Brando “the Boss” Perotti, “Strong” Jim Johnson, and Billy “the Trigger” Accardo were handcuffed and escorted out of the lobby. The gun from the stairwell was tagged and bagged, and the three diamond lines were scooped up with a broom and a pan. Some poor uniformed officer would have to count them all.

Medics tended to the gassed exhibit-goers and security guards and took a few who had a severe reaction to the hospital.

The two young heroes sat on the steps of the skyscraper. Evelyn had William’s jacket around her shoulders to shield her from the autumn air. The sounds of the city were loud with honking, last-minute breaking, and complaining. The monoplanes above buzzed and the iron train wheels squeaked on the tracks.

Detective Chief Inspector Walter Derringer came out of the lobby and walked down the steps until he was eye level with them. His cousin, Detective Constable Derringer, or “Junior” as everyone called him, bounded up the steps.

“Which one of you pulled the lever to fold the airstrip?”

“I did it,” said William.

“That was quick thinking,” he said, shaking Will’s hand. “Saved us a lot of work if they had gotten on that aero mobile. The pilot will be easy to locate. Local police out in Montclair picked him up.”

“I almost killed them.”

“Attempted murder, or retrieving stolen property? I suspect the insurance company will want to reward you handsomely. Have a good day.”

He tipped his fedora to them and walked down the steps. Junior gave them a thumbs up and followed.

“My auto broke down when we first met, and we stop a robbery the third time we meet. Isn’t that interesting?”

William had to admit it was interesting.

The assembly was still going on by the time William and Evelyn got back up to the thirtieth floor with none of them the wiser, except that Mrs. Astor demanded to know what happened to his top button, and how he had dirtied his tuxedo. James didn’t know what happened, but he knew he had missed something exciting and wasn’t happy about missing it.

When the assembly did end an hour later, William escorted Evelyn up to the terminal where her family waited for their aero mobile to touch down.

“This was a fun day,” said Evelyn. “I would hate for this to be our last day together.”

“I thought about asking if you wanted to go to a mini-golf park, but that might not be exciting enough.”

“That would be more than acceptable, if you will allow me to take you to a movie before it.”

“That is more than acceptable.”

The Gates Family marched down the runway to their aero mobile and piled in. Mrs. Astor snuck up behind her son and hugged him. Mr. Astor came up beside his son and whispered something in his ear. James jumped up onto his older brother’s back to annoy him. William waved as the aero took off, and Evelyn waved back with one hand on her hat.

Only when the aero was lost amongst the hundreds of other flying machines in the evening light did they turn and go back inside. The elevator took them down to the garage where their driver was waiting for them with the auto.

End of Episode 1

Automobiles rolled up to the skyscraper and assembly invitees and diamond exhibit-goers strolled up the steps into the lobby.

Far above them, on the sixty-first floor, a landing strip rolled out of the building with the necessary struts and beams unfolded and ratcheted out, fitting into place on the fifty-eighth floor: the hydraulic bolts snapped into place. In five minutes the twenty-yard-long and four-yard-wide take-off and landing strip was ready to accept the monoplanes and aero mobiles circling above. (The helicopters landed at a fixed helipad on the roof of the building.)

The first pilot landed, dropping off a family of four attending the ball, then he took off and the next plane landed. Two people disembarked. The third plane landed and a security guard ran out to meet him; a lockbox filled with jewelry and diamonds was handed over, and the plane took off as the guard ran back and disappeared inside. This was much safer than transporting jewels and diamonds by auto on the ground. Less of a chance of an air-robbery than a highway robbery! The process to repeated.

The wrought iron elevators worked overtime to move such a large amount of people.

Mixed-use developments were the future, and buildings were no different. This specific skyscraper had offices, event spaces, a cinema, and event spaces. The assembly was held in the thirtieth-floor event space while the diamond expo was held on the fortieth floor.

#

The delivery van parked in the loading/unloading zone beneath the skyscraper with a squeak and the doors opened.

Out came Brando “the Boss” Perotti and his two-man crew: Billy “the Trigger” Accardo and “Strong” Jim Johnson. All three were dressed as workers, but only two of them carried a ladder between them and a toolbox each. The Boss held a clipboard and spat tobacco.

The working woman behind the desk reading a beauty magazine smiled up at them.

“Are you here to fix Mr. Buckster’s manipulators?”

“We are,” the Boss said in a friendly tone, which sounded more like barely disguised sneering.

“Great! Mr. Buckster’s been complaining for two days! Gary will take you up to the seventieth floor. That’s where the apartments are.”

#

The ballroom was the size of a football field. The walls were symmetrical and geometric, with gold-yellow curtains overhanging the windows and the mirrors opposite them. The ceiling was tiered with circles leading to an enormous chandelier buzzing with Edison bulbs. The windows showed films of the countryside with horses roaming.

The Master of Ceremonies[1] at the door announced the names of the men and women entering the hall. An orchestra played.

When the Astor family were heralded (made up of both parents and their three oldest sons, William, James, and Theodore), over two hundred of the total three hundred invited guests were there. There were the Appleton’s, and the Bend’s, the Bentinck’s, the Cottenet’s, the Cooper’s, the Lanier’s, the Moore’s, the Willing’s, and dozens of more respectable families of New Amsterdam’s elite. A thin layer of smoke hung above their heads from all the smoking.

Theodore became bored within six seconds. He didn’t like to dance, and he didn’t like the music, either, and while he was interested in girls, he didn’t understand why they had to wear such ridiculous dresses.

William stood beside his family while his eyes searched for Evelyn. It would not have been proper for them to enter together, since they weren’t married or a couple, and neither could he walk up to her and ask her to dance until he was introduced to her by a friend or family member. Those were the rules of an assembly. Phoebe had promised to do so, and here she was.

Evelyn waited by the windows; she had turned off the film of the countryside and stared out at the planes flying below them and the autos on the road and overpasses; a train chugged between two buildings.

“Evelyn, this is William.”

That was all that was needed from Phoebe, so she stepped away and let them talk. A waiter passing by offered them champagne; they each took a glass.

“Monday was a long time ago,” he said.

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” she said.

“As have I. My mother made a mistake when they decided to have us meet here. Assemblies are not a place I feel comfortable in.”

“I will have to change that, then,” she said.

Taking his unfinished glass, she set it on the tray of another passing waiter and pulled him to the dance floor.

#

The fortieth floor had nine event spaces; the expo had taken over two of them, leaving the rest of the floor a ghost town. This was by design. Renting out all seven spaces came to five percent of the total score the thieves would get from this job.

Gary lay unconscious behind a potted plant.

The three workers passed eight security guards standing at the four doors into the expo on their way to the ventilation room around the corner to fix a wobbly fan. Next to the ventilation room was a room the size of a shoebox with no guard standing next to it.

Part of the “brand new, state-of-the-art anti-theft system” was the measure of locking all the doors. If somebody wanted in or out, the guards at each door would check the ticket, radio to the control room to unlock that specific entry point, and then radio back for them to relock it. Each security guard was equipped with a Tesla baton and stun-pistol.

Strong Jim knocked two heads together and the control room was theirs. Then, he went to deal with the guards at the doors. Meanwhile, Billy was in the ventilation room, found the air duct for that floor specifically, and set a contraption inside the duct. Peaking his head into the control room, Billy told the Boss it was ready, and Jim shouldered his way inside to say he was too.

Nodding, the Boss told them to put on their gas masks on. He slipped a remote out of his pocket and pressed the button. In the air duct, aerosolized laughing gas hissed out. Inside the expo hall, people started pounding and scraping at the doors. By the Boss’ watch, a minute passed before he pressed a button to unlock all the doors, and then they went in.

#

William and Evelyn left the dance floor. She needed to sit down; her heels were not as comfortable as they were in the shoe section of the department store.

Like bees to a flower, two waiters popped out of the crowd to offer them finger foods and champagne. Only once they had taken one of each did they disappear into the crowd.

James arrived. “What am I supposed to talk to girls about?”

Before William or Evelyn could reply, a thoroughly sloshed man bumped into James, then trod on Evelyn’s hurt feet, made William spill his drink on himself, and proceeded to bang his head into another man’s chin. Wheeling, he bumbled out incoherent words as he backtracked right into a lady, knocking off her hat. This maddened her beau: his eyes widened in fury as he grabbed the dope by his collar—and William and James were suddenly in between them.

“No need for anger at an assembly, sir, no offense was meant, I’m sure,” apologized William with pleading smile. “This man is just a little sozzled, that’s all. Plain as day, he’s a little tipsy. Why, he knocked into me and caused me to spill my drink! We’ll get him out of here, don’t worry, just attend to your lady and have another drink!”

“You should do that,” the beau sputtered. “Good. Get him out of here!”

With an arm each around him, the two Astor brothers guided the plastered gentleman to the door, stirring up quite a scene which Evelyn, who led the way, put down. On the way to the exit, the gentleman managed to procure four more glasses of champagne and down them in a single gulp, amusing Evelyn greatly. At the door, the stewards went to take the gentleman from the brothers, but Evelyn cut in.

“No need, my men will take him to the lobby. You boys just enjoy the music.”

The brothers eyed each other. The gentleman was growing heavy in their arms. But they followed her to the elevator anyway.

“That was first-rate!” she said. “You handled that situation robustly!”

“Anyone would have done it,” said William.

“All in a day’s work, ma’am,” said James.

Evelyn laughed.

The elevator arrived and took them swiftly to the ground floor, but the trip from the lobby to the front door was long enough for James to go on a tirade about how drunkenness and indecency were signs of a poor mind and a poor constitution, or rather a lack of one. At the entrance to the building, they kicked the boozer out of the door. Not literally, James held the door open and Evelyn waved goodbye to him.

“That was fun,” she said, washing imaginary dust off her palms.

The brothers rolled their shoulders and flapped the blood back into their arms.

“Come-come,” she said, and headed back to the elevator.

On their way back up to the thirtieth floor, William remembered the diamond expo being held in the building.

“Want to sneak in?”

“Do you have to ask?” asked Evelyn.

“I wanna go too!” exclaimed James.

“No,” said William. “You should go back. If mom or dad ask, tell them we needed some air.”

“Fine…”

The elevator arrived at the thirtieth floor and James got off. The door cage clanged shut and the lift shot up to the fortieth floor.

A long hallway of white walls and beige carpet rolled out before them with several other hallways connecting to it. Potted plants spanned every eight feet. It was as quiet as a ghost town; not a single unconscious security guard to be found because they had been shoved into one of the rented event spaces. A smell hung in the air.

“Is that laughing gas?” asked Evelyn.

“I believe it is.”

They took a few tentative steps further down the hallway. One of the doors to the expo opened and William and Evelyn spun around and hid behind a potted plant by the elevator. Evelyn glanced down; her eyes shot up. The unconscious body of Gary lay in a ball of limbs between their feet.

“There’s a body underneath us,” she hissed.

“Be quiet.”

Peeking out from behind the small green leaves of the rectangle hedge, they watched three men in lime green workmen’s jumpsuits and gasmasks walk to the elevator. Each held two duffel bags. William and Evelyn held their breath; they were three feet away from them. The shorter thief called the elevator.

“Worked like a charm, Boss!” said Billy. “We’re rich!”

“Da Boss’ plans always work,” said Strong Jim, throwing off his gasmask.

“We have two minutes to get to the landing strip,” da Boss said, taking off his mask as well.

“Should we leave a diamond for the police to find?”

Nobody answered Jim, and he shrugged like it didn’t bother him, but it did. The elevator arrived and the thieves stepped inside the cage, then the door closed and shot up. Jumping out from behind the bush, the two young adults stared at one another.

“The landing strip is on the sixty-first floor,” he said.

Twenty-one flights later, they arrived huffing and puffing on the sixty-first floor, an observation deck and terminal for office workers commuting home and residents traveling. The skyscraper had a permanent take-off and landing strip, and the temporary one was only used when necessary, like today.

Outside, the three thieves stood on the landing strip. William and Evelyn arrived in time to watch the five-seater aero mobile touch down.

“Sir!” William shouted across the floor to get the attention of hotel security. “Those three workers are thieves! They robbed the diamond expo!”

The guard took off and slipped through the automatic doors with his stun-pistol in his hand. Through the large windows, they watched one of the thieves pull out a snub-nosed revolver and shoot the stun-pistol out of the guard’s hand. His hands shot up in surrender and he ran back inside.

“Where’s the telephone! Call the police!” the guard shouted.

The thieves were about to board the aero mobile! William jumped over the counter to purchase tickets and inquire about arrival times and dashed into the backroom where a giant lever like a railroad ground frame switch waited to be pulled back. With all his might, he heaved the lever towards him and the floor rumbled.

The landing strip shook violently as it slid back into the skyscraper. The struts, supporting beams, and load-bearing beams beneath the light-weight asphalt uncoupled from their brackets on the lower floors and folded up neatly into the underside of the landing strip.

Without waiting, the aero mobile took off, abandoning the three thieves. With no other choice, they turned and tried to get back inside, but the automatic doors had automatically locked as a safety measure. They banged on the glass and screamed bloody murder. Evelyn rushed forward and pressed the emergency button; the doors opened and the thieves fell in a heap inside. Billy dropped the revolver.

“Oh my God we’re alive!” said Billy.

“Ground, sweet, solid ground!” said Jim, kissing the floor.

The wind spilling in from the open doors made Evelyn’s hair go crazy and sent dropped newspapers flying. Everyone in the terminal had moved to the other side of the floor to get as far away from the sixty-one story drop as possible. William picked up the dropped revolver.

“You’re under arrest—citizen’s arrest!” said William.

“You tried to kill us!” da Boss said, shocked.

“Ah, yes, I’m sorry about that. Why don’t you come away from the door. Evelyn, get their duffel bags.”

The young adults backed up ten feet, and the thieves moved forward ten feet; neither group thought that was far enough, so they moved an additional fifteen feet back/forward to the benches.

“Okay, now wait here and don’t move, the police are on their way.”

“They are!” shouted the security guard from the other end of the floor.

“Thank you!” Evelyn shouted back. She knelt down and unzipped one of the duffel bags. Light spilled in and diamonds glittered back. “Wow.”

Billy “the Trigger” jumped to his feet with a second snub-nosed revolver in his hand and shot the revolver out of William’s hands. He and Evelyn put their hands up in surrender.

“Attaboy, Billy,” da Boss said, standing up. “Jim, get the bags.”

“How are we gonna get outta here, Boss?” Jim asked, picking up the bags. “What’s your back up plan?”

“Follow me.” Da Boss turned away. Over his shoulder, he told Billy: “Scare ‘em.”

Billy smiled and pulled the trigger. Bang! The young adults jumped and blinked. Then they blinked again and looked down at their torsos. Somehow, Billy had shot the top button off William’s tuxedo without harming him. But he had been standing directly in front of him. What a crack shot! William would’ve been impressed under different circumstances.

The stairway door shut.

#

The stairway door shut and it was a chase down the stairs.

Bullets flew past William and Evelyn as they crashed down the stairs after the thieves. Every chance William got to peek over the railing was met with more bullets flying inches past his face. He never got a clear enough shot to take. Billy didn’t seem to run out of bullets.

“I don’t think the man shooting wants to hurt us!” said Evelyn behind him. “He could’ve killed us up there.”

“I think you’re right!” He hadn’t been 100% certain, so he was glad to hear she had come to the same conclusion. “He’s been shooting to accurately for it not to be skill rather than chance.”

Taking a big chance, William leaned over the railing and fired three times: three bullets ripped into three of the duffel bags and diamonds spilled out in a glittering, sparkling trail. Then Billy fired again and the revolver was knocked out of his hand and clattered on the floor below.

Strong Jim—who carried all six bags—cursed and Billy yelped like a wounded pup and desperately stuck his fingers into the holes to stem the bleeding, but the bags kept bouncing around and he couldn’t properly stop it.

The Boss shouldered the stairwell door open and the thieves slipped into the lobby. Seconds later, their pursuers were pushing their way through the door and—

Bam!

William reeled back, falling into Evelyn’s arms. His nose stung and his teary eyes saw da Boss giving him a clever grin, then he was leading his men to the lobby doors. A trail of glittering diamonds pursued them, tinkling onto the burnt metal ceramic tile floor.

Evelyn lifted William up and gave him a little shove and he tackled Strong Jim. He fell on top of William, who had managed to get his arm around his neck and held him in place, helped by the weight of all the diamonds.

“Shoot his cuff links!” da Boss ordered.

But before Billy could do that, police rushed into the lobby. They came from the double doors and from behind the counter and from either end of the lobby, including the stairwell.

“Could be a little faster, boys,” Evelyn critiqued.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_ceremonies

When Evelyn returned to her parents’ homes in New Amsterdam City at 6:28 pm (twenty-eight minutes late for dinner), her family were in for a surprise.

“Mother, I have met a man,” Evelyn stated when she was comfortable in her chair at the dinner table.

Mrs. Gates dropped her fork on her plate. It rather loudly clanged on the fine China. Mr. Gates had an amusing glint in his eye and the whisper of a smile on his lips, knowing full well what his wife was about to say.

“That’s not possible.” Uncharacteristically, Mrs. Gates had become flustered. “I have made plans with Mrs. Astor! We have arranged for you to meet him at the ball next weekend!

What’s gotten into you, Evelyn? You’re not silly like this. This isn’t in your nature to fly by the seat of your pants, that’s your sisters—”

“That’s not fair!” cried her two younger sisters in concert. Their younger brother snickered.

“Dear, she only said she met a man,” Mr. Gates said, stifling a laugh.

“You know what she means!” Mrs. Gates exploded. “She means she wants to marry him! She means she wants to settle down with him! But she knows nothing about him! We don’t know him! We don’t know the family he comes from, the stock of their character, the fabric of their clothes! She might have fallen in love with a street vagrant or journeyman or machinist!”

“Mother!” Evelyn scolded. “How could you say such things? Do you not know me? Do you not trust me? Am I not your daughter? I am not a floozy. I have a brain inside my skull; it is not full of air like father’s aunts.

“Should I remind them how we met?” Mr. Gates asked.

Mrs. Gates glared at her husband, then took a deep breath and picked up her fork. “Forgive me, Evelyn, you caught me unawares. I do trust you. I acted out of turn. I might be coming down with a cold. What is his name?”

“Mr. William Astor. I believe you said you were arranging our marriage.”

Mrs. Gates almost fainted from pride; instead, she dropped her fork and knife.

#

William decided to tell his parents the good news, so, skipping a lonely dinner at his brownstone, he drove to his parent’s home and, after handing his jacket to Mr. Aldrich the butler, jumped out of his shoes and went straight for the living room.

“Mother, I have fallen in love.”

Eight pairs of eyes stared at him. His two youngest brothers snickered and went back to playing their boardgame. His two middle brothers wished they had a girlfriend, so they turned off the radio to listen better. His other brother, one year younger than he was, wanted to hear more, but pretended to still be reading. His mother and father glanced at each other, surprised. Mr. Astor folded the evening news (it was boring drivel and didn’t have any comics). Mrs. Astor was over the moon, but she dreaded calling Mrs. Gates in the morning and canceling their well-laid, ten-step plan to marry their two children.

“Who is the special girl?” asked his father.

“Miss Evelyn Gates.” His parents looked at each other again, even more surprised. “What’s with that look?”

“Mom was setting you up with her!” said his second youngest brother Andrew Jackson Astor. “I overheard them.”

“Mother!”

“It’s just that you’re nineteen now, and your father and I were already married when we turned eighteen, and I didn’t want you to be left behind while all your friends are getting married, and I wanted grandchildren.”

“None of my friends are getting married.”

“Well, now you can be a—what’s the word I am searching for, dear?”

“A trend-setter,” Mr. Astor said.

“Yes! One of those.” She clapped. “This is wonderful! Best of all, Mrs. Gates and I decided you two should meet at next week’s assembly.”

“There’s a diamond expo being held in the same building,” Mr. Astor cut in, unfolding the newspaper and riffling to the third page. “It’s touting a brand new, state-of-the-art anti-theft system!”

Young Mr. William Astor roared down the country road in his Benson 60-Turbo automobile, a gift from his parents on his eighteenth birthday. The twisting, torturous road made him shift continuously, and his feet and right hand were a blur of action. The long tail of his stripped scarf fluttered after. New Amsterdam was quickly descending into a speck behind him as storm clouds rolled in above, and if nobody knew any better, you would swear he was trying to outrun the clouds.

The road bent hard right and then left, and around the left bend, the road straightened and William slammed on the breaks.

A woman in distress has several noticeable attributes.

1) She is alone or with another member of her sex; she is without a man but in need of one and is looking around for one to help her.

2) Her expression is one of concern; her eyes are large, and her face is as innocent and helpless as a child’s own.

3) She is on the side of the road with a broken-down automobile, waving her arms in the air.

