The plane came in low over the floodlights, silver belly streaked with rainwater gleaming in floodlight. Iris rolled the throttle just enough to feel the bike coil. Thirty minutes. Her HUD stamped the numbers in the corner of her visor—white and sharp: 30:00.
Stairs rattled up. The cabin door swung. Crew in neat jackets hurried to make themselves useful, all hand signals and plastic smiles. The first passenger brushed past them like tide around pylons.
Younger than Iris expected. Mid-twenties. She moved the way tutors teach - spine long, feet light, gaze level - but her eyes flicked fast. They found Iris, narrowed a fraction, then steadied.
"I thought it would be a car," she said.
Iris thumbed the ignition. The engine woke in a low animal purr that shivered the metal stairs. "Yeah," she said, deadpan. "I thought so too. But here I am."
The girl glanced once at the saddle like it was an insult she'd been trained to ignore. She swung a leg neatly, and settled in behind Iris. Arms slid around her waist, knuckles pressing through leather.
"Hold tight," Iris said.
"I plan to."
Someone from the crew made that soft managerial noise that means don't, but Iris twisted the throttle before the sound learned words. The bike snarled, spat rubber, and leapt. Floodlights strobed across her visor; tarmac unspooled into a hard white vein.
The airport didn't even try. The storm had left systems slow and men slower. A maintenance gate sat propped for a convoy of carts; Iris took it like an invitation and found the perimeter road yawning open, the night peeled thin toward the highway.
North Lantau Highway rose like a black ribbon poured out to sea. Iris leaned into it, tucking small, letting the wind smash flat against her helmet. The HUD numbers burned steady at the edge of her sight, ticking down with every heartbeat.
Behind her, the girl's breath was quick and hot through her jacket. A grip meant for politeness had turned iron in under a minute. Iris smirked. Good. At least she wasn't pretending this was normal.
The first patrol car wasn't hunting her. It was bored, nose out behind a crash barrier, engine idle, driver half asleep in the spill of a streetlamp. Then the HUD drew him in bright red, painted a threat cone across the lane, and the cruiser moved. Engine up. Siren yowling awake. Lights spitting red-blue.
"Oh, brilliant," Iris muttered, not even glancing back. "As if this wasn't stressful enough."
"What?" the girl shouted, voice shredded by wind.
Iris dropped a gear, found a seam in traffic that wasn't a seam at all, and cut it open. The girl gasped, nails digging straight through leather.
"Hang on," Iris barked, voice bouncing in her helmet. "Complain later. Breathe now."
The cruiser heaved after them, engine whining. Iris threaded between two trucks plodding like reluctant gods. Siren harmonics smeared across the guardrail behind her as the patrol car hesitated, choosing which giant to risk offending.
The road bent left. Sea opened out, black and salted, dragging at the wind. The HUD ticked: 27:58. Eastward the sky had shifted with the first glint of steel, not light yet.
"Faster," the girl said into Iris's shoulder. Not a plea. A demand, sharp and cold, though her breath shook.
"I'm working on it." Iris grinned against the visor, twisted the throttle wider, and let the bike scream.
The patrol car committed. Tires squealed, engine howling, siren cracking across the highway like it wanted applause. Iris didn't give it the dignity of a glance.
HUD clock pulsed: 27:32.
She dropped another gear, let the back wheel bite, and flung the bike between two container lorries. Metal walls hemmed her close, corrugated steel flexing in the wind like ribs around a lung. Air turned heavy, compressed into a tunnel. The girl clamped tighter, gasping sharp as they threaded through. Her nails carved crescents through leather.
Iris spat out the far side and heard the car's bumper screech against a guardrail, sparks cascading like fireflies in the mirrors.
"Are you insane?" the girl managed, voice jerking with each lurch.
"Occupational hazard." Iris tilted her head, eyes narrowing as the road began to climb. "Now lean with me or you'll get acquainted with asphalt."
The girl swore—crisp, formal Cantonese, like she'd learned it from a tutor—but she leaned. Not perfect, but enough.
Ahead, Tsing Ma Bridge rose out of the dark, towers strung with cables like a harp left in the wind. Ward paint still gleamed wet on its pylons, smeared vermilion where monks had leaned too far out on scaffolds. The HUD fizzed static, then guttered back, numbers stammering as if the city itself didn't want to commit to the truth.
Behind, a second patrol car joined the chase, its lights strobing brighter than the storm lamps along the bridge. Two sirens now, baying in off-key chorus.
HUD blinked: 26:05.
The girl's breath hitched. She wasn't composed anymore. She clung tight, whispered something that might've been prayer, might've been pure survival. Iris only grinned, cut into the lane without permission, and aimed straight at the bridge's service strip.
The ascent took them straight into the wind's fist. It shoved sideways, bored and brutal, tugging the bike toward the guardrail like some lazy god. The girl hissed a curse, arms crushing tighter. Iris grinned into her visor. If she wasn't swearing, she wasn't paying attention.
