“That’s it,” said Jock, his voice buzzing from the speakers of Rat’s mobile phone. “Looks like you’re clear of them. No one armed in the area, I’d call it safe.”      Gina closed her eyes in relief and leaned her back against the wall, panting. The Spice still whirled in her head.      One pill. One pill had kicked...

     Gina’s body rested on a pile of soft leaves. Golden sunlight played through the lush, green forest canopy above her. There was no wind, however, not a leaf moving out of place. Gina noticed the strange silence, completely barren of animal life. The air itself had a familiar dreamlike quality to it.      Gina eyed her surroundings for a minute, then sat up and said,...

     The night passed by, dark and dreamless, Gina didn’t stir until the first rays of morning sunlight touched her face. It poured through the glass sliding doors like a river of honey and turned the room to gold.      Blinking against the brightness, Gina turned over and went back to sleep. She didn’t get long before the alarm clock on the nightstand started...

     “What do we do now?” asked Rat. She stood over Bomber with her hands hovering a few inches above him, feeling like she should do something but too afraid to touch. The creeping horror of the building had finally wiped the grin off her face.      “Cut him loose,” the Emperor ordered, tossing her a sheathed Fed sword from the corpse. Rat took a moment to figure out...

     Gina sat in her cell, staring at the door. She wondered how she could ever have thought this plan would work. How stupid the whole thing seemed now! Break into the most heavily-defended building in Hong Kong, bust someone out of a Fed prison, and then escape scot free. Yeah, right.      Then the Spice trance came on again, and her growing despair became remote, out of touch. Unpleasant...

     “We did it,” Rat said when they got back to their hotel room. It was like a finishing point to this adventure, a precious lull in the storm. The three just sank onto the bed, no longer able to stand. All the strength had gone out of them, leaving only exhaustion. Colours pulsed and danced above them — somebody had tuned the giant TV in the ceiling to a 24-7 news network. The same Hong Kong...