This was the scene presented to Mr. Astor as he came upon the straight and narrow bit of country road: off to the right in the unpaved dirt and grass was an automobile, a Cat-6 with its hood open, and a woman waving her hands in the air. Leaning against the auto was a second woman dressed for driving, seemingly unconcerned.

Since William was raised to help people in need, he promptly slammed on the breaks and pulled off the road in front of the broken down auto with the ease of one who has driven before in heavy traffic with one hand. The tires skidded across the dirt and a small puff of dust rose and drifted away.

Foregoing the door, he hopped out of the auto and introduced himself to the two young ladies of the refined upper class standing before him.

“I am William Astor,” he said, doffing the auto cap. “Do you require assistance?”

The two ladies appraised the man in a tailored, tan-grey, double breasted duster coat made from alpaca leather and matching high-waisted trousers in the classic width. The scarf—handsewn by his grandmother—and motoring goggles obscured his face from the elements, and when removed, revealed a man no older than themselves, smiling.

“Yes, desperately, we need your assistance!” cried the taller of the two ladies. “Isn’t this wonderful, Evie? We only just broke down moments ago before we heard your engine!”

“As I have told you, Phoebe, I can fix my own auto,” said the second lady, her brilliant emerald eyes piercing him. “Kind of you to stop and offer your help, but you don’t need to cut short your afternoon drive.”

“I say,” began William, “Phoebe Koch and Evelyn Gates?”

Phoebe was a gangly girl who hunched over unbecomingly as a consequence of her self-conscious mind. Sometimes she appeared uncertain as to how all her limbs should properly be held. A six-foot-five girl was very unusual; William was used to being the tallest person around, but here was a woman as tall as him! (And Evelyn was only a few inches shorter than them.) From head to toe, she wore a motoring bonnet that covered her hair without crushing it, a bronze dress underneath a long, bronze-green overcoat, and fur mittens.

“But of course, William Astor, how foolish of us not to recognize you!” said Phoebe. “Fancy that, Evie, save by a man we know!”

Evelyn had gone back to leaning against her auto, as slick as an icy road and as cool as winter itself. Her black leather motoring jacket and tough, black motoring pants with boots and gaiters amplified how unusual she was; not many women found the act of driving itself enjoyable and less knew how to fix their own auto. The black silk scarf made her pale skin glow. She played with her leather gauntlet gloves.

We hardly “know” him, she thought.

All three of them had, at a distance, met one another, and exchanged nods, and had, up close, shared short words between them such as “Hello, lovely time of year, this dance is a real hoot, the weather is nice, fancy seeing you here on this street, have you eaten at this restaurant before?” But they had never been friends because William ran with a different circle than Evelyn and Phoebe. That had not stopped him from noticing how attractive Miss Gates was, only it had stopped him from finding the right time to “make his move” as the new turn-of-phrase went.

“Now it is doubly my pleasure to help two graceful ladies in need,” he said with a dimpled grin, and looked at Evelyn. “If my help is still required.”

As for Evelyn, she had yet to really make up her mind about the man, being one of those sorts who judged long before settling on a course of action. It was undeniable that she found him handsome and had for a long time, and while he had come to their aid, it did not make him a man she would happily converse with in other circumstances. In this way she quite took after her mother. However, she felt a strong attraction to him, which was completely ridiculous because she didn’t know him at all!

A test, then.

“If you stand by your offer, come and peak at the engine if you feel you can.”

A test, then! thought William. “Do you need my tools?”

“I have my own.”

The leather driving gloves came off and their hands got dirty.

Take it slow William, don’t make a fool of yourself!

If she could hear his heart, she would know he had fallen completely and utterly in love with her, but he knew women did not like men who swooned over them, so he imagined a man was working on the engine with him and focused solely on it.

“Do you know what went wrong?”

“It made a metal grinding against metal sound,” said Phoebe.

Unfortunately, she didn’t understand auto jingo, and so couldn’t follow the conversation William and Evie were having, but she knew sparks when she saw them (metaphorically between them, the auto was not on), and so she silently bubbled with excitement. Sneakily, she retrieved her film camera from inside the auto and snapped some photos of them.

“Here is the problem!” said William, reaching further into the engine block.

“It would be that,” grumbled Evelyn, as if she was disappointed in her auto for giving up the secret that easily.

As they worked, Phoebe asked William Astor dozens of questions on a range of topics to see the extent of his education and knowledge was—seeing it as her duty to her friend to ask the harder questions. After she was assured of his upbringing and general temperament, the conversation then flowed more naturally, and Evelyn joined in as well.

William was smart and witty, and best of all, taller than her. Evelyn was sharp, confident, and beautiful. Phoebe thought the two of them had excellent rapport.

Too short a time later, the Cat-6 was fixed. William shut the hood, wiped his hands, and put his cap back on. Evelyn was holding his jacket open, which was kind of her to do, and he slipped into it. Did she like him? He gave her a grin.

Darn, he is cute! she grumbled.

Evelyn had kept her jacket on. Unsure of what the gentlemanly thing to do now was, William glanced around then stepped to the driver’s side door and opened it.

“I’m sure you ladies would like to get back home—”

Thunder boomed above them and rain spat down on them. Phoebe screeched and ran around the auto and dove into the passenger seat. Evelyn hurriedly sat down in the driver’s seat and started the engine. A single button brought the canopy out of the back and it unfolded itself and clicked into place on the windshield and side windows.

The rain picked up. William crouched beside Evelyn, hanging onto the open window.

“I was wondering—”

“Thank you for helping us, Mr. Astor, that was kind of you to do,” interrupted Evelyn. It wasn’t rude to cut off a man, since she was a lady. “If you so desire, I would hate to not have you call upon me when you return to New Amsterdam, say, tomorrow morning, but not before 8 am.”

Caught by surprise, William had his mouth open, obviously surprised that a lady was being so forward. He had been about to ask her the same thing but didn’t fully trust himself to not mess it up. Now the hard work was done for him. Miss Gates was a woman of surprise.

With a wave from her, and an encouragingly energetic wave from Phoebe, the Cat-6 pulled away, doing a U-turn, and sped away to New Amsterdam.

“My goodness Evie, you were so forward with him!”

“It’s almost the 21st century, Phoebe, a woman should be making the first move! My mother did the same with my father.”

“Your family was always strange.”

“All the way to my great-great-grandmother.”

Alone on the side of the road, William skipped back to his Benson with a big, goofy grin on his fine face. But when he sat down in his auto, with the canopy over his head and the pattering of rain trying to put him to sleep, the smile slipped into a frown, and his brow furrowed.

“How did she say it? ‘I would hate to not have you call upon me...I would hate to not have you call upon me…’ so I should call upon her tomorrow. Yeah, yes, I should call upon her tomorrow, sometime after 8 am. Okay. Why the double negative?”

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one man to marry a woman, and likewise for one woman to marry a man, they must first desire to do so before entering the world in search of their soulmate, thereby undertaking a toilsome affair which so often entails settling for other mates, e.g. a friend, coworker, instructor, or the mate at the bar who was not grossly inebriated—or sometimes, the mate who was falling over drunk; whereupon a mate is found and love is fostered in this period known as a courtship (which must first occur and wherein is initiated by the male of the species), the woman’s right to decide if this man is whom she desires to spend her natural and eternal life with shall not be infringed; the date is scribbled on the calendar and the priest proclaims the two as one, and they are henceforth married.

However, when a marriage is arranged, such responsibilities are lifted from the potential husband and wife and entrusted to the parents, principally the mothers—who know their children far better than they themselves do. The mother of the future groom and the mother of the future bride will meet for brunch to discuss first a few frivolous topics before moving onto the matter of marrying their children in holy matrimony (a very simple thing to do when parental authority is exploited). The plan is formulated and ready to act upon before the third pouring of the tea, and this plan always survives first contact with the enemy.

The second method was practiced by two mothers on a rainy day on Manhattan Island, New Amsterdam, New York, United States.

At 101 E 81st St, the Astor Residence:

“He really should have been married off by now,” said Mrs. Caroline Ann Fillmore Astor, sitting in her living room. “It’s not right for a young man to be single for too long.”

“Hm…yes,” mumbled Mr. Warren Delano Astor as he flipped through the news. He liked the save the comics page for last, once the droll of the worldly news was out of the way. “They tend to pick up bad habits.”

“And then those bad habits cement,” Mrs. Astor agreed, leaning in towards her husband slightly. “The Gates daughter is a beautiful girl, wouldn’t you agree? A touch too tall, but beautiful, and unmarried, too.”

“Do what you think best, my dear,” Mr. Astor said. His eyes skimmed over an article announcing peace in the Balkans and a second article about the state of Lemuria[1] wanting to secede from the Union. He had been expecting to hear this soon after their son turned eighteen two days ago. “You know I trust you.”

At 31 W 95th St, the Gates Residence:

“I believe we will be seeing the Astor’s at the assemblies[2] this next coming weekend,” said Mrs. Edna Cook Gates as she knit a lace tablecloth.

“I believe we shall see many families there,” said Mr. Jay Gates in reply, flipping to the next page in the newspaper he was absorbed in.

“Yes, but none of their sons is from as good of stock as the Astor’s oldest son.”

“And which of our daughters do you wish him to marry?” Here was a thrilling story about new bonds being introduced by Congress. “I do wish you would get to the point sometimes.”

She placed her hands in her lap with her knitting and made an exaggerated sigh. “You know which of our daughters I think should marry him.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Why not?”

“The Astor’s have all boys.” With a minimum purchase of $10, the bonds would mature in twenty years at an interest rate of 1.625 percent. “I would be shocked if the young lad had ever talked to a woman who wasn’t related to the family!”

“Don’t say that!” she scolded. “Why, I had never talked to a man longer than seventy seconds before I met you!”

“Women are different; boys salivate over girls.” He was salivating over these new bond options. “However, I will trust your judgement and not get in the way. I suppose this means I must attend the assembly this weekend.”

“You were never going to be able to get out of it.”

“Pity.” Mr. Gates sighed and turned to the next page.

Both the Astor’s and Gate’s marriages had been arranged by their parents when they were sixteen, however since then, social conventions had changed and it was common now to wait until one’s children were of the age of eighteen before marrying them off. But both their children were nineteen and still unmarried!

Simultaneously, the two wives and mothers announced to their husbands: “I shall call her right away!” Mother knows best, after all.

In the background of the phone call, Mr. Astor could be heard laughing at Maisie the Meercat getting stuck up in a tree.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuria

[2] An assembly is a ball held in a ballroom (see Pride and Prejudice pg. 382 Chapter 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_(dance_event)#Georgian_England

It was a steep hill. Gravity tried to pull him back, but he kept running as fast as he could, so fast that he would trip if he wasn’t careful and break his nose. He hiked past upscale shops and nice old brick architecture to arrive in front of a church.

Past King’s College on the right, the road mercifully sloped down. He crossed the street and beelining for a garden that backed onto a group of buildings, one of which was Swire Hall. Through the tree branches he could see a single dorm room light on. It beckoned him!

A wall that was more for show than security enclosed the garden. Nick easily jumped it (surprising even himself) and landed on the other side. The path guided him to the back entrance of Swire Hall, illuminated by an LED light over the door. He shoved a hand in a pocket and slammed his keys against the proximity card reader.

The door gracefully opened and gently shut on its piston.

By the time it shut, and the electronic lock engaged, Nick was already spamming the elevator call button. His legs hurt too much for him to walk up seven flights of stairs. He might have pulled a hamstring.

The lobby was a ghost town. Everything inside was so off-puttingly normal. From the sterile white lights to the cleanliness of the hallway (the doors, window trim, and random splashes on the walls were accented with a garish orange color), it didn’t match the absolute Hell he’d gone through for the last ten hours. It was like the chaos outside hadn’t touched the inside yet. The posters from the last few weeks—and last school year—were still hanging. “Arts and crafts night on Floor 4 common area” and “Gone to Sky watch party @8pm 9/10” and “History tutoring, $10 an hour, first come first serve!” and other messages and flyers encouraging students to take part in some activity.

Painted on the elevators double doors was an L for Lobby. The L split open and the box took him to the eighth floor. The 8 split open and Nick sprinted down the hallway.

Between the elevator and the door to the stairwell there was a large construction paper board that had a photo of almost everyone on the floor in a simple colored house with their room number. A smiling Nick was taped to a yellow house.

Nick sprinted as quietly as he could. Air whistling in his ears, he hoped nobody would come out of their rooms and see him. He didn’t quite know why; they might turn him in.

At his door: the key slammed into the lock, tumblers moved, key turned, door opened, and the door gently, oh so gently and gingerly, closed on its piston.

Nick collapsed on the floor, panting in the dark.

Pulling his knees up, sitting up, he dropped the Canon in his lap. It had 38% battery remaining when he stopped recording. That didn’t really matter. A finger flicked the camera off, and the lens cap was popped on. Then he let his head fall back against the wall.

He had no energy left. And he was hungry. And sore. His brain wanted to process everything, but he didn’t let it. He pushed it all down.

Then he mustered up the courage to go to his window. Outside it looked so peaceful. The streetlights shined and not a single person was out.

What time was it?

His eyes passed over the 84 missed calls and a barrage of text messages: 9 pm.

It was only 9 pm? This entire, disastrous night had only taken five hours? The worst day of his entire life had lasted five hours?

But he was alive, and he was safe.

But for how long?

Nick stared at mouth of the empty alleyway.

He let out a long, low sigh and sat against the brick wall, the grey plaster chipping on the corners. His head banged against the wall.

He had liked navigating this hellish night with someone, even if it was only for ten minutes. He hadn’t really expected to spend the rest of the night with her, but he thought she knew he was going to help her get home. She might have even offered her couch to sleep on, then he could leave in the morning when things were safer. Not that he expected her to, except that he had, and was that so wrong for saving her life? Well, he hoped she made it home safe and sound.

He opened his eyes and sighed again. What hurt was that he liked protecting her.

The back alley was grimy. From the wet concrete to the tiles and the metal gratings, it looked like the floor of a fish cannery. The buildings were streaked with dirt as well, and the pipes that ran up and down them were rusty, and one was leaking, spraying a mist of water onto a heap of pallets and trash. Behind a pillar, making up one corner of one of the buildings, was a small grass area covered by the rest of the building. A giant air vent loomed over it, its giant fans dumping out gallons of air. However, the garbage bins were neatly in order.

From where he was off Queen’s Road West, Nick guessed he was a little less than half an hour away from Swire Hall. Fifty minutes at most, and then he could collapse on his bed and let this bad dream pass.

Surely, the journey would be easy now, surely, he pleaded. It was dark—it had been dark for what felt like six hours—the police and protesters would be packing things up and going home and the city would be dead, and nobody was out except him, and he could get home quick.

Not in a million years.

Shut up! he yelled at his subconscious. But it was just trying to keep him alive.

Was he slipping backwards into his old self? A scared little boy, naïve and unwilling to defend himself? He howled in frustration; the fans drowned him out.

He was so fed up with this game of cat and mouse. He didn’t know where the cat was, but if he lowered his guard for even a second, the police would be on him and there wouldn’t be two crazy men with guns around to save him. Nick touched the baton in his belt loop and took a deep breath. He was so close to being home. Everything would be better, everything would be right, once he got to Swire Hall.

When the fans switched off, he listened closely for cars driving by, but there was nothing. A minute went by and still nothing. The city was quiet.

It’s an illusion.

His subconscious again.

Taking a deep breath, Nick left the alley.

Queen’s Road West was as dead as a cemetery.

Something will happen soon.

And his gut agreed. Something was going to happen. But what would happen? So many bad things had already happened tonight that he couldn’t even start to guess. He didn’t want to guess lest it come true. Or maybe whatever was going to happen would be worse than whatever he could imagine. That’s always how life went. He shuddered.

Cautiously, he followed Queen’s Road West west and made sure to stick to the shadows. He went hunchbacked and half-crouched. The road took a shallow turn then straightened for a block or two before being bent like an upside-down L. Nick stopped a short way past the corner and paused for a moment: the road gently curved again, blocking his view, so he continued. Things seemed safe.

A light flickered in the Sai Ying Pun Station on his right, and to his left the light was on in a double-decker bus parked on the curb. Printed on the side of the bus was an advertisement for a youth cream with a smiling woman who was “Actually 57!” but looked 40-years-old. The door was open and Nick peeked inside, but it was deserted.

Where the road curved, Nick stopped underneath a Sunbucks Coffee Shop sign (a Chinese rip-off of Starbucks that made adequate coffee, not good enough for a college student, but good enough for a retiree or if you needed to stay awake for an extra couple hours). The bored sun-girl stared at nothing, and she judged it harshly.

From his position, Nick could see the rest of the road. Up ahead in the crosswalk where Queen’s intersected with Eastern Street was a police car. The car was parked at an angle, the front facing him. The headlights and interior lights were off, and the passenger side door was open. It looked abandoned, and the road was empty except for it. That was good news for him.

Before leaving his spot under the Sunbucks sign, however, he gave the street another look over and glanced behind him to make sure no one was sneaking up on him. When he was sure that he was safe, he advanced towards the car.

Wait!

Nick fell hard on his knees and caught himself with his free hand. Someone was in the passenger seat. An officer’s cap was on the dash. The dark blob of the person kept moving his head around; he seemed to have something stuck to his face.

A high-pitched whine started up and from the shadow of the police car a drone rose, four propellers spinning fast. It went vertically to two hundred feet in the air, turned south, and flew away over the apartment rooftops, its white light blinking. The sound faded.

Most likely that was a Chinese DJI drone. From personal experience and extensive video watching, Nick knew that a good drone could fly three hundred feet in the air and still clearly make out a person’s face two blocks away, or a license plate even if it was flying. And the police had good equipment. Maybe better than the military. Suppressing citizens wasn’t cheap after all. Plus, their drones had thermal cameras. All for $13,000.

Nick had a chilling thought: how many drones were flying above him? How many drones had seen his face in the park, or at the LegCo building? His wandering eyes looked up at a building; stuck to the wall was a security camera. How many CCTV cameras had captured his face, and how many hours of footage was the police going to confiscate as evidence throughout the city? He’d been so focused on the helicopter he hadn’t considered other possibilities.

Nope, he wouldn’t let himself dwell on that anymore.

With only one officer in that car, that left only one option if Nick wanted to get home safe and without anyone, even a drone, following him: rendering the officer unconscious.

Unconscious! Nothing more than unconscious!

He got back on his feet and crept towards the car. VR goggles were strapped to the officer’s head, and he held a standard drone controller.

“I see all of you,” the officer giggled, and for a half-second, Nick’s heart stopped. “Trying to get to the hospital, hm? Well, backups on the way. You’ll all get to see the inside of our cells soon. Couldn’t just follow the rules, could you?”

Baton in hand, Nick raised it up and the controller fell to the floor of the car. The goggles broke. Wherever the drone was, it would stay hovering in the night sky until it ran out of juice hours from now.

Nick slammed the car door shut (and he winced at how loud that was) and stepped into the intersection. He went to flip on his camera before realizing it was on and rolling with 50% battery left. His hand was cramped from holding the camera for so long, so he tried to shake it loose.

South of his location, where Hospital Road connected to Eastern Street up the hill, there was a swarm of protesters. Their shouts drifted over to him. It sounded like hundreds, or it could be a couple dozen, he didn’t know. The police obviously thought this part of the city, or at least this street, was more locked down than it was.

Then Nick noticed the road. Six dead civilians and a single dead police officer lay dead, beaten or shot or trampled. A lone traffic cone stood with its base duct taped to the asphalt; there was the distinctive smell of tear gas wafting from it.

His heart sank. It was not going to be easy to get back to his dorm.

Behind him, the road split the buildings and gave a slivered view of the waterfront maybe a quarter of a mile away, and the illuminated overpass stood in front of the pitch black of the night sky. Six, seven, eight hours ago, however long it had been, he had walked by that overpass.

Police lights danced on the buildings. Two STS vans were speeding east towards him on Queen’s. Panicking, Nick ran south toward the protesters then broke right onto First Street, only he had the same problem as before: twenty riot officers were running towards him to arrest the protesters by the hospital.

By the time Nick saw them, he was already halfway down the street, and if he turned around he was afraid he might meet up with the police car—a glance over his shoulder told him he would; flashing blues and reds painted the buildings, then the vans shot past, probably to run the protesters over.

With no other choice, Nick had to run up a set of stairs that went underneath an office building on the south side of the road. He didn’t take the escalator for some reason. The riot police shouted at him—yeah, like that’ll get me to turn myself in.

On the first level was a preschool and a water wall. Up another flight of stairs—this time he took the escalator—brought him to the chaos on Second Street.

The street was dim yet bright. The streetlights, flashlights, and searchlights of the drones above illuminated the night, creating an ephemeral bubble over the action. Even the lights in the apartments above them were on, and people watched the anarchy below.

