•QIN•
David had been shot through the thigh by a bullet from one of the attacker's guns. The same bullet had also shattered Qin's precious screen. And Qin wondered which had been the real target, them, or the data? Had the soldiers followed them here to capture them? Or to stop them from learning what was on the computer? Had it been both?
Qin couldn't help but wonder if it had been neither. She glanced at David, slowly regaining consciousness on the floor. Had he shot the screen? What motive could he possibly have for doing so? And why now? If he was colluding with the attackers, why go through the ruse of getting shot? That would only make sense if he knew they were going to lose. But if he knew they were going to lose, why bother with the attack at all?
It just simply didn't make sense. How could the soldiers even have found them? Unless someone had provided them with a location? She cursed herself for not keeping one alive to interrogate, though, she had to admit she's barely made it out alive as he was.
"How many?" David asked from behind, causing Qin to turn around.
"Three." She breathed, eyeing him suspiciously. She still couldn't shake off the lingering doubts that David had something to do with the attack.
But she realized that in all that panic, she had forgotten to see if the attackers were Chinese or American.
David smirked, as if reading Qin's mind, he pulled off the soldier's helmet.
The face was American. And it was a woman.
Qin's eyes widened. "They had girls in the military?" She asked.
David simply nodded as he slumped the other two bodies near the fallen american soldier.
Their helmets came off to reveal the same distinguish American look. But they were men.
"These are highly trained mission soldiers." David said suddenly as he studied their armor. "And you killed two of them?"
"Skin of my teeth." Said Qin. "These look like wet suits under their armor. HangZhou is really near the coast. They could have swam here from a fleet to check."
"I was thinking the same thing. But if that's true, then there should be more of them coming. But I don't see any. And to add on, they don't carry any wireless radio or any other form of contact. And besides, the whole place is knee deep in water, even without going to the ocean, they'd still be wet. Doesn't leave a lot of options." David said.
"They could have done both." Said Qin.
David perked up. "What?"
Qin thought a moment before she shook her head. "No, it doesn't check out."
David sighed. "Yeah, that's what I thought."
"Or they could have-" she stopped herself, not wanting to propose the other explanation so brazenly: Or you are a spy, and told them exactly where we are.
"Or what?" David asked, his tone was cold.
"Nothing." She said, not daring to look up at David's eyes.
He stood up abruptly, obviously angry at Qin's earlier implications. "Take their gear." He said harshly. "I'll dump their bodies into the closet upstairs."
And with that, he stomped up with a soldier's body draped across his shoulder.
Qin went over to her broken screen. The gray side handle was still attached to the server with a cable. The server itself appeared undamaged, and for all she knew the data transfer was still ongoing, dumping all of the American's secrets into the handle. But without a screen, they wouldn't be able to read it.
But this is a data centre, she thought, everyone who worked here was probably a tech nut, like me. There's bound to be other screens somewhere.
Qin headed back upstairs to the offices. She started at the corner offices, hoping that their extra prestige might mean an extra computer or two. But found nothing. The screens were designed to be portable. So whoever had them probably took them home.
She kept looking, checking each office one by one before starting in on some of the cubicles. Qin suddenly thought of something. On a hunch, she left the cubicles and searched the back halls and rooms for anything marked with the initials IT. Information Technology.
She finally found the IT office on the first floor, knee deep in water. The IT director was still there, dead at his desk, his upper body stripped clean of everything but bone, his lower body covered with slime. She held her breath, sorting through his shelves and found a screen slightly smaller than hers in the desk drawer. She fled back outside as fast as she could, gagging and closing the door behind her, and made sure to rinse herself off in the cleaner water outside before heading back upstairs, where she found David was waiting for her.
"New screen." She said plainly.
David jutted his head toward the server, and the screen handle still connected to it. "Did we get everything?" He asked.
"I don't know." Qin sighed. "I don't dare disconnect it in case it's still transferring data."
"How long will it take?" He asked.
