9:45AM – fifteen minutes before God’s prank

            Accelerating well beyond the urban city limit, the scenery besides him undoubtedly blurs into many fine brushes of water paint.  The engine roars loudly as he adds more pressure on the gas pedal when the road is finally cleared of obstacles upon the sound of siren. 

A couple of cars incurs some scratches and dents when they run and hit against the curb on the side of street and an unfortunate bicyclist falls hard from his bike because he couldn’t stop in time at the suddenness.  Some cars from way back honk at those in front, completely ignorant of the sudden halt of the traffic that’s due to a fierce car chase that is currently taking place.

He throws a quick glance at the rear mirror, but is not overly concerned of what is happening behind him, the target in front is his top priority at the moment.  Keeping his eyes on the target, he pulls the gearshift and drifts the vehicle at the intersection to the left.

A glint flickers in his eyes briefly when he sees a huge sign on the side of the road up ahead.  He quickly punches in the speed dial and adjusts his Bluetooth earphone.  “I need backup to block off Waibaidu Bridge on both ends,” he informs his partner curtly.

“Let me check your location—”

“The target will probably reach there in less than three minutes and in Huangpu district less than five minutes.”

“Then, it can’t be done!”

“Get it done.  I’m counting on you, Tia.”

“Hey, William Chan!  That’s a tall order!  You can’t just—”

He takes off the earphone and throws it onto the passenger’s seat.  He refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer.  He will catch the fugitive all by himself, if came to that, because ‘impossible’ simply does not exist in his dictionary.  He steps on the accelerator, seemingly without much regards for his own life. 

9:46AM – fourteen minutes before all hell breaks lose

            The traffic cop parks his motorcycle on the side, near the railing of the bridge.  He takes off his helmet and fans himself with his free hand.  He pants from the cruel heat emitting from the summer sun.  “I’m so underpaid for this sh*t,” he mutters and takes out his phone.

He smiles upon seeing his girlfriend’s message, telling him to return her call as soon as possible.  They have been dating for about three months now and this is his longest relationship up to date.  Maybe luck is finally smiling on him.  With a heart full of bliss and vision for their possible future together, he taps on her name.  “Ms. Kuo, guess who?” he deliberately lowers his voice down an octave when the call is finally connected.

“Oh please...ever heard of caller ID?” his girlfriend responds rhetorically, seemingly annoyed.

‘Tsk, you could have just played along,’ he wants to say.  Though, he supposes all beauties tend to have a tough temper.  He could live with that.

“Yifeng,” she tries to sound apologetic, but her tone somehow comes off as rather peeved instead.

His smile stiffens.  An oddly familiar feeling slowly itches its way to his heart.

“Anyway, I have given some thoughts—”

“But I don’t think our relationship is working out, so let’s break it off,” he finishes it for her and ends off with a morose sigh of defeat.  The warm fuzziness that he has felt and the life’s possibilities that he has dreamed up earlier are nothing but illusions yet again.  God just wouldn’t give him a break.

“Oh?  So you have it coming.  Good, that makes everything easier.”  Perhaps for a very brief moment she is shocked, but her strong desire to end things off quickly replaces her surprise in his foresight.  “Don’t call me from now on.  Bye—”

“Wait!  Can you think it over?” his last attempt to save what is already gone.  “Our three months anniversary is just in a few days…”

“Hm…let me think,” her pretense over the deliberation could not be more obvious.  “No.  Sayonara!”

“Hello?  Hello?”  He pulls the phone away and dials the number again, but it seems she has already put his number on the block list immediately after the call has ended.

Out of frustration, he kicks at the motorcycle only to inflict unnecessary pain upon his own foot.

Just when he assumes his day couldn’t get any worse, he hears a loud crash, follows by the familiar sound of sirens alarming off wildly.  He turns his attention to the direction of the sound and realizes that a vehicle has crashed its rear right into one of the bridge’s pillars.

His eyes widen at the sudden chaos before him.  “Holy…”

Suddenly recalling his duties as a police, his hand fumbles around his belt for the walkie talkie.  “PC98007, PC98007!” he shouts into the walkie talkie without realizing that he is holding it upside down.  “A vehicle collided on Waibaidu Bridge – call medic!  Call medic!”

The rear of the vehicle is ablaze and it is only a matter of time before the flames engulf the entire vehicle body and explode.

