We had made it about a mile out of downtown Chicago when the bike stalled.
Wheels still on fire. Lotus on the down tube still glowing. Bubble of warm air still warm, but the bike, which had been doing fifty miles an hour, which had been eager, which had been zigzagging us through the Loop like a divine commuter, slowed. Thirty. Ten. Zero.
We rolled to a stop on Lower Wacker, the underground street under the city, in front of a closed valet sign and a single broken streetlamp.
The bike trembled.
"Why are we stopping," Lucy said.
The bike, in its bike-voice from inside the frame, said one word: "Don't."
The streetlamp turned on by itself.
The standing rainwater in the gutter underneath it rose.
Not splashed. Rose. In a column. Three feet tall. The column tilted. The column had a face. The face was a man's face, made of murky underground-Chicago rainwater, with eyes that were small whirlpools.
"Lotus prince."
His voice was every faucet in our house running at once.
Lucy was off the bike before I had processed the word *don't.* One motion: seat to standing, dao in her right hand, lily-fire at her knuckles — white, clean, the kind I had not seen from her before. She faced the column the way you face something you have already categorized and are now confirming.
She had made the decision before I had finished blinking.
"Gong Gong," Lucy said. Quietly. Not a question.
He grew. The column thickened. The water in every gutter on Lower Wacker began to rise.
Within five seconds, Lower Wacker was underwater.
The bike — bless the bike — also knew this. The handlebars popped upright. The wheels reconfigured. The fire turned from silver-and-gold to blue-white.
"Jackie," the bike said. "The wheels can ride water, but you have to drive."
"I CAN'T DRIVE A BICYCLE."
"You can drive ME. This is different."
Lucy was already back on. She had made the full assessment in the time it took the bike to reconfigure. She does not calculate, then move. The calculation happens while she is already moving.
I hit the pedals.
We shot through the rising water like a jet ski with a god under the hood.
---
The flood was a pocket-dimension flood. Pedestrians on the Lower Wacker overpass walked dry-shod, looking at their phones. Cars on the upper streets drove on dry concrete. The water was only there for us.
Behind us, Gong Gong was coming. Becoming the water. Folding the water into himself. Ten feet tall. Twenty. Fifty. Filling the entire underground street.
I did not turn around. Lucy did.
Once — just her upper body, one clean check — and then she was facing forward. I felt the shift of her balance. I could not read her face from this angle, but the way she settled back, hands at my waist, not tighter, told me: she had seen it, filed it, and decided afraid was not the useful register.
We blew east along Lower Wacker. We blew under the Chicago River. We blew up the ramp at Columbus Drive into the cold gray daylight of an ordinary Wednesday afternoon where nobody could see what was about to crash onto the sidewalk behind us.
Gong Gong's wave came up the ramp and hit Buckingham Fountain.
In the mortal world, the fountain just turned on early for the season. The maintenance guy was confused but unalarmed.
In our world, the fountain became a column of water two hundred feet high, and Gong Gong's face rose out of that water, taller than the Sears Tower, eyes a thousand small whirlpools, teeth tugboats.
"JACKIE," Lucy shouted. "HOW DO YOU DEFEAT A GOD OF WATER."
"I HAVE NO IDEA."
"WU XING," Rufus shouted from the basket. "WATER IS DESTROYED BY EARTH. CONCRETE IS SET EARTH."
"CONCRETE IS *concrete,* RAF."
"JACKIE. CONCRETE IS LITERALLY SET EARTH. THIS IS WU XING ONE-OH-ONE."
I had no time to argue with the cosmic moon rabbit's understanding of building materials.
I yanked the handlebars left.
The bike turned.
We headed for Grant Park. For the grass, and the trees, and the frozen earth.
The wave followed.
We hit Grant Park at speed. The bike's flaming wheels tore through the snow. The bike, picking up on Rufus's theory, lowered itself, dragging the front wheel along the frozen ground, plowing a furrow through the dirt under the snow.
Behind me, I heard Lucy once: "Earth and Earth and faster." Not to me. To herself, or to the bike, or to the calculation she was running about how much frozen soil stood between us and a tide with no speed limit.
Behind us, the wave hit dirt.
The wave bled into the dirt. Slowly. Reluctantly. The earth, frozen as it was, drank the water.
Gong Gong screamed.
"YOU ARE LITERALLY USING MY OWN ELEMENT'S WEAKNESS AGAINST ME, IT IS RUDE."
Here is the thing I had not said out loud yet: I had just used the enemy's elemental classification against him, mid-bike-chase, in a flooded underground street, one-handed, having learned the theory from a moon rabbit approximately ninety seconds ago. This was either very clever or very obvious. Probably both. I would figure out which later. Either way: working.
"Sorry. Quick study."
The wave dropped from fifty feet to forty to thirty as it bled into the soil.
But it was still thirty feet, and Grant Park was only so big.
The bike was burning hot. The blue-white fire flickered. The bike was overheating.
"JACKET POCKET," Lucy shouted. "ZHANG'S PACKET. WHITE CANDY."
In my hand, Zhang's small cloth packet was warm.
*If your spear's heat is too much, eat the white one.*
I dug it out one-handed. Tore it open with my teeth. Two candies. Red and white.
I shoved the white into my mouth.
It tasted like winter mint and lake water.
The bike cooled. The blue-white fire steadied. The wheels caught new traction.
Behind us, the wave was almost on us.
I pulled out the Truthsayer.