The protesters were pushing in two directions: on the right, they were fighting about a hundred riot police; on the left, they were doing the same thing, trying to push towards the hospital. There was the distinct pungent smell of tear gas in the air. Nick got the feeling these protesters weren’t the type of people to run; they could have gone down the stairs at any time, but they were choosing to fight instead of running.

The crowd swallowed him up. The deafening noise became muted like he was underwater.

The hundreds of protesters carried makeshift weapons: paintball guns and slingshots and airguns (not exceeding 2 joules as was the law), fireworks, canes, cricket bats, sticks, garbage can lids, and umbrellas.

Those with slingshots loosed paintballs at the drones above. Airgun pellets dusted the ground because they missed the drones. Others picked up whatever trash they could find and threw it up only for it to fall short and hurt someone below. The drones stayed where they were, unaffected, until paintball guns started shooting at them. With each operating independently, the drones expertly dodged the projectiles then shot up into the sky out of reach but still watching them.

Things were calm in the middle of the pack, which only meant that Nick wasn’t in any immediate danger. The camera couldn’t focus on anything because Nick kept whipping it around trying to film everything he saw.

Nick pushed his way through the mob, towards the riot police on the western side of the street. Behind him, the riot police had finally made it up the stairs and were now firing on the protesters with pepper balls at point-blank range. People screamed but other screaming swallowed it up. The camera witnessed a teenager falling to the ground.

The camera and Nick both caught the retaliation against the newly arrived officers. Along with paintballs splattering the molded plastic riot shields, four fireworks ejected from four separate tubes and flew in an irregular straight line at the police. The first and second hit plastic shields and knocked the officers down before exploding. The third flew past the STS and exploded when it hit the underside of the building, showering them in sparks. The fourth flew towards the police, but then the thruster spluttered, and it fell at the policemen’s feet. Before they could run back, it went off once, twice, five times. They were forced to retreat.

A cheer went through the crowd; they were silenced by the arrival of the helicopter.

It hovered overhead. Its floodlight shined down. Protesters shielded their eyes or stared at their feet, momentarily dazed.

A flood of new protesters and rioters come in from three adjoining alleyways. Everywhere was blocked by police. It finally dawned on Nick and the others that they were trapped; the police had successfully contained them on all sides, from the side streets to the alleys. Nick hadn’t been fast enough. He should have gone north to the waterfront.

The camera fixated on a man barely a yard away trying to lift a manhole cover. Nick half expected Garrison soldiers to erupt out of the sewers.

The helicopter descended, pounding the protesters with anvils of air. The wind picked up umbrellas, trash, hats, anything that wasn’t nailed down, and mixed it into a vortex. Soldiers sitting on the edge threw nets down onto the crowd. Nick manually wrangled the image and brought it into sharp focus onto the helicopter.

Someone out of sight pointed a firework tube at the helicopter. The camera watched the rocket ricochet off the underside of the helicopter and airburst over the protester’s heads. Motes of burning light rained down on screaming people.

A voice boomed over the helicopter’s blades: “Curfew is in effect. Lay down your weapons. Surrender to the police. Curfew is in effect. Lay down your weapons. Surrender to the police.”

Provoked by the order, the protesters gained new strength and attacked again; a pepper ball whizzed by—one hit Nick in the neck.

With a swarm of men and women, he fled up a sloped concrete hill where four STS officers waited. Together, they barreled into the officers and beat them down but didn’t kill them. Somehow a group of people was less dangerous than himself. He didn’t like that.

Light flooded the darkened foot path. Somehow, the damned helicopter had picked him out in its thirty feet in diameter floodlight, along with everyone else around him. How could they see his PRESS jacket from all the way up there? (Terrified as he was, he forgot he had taken the tape off.) Did they have a personal vendetta against him?

When Nick’s group emerged onto Third Street with a platoon of protesters following behind, they met with more police standing feet away.

An officer pulled out his sidearm: “Get down on the ground, get down on the ground, shut up and get down on the ground!” Shoving his pistol into a young woman’s face, the officer wildly looked around with bloodshot eyes.

Twenty protesters attacked the police. Nick didn’t. He broke away and went down a side street. Without looking, he pointed his camera behind him: it caught the helicopter’s giant searchlight tracing the ground, searching until it landed on the protesters. Perhaps it didn’t care about one lone man running away when such a juicy score was to be had. Whatever the reason, Nick got away.

He sprinted as fast as he could. He could feel the wind in his hair and inflating his half-unzipped jacket. Each time a foot landed on the asphalt, his backpack bounced. When he reached Western Street, he turned left and sprinted up the hill.

At the bottom of the stairs, Nick looked back up from the way he’d come and saw nobody, and he suddenly felt very alone.

The baton and pepper spray gave him some confidence: the booze amplified it. He could take on a “cop” (as they said in America). In fact, he wished he could fight a cop if only to prove to Randy and Coal that he wasn’t a pushover. He could do take a cop! He tripped and caught himself, scrapping a palm. Maybe he was a loser.

Nick meandered through the streets, sometimes walking on the sidewalk, sometimes in the middle of the road, and sometimes zigzagging about because he just felt so good with himself.

The world was sort of tilting back and forth. Am I a lightweight? Surely he was overreacting; there was no way he was this tipsy, he had like four shots of whiskey. At least his body didn’t hurt anymore; that was nice. He could run a mile!

But he was having trouble walking up this hill. Go up a hill then go down a hill. It was a never-ending cycle. Why did the city have to be built on a hill? Couldn’t they flatten the whole island?

Where the road terminated there were three footpaths: two went downhill and one went uphill. The north stairs took him away from the hills Coal had told him to stick too, and the northwest stairs descended to a hospital. That place was probably crawling with cops. Over thirty-three thousand cops and they couldn’t quell some protesters. He laughed out loud and clapped a hand over his mouth, horrified.

What’s wrong with you? Get your head in the game!

He slapped himself twice, and a third time for good measure, then he went up the hill.

Strung above him was a clothesline with a full load of laundry hanging in the breeze. About a hundred steps later, he arrived at Hospital Road. From here, he would cut across Bonham Road and climb the hill, then cut across and drop down on Hong Kong University from the north, and then, finally, he would be safe.

“Get back here!” a man shouted.

“Get off me! Get away!” a woman screamed.

“Stop resisting! Why are you out past curfew!”

The plan fell apart in microseconds. Instinctively, the camera was flicked on and recording, and the lens cap was shoved in a pocket. Armed with it and nothing else, Nick jogged up the road where it curved around a building. Between the sidewalk and the building was a brick wall. The lights in the windows illuminated the one-way street.

Being drunk often makes one do stupid things, and stupid things happen because someone wished he could fight a police officer.

In a cone of light from one of the windows, a man threw a woman against the brick wall. She banged her head against the sharp trim and would have fallen if the man didn’t catch her. She didn’t scream, just silently tried to fight back. Fear might have robbed her of her voice. The man grabbed her hair and pulled it at the same time she kicked him in the privates, and he let out a satisfying howl and let go of her. She started running down the hill but stopped when she saw Nick.

“No-no-no, I’m not—!”

Behind her shoulder, the man stumbled into the light: he was a Hong Kong Garrison soldier, easily recognizable by the camouflage uniform he wore. On his helmet was the Garrison insignia of a tan star above two rifles crossed with their bayonets affixed, surrounded by laurel leaves and the white Hong Kong flower at the bottom. The soldier unslung the rifle from his shoulder.

Nick yelled syllables and he and the woman, with nowhere else to go, jumped over the brick wall and fell three feet into the gap between the wall and the building. The woman sprained her ankle. If he hadn’t been slightly buzzed, he would have as well.

A four round burst followed shortly after they jumped, spraying the building and breaking a windowpane. The woman screamed

“Get out from there!”

Helping her up, they limped down the path. The wall on their left got shorter and shorter, but if they made it to the end, then they could hop the wall again and run down the footpath he’d taken up. That was a good plan, right? A three round burst hit the wall; chunks of brick flew. Bad plan! If they peeked even their head over the wall like Nick just did, the soldier would shoot them between the eyes.

“Get out from behind there!”

Without waiting for an answer, the soldier let off a spray of bullets, right on Nick’s position where he was crouched and had his eyes squeezed shut.

The soldier was shooting, shooting! At him! He couldn’t believe it! Why him! He couldn’t die yet; he was still a virgin! Oh, if only the two crazy people were around to save him! Why had he gone towards the yelling and not away?

Nick glanced at the woman. She was on her knees; forehead pressed into the concrete with her hands over her head. She didn’t scream, but she was shaking like the ground in an earthquake.

This was one of those times a man dreams about. Late at night when he’s wondering what he’s doing with his life. Wishing to be given a chance to be a hero, to save another person or rescue the girl, until he remembers that it’s the modern day, and that doesn’t happen anymore, and reality takes hold again.

Nick was just a cameraman. Journalists didn’t get involved in this kind of thing. They were supposed to be like nature documentary filmmakers; they were supposed to be invisible, barely affecting the environment they were in and doing nothing else but reporting what they saw.

During one of the Anti-Firewall protests, Nick and Curtain had watched a police man—dressed in a riot helmet and armor, with a plastic shield and a baton in either hand—beat a woman while her husband and children screamed not two feet away. The father kept crying, “We haven’t done anything! We haven’t done anything! We haven’t done anything!”

Nick didn’t remember doing it, but he’d taken a step forward, and Curtain caught him and pushed him back. He had a firm grip on his arm and walked him away from the scene.

“We don’t get involved; that’s for other people. We document it. Lawyers can us our footage to help them.”

They both knew no lawyer would help them. Like that family would ever be able to sue the police or the government. The system wouldn’t help them. They would never be able to get a trial.

It had always seemed cowardly to him. Journalists said they cared about protecting the little guy, but they only tried to affect change after the fact. They pointed at a problem and said, “This is wrong,” and then everyone ignored them. Half the time they were lying about the problem, and half the time their solutions were bad.

Nick could use his camera as an excuse, or he could fight. Some people fought, some people hated violence. Some people recorded the fight for posterity…and to make it big on the internet. Which kind of person was he?

A section of the wall to his left exploded and chunks of rock hit the ground. Dust covered him and the woman on the other side. She still didn’t scream, only shook harder—probably crying.

A door unlocked in his mind, and Nick started to get mad.

How much running would he do? When would he stand and fight? When would everyone stand and fight? Even if it meant death…how could you say that? Doubt asked. He’d never killed man. Never been put in a life-or-death situation. All he had seen was movies. His whole life, people had told him violence was not the answer, but the state used violence; what were the rest of them supposed to do? Killed or be killed. Self-defense was a good thing, wasn’t it? But they were unarmed, they had nothing to fight back with other than sticks and stones. If they wanted guns, they had to take them from the police or raid their stations. Violence was the answer, wasn’t it?

What kind of man was he? They say people learn who they are in college, so what kind of man was he?

He didn’t want to kill anyone, but he couldn’t be a pacifist when people were getting beat up and he could stop it.

This was either incredibly stupid or incredibly brave, and both might kill him.

Gunfire peppered the building. For whatever reason, the soldier wasn’t peeking his head over the wall and shooting them. And that was fortunate.

Shaking off his backpack, camera on the ground, still on, Nick gripped the baton and the pepper spray. He knew from seeing it firsthand that the pepper spray reached almost twenty feet.

One wrong move, and the whole game would be lost. That might be why he didn’t come up with a plan.

When the gunfire ceased, Nick popped up over the wall and extended his arm out in front of him and squeezed the pepper spray’s handle trigger: the soldier six feet away recoiled and covered his face with an arm.

Dropping the bottle, Nick hopped over the wall in a surprisingly fluid motion and ran at the soldier, baton raised over his head. But he misjudged the distance and was too close to the man when he brought down the baton and had to pull it back. The soldier grunted and shoved him away. A couple of rounds went off on Nick’s left.

Still not able to clearly see, the soldier must have thought firing his rifle would keep Nick at bay, but it didn’t. The soldier went down, and Nick continued beating him to unconsciousness, possibly death—when that thought got through in his mind, his eyes went wide, and he backpedaled and tripped on his own feet.

He landed against the wall, banging his head against the brick. His ears were ringing. The woman crawled over the wall and stared at the bloody soldier. His breathing looked ragged.

“He’s not dead, unconscious. Unconscious, not dead,” he mumbled.

“We need to leave,” the businesswoman said.

“My camera—I need my camera.”

“I have it, and the pepper spray.”

She helped him up and he followed her—or maybe she pulled him along with her—down the stairs he’d come up, and then straight on down more stairs past a wall topped with razor wire. At the bottom step, Nick had to stop and sit down; he fell hard on the concrete step.

His hands were shaking. Had he really done that? It felt great! Fuck that guy; he hoped he died! No! You don’t mean that! cried his subconscious. Shut up! Nick told his subconscious. The man was nothing but a stooge for the CCP, either unknowingly or unwittingly. Did he really believe that? He didn’t want the man to die, but didn’t his actions justify it? Nick couldn’t think straight, his head was a twirling mess. His subconscious wouldn’t answer.

“Thank you for saving me.”

“Never thought I would beat up a soldier,” he replied with a half-hearted chuckle.

The hospital was down the road on their left. It seemed dead, surprisingly. No cars on the side of the road nor any people heading in or out.

Her legs were standing next to him. In the dark, all he could make out was her black, or maybe grey, business suit. Her black hair was straight. She wasn’t wearing any shoes, and her stockings were torn.

“You went to work today?”

“My boss said to act like it was a normal day. I don’t care about politics; I just work and go home and work and go home. But my boss let everyone go home early because of the curfew, and I missed the last bus, and I missed the metro train, and the tram isn’t running. And I have no friends who could drive me home and I—I had to take off my heels to run home to avoid the rioters, your people.”

From the way she said it, the heels sounded expensive.

“Protesters.”

“They’re breaking the curfew. They’re attacking the police. They’re rioters! I saw a mob flip a police car!”

Her voice echoed. Nick’s head snapped to the hospital, expecting an officer to come around the corner, wondering who was over there. Nobody did, and he relaxed. The businesswoman sat on the step next to him and asked if he had any water.

Nick slipped his backpack off. Sweat plastered his shirt to his back. While she hydrated, he caressed his camera, looking for any scratches on the lens or screen in the dark. When he was sure there was none, he used the cleaning cloth to wipe any smudges off the lens. He put the pepper spray back in the side bottle pouch and slipped the baton into a belt loop.

The businesswoman kissed Nick on the cheek.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime, ma’am.” He couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “But we should leave.”

Far away in front of them, a loud group of protesters passed heading northwest along Hollywood Road.

“That is the way we have to go…” Nick said slowly.

The only way to go was forward; the injured soldier—he’s not going to die—blocked their way south, and the dead police at the Central–Mid-Levels Escalator prevented them from going east, not that he wanted to go east. The police were probably swarming that place anyhow. The hospital was west. So, the only option they had was Hollywood Road. She didn’t like it, but tonight was a night to do shit you didn’t want to do.

A minute later, they turned left onto Hollywood Road. The protesters had disappeared. Nick hoped they were going north to the waterfront and not west in the direction he wanted to go. And though the street was dead empty and dead quiet, they stuck to the shadows of the buildings above.

Further on, they passed a park with a traditional ancient Chinese Paifang gate entrance. The pillars were painted red and jade green shingles adorned the three roofs. Enclosing the entire park was a wall about head height with more jade green shingles. The camera saw red pupils: like in a horror film, there were people in the park staring at them as they went by. Their eyes glowed.

The businesswoman slammed her foot into something metal; they both held their breaths and hurried on.

Queen’s Road West was a three-laned, one-way road surrounded by old apartments from previous decades (the 2010s were considered old now—a fact Nick did not appreciate having been a child during it) at the foot of which were closed businesses. Several box trucks and flatbeds were parked along the sidewalks.

Police sirens came from the east, and police lights danced on the buildings. Nick and the businesswoman across the street and dashed down a side alley—they both almost fell down steps—and into a small loading zone behind a building. They pressed themselves against the wall around the corner: the police car drove past.

“When are they going to give up and go home?” Nick asked.

When he didn’t get a response, he looked behind him and discovered he was alone. The businesswoman was far at the other end of the alley and slipping around the corner—and then she was gone.

A few stars were now revealing themselves in the night sky alongside the bare sliver of the moon.

Nick scurried down Arbuthnot Road in the darkness. The farther he got from that intersection, the better he could breathe, and he needed to breath because all this running was tiring him out. Yet, at any moment, he expected a policeman to jump out of the shadows and taze him, or for the helicopter to fly overhead and spot him with its giant searchlight and then policemen would swarm him and beat him into submission.

The camera had 63% battery left. It ticked down to 62% because he forgot to turn it off.

What was going on in the rest of the city? Were his friends—they had to be okay; he couldn’t handle anybody else he knew dying. Beauty couldn’t die before he asked her out! And what about Curtain; his body was probably resting in a morgue by now.

What was going on in Taiwan, and how was the world reacting to the invasion? Did anyone care about Hong Kong or was the war overshadowing them? Surely the authoritarianism and police brutality would get media attention. But that assumed people cared about the city, or knew what was happening. Maybe, to the eyes of the world, Hong Kong just some city under China’s control, indistinguishable from Macau, just a former European colony given back to the motherland.

There was too much going on. He couldn’t live with these unknowns. He wanted to sit down on the curb and take a break and look at news to figure out what was going on. But he knew he couldn’t, it wasn’t safe here. Only campus would be safe. Only his dorm room. He wanted to jump into bed and sleep the year away. What a shitty year it had been.

The road snaked downhill. On the right was a a statue of a man made out of small blocks. Rising in front of him was an ugly building—in the daylight it was ugly, at night, its metal shell was much easier to ignore—and he turned left to get onto Chauncey Lane, a dead-end, one-way side street.

Nick gulped like a cartoon character because on his right was Victoria Prison. A must worse prison was in his future if he was caught.

They might need to reopen it soon.

And that, for some reason, made him laugh, which made life hate him even more than it already did because less than three hundred feet later, his bad luck struck again.

Where Chauncey Lane met Old Bailey Street, Nick came upon two police officers. The first one stood less than ten feet away and was urinating on a streetlamp. The cone of yellow light shined on his back. The pig’s buddy was up the hill with his back turned.

They hadn’t heard him. If he was really quiet he could sneak by—the clever thought was murdered by his own bumbling feet when he kicked a discarded soda can because he was too focused on the officers.

The farthest policeman didn’t react.

The closest policeman’s head cocked to one side. He zipped up his pants and turned to face the cameraman. The yellow light harshly cast black shadows upon his face, and all that could be seen was his beret flash.[1]

“Sorry,” he squeaked.

Nick hurtled down the hill. Three pairs of shoes slapped the asphalt and echoed off the buildings. The officers shouted after him and one requested backup. The camera captured blurs.

His brain was on fire with hysteria. All the pent-up anger from the park came rushing back because somehow, in the infinite idiocy that was his pitiful, rotten life, he ran into more police officers.

You’re the dumbest person alive! You have two left feet!

At the first opportunity, Nick turned left down a one-way street. As he rounded the corner, he crashed into a line of twenty mopeds parked against the wall of the old Police Married Quarters. Spinning three hundred and sixty-two degrees, he caught himself on an upright moped and kept running.

“Stop!”

“Cease!”

UP ahead was the Central–Mid-Levels Escalator.[2] At this time of night, the escalators were moving uphill, so he could run up them and disembark wherever he could and disappear.

In the side street, adjacent to the escalators, was a gastropub on the left with the flags of the United Kingdom and Ireland, Nepal, Hong Kong, and the People’s Republic of China (which was bigger than the rest) hanging from the deck. Opposite the pub was a shop painted with flowers and young girl eating an ice cream shaped flower while staring at a hummingbird.

A police officer stepped off the upgoing escalator on the right, blocking the painted child’s face. It was something out of a Hollywood movie the timing was so perfect. In fact, time might have slowed down too. Nick lurched, eyes wide, and turned to run back the way he’d come, but the officer grabbed the strap on his backpack, jerking him back, and clocked him on the head with a baton. His eyes snapped shut when the hard plastic contacted his skull.

Semi-conscious, he didn’t remember much more after that, only that he’d let go of the camera, and when he tried to pick it up, the policeman jerked him away and slammed him onto the ground. The rough road scrapped his cheek.

The officer painfully pinned his right arm to his back and had a firm grip on his neck. Nick tried to roll onto his side, couldn’t, and was yelled at to stop resisting. When he tried to shake them off, he was hit on the head again.

Finally opening his eyes to see what was going on, his vision was blurry and it felt like his brain was acting slow. He needed to get away—why couldn’t he get up? He groaned and tried to roll onto his side again, but they held him firm on the ground. His cheek was smashed into the road more, and the coarse rocks cut up his skin. He uselessly kicked his legs until someone held them down.