25:44.
Patrol lights smeared red-blue against the suspension cables. The lead cruiser lumbered up behind her, engine whining, its partner pacing two lanes over, trying to herd her toward the rail.
A service strip cut the bridge's span—a narrow band of ribbed steel, locked by a sagging chain and a polite warning about fines and penalties. Iris dipped a shoulder, hit the curb, and snapped the chain like thread. Tires clattered onto wet steel. The bike fishtailed, then bit back into line. The girl yelped.
"Don't let go," Iris barked. "You'll ruin my morning."
The patrol driver made the mistake of following. Tires hit steel, chassis scraped. Sparks spat under his car in a sheet of angry light. Iris heard his voice crack through the open channel, swearing to his dispatcher before the cruiser peeled off, brakes shrieking. The second car hesitated, then dropped back, siren still whooping as if noise might make up for failure.
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The bridge carried them out over black water, towers humming with storm-lingering wards. Iris let the wind shove her helmet again, let the cables sing. Her HUD ticked down: 24:19.
She laughed once, sharp and short.
The girl shifted against her, voice raw in her ear: "You're going to kill us."
Iris bared her teeth, even though the girl couldn't see. "Not today." She twisted the throttle wider, letting the bike scream.
Ahead, the cables curved toward Kowloon like an iron harp strung for giants. Patrol lights fell away behind, left to lick their wounds. Iris bent forward, and the city pulled them home.
The highway braided through Tsing Yi's ramps and spilled them out toward the water again. Ahead, Stonecutters Bridge stretched its sword-flat span across the harbor, towers staked into black depths. Floodlights burned pale along the ribs, and down below barges shouldered storm wreckage—scaffolds bent like broken fingers, idols with their faces scraped off, neon tubing knotted into dead bundles. The storm hadn't left quietly; it had scattered bones for the sea to chew.
21:52.
Two fresh patrol cars barreled onto the approach, overeager, engines bellowing in harmony, red-blue wash painting the cables. Iris snorted. Cops had short memories.
The girl's arms were welded around her waist now. Every sharp lean dragged a gasp from her throat. Sometimes it was a curse, sometimes just air crushed thin.
"Relax," she shouted into the wind. "You're not dead yet."
"Yet!" the girl yelped, voice high, clipped by fear and rage both.
Something whined overhead. Iris glanced up just as a drone dropped out of the patrol car's roof rack, rotors whining, belly flashing glyphs that stuttered between Cantonese and English: PLEASE COOPERATE. STAY IN YOUR VEHICLE. CITIZEN SAFETY FIRST.
It swooped low, locking on her visor with a bright interrogation beam.
Iris bared her teeth. "Bad timing, tin can."
She stood the bike up straight, let the drone rush head-on, and at the last instant jerked her chin a fraction. The machine's undercarriage clipped the crown of her helmet with a brittle crack. The drone hiccuped mid-air, lost balance, and pinwheeled sideways into a bridge rib. Plastic and metal blossomed into the sea like angry confetti.
The girl yelped sharp in her ear, then bit it down.
"I hate drones," Iris muttered, twisting the throttle back down. "They never tip."
She drove hard up the inside lane, a bus wallowing wide on her left, the rail licking sparks under her boot. The back tire spat fire, skidding a heartbeat before it caught. Patrol cars swerved, stuck behind the bus, sirens muffled by steel.
19:04.
The bridge sang in the wind. Kowloon's bruised skyline rose ahead, wards smeared across rooftops, neon signs stuttering back to life one diode at a time. The city waited, wet and glittering.
Stonecutters spat them out into Kowloon West, storm-bruised and raw. The skyline here looked patched together: scaffolds lashed like broken bones, tarps flapping in the dawn wind, neon still out in half the towers.
17:41.
The highway ahead snarled—buses stopped half-crosswise, a tram stalled cold on its rails. Orange-slickered monks knelt at the curb, repainting wards in quick, sure strokes, their brushes too delicate for the job but their hands steady. Incense smoke rose in little curls where someone had lit sticks in a coffee can, the smell of metal and ash tangling in Iris's nose.
She ducked off the main lanes before the trap could close. Service roads coiled under the highway, half-flooded, lined with dumpsters still leaking storm water. Trucks loitered there, engines thumping low. Men in vests shouted at each other over the sound of a pump, glancing up just in time to see Iris blur past, spray in her wake.
The girl clamped tighter, breath catching each time the back tire hissed through puddles. Once, Iris heard her whisper—not English, not clean Cantonese, but something older. A prayer Iris only recognized by rhythm, temple words stammered into the wind. She didn't comment.
Patrol cars tried to follow, learned the gospel of girth. One wedged itself between a barricade and a scaffolding stack, horn braying. Another braked too late and skidded sideways into a puddle of oil. Sirens collapsed behind them, muffled by concrete.