His mind is drawing a blank.  Although he is already in his fourth year on the job, luck has been shinning on him all this time and so, he has never dealt with such a severe accident before.  Heck, he hasn’t even got the chance to give a drunk driver a ticket yet.  Any hot-blooded lad would jump at the chance to showcase his skills in hope for a promotion, but not him. He is perfectly content just clocking in and clocking out with minimum effort while enjoying the maximum benefits of a ‘crime-fighting’ career.  Just as he wonders if the person inside has survived the crash, an outline of a man gets out of the vehicle and is staggering towards his direction.  He rushes over.

“Stay away!”

His body flinches at the sudden voice behind him.  He turns around and is stunned to see a man holding a gun is moving cautiously towards him – or rather, towards the victim of the car crash.  From the man’s posture and the way the gun is held, Yifeng could tell right away that he is a fellow policeman.  However, before he could process the situation fully, a strong hold chokes him out of breath temporarily.  When his vision becomes clear again, he is petrified at the sudden close proximity of a cold, steel handgun pointing firmly at his temple.  Though his peripheral vision, he recognizes that the gun the predator is holding as his own.

“Let go of him!”  William continues to take steady steps to close in the distance as he adjusts the gunpoint subtly.

“Manners, Chan!” the fugitive roars back.  He pushes the gunpoint hard against the traffic cop’s head.  “I have the upper hand now!  Drop your gun!”

William only holds the gun handle tighter.  His eyebrows are knitted close together.

“I said drop your gun!” the fugitive shifts the position of the gun a bit, seemingly ready to pull the trigger any time soon.  “Or, this goddamn cop will get it!”

“W-wait…!  Mister, careful here…” words escape Yifeng’s mouth out of reflex.  Cold sweats beam on his forehead.  The pounding of his heart drums rapidly against his ears.  His lips are becoming dry and chapped.  ‘Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t…’ his mind keeps rambling, but nothing helpful pops up.

“Drop your in’ gun,” the fugitive repeats madly.  “Now!”

After much reluctance, William lowers his gun and keeps a watchful eye on the criminal as he places it on the ground.

“Oh, you’re finally getting it,” the fugitive sneers.

“You won’t get away!” William announces suddenly, “I suggest you surrender—”

“Shut up and kick your gun to me!”

‘Why the would you provoke him now?!’  Despite the current predicament, Yifeng couldn’t help but stares at the civilian-clothed cop in disbelief.  ‘You’re gonna get me killed, you bastard!’ he would have rip off that face of impassive arrogance.

The fugitive halts the swift motion of the standardized police gun and kicks it behind him.  He smirks.  It’s only a matter of time before he could declare complete victory.

Yifeng feels his captor’s hold relaxes a bit.  Gulping down some saliva out of nervousness, he suggests, “M-mister, you don’t need me as a hostage now, so why not release me?”  Then, he adds, “I will make sure that in’ cop won’t get in your way – how about it?”

“Oh?  But aren’t you a cop as well?”

“Come on, Da-ge,” Yifeng deliberately uses a more familiar term to pull their psychological distance closer as he smiles nervously, “between you and that arrogant black face, of course I would choose your side.”  Then he adds, as he glares at the detective with evident spite, “Anyone would!”

William quirks an eyebrow in confusion at the traffic cop’s unexpected loathing.

Amused, the fugitive leans in and whispers in a tone of mockery, “But I don’t want to – You see, I have a big, big plan for you.”

“E-eh?” Yifeng is caught off-guard by the fugitive’s words.  Suddenly, the little tiger molar tooth that the fugitive displayed seems like that of a sinister vampire.

“Don’t try any funny business,” the fugitive warns the traffic cop.  He continues to hold the gun against the cop’s head as he takes out a sharp Swiss army knife and a mysterious spherical shaped wooden artifact.  A fierce dragon and a keen serpent are carved on it, and unmistakably in the distinctive fashion of the early Han dynasty.

William unconsciously clenches in a fist as he follows each movement of the criminal carefully with his hawk-like eyes.

The fugitive grins widely in arrogance at the detective.  “Don’t waste any more effort, Chan.  You will never catch me, and I will show you exactly why – a miracle!  Watch carefully!”

All the boasts and threats from the fugitives are deaf to the detective’s ears at this point for none of it is of any relevance.  He just needs to focus on every pertinent motion that is being processed and imprinted onto his mind at lightning speed.  Only the relevance shall stay.