Nick had never been punched before. It hurt so badly. He wanted to crawl into bed and fall asleep. He was dog tired.

Three officers of the law were yelling at him and asking him questions he didn’t understand. One stood over him, slapping his palm with a baton; it made a sickening, meaty sound.

“Where were you going?”

“There’s a curfew, don’t you know?”

Incoherent words stumbled out of Nick’s mouth.

“Don’t talk back.”

“Hey, this guy’s trying to record us.”

“Turn off the camera!”

“How far did he run?”

“Came out of Chancery Lane.”

“Didn’t get very far.”

“How do you turn it off?”

Nick wheezed out a few words, something involving “home” and “switch.”

“You’re a college boy aren’t you?”

“They’re filling your heads with poison.”

“Were you at the LegCo building?”

This time Nick didn’t speak.

“That sounded like a yes to me.”

“Shut up. We already got him for noncompliance.”

“He’s out of it. Let’s get him to the van.”

An officer handcuffed Nick, then multiple hands grabbed his arms and brought him to his feet; he didn’t resist, but a fist smashed into his gut and a pathetic sound came out of his mouth.

“No-no-no, don’t do that, I know you were going to try to run. That was a warning.”

“You college types are always so weak. Don’t know what the real world is like.”

“Shut up; he’s already cuffed. He’s not going anywhere.”

“He’s a traitor. Possibly a terrorist.”

All three of their radios crackled, and a static voice on the other end requested nearby units to investigate why the officers at the intersection of Upper Albert Road and Caine Road weren’t responding.

“You two check up on them, I’ll take him to the van.”

“But I’m hungry, and there’s food at the station, and I need to sleep.”

“Boo-hoo—”

Seven gunshots shattered Nick’s eardrums. The officers were bleeding out on the ground, and the cameraman was right there beside them, unharmed, frozen stiff, and lying in the fetal position with his cuffed hands behind his back. His brain screamed at him to get up and run away, but he couldn’t move, so he held his breath and played dead. Maybe the shooter would move on and assume they were all dead without double checking.

Please don’t let it be that mob.

The ringing in his ears faded. Shoes approached him.

“Relax, we’re not gonna shoot you,” said a friendly, American voice.

“You’re safe,” said a Hong Kong accent.

Nick opened an eye. Two men stood above him, a white man an Oriels baseball hat and a Cantonese man with no hat on. Both were in their late thirties or forties and wore khakis and loose-fitting shirts and had overstuffed backpacks and pistols on their hips.

“Hi, I’m Randy,” said the man in the Oriels hat. “He’s Cole.”

“Americans?”

“You don’t recognize a fellow Hongkonger?” laughed Cole. “He’s the American, I only have a green card to America. But I shot two of the bastards for you.”

“I shot three of them, you got one.”

Randy found the right keys and uncuffed Nick, then tucked both items into a pocket, and Cole gave him a hand. He winced and groaned the whole way up.

“There’s only three of them.”

“Yeah, we tied for one of them.”

“No, we didn’t; I shot two, you got one. My score is eight. I’m winning.”

“Stop being overly competitive.”

Nick had trouble comprehending them: how on Earth were they talking so casually about killing three—eight—whatever—people! Two psychopaths saved his life, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about that except grateful.

The internet would later dub these two men the “Wannabe Soldiers of Fortune,” and they absolutely loved the mad lads. The negative comments calling them buffoons who didn’t know what they were doing and hotheads who would die did little to lower their cool levels. “If the police can shoot them, why can’t they shoot back?” was the common refrain, which the legal nutsos[3] (netizens who loved laws, legality, and reminding people that J-walking is illegal) disagreed with and used many words (most of which nobody knew the definitions for) to prove them wrong, so everyone ignored them. “At least they’re having fun,” was countered with, “Sure, dying of starvation and torture in some Chinese prison sounds like a lot of fun.” Some people just don’t like taking risks.

The three police radios crackled, and the dispatcher again requested units go to the intersection of Upper Albert Road and Caine Road. That reminded the two crazies to turn on the radios clipped to their belts. Randy went to loot the cops.

Nick picked up his camera—bending down made him dizzy—and brought it under one of the streetlights. It was still on, and it appeared to be undamaged, which was a relief. All the same, he cleaned the lens with a cleaning cloth.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Cole. “Got everything?”

“Ready.” Randy finished looting the cops; he stuffed extra magazines and the batteries from their flashlights into his backpack and slipped a baton through a belt loop. “Let’s go back the way we came.”

“C’mon kid.”

Without another word, they jogged down the street, except for Nick, he was too bewildered to move. The escalator was right there; he could go up its enticingly endless stairs and get off somewhere quiet to rest.

“Are you coming?” asked Randy. He and Cole were staring at him.

“Yeah! Yeah, I didn’t know—” if you were talking to me?

He shut up and jogged after them. Every step made his head hurt and he wanted to vomit; he really was not built to take hits. If only there was a bed nearby he could crawl into.

Over the radio, they heard a police officer was responding to a sighting of a man defying the curfew on Lyndhurst Terrace. Then they turned the radios down low and it became a garbled whisper.

Where the road bent and headed west there was the permanently closed Hong Kong News-Expo on the left and a restaurant called Bar Professional on the right. Adjoining both businesses were stairs going up and down the hill. The dwarf palm trees in front of the restaurant rustled, causing a frond to fall off.

“Let’s sit here a minute or two and catch our breath,” Randy suggested, and stuck a finger at Nick. “He looks like death.”

Without waiting for a response, Randy sat down on the top step of the stairs next to the restaurant looking out at the city and pulled out a flask of whiskey.

Nick whipped his head around—giving him a headache—searching for riot police about to jump out of the shadows and tackle him. He hated breaking the rules, and the law! Yet that was all he’d done today. One law after the other, broken and sealing his fate: a hundred-year prison sentence, if the courts didn’t consign him to an execution. And now he was an accessory to murder!

“Why don’t we keep going?” he squeaked. Why did he sound like that?

“Sit down, we’re not gonna be here long,” said Randy. “I would’ve liked to be in that gastropub and get a nice beer or something.”

“We can raid the restaurant,” said Cole. “Hey, kid! Sit down.”

Nick complied and sat next to Cole, then Randy got up to sit next to Nick. It made him feel a little safer.

The American saluted them with the flask, took a swig, then passed it to Cole, who took a swig and gave to Nick. He was more of a beer man personally, but he didn’t want to offend, so he took a swig and the throbbing in his head faded a touch.

“Attaboy,” Randy cheered. “This is authentic stuff—probably. It’ll calm your nerves. What’s your name again?”

“Nick.”

“Right. What’s with the camera?”

Nick almost had a stroke: he’d forgotten about the camera! And it was still on! “Is it okay if I film?” he asked automatically. It was a habit he’d picked up as a journalist. In public you didn’t have to ask a person for permission to film them, but he always thought it was best to do so out of common courtesy; he didn’t want people recording him without his knowledge, plus, they had guns, so he thought it a doubly good idea to get their permission, however, he chose not to tell them he’d been recording the whole time.

“I don’t care.”

“Me neither.”

Nick’s shoulders sagged with relief. All this stress was bad for his heart. He didn’t know how he was going to survive the night without having a stress-induced heart attack. A man could only take so much stress, anxiety, and fear before it killed him. Thankfully, he was young, but he felt like tonight had taken ten years off his life.

Perhaps Randy sensed his fear of dying ten years early, and about everything else, because he handed the flask back to him. He enthusiastically took another shot, and a third, and that settled his nerves. His headache vanished, and tender cheek didn’t hurt anymore.

“Are you a journalist?” asked Cole.

“Yes—but I’m mainly a cameraman!” He hurriedly corrected himself when they didn’t like the first answer. “I’m a cameraman first, not really a journalist. You said I could film you!”

“It’s whatever,” said Randy, shrugging. “I’m a decent judge of character, and you seem like you’re an alright fellow, journalist or camera dude.”

They both stared at Nick.

“I am an alright fellow?”

“Course you are, you’re a protester!” Cole said, slapping him on the back. “Were you down at the LegCo building?”

“Yes, with a—” he coughed “—a friend of mine.”

He hurriedly took another shot.

“You two…got separated,” said Randy.

He nodded.

“Take a drink.” Randy nodded approvingly when he did. “It’s never easy, and these aren’t the best of circumstances.”

“Here’s to him,” said Cole. He took a swig and shook his head. “I was here during the 2019 protests, on business. Four of my cousins got arrested, and my niece, and for some reason, I don’t know why, but my niece was convicted. Life sentence with no parole. Every day I want to kill the bastards who sent her there. The judge, the lawyers, the journalists who ran cover. After a year they stopped allowing us to talk to her.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nick.

“I know the commissioner of the NBA, I personally know that fucker, yet I couldn’t get him to not cave to the CCP.[4] Back in 2019. I tried, I really did, but I guess I didn’t have the sway I thought I did. It would have done so much good. Maybe now things will be different. Who knows. If I could convince him…well, that might be my proudest moment.

“I have to say, I’m proud the people here haven’t given up. I left; I left the city; I abandoned my family. But you stayed. You could’ve gone to school anywhere in the world, I assume. It takes guts to stand up to them. I thought it was bad luck we were here when China invaded, but I was wrong. I’m glad to be here, fighting back. Every single one of them deserves to die, ‘just following orders’ or not.”

Nick shivered. He didn’t like that sort of talk. He wasn’t a pacifist, but he didn’t like violence, either. And if he thought Beijing would have invaded Taiwan before he graduated college, he would’ve left.

“Why are you guys here?”

“We both work for Deloitte,” said Randy. “We go around the world auditing companies, and this is, by far, the most fun I’ve had since starting there.” He looked into the camera and said, “And if anyone from there is watching this, I’m not resigning. You’ll have to fire me.” He leaned back and downed a shot.

“You’re not trying to get to the American consulate?”

“You kidding? I’m not going home. This is great!”

“And I’m not abandoning my city.”

Nick stared at them, eyes wide. How drunk were they? They were crazy; they had a death wish!

“Don’t you have—what about your families?”

Randy made a face. “See my kids, my wife? This is the most fun I’ve had in thirty years, ever since my frat days.”

Nick thought about asking if he wanted that cut.

“My girlfriend’s only good for sex,” said Cole, “and she’s seven thousand miles away.”

“I told you not to date a Californian Chinese. But now that you’re home, you can find a nice Hongkonger woman to make your mama proud.”

“Fuck you.”

Randy cackled and drank some more whiskey, then he gave Nick a side-eyed look. “You got a sister?”

He wanted to make a joke about her being a Vancouver Chinese, but the camera was still rolling. “No,” he said after a moment.

“You’re outta luck, Cole.”

The buildings above them were dark towers that cut the freckled night sky. Would you look at that. Clouds had moved in to cover the bare sliver of moon. A breeze shuffled some abandoned newspapers and leaves, and the fronds of the palm trees above them.

“We saw your tussle with the police,” Cole said. “Why didn’t you fight back?”

“What was I supposed to do? They’re the police!”

“You fight back. A man’s got to defend himself. You can’t be a victim. I know your generation is soft and weak willed and overly sensitive and lacks a spine, but you have to stand up for yourself and become a man.”

Nick’s mouth hung open. That genuinely hurt his feelings. (A part of him admitted Cole was right, but he could’ve said it nicer.)

“Your generation is a bunch of softies,” Randy agreed. “What kind of man do you want to be? One who hides behind his camera, or one who fights? Other people will film everything; you don’t need to be another video on YouTube. Take one of our guns, or at least a baton; give them a taste of their own medicine next time they attack.”

It’s not like I can take on three of them at once!

Standing up, Randy took the baton from his belt loop and a can of pepper spray from his backpack. At Randy’s insistence, Nick got up and took both self-defense weapons because they were handed to him.

The riot baton was wood with the handle poking out the side, not the collapsable ones he thought were cool, and he put it through a belt loop. The pepper spray had a trigger on the nozzle, and he put that in his backpack’s side bottle holder.

“There, now you look like you can defend yourself,” Randy said.

Nick’s neck was starting to itch. Whiskey did that to him, which was why he didn’t drink anything other than beer. Cole didn’t seem to have that affliction.

Their police radios crackled, and Randy turned the volume up on his in time to hear the dispatcher ask for units to check-in on three police officers who last reported being on the intersection of Staunton and Shelley—the escalators.

“I think it’s time we moved on. We’ll take you to the end of the street before we part ways like it’s your first day of school.”

“You’re heading west, right, back to HKU?” said Cole. “Nice. I graduated from there, the Harvard of the East.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Randy said, deadpan.

Cole ignored him and pressed on. “Be smart. Go south and go as high up the hill as you can. Things should be pretty quiet up there. And stick to the footpaths, or at least the narrow streets. Minimize your time on the main roads. We’ve noticed the cops like to stay in their cars and drive around, not many are patrolling on foot around here—except for the two you ran into.”

I should stick to the hills? I never thought—stop being a jerk.

“Thank you.”

Slapping Nick on the back, they walked him half a mile to where the street ended and dropped him off at a flight of steps there, between the boarded up Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong and YMCA Christian Academy. And just like it was his first day of school, these “Wannabe Soldiers of Fortune” waved him goodbye and blew him a kiss as he walked down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, they turned away, laughing, and vanished from view, and Nick suddenly felt very alone.

[1] A beret flash is the shield-shaped cloth patch embroidered onto a beret.

Wikipedia contributors, “United States military beret flash,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_beret_flash (accessed November 23, 2025).

[2] The Central–Mid-Levels Escalator is an 800-meter-long hillside escalator, the longest non-continuous outdoor escalator in the world. It opened in 1993. Commencing at Queen’s Road Central, it snakes up the hill through Central Market Flyover and Central to its terminus at Conduit Road. All strung together, it has sixteen reversible one-way escalators and three reversible one-way travelators that switch directions depending on the time of day. In the mornings it heads downhill from 6 to 10 am, and uphill from 10:20 am to midnight. Those who catch the escalators at the wrong time must walk up or down 782 steps.

See References for more details.

[3] Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “nutso,” accessed November 26, 2025, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nutso.

[4] See References, Hong Kong – NBA.

Dusk had arrived, and it painted the city and the sky orange.

The streetlights, sparse though they were, shined pools of yellow light on the pavement and the parked car and small Japanese trucks populated the lifeless road. The apartment buildings above were empty structures.

With nothing to see, he switched the camera off and tucked it under his arm so he could rip the white tape off his jacket. The P became a small backwards C, the R some lines, the E vanished, and the two S letters became dashes before he tore off the rest, crumpled it into a sticky ball, and tossed it into a narrow canal running off the side of the hill.

Though he didn’t want to think about it, Nick knew the only reason he got out of the park unscathed was thanks to other people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He hated that it might be true.

The road brought him under the shadow of a white luxury apartment complex called Visalia Garden. The glass doors of the lobby were locked up tight from the inside with a chain. Not long after, he went by Saint Paul’s Co-Educational College. The red brick walls were painted with the Post-it notes of a Lennon Wall.[1]

Curtain’s body surfaced in his mind, and he violently shook his head to get the image out.

Further up the road, Nick stopped at a bridge over the Peak Tram track, an inclined railway that started near Hong Kong Park and went almost to the summit of Victoria Peak.

Here, in the silence of the hills, he gazed upon the city: the water glistened and the skyscrapers flared orange like a movie. The mainland looked picturesque.

The cameraman and video camera watched the final minutes of evening slip away as the sun slid below the horizon somewhere out of view. Night fell upon the city, and the city slept. There were no lights turning on in the buildings. Nick assumed people hoped that if their lights were off, no one would come a-knocking. The streetlights became nightlights, and feeble ones at that. The entire city was as dark as the wilderness, yet he couldn’t see a single star. Even the moon was hidden, except for the barest sliver rising above a tower block.

He’d never heard the city so quiet before. He didn’t think a city could be this calm—it creeped him out.

Then a burst of gunfire echoed off the concrete and metal walls, and the manmade crevices that were the roads and alleyways amplified the sounds of rifles being discharged. It took a long time to fade, but when it did, more gunfire broke the unnatural silence of the city.

Nick shivered.

He switched the camera’s settings for night shooting. If I’m stuck in this nightmare then I’m going to get something useful out of it. He looked through the digital viewfinder to get a feel for his surroundings and to make sure the footage was at least somewhat readable when something in the distance caught his eye, and he zoomed in on it.

A blinking red light at eye level moved from right to left across the sky: the helicopter, with its giant searchlight, cut through the darkness and shined down on the rooftops, probing for unwary protesters. The distant noise of the rotors was only interrupted by more gunfire.

A lecture from his favorite journalism professor, Dr. Charles Lau Rong, came to mind.

“When a free country is at peace, protests are a minor annoyance to the government and a major inconvenience to regular people. They impede traffic, create bad chants, and push an agenda half of the population tacitly agrees with, but at the same time, now everybody has to work around them to get to the shops. When a free nation is at war, protests threaten the war effort by lowering support for the war on the homefront. To stop this, governments oftentimes simply arrest them, and nay-saying journalists are silenced. Abraham Lincoln did it, Woodrow Wilson did it with the Espionage Act, and Bush Jr. furthered it with the Patriot Act. And I’ve become depressed because I’ve just remembered all of you were born after 2000.”

The class laughed.

“In a totalitarian state, protests are a potential flash point for a riot that can snowball into the downfall of the regime. This is why any gathering of people, a group of five people or ten is broken up by police, or even just two people, because they’ll start to talk. They’ll talk about their hobbies and their grievances and what they would do if they were in charge, then a few more people will join in, and then, as I’ve already said, that crowd can easily become a riot that threatens the legitimacy of the state. This happens in mainland China; any large group of people is broken up by police.

“When a totalitarian state is at war (keep in mind that a totalitarian state is never at peace, it is always at war with its own citizens at the very least), when a totalitarian state is at war against a legitimate threat such as another country, not their own citizens, then dissent must be squashed immediately.”

Before yesterday—before September and before the blockade against Taiwan—China half attempted to put on the veneer of being a decent country.[2] They pretended to play by the rules, and they talked a big game with regard to the environment and civil rights, and they liked to call for international cooperation when not doing so themselves and signing treaties, accords, and agreements while knowing full well they would never honor those little pieces of paper. China lied, constantly, and every country in the world let them get away with it; they turned a blind eye to the human rights atrocities, IP stealing, mishandling COVID, and so much more.

The truth was the CCP never cared about anyone or anything besides themselves.

And now China was at war. They had invaded Taiwan, a sovereign nation, and if they won, then that was it, they would get away with everything. They wouldn’t have to answer for their crimes. So why should they pretend to care anymore? They could silence reporters and mass arrest civilians with wanton abandonment. (Not that they cared before, they just did it quietly to not attract international attention.) And Beijing believed they were going to win; else they wouldn’t have invaded, however delusional the rest of the world thought it might be to think they could win.

With Hong Kong under Beijing’s thumb, the same rules applied here. The police at the LegCo building had given them, the protesters, several chances to back down and go home, but the majority of them chose to stay and had to deal with the consequences. He hated admitting the government or the police did something decent, so he reassured himself that the police had probably arrested the protesters leaving when they had the chance anyway.

Nick looked around. It was time to move on.

Silence walked with him along the barren street, past shuttered shops and cars with cold engines; the deserted gas station was ominous with a single flickering light. He switched the camera off and drank some water.

Where Macdonnel Road ended at Garden Road, Nick took a moment to consult his mental map of the city for the most direct route home; he didn’t want to be outside any longer than he had to be.

Sticking close to Pok Fu Lam Country Park up in the hills was the smartest choice, except the route he wanted to take would bring him past a private hospital and police might be waiting there to arrest protesters seeking medical care (or they might be arresting the medical staff giving aid),[3] so it would be better to go southeast up Garden to get onto Brewin Path which would then put him on May Road, and from there he would eventually drop onto HKU from the south, get to Swire Hall, and be safe. He could also retrace his footsteps, but that was a risky waste of time.

It was settled then, that was the plan, and he’d take that route and be home in less than forty minutes—

Headlights bounced off the road and clipped the trees. The throaty noise of engines groaning against gravity filled the air. Several cars were driving up the hill. With only a moment to spare, Nick dropped to the ground (banging his chin) just in time to watch three police vans drive by. When the sound of their engines faded, he let out a relieved sigh and let his head gently hit the asphalt.

Taking Garden Road was ruled out. He wasn’t going to risk it. That meant he would have to cut through the Zoological and Botanical Gardens (conveniently, the entrance was just across road) to Glenealy to take a footpath to Robinson Road to get home.

The journey began with a tentative first step onto Garden Road. He looked left-right-left then sprinted into the Botanical Gardens and got lost.

