaust.
Hsssss.
The brakes screamed.
A massive white truck pulled into the lot. It was a beast of steel and ice. On the side was a logo of a blue circle, above it a snowflake.
The Cold Chain.
It hummed with a low and industrial power.
"The biological materials," I said. "They're moving them south to the Kaohsiung labs. If we hitch a ride... we bypass the checkpoints."
A-Lan looked at the truck. She looked at the driver stepping out into the heat. He was a man with papers and a clipboard. Another Shadow.
"It's too dangerous, Wei. The perimeter is high-density here."
"A-Lan, we have no choice, we need to do this," I said.
"The Red Notice is live. Every civilian with a screen is an informant now."
I squatted by the wheel of the Yamaha. I looked at the road stretching away toward the harbor and I saw the soft ash of my own memories swirling in the gutters. Everything was paling away.
"The breakage is coming back, Agent," I whispered.
"I know," she said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a sticker. A small, yellow sunflower. She pressed it onto the silver fairing of the CygnusX. "Follow the flower, Wei. If the screen goes white... just look for the yellow."
I looked at the sticker. It was bright. A holy relic in a world of salt and junk.
"Target acquired," I said.
We mounted the bike. We didn't take the truck. We moved soundlessly into the dark, weaving behind the heavy transport as it pulled back onto the highway. We were pilgrims in a fable. Moving through the inward parts of a beast.
Behind us the 7-Eleven glowed like a dead star in the mist. And the digital screen inside continued to flash the face of a man who didn't exist. Tolling the hours. Tolling the years. Without cease.
Moving south. Always south. Toward the breakage of the sea.