I had not, until this moment, known that the Truthsayer could be deployed one-handed while holding a bike handlebar in what amounted to a forty-mile-per-hour wind tunnel. I had also not known I could write calligraphy while genuinely terrified. The brush, apparently, did not need my hands to be calm. Just present. This was the kind of information I would find interesting when I was not being chased by an ancient water god.
I drew, in the air over my left shoulder, the largest character I had ever attempted.
*EARTH.*
The character glowed gold.
The wave broke.
The character was not just a glowing word. It was a truth. It said *this place, in front of you, is earth.* The wave, which had been water that had decided it could ignore inconvenient earth, believed the character. The wave became water that had to obey earth.
I drew, over my right shoulder, the character *ANCHOR.*
The wave anchored. Stopped advancing. Hung in mid-air over Grant Park, defying every physical law, because the Truthsayer had named it.
I hit the brakes.
I dismounted.
I planted my feet on the snow.
I drew, in the air over the wave, the largest character I had ever drawn.
*DISPERSE.*
The character — golden, ten feet tall, perfectly drawn (the brush did the calligraphy; my hand just held the brush) — floated into the wave.
The wave dispersed. Gong Gong, the ancient water god, the entire pocket-dimension flood, gone.
The wave broke into a fine mist.
The mist hung in the cold Chicago air for half a second.
The mist scattered in the wind.
Where Gong Gong had been was, simply, cold air.
A single Lake Michigan breeze blew across Grant Park.
The grass was wet.
Lucy, behind me, said, "…what."
The bike, beside me, said, in a voice gentler than usual, "I have been waiting eight hundred years for this moment, and you are ruining it."
Lucy laughed once, a wet startled laugh.
The bike said, "Well done, lotus prince."
Rufus, in the basket, said nothing, because Rufus was unconscious. The water-bike pursuit had taken everything out of him. He had passed out somewhere around Buckingham Fountain.
I sat down on the wet grass.
My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking. The Truthsayer brush was flecked with gold dust, like the brush itself had been used and was now spent.
"Did I just dispel an ancient water god with a brush."
"With a brush," Lucy confirmed.
"By writing the word *disperse.*"
"Yes."
"That cannot be a skill."
"Jackie. It is your whole skill."
"…okay."
She crouched beside me.
"Are you okay," she said.
"I think I might pass out."
"Pass out. I'll keep watch."
"Lucy."
"Yeah."
"Did I just defeat the Dragon King's lieutenant."
"Yes."
"Cool."
"Cool."
I lay back on the wet snow.
Above me, the sky began to clear. The sun behind the clouds became visible. The temperature went up half a degree, which in Chicago in February is a noticeable miracle.
Lake Michigan, when I sat up two minutes later, was visibly lower. By inches. The shoreline showed wet sand that had not been visible at this hour in living memory.
Gong Gong was, somewhere, now distributed through the atmosphere.
He would, I knew, reform.
But not today.
Today we had won.
---
Lucy made me eat a granola bar. She made Rufus eat half a baby carrot, which woke him up. She made a phone call from a payphone, paid in coins from the Council's wallet, to Mei. Two minutes of low fast Mandarin. She hung up.
"Mei says the next weapon — Universe Ring — is in D.C. Sealed in a Han Dynasty case at the Sackler Gallery, labelled *jade ornament of indeterminate purpose.* Donated 1923 by a Chinese-American collector who was almost certainly a Society sleeper agent."
"…we have to break into the Smithsonian."
"We have to break into the Smithsonian."
"Just."
"Just."
"Lucy."
"Yeah."
"We are middle-schoolers."
"Yeah."
"We are about to break into the *Smithsonian.*"
"Yeah."
"This is going to be the best day of my life."
"Eventually."
She picked up the bike.
The bike was warm and trembling slightly. The bike, like the Truthsayer, had felt the dispersing of an ancient water god.
"The bike needs to cool. No more flaming wheels for at least two hours. We take a regular train to D.C."
"How long."
"Sixteen hours. Capitol Limited. We can be there by tomorrow morning."
"Sixteen *hours.*"
"Yes. Take the train. Sleep. Eat. Recover."
I stood up. My knees worked. Mostly.
We mounted the bike.
The bike, at normal speeds, like a normal kid in a sweater, rolled us across Michigan Avenue toward Union Station.
---
In the locked seat-back pocket of the Capitol Limited train sixteen hours later, I would find a postcard from Megan, mailed from Palo Alto two days earlier, somehow already there waiting for me.
The postcard would say:
*J, Bradley confirmed the Sackler. I have ordered floor plans from a Smithsonian-architecture website. Will mail to your next drop. Mom went outside today. Anna is teaching Mom to draw the character for "good morning" with the second brush. Mom got it on her fourth try. She cried after. Tan called this morning. I will tell you what he said when you are home.*
*Brent tried to look at my notebook last night. I was reading it on the couch. I put it under my arm and went upstairs. He did not follow but he watched. Sleeping with notebook in backpack now. Will lock bedroom door.*
*One more thing. In the audit I have traced one of Dad's Stanford consulting deposits to a Cayman fund whose manager is married to a LongYu VP. I do not know yet what to do with this. Dad does not, I think, know. We will find out together. Hold the line — M*
I would, when I read it, cry on the train.
But that was sixteen hours away.
For now, the bike rolled toward Union Station.
The Truthsayer brush was cool against my belt. The candies were gone. The wet scarf was drying against my neck. In the basket, Rufus was still deeply, mortifyingly, heroically asleep.
Whatever was going to happen at the Smithsonian was going to happen with or without me feeling ready.
I was, surprisingly, fine with that.
The bike rolled.