Every shortcut shaved minutes. Every slip might add one back. Iris's jaw ached from the clamp of her teeth. She cut another ramp hard, railing biting her boot, sparks spitting like coins on pavement.
The girl hissed something, syllables half-lost to the engine. When Iris caught the tone, she barked a short laugh.
Kowloon folded behind them in a mess of tarps, incense, and traffic clawing itself back to life. Ahead, the harbor spread wide, Connaught Road West threading the edge like a taut line, and at the far end of it the ICC tower speared up—Ritz penthouse catching the first whisper of dawn in its glass.
11:29.
Connaught Road West opened before them, slick with last night's salt and storm. Traffic here was awake now—minibuses fogged with breath, taxis with taped-on mirrors, delivery vans already blaring their horns like it would conjure daylight.
Iris dropped a gear, threaded the gap between a lumbering bus and a truck still dripping seawater from its bed. Mirrors kissed her sleeves. Sparks spat where the rail scraped her boot. The girl's arms locked, breath sawing through her teeth. She muttered something again—half curse, half prayer—and Iris felt it buzz against her back like a trapped insect.
A fresh patrol car caught her on the merge. Too eager. Too green. Siren yowling, it swung wide across two lanes to box her.
"Sure, hero," Iris muttered.
She let the driver believe in his angle for half a heartbeat, then slipped through a seam between a taxi and a corp sedan, front wheel popping the low median like it was a curb. Back tire slapped down hard; her spine rattled. The girl shrieked, clamping on so tight Iris thought ribs might crack.
HUD screamed: 07:02.
The sky had sharpened—eastward glass catching light, towers burning thin silver. The sun was dragging itself up whether she made it or not.
05:31.
The ICC loomed ahead now, a shard of obsidian stabbed into the harbor sky. Its wards pulsed faint white at the base.
"Almost there," Iris shouted.
The girl didn't answer. She'd gone stone behind her, breath shallow, arms carved tight around Iris's waist.
The ramp curled down toward the underground like a hook waiting to snag them. The last flood line stained the concrete half a meter up; someone had chalked luck, then crossed it out, then written later. Iris blew past, back tire yelping once.
02:11. Then the numbers fell too fast to count.
The ward-line waited across the garage mouth—thin white strokes seared into the concrete, humming with quiet teeth. Bollards fat and bored, cameras blinking with lazy reptile interest.
00:42.
The light behind them turned sharp, cold, inevitable. The sun edged the horizon like a coin being forced up the side of a bowl.
"Hold tight," Iris growled.
The bike screamed, a beast at full throat. The girl's breath broke into a gasp, half-prayer, half terror. They hit the line just as the light struck.
Wards detonated. White fire ripped across the concrete, sigils standing up into the air. Her visor whited out, chest crushed with invisible pressure, then released.
00:00.
They were inside.
Iris braked in a clean line, back tire chirping once for applause before the engine settled into a heavy growl, then quieted. Sound came rushing back—vent fans groaning, a compressor coughing to life somewhere, the steady drip-drip of water finding the wrong pipe.
The girl slid off the saddle too fast, knees folding under her. She staggered three steps, caught a concrete pillar, bent double, and retched into the storm drain grille with the miserable efficiency of someone determined not to cry. Her hair fell out of place for the first time. The sound echoed sharp against the garage walls.
Iris popped her visor, pulled the helmet free. Sweat glued strands of hair across her forehead; her mouth was bent into a grin that didn't belong to her anymore. She let it fall away.
"Welcome to Hong Kong," she said.
The girl wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, straightened slow. She smoothed her coat, tucked a loose strand of hair back, composure snapping into place like lacquer over cracks. When she met Iris's eyes, it was Wei looking back—same steel, just younger.
"You're insane," the girl said, almost to herself.
The wards' afterglow still crawled across her vision when she blinked.
"Common feedback." Iris swung a leg off the bike, boots scraping the smooth concrete. She rolled her neck until a vertebra clicked like a switch. "Tell your father sunrise is an ugly opponent. But I'm uglier."
That pulled a sound from the girl—a small, breathless laugh that slipped free before she could stop it. She caught it, locked her mask back in place, and turned away. Steps gathering composure with each stride, she walked toward the private elevator without looking back. Numbers blinked alive above the door, then died as a VIP key swallowed them whole.
Silence finally settled, interrupted only by low wine of turbine powering down to cool itself.
Iris patted the tank once, the way you reward an animal for bringing you home in one piece. The machine shivered, purring low. Above, the tower's weight shifted with a satisfied groan, settling back into its wards. Outside, dawn rearranged the city's light.
Iris exhaled.
“Told you,” she muttered to no one, because no one needed telling. “Faster than sunrise.”
Her hands were still shaking.