Nick (internally) screamed at himself. He mocked himself and derided himself and resented himself for being such a useless, bird-brained, dimwitted nonce who couldn’t take a second to look at the park’s map to know where to go because he thought he knew how to navigate this crummy park!

The trees rustled in the wind, and he thought the wind carried whispers of people hiding in the bushes. At the fountain in the middle of the park, alone and scared, he spun around twice trying to figure out which way he should go. Was it that path, or another one? Something fell in the kiosk behind him, so he picked the path exactly opposite the kiosk and sprinted away.

Fortunately, luck took pity on him, and the path led him out of the park to an offramp that deposited him on Upper Albert Road. Not where he wanted to be, but this was okay, though, he could still get to Glenealy from here.

Then he saw it. Government House, a historical landmark. The gate was usually staffed by a security guard, but tonight, there might be a policeman waiting for protesters to vandalize the property like some had done during the Great Firewall protests. He crept slowly and hugged the retaining wall on his left, and…nobody was there. He didn’t bother exhaling; he just hurried on.

I should’ve known there wouldn’t be anyone there. The police have people to kill.

Nick crossed a bridge and approached the intersection of Upper Albert Road and Caine Road. Right before he stepped out into the crosswalk, flashing blue-and-red lights danced along the tree branches and buildings up Glenealy and a police car sped towards him.

Pushing through a mini heart attack, Nick backpedaled and jumped over a guardrail to get onto the sidewalk and then another railing to hide behind a large tree.

Did they see me? Did they see me!

The driver slammed on the brakes, the doors opened, and two officers leapt out in time to face—

A loud and raucous mob barreled down Caine Road. They carried umbrellas, air guns, paintball guns, slingshots, cricket bats, and torches.[4] When they saw the police, they hollered loud and proud but stopped all the same.

“Put down your weapons!” yelled an officer. His voice was feeble. The other officer shifted his feet. His pistol shook in his hands.

Nick didn’t know what to do. Sweat trickled down his neck. The knuckles of his camera hand were white. The camera was switched on and recording, when had he done that? He should backtrack to the bridge. What if they saw him when he moved? He should’ve retraced his footsteps on Macdonnell Road. Why didn’t he just wait a couple minutes? Why was he so stupid?

He tore his fist out of his mouth and peeked around the tree trunk.

The forty person mob glanced at each other, smiling and nodding. The police officers didn’t bother giving a second warning. At least eight gunshots went off in quick succession; the mob attacked after the first two shots.

Seizing the opportunity, Nick ran out from behind the tree and booked it to Glenealy, but he had waited a second too long.

“There’s a guy!”

“Get him!”

“Stop!”

Six paintballs hit Nick’s backpack, and one hit his leg. Swearing, he stumbled and stopped despite his instinct yelling at him to keep running. Rather than listening, he put his free hand above his head and kept the camera close to his chest. When he turned around, the car’s headlights shined on the navy-blue pants of one of the officers.

A man of about thirty, with deep lines in his face and a cricket bat on his shoulder approached him. “Who are you?” he shouted in a baritone voice. When he saw the camera pointing at him, he recoiled like it had shot him, and shouted, “Don’t film me! Don’t film me!”

“I’m not filming—”

Without warning, the man lunged forward and pushed the camera deep into Nick’s chest, forcing him to hop backwards. His fingernails dug into Nick’s hand and he puppeted it to shove the camera into Nick’s face, getting the lens real close.

“Can’t you hear? Are you stupid? How do you like it, huh? Don’t like being filmed, huh?”

“No-no sir! I just want to go home!”

“Then go home! What’re you standing here for, go!”

He shoved Nick towards the police car and kicked his backpack for good measure, sending him hopping away. Over the hood of the car, he could see twelve bodies—one of them being the second officer—lying dead on the road.

That, and the man yelling at him to get lost already, sent him shakily running away down Arbuthnot Road. Shouts chased him, and another paintball struck his leg. He stifled a yell by biting his lower lip.

“Ha-ha-ha! Run to your mommy!”

“You’re out past your curfew!”

“Baby can’t handle it!”

“I hope you all get arrested,” Nick whispered.

The dark street swallowed him up while laughter echoed off the buildings. The microphone picked up his labored breathing. He was going the wrong way. Why did these bad, unlucky things keep having to happen to him?

[1] In 1980, after the murder of John Lennon, an unknown artist painted a mural of him on a wall in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czechia). The graffiti wall grew as a space to protest the communist government. Lennon Walls now are used by causes around the world.

The first Lennon Wall in Hong Kong appeared during the 2014 Occupy Protests when thousands protested Beijing’s decision to rule out fully democratic elections in Hong Kong. Post-it notes are tucked to the Walls with messages of freedom, epigrams, lyrics, poems, and drawings.

See References, Lennon Walls for more details.

[2] See References, China for more details.

[3] See References, Hong Kong – Protests for more information.

[4] Flashlights.

Nick dashed under a postmodern pavilion that marked the entrance to Hong Kong Park.

The trees on his right tried to hide the buildings outside the park. Vines hung from the delicate branches. The setting sun topped the skyscrapers and blew out the blue sky. Rays of sunlight broke through the leaves, and a gentle breeze made Nick slow down just a touch. The camera saw very little of any of that; what it saw instead was the grey, concrete bricks of the path.

Lampposts lined the path and guided him to a dry fountain where some protesters rested. He jogged on to arrive at, by way of a manmade watercourse, a second dry fountain dug into the ground and encircled with potted plants. People sat on the steps leading down to the fountain and on the steps under the colonnade on the opposite side.

Nick remembered he had a camera and brought it up to bear, then stopped recording when he couldn’t find anything interesting in the scene. Misery wasn’t fun to film. He flicked the camera off and put the lens cap back on and readjusted his backpack on his tired shoulders.

It’s finally quiet, he thought, save for the heavy breathing around him. There wasn’t a woman screaming, either. The loudest thing was the blood pumping in his ears.

In relative safety, he caught his breath by pacing. He couldn’t sit down—he didn’t want to be caught with his pants down and he couldn’t relax until he made it back to his dorm room in Swire Hall. At the same time, he wanted to close his eyes and for this to all be over when he opened them. He wanted to wake up from this bad dream in his bed. Curtain would be alive, then, if all this was a dream. But he couldn’t think about Curtain until he was safe in his dorm room.

He can’t really be gone, just in shock, yeah, the pain made him blackout. Why did the police have to start shooting?

And what about his other friends? Where were Henry, Jon, Beauty, and the other journalism students, how were they doing? Alive, yes, they were alive. Should he call them, text? It wasn’t the right time to do it. His phone fell back into his pocket.

Nick kept pacing. His right hand was beginning to cramp, so he switched the camera to his other hand. He once brought a girl here to Fountain Plaza on a date. It didn’t go anywhere. She was really into anime, and he wasn’t—that was apparently a “red flag” to her. He really didn’t want to die a virgin.

From the road not far away, a man in a suit came running through the trees—lightning fast, the lens cap came off, the camera turned on and was recording—and bear hugged the seventeen-year-old girl who was sobbing on the steps of the fountain.

In her father’s arms, she said, “We got separated and Louisa got trampled—”

Pulling back, he gripped her shoulders. His face was slick with sweat. “Why would you do this! I told you not too!” Her hair flailed as he tried to shake some sense into her. “Why didn’t you listen? They brought tanks—they killed students! What do you think they’ll do here? I can’t lose you.”

They went through the trees to the road. A few tried to follow until he yelled at them to go away.

Nick chewed on his lower lip.

He left the fountain in a hurry.

Of course he knew about the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, though only because he was old enough to have talked about it in school before it became a taboo subject (like it was with his parents). Talk about the massacre wasn’t banned, because that would trigger a wave of protests comparable to the protests in 2010 when Donald Tsang, the second chief executive of Hong Kong, attempted to change the primary education to be more in line with CCP teachings,[1] but talk of the massacre was censored. If he had grown up in mainland China like his cousins, he might not even know about it or wouldn’t believe it happened.[2]

He crossed a small plaza where, in the middle of it, there was a monument pillar and clock commemorating the park. A tea and dim sum shop was over on the right, and a cloth masked group of people came from that side. They hurried across the plaza and went up a flight of stairs while Nick veered to the right of the conservatory.

The path stretched down the hill, and he jogged past white picket fences, a green signpost pointing to the Marriage Registry, the Botanical Gardens, the Peak Tram, and the toilets. There was a rock with yellow writing carved on it, and a small lake to the left. On the old-style lampposts hung arts and crafts posters telling of an event being held here in the park tomorrow. A World War One soldier holding a bayonet rifle stood among the bushes. The plants and trees above rustled in the breeze, and the colors popped even in the low, fading light. Somehow it was peaceful.

The closer he got to the bottom of the hill, the rumbling of a thousand shouting voices grew, and his stomach sank. Jumping up onto an elevated walkway, he peaked his head over the railing, and his eyes witnessed the chaos in the street below. Luckily, the camera saw it too.

A sea of protesters filled Cotton Tree Drive from the walkway to the Citibank skyscraper. Of course they did. They had pushed their way west past the police on Queensway and come south on the Drive. A handful of people were hopping the concrete barrier and falling into the one-way road between the Drive and the Citibank building that led to an underground car park. Directly below Nick was a three-person deep line of riot police the protesters were pushing against to get to a staircase that led up to the walkway so they could disappear into the park, but they couldn’t quite get there. Nick turned around. The road was empty.

The smell of pepper spray drifted up to him, and he glanced down to see an officer pull a protester behind the line so another officer could handcuff him and drag him to the bus.

The helicopter arrived. Protesters hid from its camera under their umbrellas. Tear gas smoke rose at the back of the sea of protesters, and they pushed harder against the riot police. The helicopter turned away to go to another part of the city.

A sixth sense told Nick to turn around. In less than a minute, the road had become overwhelmed with dozens more police and police vehicles, and a bus to ship the protesters off to prison without a trial. They waited for orders to attack. Then his heart sank to his shoes. A policeman was pointing at him and yelling at officers already running to the park entrance.

Why did I stop! Why didn’t I go up the hill? Why am I such an idiot! Being a journalist is going to get me killed!

Nick abandoned the elevated walkway at the same time a few protesters managed to get past the police line. They sprinted up the stairs with officers chasing after. Screams came from the Drive, but he didn’t hear any gunfire.

“Get back here!”

I had a clean break, why didn’t I just keep running? Why didn’t I run up the hill!

A short way up the hill, Nick took a set of stairs to get to a path along the lake that brought him to an open space at the top of a larger set of stairs that led up from the park entrance. The park suddenly seemed to be filled with protesters and police. The police chased after protesters, they went after one person then changed their minds and went after someone else, and on and on.

Twenty officers were running up the steps, and Nick made eye contact with one of them. The camera and the PRESS jacket meant only one thing.

“Get the reporter!”

As the order left his lips, a handful of protesters from the walkway came up behind Nick, and he ran with them. Another handful of protesters joined them, further obfuscating him, and together they pushed each other out of the way. The camera captured five unlucky souls being shoved to the ground and a few young men coming to save them; they punched and kicked the officers, then three gunshots went off. Thankfully, Nick didn’t see it happen, but the gunshots sent a chill rolling down his spine—Curtain’s face jumped out at him—and he ran faster.

How did he forget he was wearing this stupid jacket? A giant PRESS shaped target was on his back and front—he was inviting the police to come after him!

I’m glad Curtain’s dead!

And he didn’t have the chance to take that thought back, because the person next to him was shot in the leg and went down.

Nick and the protesters ran up a set of stairs. He was at the rear of the group, the last one, and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end in anticipation of a bullet biting his leg or a hand grabbing the handle on his backpack and yanking him to the ground, but it never came. He didn’t want to look behind him to see what happened to the officer who fired.

The protesters split in all directions like insects from an uprooted rock. Nick stayed straight and ascended the hill, going past a waterfall and Olympic Square and then into the Tai Chi Garden.

From there, he found the final set of stairs he was looking for and took them up onto Kennedy Road. Nobody had followed him.

Rising before him was an old concrete wall trimmed with trees. To the left was the clean glass office building of the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. He could see the guard in his little booth, and he could see him staring back, so Nick hurried away, hoping he wouldn’t call it in.

Apartments built on the hill rose above him, both from the previous century and modern ones. Parked cars and trucks were on the side of the road, and a car even drove past at a slow speed, though the driver sped up when she saw the PRESS jacket and the camera.

Nick knew the Office of Former Chief Executives of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was around the next corner. At Park Gate, he took the footpath up the hill to Macdonnell Road and, safe for the moment, slowed down to catch his breath.

[1] Jemimah Steinfeld, “Back to School: A Hard Lesson for Hong Kong,” Index on Censorship, September 11, 2024, https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2024/09/back-to-school-a-hard-lesson-for-hong-kong/ (accessed January 4, 2026).

[2] TIME Staff, “‘I’ve Been Told Lies.’ Young Chinese Recall When They First Learned of Tiananmen,” TIME, June 4, 2019, https://time.com/5600385/tiananmen-june-4-1989-china-30th-anniversary-censorship/ (accessed February 4, 2026).

A single shot rang out.

Thousands of people crouched with their hands held above their heads. They crouched like a line of dominoes, even the ones who hadn’t heard the gunshot crouched because the man next to him did. The endless screaming—which had never stopped since the police first showed up—continued.

Nick’s heart jumped into his throat. He cautiously looked around with every else to try to see where the shot came from. He forgot about the camera.

Then automatic rifle fire filled the air, and the screams were muted. The mass of protesters pressed against each other, unknowingly trying to push the other side closer to their police lines.

“Film this! Not me, them!” Curtain shouted, pushing the camera out of his face. “Gunshots! Shots fired!” he yelled into the microphone. “The police have opened fire on innocent demonstrators!”

Nick’s mind shut off as his cameraman instincts once again took over. The rest of the world didn’t exist except for what he saw through the lens: flame spitting out of rifles, riot shields sprinting their way, the petrified faces of young men and women his age, the determination on other’s faces, and the look of glee on Curtain’s face, like this was everything he ever hoped for, like this would win him an award.

“Stay on the police!”

Nick ignored the order and ran like hell, yet somehow, Curtain managed to get in front of him. The camera shook, but, as an instinctual extension of Nick’s eyes, captured what he saw clearly.

Something hit Curtain in the shoulder with enough force that he half spun and fell onto the asphalt, face up, surprised. Camerman and camera gawked as the milliseconds stretched to infinity. The reporter’s body didn’t move; his eyes saw nothing; blood blossomed between the two white S letters of PRESS. Nick’s heart dropped to his feet, but then time rubberbanded and he was swept away without a chance to process what happened.

The sea of protesters pushed him forward. The footage was a blur. Shoulders knocked him about, elbows attacked him, and errant fingers nearly poked his eyes out as hands shoved him this way and that way. His mind rocked back and forth like he was on a boat out at sea in a storm; he was sick to his stomach. All he could do was to stay on his own two feet as the mob carried him over a concrete barricade and down another street.

Tear gas filled the air between them. Nick nearly tripped over an older man on all fours, searching for his lost sandal. Their eyes met; his fear was evident, then they broke away. He clutched the Canon with both hands; it was the only thing that felt real to him.

Forward was the only way the masses could think of going with the riot police running after them, so they went forward past the Admiralty Centre and metro station. They trampled over the police that had been stationed here, a dozen unconscious or dead bodies that couldn’t stop the tidal wave that descended on them. Some broke off to go down into the metro or into the shopping centre.

The street opened and hundreds of people spilled out onto Queensway and fanned out across the six laned, double tram lined road.

Out of the gas, Nick joined the chorus of people coughing up their lungs. Hands on his knees, he expected blood to spew out of his mouth. I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home—he’s dead! Tears streamed down his cheeks.

Able to breathe again, he ran across the street to the One Pacific Place building, home to the Admiralty Station shopping mall. More protesters poured onto Queensway from other intersections, and the two bands reformed into one single, large, shrieking mass once again.

The helicopter hovered six stories above them. Its rotors sent powerful gusts of wind beating down upon them and forced Nick to hunch over. Umbrellas flew out of people’s hands, and masks, hats, and helmets were carried off. The incredibly loud din of the helicopter deafened even thought.

“Surrender your weapons and lay down on the ground. All rioters will be arrested. Surrender your weapons and lay down on the ground. All rioters will be arrested. You are being recorded. We have your faces. We will find you. Surrender your weapons and lay down on the ground. All rioters will be arrested.”

Nick almost fainted. They knew who he was. He was going to die in prison. A part of him wanted nothing more than to crush that thing with his fists until the pilot’s blood squeezed through his fingers.

But that didn’t matter, because hounding the straggling protesters were the riot police and SDU officers, and worse still, six hundred feet away to the east, another line of police officers was approaching, and probably the west as well.

I’m going to die in prison!

He zoomed in despite himself and watched the police run towards them. Then a man knocked into him, and that brought Nick to his senses. He abandoned his cameraman instincts and ran east, following a group of about a hundred people. Over three times that number ran towards the police with their weapons held high.

He was keenly aware he was running towards the police who were running towards him, but he hoped the daredevils also running at the police would distract them. If not, maybe the police would be focused on the thousands of people behind him and not on their little group.

The group stuck to the herringbone pattern sidewalk and headed for an offramp. Nick’s backpack bounced with each step. The offramp brought them past a Starbucks. The employees stared out the windows at them, their phones out, recording. Get away from the windows! A few people dipped inside.

Hiking up the ramp, Nick and the rest found themselves to the bottom of a steep hill and in the shadow of the skyscraper to their right. At the top of the hill, the dying light painted the jungle orange.

It felt to Nick like he was having a nightmare. Not only had his worst fear come true, but now he was endlessly running up a hill, making no progress, as the road before him stretched up to the sky and everything in his peripheral repeated. But he had to keep running, he had to escape and get as far away from the LegCo building and the police and the helicopter as he could. He couldn’t do it, his backpack was too heavy, his legs were tired, and his lungs were on fire.

Then the illusion ended halfway up the hill when a couple dozen people coming from the Admiralty Station mall joined the group. They ran by a shaded PACIFIC PLACE sign stuck in a verge.

“Where does this road go?”

“It dead ends!”

“Not if we go right!”

“Yeah, we can cut through the park!”

Nick’s ears rang so loudly in his head because of all the screaming, gunfire, and helicopter noises that he barely made out what was being said around him. They spoke in hushed tones, huffing and puffing, one conversation amidst many. A young girl of about seventeen next to him was whispering to her phone. A guy in a yellow bandana bumped into him. At least no one was screaming.

“There are people up there.”

Whoever said it was right.

It did look like there were more people at the top of the hill. There were people at the top of the hill. Over fifty people protested in front of the British Consulate, from the roundabout to the front entrance farther down the road. The employees watched from up in the windows, concerned. The waterfall display was shut off.

“Condemn China’s invasion! Condemn China’s invasion!” the Hongkongers yelled.

The demonstrators on the outside edge glanced their way when Nick’s group approached, eyebrows crossed, no doubt wondering why this scared, ragtag group was breathing so heavily.

“You’ve got to leave!” someone cried. “The police are down the hill!”

“They’re shooting innocent people!” yelled another.

Again, the people on the edge of the crowd glanced at them, this time uneasy, but they weren’t sure if they believed it, so they elbowed their neighbor to get his thoughts on the matter—should they be scared or not?

Nick wanted to scream and tell them to run the hell, and he wanted to run like hell, and he didn’t know why he was lingering and recording still.

From where he stood on the sidewalk, back to the Conrad Hotel, he saw what everyone else missed. The camera saw it too. At first, he heard a siren growing louder, then a flash of a checkered yellow and blue police car with its blues and reds flashing, and before his eyes processed what happened, the police car drove into the demonstrators. Nick jumped four feet backwards and squealed.

The tires screeched and two officers jumped out of the car. “Get down on the ground!” Their pistols swept the crowd looking for anyone who hinted at disobeying their orders. Men and women lay on the ground, the ones still conscious moaned in pain.

“Call in for backup!” said the driver, and his partner fumbled with his radio.

Both officers were plainly scared at the prospect of having to arrest this many people by themselves, but they wouldn’t have too, because the protesters and demonstrators didn’t comply, and two dozen men tackled the cops to the ground. Three gunshots went off.

When the first shot went off, everybody scattered except for Nick and the men grappling with the officers. They ran in three directions: up the hill, down the hill (not knowing what awaited them), and towards the park. A few banged on the glass doors of the Conrad Hotel and yelled to be let inside, but when the employees refused to open the doors, they went elsewhere. Others tried to do the same at the consulate, but those doors wouldn’t open for anyone. One woman claimed to be a British passport holder but couldn’t produce one.

Now was the time to escape, but Nick couldn’t leave; he had to film this, didn’t he? No, you don’t!

For some reason, he ignored his subconscious, and he let the camera record the aftermath. The men (and a single woman) who had tackled the officers were now backing away from two unmoving bodies. The guy in the yellow bandana kicked one of them in the ribs.