"Fuck. Just fuck it, okay? Stop asking me questions, Mr Soldier. You were the one who go down so easily in battle and I had to be the one who faces two well trained soldiers myself! Fuck! You're the soldier! Not me! And now I have dead guy slime soaking in my pants when I don't even have the antibiotics to help your gunshot wound when you're losing blood! And if you dies then i'll probably die in a future ambush and then the whole of China will die with like the batteries of the computer!" She threw her hands up in the air, exasperated.
"Qin-"
"Fuck!" She screamed. And hurled a boot towards him. Too bad she missed, because Qin would love to hit David in the face.
David was silent for a while as he bandaged his wound. Qin could tell he felt guilty and embarrassed he didn't do what Qin did.
"You think we can plug this into the other one?" David asked, handing the new screen into Qin's hands.
Qin studied it, and went over to the other server. "It only has one port." She said, wiping her eyes of eye sweat and crouched down below to have a better look at the plug. "We can't connect the new screen until we disconnect the server. And I don't want to mess with it if it's still downloading." She said.
"Then we'll set up a perimeter and stay here for the night." David said. He glanced around the room, computer towers obstructing visibility in every direction. "We can't stay here though, there's no good way to guard it. Plus the generator was damaged in the battle. And the exhaust pipe. It's pumping the whole place full of burning paint thinner."
"Great." Said Qin. "Life wasn't crappy enough yet."
***
•WEITING•
Alarms rang and rang, waking WeiTing up from her sleep. Wait, why are there even alarms? She could sense something was wrong. Especially when she looked out of the window, and saw people running away from a docked boat. Children were crying loudly. And their parents look as if they were crying as well. WeiTing seemed to be the only one who didn't understand the situation.
At that moment, a familiar face burst through the door. It was General Tang, and beside him, was an American-Chinese girl. Tze Xian and Lu Er was awoken.
"The Americans are here. We have to move." General Tang said. His usual calm tone even became panicky.
"What about Qin?" WeiTing asked.
"We'll get her and David. And then we'll board the last boat to get the hell out of here." General Tang said.
"Who's that?" A new voice asked. And WeiTing turned around to find Lu Er.
"This is Izzy, David's sister. She's coming with us to get Qin and David." He replied.
"So we'll go over to the data centre, pick them up, and then go to who-knows-where?" WeiTing asked.
"At least that's the plan for now. Hurry please. The Americans are already here." He said impatiently.
"Alright." WeiTing's tone was soft but she didn't question him.
*
"We're going there by a helicopter?" WeiTing asked as she saw the giant vehicle parked at the basement of the Airport.
"Yes. But there's just one problem. I don't know how to steer a helicopter." General Tang admitted.
WeiTing immediately looked at Tze Xian, who was standing there awkwardly, pursing his lips. "My friend here knows how to. His dad was a mechanic." WeiTing said, pushing Tze Xian towards Tang.
Tang raised his eyebrows. "Very well. You take the controls then."
"Oh Qin's gonna be so pissed when she sees you're the one behind the controls. She's gonna be jealous man." Lu Er laughed.
That made Tze Xian smirk. He jumped into the pilot's seat and fired the helicopter up.
About 20 minutes into the journey, they spotted the data centre. And Tze Xian lowered his altitude. As the helicopter hit the ground, Izzy and WeiTing climbed out of it in a hurry.
They pushed through the doors violently and shouted in unison,"David! Qin!"
They could hear hurried footsteps at an instant. And before they even knew it, Qin had a sidearm aimed at them. But lowered it quickly when she spotted the two girls. "WeiTing?"
David came out moments later and froze. "Izzy?"
***
YOU ARE READING
The Art Of War.
Science Fiction"Ever heard of Sun Tzu?" She asked, eyeing him carefully. He looked up, thought for a moment before replying. "Yes. He was the guy that wrote 'Sun Tzu's Art Of War wasn't he?" The girl smiled. "Well yes, that's correct. But screw him, he knows nothi...
