The Chinese man brooded. Sun Quan masked emotion with the thin glass shield over his eyes as he surveyed the destruction left in the wake of Lady Trieu’s daring attack.
“She’s playing you,” he said to the warrior. “She visited Hang Bac Street. I’ve seen the footage.” Sun Quan still didn’t respond. “The boy’s father needs to pay them one more visit.”
“Then make it happen.”
“Why does it feel like we have everything securely in the palm of our hands, and yet it continues to seep right through our fingers? You should have finished her when you had a chance.”
Sun Quan grabbed the Chinese man and pushed him backwards and lorded over the man who was still not intimidated. “Maybe your plan to unleash the machines will unleash something much bigger. You have no idea what you’re doing.”
The Chinese man poked a finger into Sun Quan’s chest. “Be careful what your careless attitude produces. Don’t forget what you owe me. Don’t forget Beijing.”
“We are far beyond Beijing at this point,” said Sun Quan. “When was the last time we followed an order from them?”
“Oh, Sun Quan, you have it so backwards.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not here for Beijing. I’m here for all humanity. This is just the beginning.”
Sun Quan snapped. “You can’t even control a small patch of earth wrapped around a river.”
“Me? Almighty Sun Quan was brought here for one purpose, and you just wallow in your soft spot for her.”
“I have done my duty. And I’ll do it again.”
The Chinese man smirked. “I have no doubt. In the meantime, I’ll have the boy’s father discover what he can.”
The Chinese man tapped the warrior on the chest and chuckled. The man removed a cigarette from his pocket and lit. “I do like these … these cigarettes.” He blew smoke on Sun Quan and exited into an elevator. Sun Quan approached the edge of the building and jumped off, flying through the air and landing at the edge of Ba Dinh Square, beside the shredded wall in front of the mausoleum. He studied the sharp-edged, precision-sliced cuts committed with great force.
“How do you think this will end?” He gazed skyward. “Can you hear me?” He sensed she could. In a single bound, he jumped to the top of the mausoleum. Through the trees to the north, the south-facing facade of the Presidential Palace poked out of the leaves. Her form moved around it and rested on its colonial facade. She morphed human and raised her sword till it glistened between the tree tops.
“It will only end one way.”
“Desolation,” he whispered.
“But whose?”
“He’s playing both of us, you know.”
“Who?”
Sun Quan glanced back at the newly constructed building in front of them. “You know who.”
Lady Trieu pondered his meaning. “He was the one who brought the machines to life, but you couldn’t hide their reality from me.” Sun Quan didn’t respond. “You still think you can turn me?”
“Trieu, do you like the living? Or is your soul content to languish in the depths of history? Ha. You’re still the foolish young woman who convinced herself that she could defeat the entire northern army.”
“And she did.”
“But at what cost? You could have been much more.”
She lowered her sword. They talked almost without audible words at this point. Their thoughts rose as whispers through the twisted air of converging times. “That I am here. That I was able to distinguish the cries for help once more, and offer myself for my people is enough.”
“I could destroy you right now.”
“You haven’t been able to yet. Maybe you didn’t want to. Maybe you wished that when I fell beneath the surface of Hoan Kiem Lake, I would arise again. Stronger.” She paused. “I have.”
Sun Quan shook his head. “So if the sides are set, the end is imminent.”
“I know you will show no mercy, Sun Quan, as I ask for none.”
He watched as she became a vapor and lifted into the wind before disappearing into the other side. He could have chased her. He could have forced her to kill him now if she wanted to survive, but he wanted to see it. He wanted her to show him her plan. Was it an act of mercy to allow her to flee without a fight? He wasn’t sure. Nor did he care what the Chinese man thought.
Minh languished for the last day and a half in isolation inside the black, glossy walls of the facility. He had exhausted his energy wondering about Nhan, his mother, Tho, and especially the appearance of his father. Nothing made sense, especially the marble tablet, which seemed visible only to him. He often fondled it in his hands in plain sight of the all-seeing walls, but nothing ever happened. This fact alone gave him hope.
