Week 37.2 – City of the Moon

Previously: Twain, Yi Fan and Digger had entered the forbidden cave to find the fabled City of the Moon. And now…

The Cobalt Czar sat alone in the back of the Jeep, his shoulders so broad that there was no room for someone to sit beside him, had anyone been brave enough to do so. With every bump they hit, the springs creaked alarmingly under his weight.

“Call Yi Fan and have her meet us there,” the Czar said to his secretary riding in the front passenger seat. “These Americans have gotten tiresome. I think I’ll simply kill them and be done with it.”

***

The chirp of the phone echoed off the walls, shockingly loud in the darkness of the cave. Yi Fan pulled out her phone, briefly illuminating the three of them in the harsh pale light of the phone screen. “Hello?”

“Mi__Cri________nts__kk__,” came the almost completely unintellible signal from the Czar’s personal secretary before the call dropped.

“Hello? Hello?” Yi Fan shut off the phone. “I can’t understand him from in here. I’ll have to take the call outside.”

“Why bother?” Twain asked. “We’re on the verge of defeating the Czar for good.”

“But until we do, we mustn’t let him suspect my loyalty or my true intentions,” Yi Fan said. She bussed Twain on the cheek and turned back the way they had come. “I’ll try not to take long. Good luck.”

[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”left”]His attention was comepletely riveted on a length of steel wire floating before him, ripped from the inner chain-link fence protecting the cave…[/blockquote]A short while later, she emerged into sunlight. The Chinese-American sat on a flat rock a short distance away. His attention was comepletely riveted on a length of steel wire floating before him, ripped from the inner chain-link fence protecting the cave. Her phone chirped again, and he started. The wire dropped to the ground.

Yi Fan answered the phone. “Hello?”

“Officer Yi Fan?” asked the voice of the Czar’s secretary. “Where are you right now?”

“Is there a problem?” Yi Fan asked as the American concentrated on the wire again, lifting it off the ground.

“We’ve received a report that the Americans have attacked the City of the Moon,” the secretary said. Yi Fan’s attention was distracted by a rock underneath the floating wire, or rather, two nearly identical rocks side-by-side, with matching, perfectly flat edges between them. If she didn’t know better, she might have thought they had once been one rock that was sliced in two. “You are to meet the Czar there immediately.”

“I understand,” Yi Fan said. “I’ll go there now.”

She clicked off the connection and turned to the American. “Hey, you understand Mandarin, right?”

“Yes,” the man said, not taking his eyes off the wire writhing slowly in front of him.

“Are you okay? Because you seem… strange.”

The man let the wire drop again and turned his full attention on Yi Fan. “Yes, I’m fine. What do you need?”

“The Czar is on his way here right now,” Yi Fan said. “I can…”

She let the sentence drift off, unfinished. Next to where the wire had dropped, the two almost identical rocks were now four rocks of unequal sizes, as if they had just been cut in two.

Just what is Cole’s secret weapon? Don’t miss the next exciting episode!

To read from the beginning, click here…