Curtain’s shocked face flashed through Nick’s mind, and he finally turned tail and ran alone towards the park.

Behind him, an old man jumped into the police car and the tires squealed as he pulled away, speeding down the hill.

“Asshole! Get back here! We could have used their guns!” yelled the man in the yellow bandana.

Nick just wanted to get back to his apartment on campus and never leave. He wouldn’t feel safe until he was there. They couldn’t hurt him there. Why did this have to happen to him, why now, why couldn’t it be after he graduated, when he was traveling the world, when he wasn’t in Hong Kong?

The faceless policeman who fired the first shot never regretted what he did. Even thirty years on, he didn’t regret it, though he tacitly accepted that he was on the wrong side of history. At the time, though, he was just doing a job: he was upholding the law, and that meant he was on the right side, one of the good guys. The rioters were clearly breaking the law and disturbing the peace, blocking traffic and making regular citizens scared for their lives. The rioters were obviously in the wrong. They didn’t have the authority to do what they were doing; they weren’t the government. They hadn’t asked permission to protest, either, a clear violation of the law. How could the rioters be in the right? Moral authority resided solely with the government.

Standing on the walkway, up above it all, he watched the rioters below with his rifle at the ready, the stock pressed against his shoulder. A line of clear plastic riot shields marched down the road towards the rioters, their batons ready. There were men down there he’d known for years and others he’d only met that morning, but they were all police officers, all part of the same brotherhood, and he cared for their safety as well as his own. He wanted all of them to go home to their families unscathed.

So, when the protesters began to throw back the tear gas and bottles and bricks and rocks and cricket balls and other trash at them up on the walkway and at the approaching riot police, his cheek touched the stock, same as the other officers to his left and right did. And when he and the men beside him had to dodge out of the way of an errant firework display and were hit by paintballs, his finger touched the trigger; the other officers did the same. And when twenty, forty, a hundred rioters were running at the police line below wielding blunt and sharp weapons while other rioters attempted to storm the walkway, he knew they had a good chance of overwhelming them, and images of the men being trampled and brutalized and killed flashed through his mind; his finger twitched; five pounds of pressure was all it took.

He shot at a man wearing a white N95 mask and a yellow construction helmet.

Nobody cared that he fired the first shot; they didn’t yell at him in the moment or afterwards when he was finished with a twenty-eight-hour shift. In fact, they congratulated him for doing so. His superiors patted him on the back, saying the whole situation was a powder keg that would’ve blown up no matter what. There was a war on, and the rioters were traitors trying to sow discord, lower morale, and lower support for the brave troops in Taiwan. They were told not to load rubber bullets, after all.

They gave him a medal on Saturday.

Information disseminates through a crowd in complicated ways, and it is often unpredictable to determine what will be latched onto by a mob, except for one thing: when the police arrive, everyone knows it.

The shouts of “Police!” spread throughout the crowd like a wildfire, and they pointed at a line of riot police and Special Duties Unit (SDU) officers five hundred feet down the road from the roundabout. They carried batons and riot shields, and likely pistols and shotguns and rifles. The helicopter ten stories above watched them like a bird.

Nick lifted the camera high above his head and let the camera gawk at the wall of law enforcement clad from head to toe in black.

On the march to the LegCo building, police cars and on-foot officers had followed the protesters, but for most of the march, the protesters were unsupervised and unmolested, a rare feat. The question on every person’s mind was why. The random roads blocked off by police cars, yellow barricades, orange traffic cones brought more questions to mind, but they knew they would never get any answers. Nick wondered if it was to get them here in a single spot so they could arrest them easier.

“Traitors!” someone shouted.

The police line advanced. Nick wished people didn’t tempt fate so brazenly.

The protesters closed ranks but didn’t move back. A handful of newbies left in a hurry. Curtain went to the edge of the sidewalk to get a better look. No, we need to get away! But Nick followed anyway, and zoomed in.

The police line stopped three hundred feet away. They were all faceless men doing a job.

A police captain emerged from behind the riot shields with a megaphone. “A curfew has been set for 5 pm. Disperse now and return home. The curfew is set for 5 pm. Disperse now and return home before the curfew is in effect.”

Panic radiated from Nick. They only had an hour to get back. That wasn’t enough time! They needed to leave now and sprint home. Why didn’t he should insist they leave sooner? Stupid, stupid Curtain, can’t listen to others! The protesters began to chant.

“Let’s go!” Nick hissed.

“Keep rolling.”

“We need to go!”

“We’re staying!” Curtain hissed back.

Since the protesters were non-compliant, the captain spoke to the man next to him, pointed at two areas in the crowd, and the line of riot police and SDU advanced. With each step the police took, the volume of the chanting increased, yet Nick saw a few more newbies exit the crowd. The fear of being arrested was too great for them, but were the police really letting people go home?

“I’m leaving!” Nick said, but he didn’t move.

“We’re press; they won’t touch us. You better still be rolling.”

“We’re not real press, we’re students!”

“Stop being a coward!”

The protesters closed ranks further, putting Nick, Curtain, and a few other brave demonstrators at the front of the crowd. They stood upright and confident; Nick couldn’t hunch down any further. He felt the police staring right at him, licking their lips and gripping their batons, eager to beat him to a pulp then throw a pair of handcuffs on him and drag his ass to jail. Unable to take it any longer, he grabbed Curtain’s arm and pulled him into the safety of the crowd. A lot of curses were flung at him.

“If we burn, you burn with us,” sang the crowd.

At one hundred feet, the police line stopped and the captain spoke over the megaphone again. “Disperse now or face the consequences. This is your final warning.”

The chanting subsided. The protesters didn’t move. They stood at the roundabout with their backs pressed against a wall painted blue with white silhouettes of people, skyscrapers, and green trees.

At the captain’s command, tear gas cannisters flew in a graceful arc, tails of smoke following, and landed in the crowd, and bounced one-twice-thrice before popping.

Screams erupted and panic moved feet. The camera jostled and became blurry.

The protesters split: half went north and half took Tim Mei Avenue to Harcourt Road. Nick and Curtain stuck close to one another and followed a stream of people up the avenue. The camera glimpsed a brave few lighting fireworks but missed them going off and hitting the molded plastic shields in a shower of colorful lights. Nick saw, and his mouth hung open.

The half-crowd of protesters crossed under an elevated walkway that followed the road. They half-jogged, half-walked past a second CITIC TOWER sign and a small green space with a tree and some bushes where several young people hid hoping to avoid capture. Next to it was a parking garage that many people dipped into, and others pounded on the locked, grey doors of the Hongkong Electric Company Limited Tamar Substation before moving on. On the right was a security checkpoint leading to the underground parking garage of the LegCo building where twenty Hong Kong Garrison soldiers waited for somebody to jump the barrier; nobody did. The soldiers pointed their rifles at the protesters rushing by, causing more screams to escape the throats of those closest. The journalists jogged on, wishing everyone could move faster.

We’re so stupid! I’m so stupid for listening to you! We’re two journalists in way over their heads! I hate you!

The bottleneck of protesters was uncorked and they spilled onto Harcourt Road and Connaught Road Central whereupon they were assimilated into an even bigger thousands strong legion.

Now they were safe, they were all safe, the police couldn’t arrest them all! The helicopter hovered above them.

Nick’s instincts as a cameraman kicked in (which were not the wrong instincts) and he pointed the camera at Curtain.

“HKPD are scaring peaceful protesters with tear gas to break—”

“They’re getting closer!” people screamed.

North down the Avenue and east and west down Harcourt and Connaught there were more police, and they were advancing. The legion oscillated.

We’re trapped! We’re going to prison! I hate you Curtain! I hate you! Why did you drag me out here! Why did I listen!

Tear gas canisters fell out of the sky, bounced, and popped. One hit a man in the head, and he didn’t get back up. Shrieking and wailing filled the air alongside the smell of metallic spices that burned Nick’s eyes and throat. Someone pushed through the crowd and dropped a traffic cone over one canister while another poured water along the base and into the top to suffocate it.

More canisters peppered the street. Nick followed one with the camera until he realized there were police on the walkway above them. Throwing a hand over his mouth and pinching his nose, Nick retreated with the rest of the protesters while the ones to the west did the same until they were just pushing against themselves.

Still more canisters rained down. Athletes bent, palmed them, cocked their arms back, and threw the canisters back at the police, all in one smooth motion. Others poured dropped more traffic cones and poured more water over them or threw blankets over them. But their best efforts weren’t enough to stop the gas from spreading. People screamed until they realized they were wasting precious air and thankfully shut up.

“We need to get out!” shouted a man.

“I’m scared!” shouted a woman.

The police ran towards them. Dozens of brave souls stood their ground and threw rocks at the police, cricket balls, fired paintball guns, fired airguns, and let off more fireworks. Several shoved Nick and Curtain aside to help; they held melee weapons and were really pissed off and wanted nothing more than a fight. Untold numbers of masked men ran at the line of police.

The camera and lapel microphones were maxed out, yet they still managed to catch the single shot that rang out.

Nick Wu-Yin Cheng flicked the Canon on and shoved the lens cap into his pocket. He shielded the screen against the glare of the setting sun with his hand, half bent over it, and double checked if the settings were how he wanted them for low light shooting.

Recording at 1080p HD 60 fps, he switched the shutter speed to 1/125 of a second, upped the ISO to 1500, lowered the aperture to f/4, increased the white balance to 5200K (then upped it to 6000K after a brief pause), turned auto focus with face and tracking on, and set the focus peaking options to manual. He made sure the external Rode VideoMicro II compact microphone was plugged in and secure on top of the camera with the correct gain level of 12. When all the settings were to his liking, he wiped any smudges and dirt particles off the 15-45mm lens with a cleaning cloth, then turned the mode dial to the camera icon. A flexible ball head tripod was screwed into the bottom.

He pressed the record button and got some b-roll: Protesters crammed the street. Each person shouted to be heard. Some stood head and shoulders above the rest on the grassy roundabout; the ones on the edge kept spilling off.

Nick zoomed in on the closest protesters—a mixture of young and old in a variety of fashions—to get a clearer picture of them.

The veterans were practical with their choice of attire: jeans, long-sleeved shirts, and jackets were the standard kit, and they wore masks to hide their identity; either bandanas, ski masks, old N95 and cloth masks from the pandemic, or even gas masks and respirators. Many wore gloves and knee and elbow pads in case they got knocked down. Brightly colored raincoats, construction vests, hard hats, and army boots accented the standard kit—all yellow, with some reds and whites. Their masked faces and hat-wearing heads let only their eyes shine through. Their backpacks were filled with extra food, water, first aid kits, and anything else they might need. One man was covered in Post-it notes from head to toe.[1]

The newbies were shockingly unprepared. They could be recognized by the water bottle they carried, the lack of a backpack, and the chicness of their clothes, as if protesting was as much a fashion statement as a political one. Then again, why not look good while making a political statement? Nick had seen endless photos of westerners posing for photos during protests, accompanied by a hollow caption that outed the poster (most often women) as someone who didn’t believe in the cause and was only there for social prestige. The camera recorded plenty of that. These people were on the fringes. The serious newbies who believed in the cause did, at least, have the sense to cover their faces, except that guy staring at his phone. If Nick remembered too, he’d blur the guy’s face.

The gray hairs,[2] the old people, were unafraid to show their lined faces. They were serious and indifferent, and Nick had a hard time picking out the veteran gray hairs from the greenhorns. They stood about watching the younger generations to make sure things didn’t get out of hand, though a few were passionately pumping their signs with them. Shorts seemed to be the uniform of choice for the men; a few even sported sandals both with socks and without. The women were dressed for warmth in long bubble coats. Somehow, these old people were dressed more impractically than their young newbie compatriots, and that just felt wrong.

Taken as one, they looked ready to dance in a K-pop music video. They brandished umbrellas, sticks, flashlights, garbage can lids, signs, and other dangerous accoutrements (the most dangerous of which was a man brandishing a guitar to show-off to women; the least dangerous was a slide whistle wielded by a man trying to lighten the mood). Their signs, raised high in the air, read: “Bad CCP” and “Free Taiwan” and “Enough!” and “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.” Their phones, too, were raised high, and recorded it all; some were even live streaming.

These protesters and several thousand more surrounded the Legislative Council Complex (LegCo) building that squatted over them. A helicopter flew around the corner of the building and rose into the sky to watch them. It quieted the protesters for only a second and sent Nick’s heart into overdrive.

The people of Hong Kong were once again protesting their government. At this point in history, only the French outclassed them.

The first protest of the year had been at the start of the year when all of Hong Kong woke up on January 3 to find out the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region had, at Beijing’s expressed orders, instituted China’s Great Firewall upon its citizens. What a terrible New Year’s present—and it was late too.

Protests had been a constant fact of life this year—as Nick knew having, been an unwilling participant in every single one—rivaling and at times surpassing the anti-extradition protests of 2019 and 2020 almost a decade ago. In many ways, the anti-firewall protests were a continuation of those anti-extradition protests, which had been quelled only because of the draconian COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

By the time August arrived, the anti-firewall protests began to lose steam as more people became certain that the government (both the Legislative Council and Beijing) wasn’t going to back down and reverse their decision in spite of the damage the Firewall had done to the banking sector and the perception of Hong Kong on the global stage. Tourism dropped by over half, though Nick admitted the protests might not have helped. He wouldn’t dare say it aloud, however.

With no change in sight, it seemed like everyone was tired of protesting. They were hopeless and disenfranchised, and soon the turnout began to drop as people wanted to save their soles. By the start of autumn, the protests may have died out altogether.

Then September 6 came.

China’s Limited Maritime Blockade of Taiwan, otherwise known as the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis, was an attempt by China to further assert its spurious claim of ownership over the island nation.

With the Taiwan Strait being a major shipping route garnering almost 90% of the world’s cargo ships passing through it, the blockade impacted the whole world, and the world was not happy.

Besides global public opinion of China dropping by twenty points every week (except in Burundi), a few countries joined the US in putting sanctions and tariffs on Chinese goods.

The 40% of Hongkongers who took to the streets in protest opposed the blockade for three reasons: first, if the blockade worked and allowed China to assert more authority over Taiwan, then it would further embolden Chinese expansion in the South China Sea and their Nine Dash Line, but more importantly, it would likely lead to Beijing stripping Hongkongers of more of their rights; second, they were still angry about the Great Firewall; and third, they wanted western countries to intervene and stand up to China, because any resistance against China was good for Hong Kong. So, the city saw more protests.

And now today, September 29, 2027, the day after China invaded Taiwan.

Hongkongers were taking to the streets again. With a stream of other students, Nick and his friend in the PRESS jacket had left the safety of the university for the umpteenth time that year to document the movement.

Some were trying to go about their normal day despite the world events happening very near to where they were, but much of the city was staying indoors if they could, and to Nick, they were the smart ones.

Nick stood in a small parking lot off of Lung Wui Road, connected to the roundabout on Tim Mei Avenue, the road which ran parallel to LegCo. A few cars and a motorcycle were still in the lot.

Panning the camera around, Nick shot the trees and the skyscrapers to the east, blurred past the Convention and Exhibition Centre, and raised the camera high to shoot the skyline of mainland Hong Kong a mile to the north across the water, beyond the palm trees. The setting sun hung in the clear sky to the right of the LegCo building.

Someone who allegedly worked for the government leaked the chief executive was in there; he had arrived that morning and was still inside. They wanted the chief executive to see all of them and hear all of them, and in the slim, less than 1% chance, he might change his mind.

“How much b-roll are you getting?” asked his friend, his face uncovered.

“Curtain” Zhou Bowen was a fairly tall Han Chinese man who was skinnier than a lamppost. His shiny plastic windbreaker was half unzipped so the white tapped E of PRESS was broken in two. A Hollyland[3] Lark M2 mic was clipped to his jacket up near his neck. Along with the coin sized microphone, he held the typical wireless microphone a reporter in the field would have. It didn’t have any batteries in it, but it made Curtain feel more professional when he did a piece-to-camera.

Curtain didn’t like his English name, but he also refused to change it for some reason. According to him, he picked it when he was eight years old when his family moved from mainland Chengdu to Hong Kong; it wasn’t like it was his legal name. But, as Nick knew, arguing with Curtain was a pointless endeavor.

“I’ll get more later,” Nick replied. He would have liked to stand at the roundabout to get a better overview of the people here, but he didn’t want to push through the crowd.

In a jacket and jeans, Nick’s face was also uncovered. PRESS in white tape was stuck to his front (Curtain’s orders), giving him the feeling of having a target on his back. People’s eyes were drawn to them, and he feared the police, despite Curtain’s insistence that they wouldn’t harm them. Weighing him down was his backpack, loaded with all the gear both he and Curtain might need, including a backup GoPro camera and a first aid kit—better to be safe than sorry.

They were senior journalism majors attending Hong Kong University. Nick wanted to work for National Geographic doing anything behind the camera so long as it didn’t have the possibility of getting him arrested, like covering environmental issues or scientific breakthroughs. Curtain just liked being in front of the camera. He would be happy as a famous news man in Hong Kong or as an important correspondent for BBC News, it didn’t matter.

“Let’s sync the audio.”

“Testing, testing, testing,” Curtain said into the lapel microphone, then clapped once. “Check, check, check.” Nick gave a thumbs up. He would sync the audio with the footage when he edited it later. “Alright, let’s interview some people to get a feel for this thing.”

“Can we do this fast? Please? Then can we go home?”

Nick had a bad feeling about today. He hadn’t wanted to come, but Curtain dragged him out here like he always did for protests. Nick knew he made a bad journalist and an even worse cameraman when it came to this sort of thing.

“Why are you always like this?” he asked, not hiding his irritation. “We’re fine, stop worrying. The police won’t hurt us, we’re press, they don’t mess with people like us because of the backlash. They didn’t over the summer, they just went right by us and let us leave.”

“Fine. Go. I’ll follow.”

Curtain interviewed twenty people in quick succession.

A Hongkonger businesswoman said, “I’m anti-war, I’m very anti-war and against violence of any kind, especially against animals. I’m tired of all the bad going on in the world and all the wars and conflicts.”

An old Hongkonger man said, “I don’t like the CCP! I want them gone! They want to completely own us and for us to be just another Chinese city. But I don’t want to be a part of the CCP. I want Hong Kong free again. Mao slaughtered so many! My family fled here, and they want our island! We can be like Singapore!”

A female Korean foreign exchange student said, “I’ve never been to a protest before, so this is really exciting. I’ve gotten so many pictures! This is my second year here; I never went to any of the protests last year. Yeah, the photos I took are going crazy on my Instagram, so many people are giving their support its so awesome! My phone has been blowing up like crazy since yesterday, everyone I know is asking if I’m okay. This is so exciting!”

A male Danish foreign exchange student said, “China takes and takes and takes and steals and lies, and now they’re trying to take Taiwan. I’m against them one hundred percent. We need to make our voices heard. I’d be doing the same in my country if I was home. China won’t listen, but other countries will, and they’ll be paying attention and maybe stand up to China, I don’t know.”

A female Chinese Australian foreign exchange student said, “Russia, China, North Korea, they’re all bad. I want people to prosper, not live in fear. If women ran the world none of this would be happening.”

A female Hongkonger student said, “What they’re doing in Taiwan, this is what they want to do to us! They’ve been cracking down hard on us, but if they get away with taking Taiwan, then we’re even more fucked than we are right now.”

A middle-aged Chinese man said, “Don’t film me! Stop filming me! Erase that!”

A Hongkonger businessman said, “People need to know we’re against it. Our kids will want to know if we stood up against the CCP and its authoritarian communist expansion. I was born here. I was in college in 2019 and was part of the Anti-Extradition Bill protests, which feels like a lifetime ago. I was in the streets then, and for the Anti-Firewall protests earlier this year, which feels like a decade ago, so I’m ready for whatever shit they try to pull.”

A male British foreign exchange student said, “I’m pro Hong Kong returning to England.”

A male Hongkonger student next to him said, “Yeah! Long live the King! Death to Xi Jinping and Sue Ip Yùmíng! And to that Korean fat man!”

It was around four o’clock when they finished the interviews. They stood in the middle of the street, and Nick was happy because he managed to get a shot from up at the roundabout.

“Ready to go now?” he shouted over the noise.

“No!” Curtain shouted back. “I haven’t done my piece-to-camera yet. Where do you want to do it?”

“Across the street.”

They pushed their way through the crowd and hopped over a metal barricade to get to the sidewalk.

“There’s videos of American jets taking out PLAAF planes!” a man close by screamed.

Nick dropped the camera close to his chest and unconsciously pressed the record button to stop recording and flicked the camera off. He had a bad habit of doing this to conserve the battery, and he always felt compelled to pop the lens cap back on, but this time he let go of the lens cap and withdrew his hand from his jean pocket.