The wall opened and his father entered, prompting Minh to stand at attention.
“Minh, I hope you’ve had time to think about everything.”
“Where’s Nhan?”
His father pulled a device from his pocket and glanced down at it.
“Where’s Nhan?”
“Minh, she’s dead.”
The stunned Minh staggered towards him a step, mouth open. He readied himself to call his father a liar, or a number of other treacherous words in his mind, but his father preempted them by holding up the device and showing him the scene—Nhan running down the bank of the Red River, wading in chest deep, and slipping under the current. Two machines skipped across the water and dipped their probes beneath the surface. After a few seconds, they returned to the bank, and the video ended.
“She refused to be caught, so she drowned herself.”
“No, no …” Minh backed away.
“Minh, the rebellion is powerless. Commander Lieu is corrupt. Did he help you when you went to him in the cave? We know the answer to that. It’s all unraveling. You can still save your mother and Tho from making grave mistakes. I need your help, Minh. Please.”
The confused boy backed himself against the wall. The man he loved and wanted to emulate strung him along with convoluted thoughts. His head swirled. Confused. Angry. Disillusioned. Hurt. His father enticed him to go, one more time, “… just come with me again. You will see.”
Minh did. His blank mind followed his blank stare as they trudged through the corridors of the facility and into the same open-air vehicle previously used. They navigated the peaceful streets of Hanoi. The population seemed dazed, unwilling to engage in their surroundings, unwilling to acknowledge the man in the unification shirt, sitting beside his son, who once was at the forefront of the resistance. Now Minh didn’t know where he sat.
The vehicle came to a stop on Hang Bac Street. Minh glanced at all the familiar sights, the houses, the shops, but they all seemed distant, like he was in a simulation, and his father held the controller. He stepped out of the vehicle. He followed the man he once knew into the familiar house—that of Mr. Thao, the former policeman.
Mr. Thao bowed to them with excitement. His wife poured scalding hot water from a tumbler into a small pot to steep the green tea. Small talk simmered in their midst, as if a war never existed, as if they had a casual visit with Thao to discuss the latest neighborhood gossip. Minh’s father reached in his pocket and handed Thao a reunification pin. Thao snatched it with a smile and attached it to his left lapel.
“Thao, word has it you were visited here recently?”
“Yes, yes. A woman. She was dressed like a warrior, carrying a sword. She said she was Lady Trieu.” Minh’s eyes locked on Thao’s after the admission. “But we know that is impossible.”
“Indeed,” confirmed Minh’s father. “So what did this impostor want?”
“She wanted us to be ready. She said the rebels will attack tomorrow morning.”
“She did? Any other details.”
“Yes, they are amassing an army in the south and …”
Minh reached for the pot of tea, picked it up with his bare hands—ignoring the searing heat on his palms—and tossed it at Thao. The water splashed all over him, and he screamed.
“You traitor!” yelled Minh. “We trusted you our whole lives, and you betrayed your own people.”
“Minh,” his father scolded, grabbing the boy by the arm. But Minh broke free and jumped over top of the coffee table onto the former police officer. He flailed his arms and punched the old man, repeating refrains like “traitors must die” and “you betrayed your own people.”
Thao’s wife tried to pull him off her husband, but the tenacious boy wouldn’t relent. His father punched a few keys on his device and two machines entered the room, each using their probes to lock down Minh’s two wrists and pulling him off the old man who had burns down the front of his body.
“Take him back to the facility,” instructed Minh’s father without looking at his son.
The machines dragged Minh out of the house—the fuming boy yelling curses at the old man and his father, while thinking mainly of Nhan. A vehicle with a Chinese driver pulled up. The machines escorted Minh into the back seat, keeping his wrists clamped, and they drove him back to the facility. He screamed the entire way, not caring who saw him or what strange looks the weakened souls of Hanoi cast his way. The machines tossed him into the same cell. His sprawling body lay flat against the cold floor, and he cried the tears he could no longer hold back. When he finally allowed the moment to settle in, he opened his eyes to notice the marble tablet had fallen out of his pocket, just out of his reach. He crawled over to it and clasp it in his hands.