“Put forward your left hand!” the fugitive orders Yifeng.

“D-da-ge, let’s not do this…”  The skin underneath Yifeng’s eyes twitches frantically.  His eyes dare not to leave the gleaming sharpness of the blade.

“Do it!”

Scared out of his wits, he shakenly puts forward his left hand as told.

One.

The fugitive lifts up the knife in victorious air.

The detective draws in a breath.

Two.

The clean, sharp blade glides down in one fast, swift motion similar to that of a Chinese hand-fan spreading.

Each movement dances ever more slowly in the detective’s mind.

Three.

The mysterious wooden piece pressured right underneath the back of the traffic cop’s palm as the knife comes into contact with the surface of his skin.

A droplet of blood falls directly onto the mysterious wooden piece as the traffic cop winces in pain.

‘Now!’ William decides at last.  Hesitation, if any, is thrown aside as he dashes towards the criminal.  Just at about a quarter of the way to where the fugitive stands, the detective leaps high into the air.

The two underneath have their eyes widened and mouth hanging, completely agape.

The sunlight behind the reckless detective is so blinding that he becomes nothing but a blackened silhouette to the two whose feet are still firmly planted on earth.

Yifeng finally snaps out of his mind and uses the opportunity to escape from the distracted fugitive’s grip the moment when William extends his leg, aiming directly for the fugitive’s head.

Alarmed that he no longer has a hostage as human shield and not enough time to hold the gun properly, the fugitive swings his knife frantically, hoping to stop the charging detective in the air.

Quickly, William retracts his leg, pushes all his strength, and swings his body to the right to avoid the sharp blade.  Unfortunately, the proximity between him and the fugitive is proven much too close for him to land unscratched.  In the split seconds just before he lands, he sees that mysterious artifact, engraved with a dragon and a serpent, glows ever dimly up in the air above the chaos when a droplet of fresh blood from the slash on his arm hits it.  The next moment, he realizes the strange artifact lands at his feet.  It is no longer glowing.  Then, he sees the fugitive and himself standing just a few feet in front of him.  He narrows his eyes in confusion.

Yifeng widens his eyes, completely dumbstruck.  He is certain that he has gotten away from this psychopath earlier.  So, why is this psychopath standing so close to him now?  He turns around and is stunned to see such a familiar figure just a short distance away.  His lips quiver but no words come out.

“Sh*t!” the fugitive curses in frustration.  He wants to shout out more words of profanity about his rotten luck, but seeing the two policemen are still seemingly frozen in spot due to the unexpected turn of event, he decides to make a dash from the place.

The sudden movement of the fugitive unwittingly jolts the detective’s attention back from the daunting bizarreness.  He resolves to focus on the task at hand and leaves the bizarre puzzle for later.  He picks up the artifact and looks at it apprehensively one more time before stuffing it inside the compartment around the belt that’s usually designated for a writing note pad.  He hasn’t worn this particularly uniform design since he got out of the academy.  But now is not the time for nostalgia.  He chases after the fugitive.

“Hey!  Don’t run away with my body!” Yifeng blurts out, even though his comprehension of the whole situation is still very fragmented.  It seems strange that his thought comes out in a voice different from his own.

William looks over his shoulder briefly.  Strange situation though it might be, he is not slowing down at all.  Instead, he shouts over, “Grab the guns!  We can’t let him get away!”

“Heh?”  It is definitely weird seeing his own image spitting out orders at himself, yet the tone is not like his own at all – even the facial expression (or rather, lack of) seems completely foreign.  Still, he carries out the order clumsily as he tries to locate the two guns at the scene of the bizarre incident.

It has been a fair chase on the Waibaidu Bridge.  However, the fugitive disappears as soon as he reaches the end of the historical, and often romanticized, Shanghai bridge and enters into the Huangpu district. 

William decelerates his pace and pants heavily.  It has been a long time since he has last felt physically weighed down.  He assumes the traffic cop doesn’t hit the gym very often.  Although, he also knows well that it is useless to chase blindly like this.

“Where’s he?” Yifeng catches up and panics when he couldn’t find the fugitive anywhere in sight.