Emerging from the crowd onto a brick sidewalk lined with trees, they walked towards the CITIC International Financial Holdings Limited skyscraper.

Nick wondered what his peers were doing. Almost every journalism student they knew was out here, somewhere. His friends Henry and Beauty said they were going to be on the waterfront side of the LegCo building; he should text her and see how she was doing. His other friend, Tim, should be somewhere in that crowd as well. He said as much to Curtain, who told him to do it after his piece-to-camera.

Nick directed Curtain to stand in front of the metallic CITIC TOWER sign (no taller than a person) which was next to a white dragon on a pedestal with his right forepaw resting on a sphere. An excellent shot for the piece-to-camera.

Once he got the framing right, he gave Curtain a thumbs up and began counting down with his fingers. “Three, two, one…”

The student reporter took a deep breath, set his shoulders back and stood up straight, exhaled, and put on a stern look of concern and stared into the camera.

“I am here at the Legislative Complex building in Hong Kong amidst a sea of brave men and women oppos–protesting the People’s Republic of China’s invasion of Taiwan. People from all over are here—” Curtain had forgotten to breathe and gulped in air “—are marching here, letting their voices be heard. A lot of people are also protesting the implemen–implementation of the Great Firewall, continuing the protests which have lasted the year–the entire year.”

Nick had never seen him this nervous before. Then again, this was history in the making in a way the anti-Firewall protests hadn’t been, at least not on the same scale as this. Wars tend to escalate things to history-making status, he thought.

Behind them, the protesters began to chant.

“In front of me,” Curtain continued, “behind the cam–camera, you can hear them chanting. I’m not sure what they’re saying, it’s hard to hear the words, but I can feel the sentiment. These are citizens–these are human beings who want a free Hong Kong, who don’t want to be under the thumb of the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party. The brave and fearless people of Hong Kong have filled the streets once more. And I don’t think these–and I don’t think the government will be able to shut these protests down.”

Curtain dropped his fake microphone and let out a huge sigh of relief. He looked at Nick, his eyes asking if that was alright or if he stuttered too much and made too many mistakes.

“That was great, even the professionals repeat themselves. Now let’s go home.”

“Police!”

[1] “Jeffrey Wasserstrom, “Vigil: Hong Kong On The Brink,”” Politics and Prose, uploaded February 16, 2020, 28:03, link.

(accessed February 4, 2026).

[2] Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (Columbia Global Reports, 2020), 75.

[3] Made by Hollyland China Electronics Technology Corp Ltd.

The Canon EOS M50 came to life and its unblinking eye opened. The cameraman pressed the record button, and the unseeing eye saw:

Hundreds of masked protesters in a multicolored assortment of fashions. The unsteadiness of the cameraman and the natural motion blur of the camera itself made it impossible to pick any one person from the crowd except for one young man in a shiny plastic windbreaker with the word PRESS in white tape on his back. As many smartphones were out as people, and both dwarfed the number of signs held high, pumping, saying, “Down with CCP” and “Free HK” and “No more wars.”

The external microphone on the camera picked up a thousand voices yelling, coughing, sneezing, walking, and grunting, all punctuated by the plastic squeezing sound of the cameraman adjusting his grip on the tripod; the soundscape contributed into drowning out the conversations of the people nearby.

“…classes will be canceled; I don’t want to go to class with…”

“…don’t think we should stay…”

“…back down now that America is…”

As one mass, these hundreds of protesters marched down Pok Fu Lam Road, downhill past the shops and restaurants on the first floors of the squat apartment buildings overhead. The camera caught long glimpses of a gym and a religious school and an English school and a real estate office and a massage parlor and other businesses.

Then down Queen’s Road West they marched under more apartment buildings showing their age abutting glistening new ones. Bamboo sticks and green netting marked an old building as being in the midst of a major renovation that wouldn’t be finished for two years, if things had gone according to plan; its white concrete had turned grey over the years. A glob of protesters broke off to go their own way.

Civilians going about their regular business dispersed when they saw the protesters coming their way. They turned around to take another street or stepped into a shop or simply started shaking their heads and making shooing motions with their hands in case any police were nearby or if any CCTV cameras watching; when a smartphone turned their way to record them, their actions became more exaggerated to show their dislike for the protesters.

In no time at all, the protesters were marching along the narrow Centre Street for a block and a half—rolling past a small truck half parked on the sidewalk and a fruit stand picked clean. Here, the camera caught sight of a pink painted apartment. They crossed the wider, four laned and two tram lined Des Voeux Road West, and crawled through the narrow side road past an all-glass hotel on the corner and another massage parlor before turning onto Connaught Road West to head east.

There, the hundreds strong gathering of protesters joined a thousand strong legion of protesters marching out of step and in step with one another. Hundreds more kept joining from the dozens of side streets while thin streams of protesters broke off only to reconnect later in larger numbers.

The sun touched the top of the tallest skyscraper behind them, and long shadows were cast from all the skyscrapers in the city.

On this long stretch of road running parallel to and under the expressway, the legion parted around the cars stopped dead on the asphalt full of angry drivers and passengers shouting from the windows for them to “go home!” and to “get out of their way!” and to “stop this silliness!” The microphone heard their yells, and like everyone else, didn’t care.

The legion split: some took the on ramp and ascended to the expressway Flyover while the cameraman and the rest stayed on the ground. They connected again in time to split again: some descended into the Tunnel while the cameraman and the rest stayed above ground. They reconnected again not long after. The sparsely spaced skyscrapers and the wider open spaces here gave a breath of fresh air to the tightly packed protesters.

Now the legion was passing Statue Square, and the cameraman trained the lens on the Cenotaph to the right. Behind it was the old Supreme Court Building, now the Final Court of Appeal.

Still on Connaught Road, they went over an overpass and down the other side onto Harcourt Road to reach their destination after a gruelingly slow walk. What should’ve taken one hour took that plus half because thousands of people—undulating and bumping into one another down twisting paths and avoiding the police who had certain random streets blocked off—walk slowly. It was like the blind leading the blind.

The legion joined another legion and together they expanded into tendrils to surround an oddly designed two-legged skyscraper connected at the top. The camera shakily zoomed in on the upper floors; the windows reflected the sunlight.

The cameraman followed the young man in the PRESS jacket under the elevated walkway and past the Admiralty Centre shopping mall where they made a left turn down a side street underneath a second elevated walkway; they went with a tendril of protesters to a roundabout farther down the road. They had arrived at their destination.

The record button was pressed, and the seeing eye no longer saw. Then it’s unblinking eye closed, and it died peacefully.

The following is the second chapter from my book The Life of Sir Archambeau releasing December 1.

Blurb:

Sir Archambeau, a restless young French knight seeking to make a name for himself, is traveling to Villaruiss to join a hunt for the Holy Grail, but fate has a different idea.

After rescuing a young maiden from faeries only for her to mysteriously disappear without a trace, Sir Archambeau happens upon a ruined manor in the woods. There, he encounters an old, blind woman who shows him four possible visions of his future, each one ending in his death. Determined to live, he leaves the manor to challenge fate.

Twenty years later, Count Archambeau returns to the manor on a desperate quest to find out if his wife Camille will recover from the pox. But when an old man answers the door, Sir Archambeau is confronted with the mistakes of his past and the uncertainty of the legacy he will leave behind once he is gone.

Written as a retelling of a Middle French manuscript composed by 15th century monks, The Life of Sir Archambeau is a tale of how your choices affect not only your future, but your past as well.

Links:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G1LX3V66 (ebook and paperback)

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-life-of-sir-archambeau (ebook only)

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-life-of-sir-archambeau-jasper-macleod/1148725187;jsessionid=D0EFBC8506ADAA0154016D266660AE61.prodny_store02-atgap09 (ebook only)

Gumroad: https://jaspermacleod.gumroad.com/l/archambeau (EPUB and PDF)

Horse and knight stopped on the ridge at the edge of the tree line and inspected the clearing below. A wolf howled far away behind them.

Amid the plat stood an unfortified manor house, a two-story building of grey stone in obvious disrepair. Moss grew in patches on the wood-shingled roof, and white smoke blew out the chimney. A dilapidated portico covered the front entrance. Sunlight glinted off—Archambeau’s eyes widened—glass windows. Those were rare; he had only ever seen glass windows on churches. Most houses had wooden shutters or, if the family could afford it, panes of animal horn.

An acre yard surrounded the manor, enclosed by a stone fence. Loose stones littered the lawn where sections of the fence were damaged. A simple gate a cart’s width wide allowed entry into the front lawn, where geese waddled about on the grass, honking when the fancy struck them. Vainqueur licked his lips at the green grass. A dirt road snaked from the gate and vanished into the woods to Archambeau’s left. The forest encroached on the house from behind and needed thinning.

To have an estate like this and let it all fall to such a state seemed a tragedy in itself. The family must have landed on hard times.

Archambeau played with the reins, thinking. If this was where the lady lived and had vanished too, why didn’t she say as much? If smoke wasn’t puffing out of the chimney and if geese weren’t in the yard, he would have said nobody lived there. Why had she not told him her horse was heading west to go home, not simply going west because it was stubborn? He couldn’t see a stable yard, unless it was behind the manor, nor was there a dappled horse anywhere—if it even existed. A cursory glance in the immediate area yielded no hoofprints.

Only one answer made sense to him in the moment: The lady knew about the manor and had lied about her horse to play a joke on him because she was a faerie; she had to be.

He let out a long sigh. He knew in his gut that wasn’t the truth. This whole affair was becoming tiring.

His eyes fell upon the dirt path snaking toward the woods. Now was the time to leave. He had looked over the hill and seen what was below and could now follow the dirt path back to the main road and continue on his journey to reach Villaruiss before sunset.

And yet he wanted to go down to that manor and knock on the door to see what was what. If the maiden did indeed live there, he would demand an explanation as to how she’d disappeared without a sound. If nobody lived in the manor, then he would spend the rest of the journey to Villaruiss grumbling.

“What do you think?” he asked Vainqueur. “Does a lady live in that manor? Or are they missing a servant? Or were we hoodwinked?”

Vainqueur stared at the green grass and knickered, nodding his head up and down. With a click of his tongue, Archambeau pulled the warhorse after him and they plodded down the hill into the clearing.

He paused at the gates. Closer up, he saw that moss grew on the exterior walls of the manor and stones were missing from them. A few of the glass panes were broken. Fallen shingles lay in an almost neat line down and around the house, and the narrow portico that covered the front door had a stone banister railing and gabled roof, also missing shingles.

The manor sounded quiet, apart from the noisy geese starting to get on his nerves, though it was clear someone lived inside. Archambeau once heard a man describe geese as “regal creatures.” They certainly waltzed around the yard with their heads held high. They pecked at the ground, eating a spread of barley, wheat, seeds, and half-squashed berries. Images of their serrated tongues flashed through his mind, and he promptly forgot about the birds.

The knight pushed the gate open, and the rotting thing toppled backward, startling the geese. They waddled away, wings raised, honking. Archambeau’s eyes flicked to the windows; he hoped nobody inside saw. Wishing he’d been more careful, he walked over the gate and entered the yard. He propped his spear against the fence and placed his helmet on it before kneeling to hobble Vainqueur. The air cut through Archambeau’s short, straw-colored hair, shaved at the back, and he shivered.

On the portico, he knocked thrice on the arched oak door, the solid bangs echoing inside. Taking a pace rearward, he put his hands behind his back with shoulders straight and waited. The rusty ring latch was flipped up, resting at an angle against the door. The window to the right of the door was broad and in need of cleaning.

Seconds slipped by before a heavy bolt moved, then the iron hinges screamed as the door opened inward.

A square-faced old woman greeted him, holding a staff as tall as he was. She only came up to his shoulder. Her black hair was tied in a down-to-the-waist braid which lay over her chest and stomach, exposing a broad forehead, wrinkled like the rest of her face. High cheekbones made her jawline more pronounced; she looked like a more mature version of the young maiden. The dark green chemise dress she wore was elaborately laced with yellow thread along the cuffs and square neckline. A grey band ringed her midriff above the pleats of the skirt. Big, clouded, unseeing eyes stared at a patch of nothing above his right shoulder, in the direction of the geese sneakily waddling to the open gate. When Archambeau shifted his feet, however, those clouded eyes snapped to him and the ghost of a smile touched her lips.

Archambeau went to speak but the old woman greeted him first: “A visitor! Welcome! Come inside, please.”

She stepped aside, still smiling, and gestured for him to enter. Her firm voice almost compelled the knight to obey; it would be nice and warm, and maybe he could sit down in a chair for a while instead of in the saddle, but he stayed on the portico.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Archambeau began, “but I’m only disturbing you to ask if a young woman lives here. I came across her in the woods being chased by … bees. I regret to say she vanished before I could help her home or find her horse, which had run off. I soon happened upon your manor by accident. Does she live here?”

The woman raised an eyebrow as if she had expected him to say something else.[1] “By accident? What a coincidence. Very Christian of you to save that poor woman, sir knight.”

“You know I’m a knight?”

The woman laughed. She did look awfully similar to the maiden, almost mother and daughter. “I’ve met many people in my lifetime, young sir, and knights have a particular way of speaking. Formal and polite, like their mother is watching—and she is, so you best stay that way. Your armor has a distinctive sound too.”

Archambeau didn’t think he spoke any differently from anybody else. The armor did, however, make a noticeable crackle as he moved, a sound he had gotten used to, though he’d barely moved since the door opened. Her hearing must have been better than his own.

“In answer to your question, the young woman you helped does not live here.”

Archambeau stifled a groan. He was certain now the maiden was a faery.

“Are you sure you do not want to come inside to rest your tired feet?”

“No, thank you,” he declined again, staying firm against her enticing invitation. “Could you tell me if the path leading from here connects with the road that goes to Villaruiss, or if I’ve gone too far south toward Égletons? You see, I want to be sure before I leave here.”

The blind woman’s smile widened like he had stumbled across a secret only she knew. “It’s good to be sure about the path ahead. I can help you find your way.” The staff changed hands, then she again stepped aside and gestured for him to go in. “Please, enter; you are no doubt travel-weary and hungry, and I will not take no for an answer. It’s been such a long time since I’ve had visitors. Your horse will love the grass in the yard.”

The knight opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off, “Don’t worry, you’ll get to where you need to go before nightfall.”

Her tone suggested he should stop standing on her portico and take her offer of hospitality. In the distance, a wolf howled. Archambeau relented. She seemed lonely and in need of company, so he would humor her for a bit, no more than an hour, before he would leave. Today was a day to be sidetracked, it seemed.

The musty smell of the entrance hall wrapped around him when he closed the door. Standing in the left corner of a high-ceilinged room, he noticed how the wide window to his right allowed plenty of light inside; beneath it stood a low and equally wide table with a ceramic pot of lavender. Supports ran up the walls, and cobwebs stretched the gaps of the beams. A red-and-yellow rug covered a large portion of the floor, the corners chewed at by rats and mice; it was the most colorful part of the hall. On the right wall were stairs leading to the second floor.

“You can wash your hands back here.”

She gestured at a waist-high cabinet along the back wall, where a kettle dangled from a delicate chain hung above an empty basin. Beside it lay a plain white towel. A heavy layer of dust coated much of the entrance hall, but the kettle, bowl, and towel were spotless.

Archambeau tucked his gloves into his belt and set his hands over the bowl. The blind woman must have heard something, because she tipped the kettle forward and rose water poured out of the spout. He washed his hands and face and then dried himself, now smelling nicely of rose with a hint of lemon. It felt good to have clean hands.

“Better?”

Not waiting for an answer, she deftly turned around and walked to the hallway, staff tapping the floor. Archambeau ran a damp hand through his hair before following her out, glancing at the stairs.

The hallway was dark, long, and narrow, made more restrictive by the console tables along the left side that stuck out and forced them to walk almost against the right wall. Candelabras held half-melted, unlit candles on each one. The surfaces were dusty like everything else. To liven the gloom, faded portraits of grim-faced men, women, and children hung above the tables.

“Do you live alone?” he asked, following the outline of the woman and the tap, tap, tap of her staff.

“I do not have many needs,” she answered, turning right down another hallway.

This corridor was a tad brighter and wider, with candles burning in half of the wall sconces. The woman’s staff became muffled by the rug going the length of the corridor, woven with floral patterns in green thread.

On the left wall, two candles illuminated a landscape painting. A king prayed at the altar in a church, a single candle flame lighting the entire left side of the scene. At the far-right end, shrouded in darkness, was a queen crying before a depiction of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus.

The old woman paused without warning and the knight nearly ran into her. She half turned, staring at an empty wall. “Tell me, why are you traveling to Villaruiss?”

“There’s a new expedition to find the Holy Grail.”

She nodded like she expected the answer and resumed walking. “It’s always the same few things with men, isn’t it? What do you hope to gain by finding the Grail?”

Archambeau chose to let the comment pass. “I hope to make a name for myself. They say the Grail is in the Pyrenees mountains.”

On the right, they passed a closed door with light flickering under the sill.

At the end of the hallway, it widened on one side to accommodate two doors. On the right wall was a three-pointed arched window showing the yard, an unbroken section of fence, and the hill. Immediately to his right hung another painting, so faded from the sun that all he could make out was a boulder and a river.

The blind woman entered the door on the right, and Archambeau trailed after her into a vast and empty dining hall close to forty feet deep. Her staff made the satisfying tapping on the stone floor again.

A bird flew past the large hole in the slanted roof. The rafters were split, and the cracks in the beams were large enough to see from the floor. Cobwebs wrapped tight around them like the spiders were trying to keep the roof from collapsing. A clutch of spider eggs decorated one beam. A fireplace shared the left-hand wall with a sitting room. A chill blew into the room from the rusting metal windows with chipped glass panes.

The debris from the hole had long ago been swept against the far wall. Above the pile hung a tapestry of a faded man on his deathbed, holding his hands out, palms upward, as he addressed those surrounding him, whom Archambeau took to be his wife, children, and grandchildren.

A dining room table sat in the center of the room, right below the hole. Crafted from dark walnut wood, it seated six. A clean red table runner fell nearly to the floor on each side. Sunlight shone on a three-tiered gold cake tray. Each tier was full of pies the size of a man’s hand.

The pies looked appetizing, though the roof was a concern. But it was the tapestry that drew Archambeau’s eye, and his feet obediently followed. The colors were still vibrant despite the piece’s age. The grandchildren were crestfallen, and sadness tinged the wife’s face, and though he was dying, a smile was on the man’s lips.

“This seems a morbid scene to hang in a dining hall.”

The woman, who stood by one of the chairs, tilted her head. “It is a joyful scene; a man’s family is with him in his final minutes on this Earth. It is a moment to cherish, and a reminder that life is short, so eat with those you love while you can.”

Archambeau looked at the tapestry again and found himself agreeing. “Was he a family member?” he asked, stomach rumbling.

The old woman plucked a pie from the platter. “He was a friend.” She held the pie out to him. “For you.”

The pie was still warm to the touch and smelled of blackberries and sugar. “My thanks. Did you bake these?”

“I did.”

The old woman lived alone, but someone had to visit the manor to deliver the flour and sugar for the pies, along with the rest of the supplies she needed to live. The young lady was the obvious answer, yet the old woman had said she didn’t live here, and Archambeau believed her.

“I may have added too much sugar.”

Salivating from the smell, he took a big bite. Though the dough was dry, the blackberry filling was deliciously tart. A spurt of filling broke free of the crust and hit his nose. Wiping it off and licking his finger, he took a second bite. That was when he discovered the pie contained a surprise within the filling: His tongue rubbed against something metal and circular. Tucking it in a cheek, he swallowed the filling and then spat out a ring into his hand.

“Marvelous! You found the ring,” the blind lady proclaimed. “It’s traditional for one Michaelmas pie[2] to be baked with a ring placed in it; whoever finds the ring will marry soon.”

“But you gave me this pie,” said Archambeau. He held the pie up, forgetting she couldn’t see, then pretended he hadn’t done that, forgetting again.

“I never said there wasn’t any trickery involved,” she countered as he took a third bite. “A young man such as yourself should be married by now. Especially knights: They all need a woman to look after them.”

He would not be surprised if this was a ploy for him to marry the maiden, who was surely the lady’s daughter.

“I’ve never heard of this tradition,” he said around the pie in his mouth.

“Do not talk with your mouth full. The tradition comes from Ireland. The women there have baked pies for centuries and will continue to bake pies for centuries more.”

Archambeau finished off the pie, the final bite as delectable as the first. He walked past the blind woman, brushing the crumbs off his hands, and she sighed at the mess he was leaving on the floor. He was unaware.

