Previously: Twain was taken prisoner by the Czar’s men, but broke free and ran, with the men hot on his heels. And now…
He burst out a back door into a filthy narrow alley that reeked of animal excrement. He stepped up against the wall and used it to launch himself over a chain-link fence and into another alley, where the smell of dung mixed with the rancid reek of rotting vegetables. A restaurant or market, maybe. Twain coughed and pushed himself past the smell . His feet splashed through the runoff from the trash, though, so the smell traveled with him.
Behind him, he heard curses and the rattle of chain link as the men climbed it in pursuit of him. He burst out into another street and broke left, a plan forming in his mind. It was crazy, but worth a try.
[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”right”]A bullet buzzed past his head, so he ducked left into another narrow alley. He vaulted trash cans and old TV’s, leapt over a moldy mattress. The breath burned in his lungs, and he wondered if he would ever be able to scour the smells out of his nose…[/blockquote]He would lead the men away, then double back and steal their truck. He wasn’t worried about the men pursuing him; he wasn’t the best traceur around, but his parkour was good enough that they wouldn’t catch him. Digger might have been able to run him to ground, but not these bozos. They had obviously gotten lazy after years of trading on fear of the Czar to push their fellow townspeople around.
The big question was whether more men had been drawn out of that police station or whatever by the commotion. If so, he would have to abort the truck idea and come up with another plan.
A bullet buzzed past his head, so he ducked left into another narrow alley. He vaulted trash cans and old TV’s, leapt over a moldy mattress. The breath burned in his lungs, and he wondered if he would ever be able to scour the smells out of his nose. He gradually worked his way around and back, past temples and fortunetellers and markets with carts bearing a paltry few vegetables on them. The few people he saw on the streets retreated from him, turned away to pretend he didn’t exist. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that a strange white man running out of alleys brought nothing good with him.
Soon, Twain worked his way back to the vicinity of the station. He would approach quietly from the rear and listen for commotion from the street. He turned down a final narrow alley that should lead him right up to the rear of the station and nearly ran into the girl.
Her delicate features and light skin marked her out as a foreigner, probably Chinese. She was tall and slim; not as tall as he, but taller than an average Chinese. Her shirt and pants were the blue of a sky that threatened rain, and her face would have been beautiful, but for the scar that twisted up from just beside her nose, through her eyebrow and up her forehead. Where the scar met her hairline, the hair bore a thick streak of white instead of her normal glossy black.
She looked at his face in bewilderment then threw her arms around her neck. “You made it,” she said in Mandarin.
Who is this mysterious woman? Join us tomorrow for the next exciting episode!
To read from the beginning, click here…
If you were one of the few people who read this in the last 6 hours, yes, I’ve rewritten the last line. Word limit + deadline = hurried mistakes.