After they had gone about a kilometer, they slowed their pace down to a brisk walk. Nathan looked up from under his blanket but couldn’t tell where they were, let alone where they were going. He saw that the young woman he had seen earlier was walking to his immediate right.

"Where are you taking me?", he asked her in a voice that sounded dry and weak.

She looked down at him and smiled again.

"Where are we going?", he repeated.

This time she simply shrugged, in a universal gesture of incomprehension. She spoke no English, and her comrades didn’t either.

Cursing his non-existent knowledge of Mandarin and Cantonese, the two languages she might have understood, Cross racked his brains for the few words he had managed to learn while working for the Tu-We. His mind was reeling with pain and exhaustion, which made it almost impossible to concentrate. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, channeling his remaining energy into one last, seemingly impossible task: communicating with these people who had, for one reason or another, saved his life.

"Nar?", he finally said. Where?

The woman looked down at him again, an amused frown creasing her brow, as though wondering where he had suddenly learned to speak Mandarin. He was asking where they were going, but she thought he was simply asking where they were.

So she told him.

"Tian An Men".