He sucked the ring clean, dried it on his tunic, and held it up to the light between his thumb and forefinger: It was a plain band of iron too small for any of his fingers. If the tradition was to be believed, one girl came to mind: Alice from Ains, the town he had grown up in. He wasn’t sure he wanted to marry her. She wasn’t the kind of woman to marry a knight without any land, a knight forced to travel around the kingdom seeking tournaments and mercenary work.

“I’ll marry, then?” He looked to the old woman for confirmation.

Still by the table, her hand was resting on one of the chairs. “If you learn some manners, yes, like how to eat without leaving crumbs. I do not need to see to know a knight will make a mess.”

“That’s hardly fair; you didn’t give me a plate.” The room wasn’t exactly clean either.

“You never asked for one.”

That hardly mattered! This was her domain to exercise her will unto it as she saw fit. If she wanted him to use a plate, she should have given him a plate or told him he could not eat without one. He went to say as much but held his tongue. As Master Guarin had instilled in him, a knight did not complain to a lady, however wrong she might be.

“I apologize. I should have asked for one. Thank you for the pie, and I meant no offense.”

Caught off guard, the blind woman raised an eyebrow. “I expected you to say something foolish. I accept your apology. This conversation was more fun on another path. You must be tired from your escapades today. You may sleep here for the night.”

“I won’t impose.” He slid the ring down the quillon[3] of his sword. “I wish to make it to Villaruiss before the sun sets.”

“Nonsense. The hunt won’t start for two days yet. Stay here awhile. You’re the first company I’ve had in a year.”

He was a moment away from saying yes despite it all. “I can’t. I’ve delayed too long already.”

“Then I must ask one favor of you, Sir Archambeau. I believe a bird has nested in one of the upper rooms. If you could take it outside, I would appreciate it.”

Passing the staff to her other hand, she left the dining hall without waiting for an answer. The knight hurried after. The hallway was even darker than before as the candles began to burn out.

How did she know the hunt was starting in two days if he was the first company she’d had in a year? Then it struck him that he had yet to ask for her name, and he couldn’t be sure he had introduced himself, yet he must have since she knew his name.

“My apologies, I never asked for your name.”

“Tell me, Archambeau,” she said, “have you ever wondered what lies in your future?”

“I have not. Tomorrow is much like today, and today is like yesterday; at least that was true before I embarked for Villaruiss. In Ains, life was predictable, but now tomorrow is a mystery.”

“You’ll appreciate this, then.”

Confused by what she meant—the entire day had been confusing—they left the gloom of the hallway for the spacious entrance hall. Crossing it, they spiraled up the stairs, the wood slats protesting under the knight’s weight. He hoped the stairs wouldn’t give way beneath him.

The second floor further revealed the state of the manor’s decay, for at the end of the hallway, the roof had caved in. A nesting bird made sense now. Dark wood panels trimmed the bottom of the walls, and sconces hung from the bare timber frames, their candles lit. The hardwood flooring was scuffed from the many years of wear, and the rug which stretched across it had unwound itself at the corners. There were eight rooms, four on each side facing their opposites, and every door—planks of tan wood strapped together by metal braces—was shut.

“This is the room,” she said, pointing to the first room on the left.

Pushing the door open—

[1] Undoubtedly, the Archambeau story has changed over the centuries in both small and large ways. One could argue, then, that each retelling is a distinct path Archambeau could have taken throughout his life. In the French text, it is Archambeau’s free choice to knock on the door that leads him to see his four futures, and all the old woman does is nudge him in the right direction disguised as the young maiden. In the English text, Archambault is destined to meet the old woman. Continuing on, in the French text, the queen’s death is predestined and is the catalyst for the Battle of March-Sedons destined to happen; thus, Archambeau is fated to fight in the battle. In the English text, the peasant revolt is only fated to happen, leading him to die in one of the four futures shown to him. In that way, both versions have him caught up in the whirlpool of fate and destiny, though the English text omits the ideas of predestination. It is important to clarify that Archambeau is not predestined for anything in the French text.

[2] See Appendix I for more details.

[3] A quillon is one of the two metal pieces that make up the cross guard of a sword, which protects the swordsman’s hands from an enemy’s blade.

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The following is the first chapter from my book The Life of Sir Archambeau which will be releasing December 1. Chapter 2 will release November 28.

Blurb:

Sir Archambeau, a restless young French knight seeking to make a name for himself, is traveling to Villaruiss to join a hunt for the Holy Grail, but fate has a different idea.

After rescuing a young maiden from faeries only for her to mysteriously disappear without a trace, Sir Archambeau happens upon a ruined manor in the woods. There, he encounters an old, blind woman who shows him four possible visions of his future, each one ending in his death. Determined to live, he leaves the manor to challenge fate.

Twenty years later, Count Archambeau returns to the manor on a desperate quest to find out if his wife Camille will recover from the pox. But when an old man answers the door, Sir Archambeau is confronted with the mistakes of his past and the uncertainty of the legacy he will leave behind once he is gone.

Written as a retelling of a Middle French manuscript composed by 15th century monks, The Life of Sir Archambeau is a tale of how your choices affect not only your future, but your past as well.

Links:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G1LX3V66 (ebook and paperback)

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-life-of-sir-archambeau (ebook only)

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-life-of-sir-archambeau-jasper-macleod/1148725187;jsessionid=D0EFBC8506ADAA0154016D266660AE61.prodny_store02-atgap09 (ebook only)

Gumroad: https://jaspermacleod.gumroad.com/l/archambeau (EPUB and PDF)

Lively in his youth and eager to prove himself, the good knight Archambeau sought adventure. Of young blood and a restless mind (the two often go hand in hand, yet time and again, they prove a dangerous pairing), within him stirred stories of battles fought by men of unusual courage and of the fair ladies of striking beauty who loved them.

Sir Archambeau proudly rode atop his chestnut warhorse, Vainqueur, as they proceeded toward the town of Villaruiss;[1] rumor was men were gathering there for a grand hunt to find the Holy Grail. Those simple rumors had been enough to spark Archambeau’s imagination, and since embarking for the town two days earlier from Ains, he’d spent his hours dreaming of journeys to other lands, traveling through cloud-high mountain passes and dense forests, hunting with his companions, and fighting bandits in marshlands. For most of those hours, one could see a smile lighting up his young face. Thoughts of cold nights, harsh rains, and the dull taste of rations were absent from his fantasies.

Donned in a simple, long-sleeved green tunic, brown pants, and boots, he wore a chainmail hauberk and coif over his clothes. The hauberk was a single piece of armor that covered his torso, with the sleeves extending to the elbows and a skirt stopping just below the knee; the skirt was cut so he could sit in the saddle. Draped over his head, the coif protected the back and sides of his neck while leaving his face open. Over the coif he wore a conical helmet with a nasal guard. Sheathed at his hip was an arming sword, and in the crook of his arm was an eight-foot spear, the butt resting on the toe of his boot.

A few clouds dotted the sky, and though the sun shone down on the knight, the day was chilly. The cold metal nasal guard of the helmet reddened the tip of his nose and made it feel like it was running. Holding the reins loosely in his off hand, Archambeau dragged a leather-gloved hand across his nose, then repositioned the spear.

Horse and rider marched along the road to Villaruiss as it passed through a forest. It was a wide thoroughfare with little traffic that morning. Ahead, the road made a lazy S. Close to an hour ago, a merchant had rolled by, and since then, Archambeau had seen not one other person. Alone, he kept alert, maintaining an eye on the woods with the occasional rearward glance to make sure nothing sneaked up on him, being wary of enemies both human and foul.

The forest was large, several miles in all directions, and he had only covered maybe a mile so far. Around him, the leaves of the trees were beginning to change color; the reds, yellows, and oranges blended with the green of the pine trees. Brown leaves skittered across the dirt road on a faint wind. The only noise came from the round shield tied to Vainqueur’s saddle as it thumped against his hindleg like a man slapping his thigh.

With the weather and the tedium of travel, Archambeau saw why minstrels glossed over the day-to-day life of adventurers. It was only his third day out and he wanted action, or at least a change in scenery. Soon. Preferably now.

As if in answer to that unspoken prayer, a scream rippled the trees and seemed to shake the ground. Squawking birds took flight, and a warren of rabbits dashed across the road in front of him. All those details the good knight ignored, instead latching on to the scream, a scream that sounded distinctly feminine and in need of assistance, coming from deep within the woods to his right.

Heart leaping to his throat, Archambeau dug his heels into Vainqueur’s sides and off they tore in a shower of dirt, dashing up a low bank and into the forest where who knew what waited to kill—or worse, kidnap!—the distressed woman. Beasts of legend, wolves, bandits, anything could be waiting for him. He grabbed the spear firm and held it at the ready, the tip hovering above the horse’s head.

Dull colors greeted the knight as he tore through the forest: The sun itself seemed too dim, deepening the shadows, making the trees less alive, and wilting the flowers. Round a clump of shrubbery they went, going down a shallow slope and back up the other side. All the while, the shield smacked against the horse’s side as they thundered on.

“Oh God!” came another scream.

The knight redirected left toward the point of origin. The trees were so tightly spaced he could barely move, much less see; fleeing deer leapt out in front of him as he and his steed took a crooked path toward the damsel. Everything was a blur. Vainqueur sprinted over bumpy terrain and bounded over rocks and bushes. Archambeau dodged low branches. The butt end of the spear bounced off a trunk and smacked the horse’s back leg. Archambeau hoisted the spear higher, holding it almost parallel to the ground, his elbow sticking out. This whole rescue was becoming very dangerous.

Through a grove of birch and silver fir trees, Archambeau saw a flash of pure white. A wider gap in the trees brought another flash of white—and a flash of gold chasing. Archambeau slowed Vainqueur to allow him to see through yet another gap that the flash of white and gold was really a young lady in a pure white dress, her golden hair flying behind her as she ran away from what appeared to be bees—large bees the size of butterflies, their fat bodies of strange greenish blues zipping in erratic directions as they hounded her, their wings glittering softly in the dim light.

“Help!”

This third scream brought him into action. Knowing the threat, and knowing it was futile to try and fight the bees, however large, Archambeau slipped the spear behind his left calf so that his leg pressed it against the saddle, then launched himself into the fray. For whatever reason, he yelled as he rode up next to the lady. Sticking out his hand, she grabbed his arm, and he lifted her up onto the saddle behind him. The blue-green bees darted toward them, flying up to sting their faces. Giving another yell, Archambeau snapped the reins, and Vainqueur went off at a gallop, leaving the bees in their dust.

Off through the forest they sprinted, across dirt and grass, under a maple and over a fallen beech tree, not slowing until they had put a good distance between themselves and the bees.

Archambeau finally glanced behind and, seeing no sign of any chasing bees, slowed to a trot. The lady clinging to his waist had said not a word since her rescue, and blissfully, she had stopped screaming; otherwise, he would have gone deaf. In truth, she was calm and breathing evenly, a stalwart companion after how she had acted before. He, on the other hand, was sucking in air from that burst of excitement. Weren’t her hands cold from gripping his armored waist? Her hands were nicely placed on his waist and—No! It wasn’t the time to think of things like that.

Once he got his breathing under control, Archambeau had to stop himself from shaking his head. Going off the beaten path and galloping through a forest on horseback without knowing the risks was dangerous and brash. He had been taken in by the moment, overly eager for action and at the opportunity to rescue a maiden in distress like the stories told of. He knew only too well what his old master Sir Guarin would say: “You were stupid.” Uneven ground could sprain or break a horse’s leg. A fast-approaching branch could have smacked Archambeau on the head and thrown him out of the saddle. He could have unknowingly ran into the center of an encircling enemy.

Up ahead, the ground sloped down and into a grove. Pulling back on the reins again, the knight walked them into the grove which ran the length of a jousting field—over two hundred yards of lush grass and wildflowers, with the perimeter ringed by purple aster. When they entered it, the forest was suddenly a much brighter place and warmer too. The sun was an hour from its apex in the pale blue sky above.

With one last tug of the reins, they stopped in the center of the grove. Vainqueur snorted. Retrieving his spear from under his leg, Archambeau dismounted and offered a hand to the lady. She took it and descended to the ground. The forest floor felt soft under his boots.

“Are you injured, my lady? Did they sting you?”

Up close, Archambeau saw how pretty the young woman was. And she looked young, a year or two younger than himself—and far prettier too. Sweat glistened on her square face and pointed nose. Beneath some baby fat still filling out her cheeks, there was the hint of a jawline. Her long, golden locks glowed in the light, half caught in her hood and hiding a high forehead. The white dress was linen with billowy, pocketing sleeves; not the sort of thing you would wear on a brisk day like today, yet she seemed unaffected by the chilly air.

“Are you not cold?” he asked, reaching for his blanket on the saddle. If he knew one thing about women, it was that they always seemed cold.

She stood as tall as his shoulder, with large brown eyes staring up at him. “I am uninjured, sir knight; their wicked swords did not touch me. And I am quite warm after that ordeal, though I lost my cloak,” she said, shivering. “You have flawless timing. I thank you for saving me.”

“Take my blanket,” he said, dancing around the compliment.

Archambeau unrolled the scratchy wool blanket as the lady untangled her hair from her hood. From her clothes, he second-guessed his earlier assumption that the woman was a lady. More likely, she was a maid or servant sent out to pick flowers, herbs, or mushrooms. But then, where was her basket? She must have dropped it when the bees attacked. But then, why was she so far out in the woods? The nearest village was a couple hours east of them (it had no name; it was that small), and Villaruiss was still hours away to the west. He didn’t know of any other settlements around. It was questionable if a lady lived in Villaruiss at all, but if one did, it was doubtful she would send her maid this far away, and if she would even have need of a maid. Then again, a lady always had a need for a maid, he reminded himself. And where was her horse?

The questions floated around his skull. His eyes had trouble focusing on her face—and other areas—so he kept his head moving, scanning the forest for danger in case the bees, or worse, found them. Vainqueur nibbled on the grass. When the woman was satisfied her golden ringlets were smooth, the knight threw the blanket around her shoulders and pulled it tight. Part of the blanket spilled onto the grass.

“What happened? Did you disturb their hive?” he asked, taking special interest in an oak tree.

“A beehive? No, those were not bees; they were faeries,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Did you not notice their blue-green bodies and sharp, tiny swords?”

“Faeries?” exclaimed Archambeau, abandoning the organized scanning for wild looks instead as he now searched the forest for the small, fast-moving creatures. That explained her comment about swords; he had thought she was being poetic! How was she so calm? “We must get out of here!” he said, glancing over the saddle: no faeries—yet.

“I believe we are safe. You scared them off.” She gave him a droll look. “You were surely brave for rescuing me.”

Archambeau barely heard the second compliment—or the sigh that followed—he was so worried about the wretched creatures. Faeries were mischievous and not to be messed with. Vainqueur, sensing his fear, raised a front leg and pricked his ears in preparation. But before his panic got out of hand, Archambeau took hold of himself and stood up straight.

He declared, “Whether or not I scared them off, we may still be in their territory. Best to leave, for disturbing faeries is never good.” He patted the stallion’s back to ease him, but his eyes stayed on the forest. “Where is home for you?”

“You are right,” the woman said, unconcerned. “Could I perhaps call upon you one more time? When the faeries swarmed me, my horse ran off to the west.” She spoke as if losing a horse wasn’t important, and its retrieval an afterthought. Maybe she was a lady after all. Anyone but a lady would be stricken at losing a horse and the cost of buying a new one.

“Are you certain? Your horse could be anywhere. They don’t tend to stay in one place when panicked or harassed by faeries.” His motivations were, he was afraid to say, entirely self-obsessed. He wanted to escape the forest as quickly as possible before more of those creatures found them and put a curse on them.

“It ran west and we shall find it,” she said.

She was a lady indeed. Suppressing a sigh—minstrels neglected to mention situations like this in their tales—Archambeau offered his steed. “You can ride while we search. I will walk.”

The lady nodded as if that had never been in question and then, with the knight’s assistance, threw a leg over the saddle. Her dress was divided for riding such that the hem of the skirt wouldn’t ride up to her knees immodestly.

Once she was comfortable on the saddle, she held out a hand. “I will hold your spear.”

The knight raised an eyebrow. “I’ll carry it.”

“Nonsense,” she said, and from her tone, she believed it was nonsense for him to hold his own spear. “There’s no need for you to carry a sword and a spear.”

Archambeau looked at her out of the corner of his eye: She was serious, and she was pleasing to the eye sitting atop his horse. These, though, were not appropriate thoughts for a knight to have; what had gotten into him?

“The spear and the sword keep the animals away.”

“Nothing will attack us.”

“I doubted there were faeries in these woods, and I was proven wrong. Besides those creatures, there are also wild animals and perhaps bandits, although I doubt bandits are here so far from town.” And bandits are smart enough not to traipse through faerie territory. From the way she watched him, he almost believed he had said the remark out loud.

The lady appeared much older as she sized him up, eyes twinkling.

“Your safety is important to me,” he said. “We will find your horse and I will see you home.”

She acquiesced with a nod. Turning his back to her, he grabbed the reins, and they started off after her horse, heading west. He swore he could feel her staring at the back of his head.

Neither said more than a few words to each other after that. Archambeau wasn’t the best tracker, but he could trace after an almost thousand-pound beast walking on four legs through the woods—except that he couldn’t find any hoofprints to track. Undeterred, the maiden told him to keep heading west. Aruspice was a light horse, she explained, who walked with a light step. Only expert trackers ever made out her hoofprints. He kept his eyes peeled for a white-grey dappled horse while at points trying to convince the lady that they should search in another direction. Horses moved about, he stressed, but she ignored him. Not only did Aruspice have a light step, but she also had a superb sense of direction; if she ran west, she would continue west until she discovered a town or a human or found it impossible to keep going west. In truth, the lady admitted, she had never seen her horse run any direction but west.

A half hour turned into an hour. Now midday, the forest was pleasantly warm and quiet. The dead leaves which layered the ground crunched under Archambeau’s boots, and the saddle jingled. The trees had thinned, and he noted less underbrush, allowing for farther sight lines. Still, not a single horse had shown itself.

A high-pitched screech came from the trees above. Archambeau’s head jerked up at the branches. The screech came again. It was what he assumed an insect sounded like when in pain.

“A common swift,” the lady stated, seeing him tense up. “Ease your muscles. You have been alert since you rescued me. As I have said, nothing will happen to us.”

The knight glanced back at her. The blanket covered her knees and dangled past the saddle. He didn’t know bird-watching was an interest ladies pursued, and he wished to know where her confidence that no animals would attack them came from. Many things lived in forests (including faeries—he couldn’t stop thinking about them), and it paid to be cautious. Especially when he had been so brash earlier.

The common swift screeched a few more times before he responded, “Better to be ready than to not be.” Even so, he relaxed a fraction. Though he accepted that it was a bird—he could see no reason for her to lie—it would be more intriguing if it was an insect.

“Better, I suppose. Preparedness is an admirable quality for some,” she said, then sighed. From her tone, she thought it could be taken too far. “My horse should be just over this rise.”

Ahead, the land rose slightly and then dropped off abruptly. Archambeau went on with Vainqueur following behind, then suddenly, his horse trotted forward to come even with him. The knight reached up and patted the steed’s neck, but something out of the corner of Archambeau’s eye caught his attention.

Turning around, he found the saddle empty, the blanket draped across it.[2]

Archambeau spun on the spot, looking for the woman in white. Where had she gone, and how had she done it so quietly? The trees were too narrow, the bushes too meager, and the land too flat for there to be any place for her to hide. Vainqueur turned his long head left and right and looked as flabbergasted as the knight felt by the disappearance.

Letting out a grunt of frustration, he stabbed the earth with the flat end of his spear. Had he been had? Tricked by a faerie who took human form, wanting to get him lost for a bit of fun? What a fun way to pass the time by wasting a good portion of a man’s day. What other explanation was there? For she couldn’t have vanished out of thin air!

He stared at the dirt. This diversion had taken him an hour out of his way to search for some horse that didn’t exist. Putting a foot in a stirrup, he hesitated. “Just over this rise,” she had said. It didn’t appear there wasn’t anything beyond the hill except more forest. He should trace his footsteps back to the main road and get to Villaruiss before evening. The road had to be less than two miles south of him. Then why did he want to take a peek? “Just over this rise,” he thought, then planted his foot back on the ground. Vainqueur breathed in his ear. It wouldn’t hurt to see more forest, to make sure it was empty and there was no horse. Then he would know for certain if he had been duped.

His curiosity had got the better of him, so he grabbed the spear and his horse’s reins and started up the shallow rise.

[1] Villaruiss appears to have been a fictional town.

[2] Page 5 in the original French text is illegible. The page presumably covers how Archambeau handles the disappearance of the maiden, why he chooses to peek over the ridge, him seeing the manor below, and deciding to knock on the door. A reproduction was written by Stonebrook’s Compendium of Medieval Stories, Poems, and Songs, and that is what this book follows.