“Lady Trieu. Lady Trieu.”
He felt movement up his spine and a whisk of air in his ear.
“Don’t move,” said the voice. “I know where you’ve been. Be ready to act in the morning. You will know when.”
Minh shifted to his side and readied a reply.
“No, don’t say a word. They will hear you. They will see you, but they can’t see me. I know where you were this morning. I know. Just wait for the dawn.”
Her presence left him alone. He caressed the marble tablet in his hands. But all the machines saw from the walls were two empty palms rubbing against each other.
Nhan rested against a large rock in the middle of an open field surrounded by the jagged mountain peaks of Hoa Lu, the ancient capital of Vietnam until emperor Ly Thai To spotted the dragon ascending out of the Red River and established the new capital of Thang Long, Ascending Dragon—now called Hanoi. Hanoi had been battered for the past two years, and now waited for the answer from the warrior in the lake. Nhan waited for answers, too. She had been isolated for the past two days, awaiting the return of Lady Trieu and the army she had been promised.
A strong wind grabbed her attention. She glanced northward but only saw a single bird, without a long tail. She froze against the rock and listened to the whirling of the wind as if she expected it to speak to her. It had a message. One she couldn’t decipher. But she listened anyway, without moving, feeling a tingling on her back and a shadow forming around her, spreading out in all directions until the light of the fading western sun was blocked completely by the dark movement. She would turn and look and not be afraid, she told herself. But still she hesitated. After everything she had seen, she wondered if her eyes could be trusted to believe in something using senses beyond only sight.
She turned. A blob of floating bodies hovered behind her. Their dark faces eluded her as the final sparks of sun slid through the cracks between the bodies, which drifted left and right in small increments. She stared at them, mammoth figures each ten to twelve feet high, not touching the ground, like giant blown-up balloons, but she could tell they had substance. Gravity did not limit them, however, and the forces gathered, more and more, until the sun no longer shone on Nhan’s face and the menacing army waited in formation like a mountain cliff.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
They didn’t reply. Not one of them. As if they had no ears. Their dark gazes continued straight ahead.
“Are you whom Lady Trieu spoke of?”
What a silly question. Non-human entities hovered over her. Who else could have sent them?
“What shall we do?”
No response. As she moved closer, she noticed their bodies were not solid, but shifting shades of light pulsing through the translucent beings. Their faces only resembled the face of a human, but there was a deformity about them, with noses slightly off, and mouths that revealed toothless cavities inside their heads.
They don’t look like warriors, she said to herself, examining their goblin bodies.
“Nhan.” A voice beckoned her to pivot. “Your army.”
Nhan glanced at Lady Trieu then quickly back toward the massive group behind her. “They don’t look like an army.”
“They aren’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Before dawn, ride on the wind and assemble at the western edge of the Yen Lenh Bridge.”
“Yen Lenh? That’s right outside the limits of the Hanoi District.”
“Yes.”
“Why there?”
“Ride off on the wind and assemble just before dawn.”
“How can I ride off on the wind?”
“My bird will lead you.”
She looked behind the warrior at the long-tailed bird grazing harmlessly in the faint shadows of the background.
“The bird? I don’t understand—”
“Nhan, do as I command. Lead them into position. When the Chinese attack, you will know what to do.”
“I will?”
“I have faith in you.”
“But who are these—” She looked back at the lifeless ghosts. “What are these …? Lady Trieu, they don’t look like warriors.”
“Oh, they are, Nhan. They are. We are counting on you. May the spirit of our ancestors go before you tomorrow. May you succeed, so we all may succeed.”
“I thought you said they weren’t warriors?”
“They once were farmers, peasants, and common folk—just like your family.”
Nhan looked at them again. She would lead them. She would follow the commands, worthy of a leader blindly putting one’s actions into one’s faith. She would ride on the wind, and she would lead this silent group into position. Then she would wait to see what it all meant.