Necropolis

them were going to be together until Paul Adams returned. It wasn't fair. Had she really swapped Mrs. Murdoch for this woman?
    "I would like a rest," she said.
    "That's a good idea. I will be here. Call if there is anything you need."
    Scarlett went into her room. She undressed and had a shower, then lay on the bed. She fell asleep instantly, darkness coming down like a falling shutter.
    Once again she returned to the dreamworld, to the desert and the sea. She could sense the water behind her, but she was careful not to turn round. She remembered the creature that had begun to emerge — the dragon or whatever it was — and she didn't want to see it again.
    Everything was very still. Her head was throbbing. There was something strange in the air. She looked for the four boys who she had once known so well and was disappointed to find that they were nowhere near.
    Something glowed red.

    She looked up and saw the sign, the neon letters hanging in their steel frame. They were flashing on and off, casting a glow across the sand around them. But the words were different. The last time she had seen them, they had read: signal one
    . She was sure of it.
    Now they had changed, signal three
    . That was what they read. And the symbol beside them, the letter T, had swung upside down.
    signal three
    What did it mean? Scarlett didn't know. But behind her, far away in the sea, the dragon saw it and understood. She heard it howling and knew that once again it was rushing toward her, getting closer and closer, but still she refused to turn round.
    And then it fell on her. It was huge, as big as the entire world. Scarlett screamed, and after that she remembered nothing more.
    SIXTEEN
    The Chairman
    The view was amazing. Scarlett had to admit it despite herself. She had never seen anything quite like it.
    It was the middle of the afternoon, her first day in Hong Kong, and she was standing in front of a huge, plate-glass window, sixty-six floors up in the headquarters of the Nightrise Corporation. The building was called The Nail and looked like one too — a silver shaft that could have been hammered into its position on Queen Street. She was in the chairman's office, a room so big that she could have played hockey in it, although the ball would probably have gotten lost in the thick-pile carpet. Paintings by Picasso and Van Gogh hung on the wall. They were almost certainly original.
    From her vantage point, Scarlett could see that the city was divided in two. She was staying on Hong Kong Island, surrounded by the most expensive shops and hotels. But she was looking across the harbor to Kowloon, the grubbier, more down-at-heel neighbor. The two parts were separated by what had to be one of the busiest stretches of water in the world, with ships of every shape and size somehow crisscrossing around each other without colliding. There were cruise ships, big enough to hold a small army, tied up at the jetty with little sampans, Chinese rowing boats, darting around them. Tugs, cargo boats, and container ships moved slowly left and right while nimbler passenger ferries cut in front of them, carrying passengers over to the other side and back. There were even a couple of junks, old Chinese sailing ships that seemed to have floated in from another age.

    The Hong Kong skyscrapers were in a world of their own, each one competing to be the tallest, the sleekest, the most spectacular, the most bizarre. And there was something extraordinary about the way they were packed together, so many billions of tons of steel and glass, so many people living and working on top of one another — it had already reminded Scarlett of an ant nest, but now she saw it was for the richest ants in the world. There weren't many sidewalks in Hong Kong. An intricate maze of covered walkways connected the different buildings, going from shopping center to shopping center, through whole cities of Armani and Gucci and Prada and Cartier and every other million-dollar designer name.
    There was very little color anywhere. If there were any trees or parks, they had been swallowed up in the spread of the city. Even the water was like slate. Although it was late in the day, the light hadn't changed much since the morning. Everything was wrapped in a strange, silver mist that made the offices in Kowloon look distant and out of focus.
    While she was being driven there, Scarlett had noticed quite a few people in the street had covered their mouths and noses with a square of