William draws in a breath and closes his eyes, trying to map out the region in his mind.  Nanjing Road and The Bund are usually crowded with foreign tourists, looking to get a glimpse of Shanghai’s former glory as romanticized in many movies that portray the roaring 1920s to 1940s.  Meanwhile, Huaihai is highly populated with local citizens.  He acknowledges that the fugitive is not completely foolish, choosing to get lost in Huangpu over all other districts in Shanghai. 

However, he is certain that the fugitive is not going to any of the populated areas.  The crowds are nothing but a façade.  Based on the fugitive’s past tendency to challenge the law enforcement, the detective is confident that the fugitive is hiding in a place closer than any ordinary folk would think – at the England Embassy.  Due to the tough security around the embassy building especially during broad daylight, William concludes that the fugitive might not have enough time to break through the security to take another hostage, but might very well be hiding at the nearby apartments.  William finally flutters open his eyes and smirks, “I know exactly where he is.”

“Okay…” Yifeng raises an eyebrow in apprehension.  Despite that it’s his own face, of which he has seen more than a thousand times on mirrors of various shapes and sizes by now, he simply could not get accustomed to seeing such a cocky facial expression sported on his own face.

With no other choice but to go along with the detective’s theory, it doesn’t take long for them to find the fugitive hiding in an alley, attempting to break into one of the apartment suites.

“Hey!  Get down here!” Yifeng barks at the fugitive who is climbing on one of the pipes attached to the building.

Without warning, William grabs the gun in Yifeng’s hand and pulls the trigger.

Bang!

The bullet scratches the fugitive’s hand when it bounces off the metal pipe.

Yifeng has to cover his ears at the merciless loud bang of the gunshot.

Just as William has predicted, it is enough to make the fugitive loses his grip and falls to the ground.  Not wasting a second, he walks up and knees the fugitive hard in the stomach before grabbing at his shirt collar.

However, much to the two cops’ dismay, the familiar sound of sirens circles the area just before they get a proper chance to interrogate the fugitive, especially about their current, very much unbelievable, predicament.

11:58AM – Unit 7 Department, Hongkou Police Station

           Tic-toc, tic-toc…

That’s just the sound from one of the many clocks hanging impassively on the walls in hallway.

Tic-toc, tic-toc…

That’s the sound that most people would not take notice about as they bustle busily down the hallway and pass by each other just like that, let alone stopping simply at the unpleasant brushes of unfamiliar shoulders.

Tic-toc, tic-toc…

He has never found the travelling of time so painfully and aggravatingly audible until now.  The fidgeting of his sweating fingers and the anxiety on his naturally boyish face would have led others at the station in a state of utter shock if only their minds are not so occupied.  After all, his appearance is unmistakably that of the uprising star detective at the station, the pride of Unit 7 Department – William Chan.

Except, he is not their guy, not their superstar.

He is just an unfortunate imposter.

He is just Li Yifeng – an ordinary traffic cop.

‘…’ he wants to scream out his frustration.  This is completely insane.

“Calm down, Constable.”  The man besides him finally opens his eyes and uncrosses his arms.

“Calm down?” Yifeng echoes the words with disbelief.  He finds it eerie to see himself putting on a stoic face and talking in such a monotonous voice.  “Hey, Mr. Great Detective, we’re not simply switching clothes here.”

“We’re not,” William acknowledges plainly.  He side glances impassively at the face and body that used to belong to him, merely a couple of hours ago.  The variety of expressions (albeit most only ranges from anxiousness to frustration thus far) that he is witnessing are all foreign to him, despite knowing fully that it is his own face that he is staring at.

“Detective Chan.”  The both of them shoot up their heads at the sergeant who has just come out of the interrogation room.  The sergeant announces, deflated, “He wouldn't talk.  We need you to pry open his mouth.”

“Follow my lead,” William tells Yifeng quietly as he gets up.  He says to the sergeant in front of them, a colleague that he knows well enough but now has to keep a stranger distance from because of his current predicament, “I’d like to help out.”

“What?” the sergeant quirks an eyebrow at the unbelievable request.

Suppressing the hollowness of an imposter, Yifeng clears his throat and gets up.  “Let him.”

The sergeant shrugs and relents, “Whatever you say, Detective.”

The two reluctant imposters exchange glances once more before stepping into the confined investigation room.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Author's Note:  As stated in the foreword, I've decided to make this a short story (less than 5 chapters).  Theme song (aka the song that serves as an inspiration for this story):  Never Know by Jack Johnson.  Found the lyrics version just in case you want to sing along.  ^^