In unison, the six men Lau led switched to either their chest-mounted phones or glanced down at their PDAs, quietly and without the sound signature of a man with a Baby-On-Board sticker on his car and inability to operate a specialized weapon. Lau, meanwhile, used the time to whisper, ‘HUD on,’ in English and let the customised AR lenses come to life—exactly like an FPS videogame, with a minimalist red UI that stayed small but legible: bottom right showed a round-count for his Type-121, fitted with a recording round-count module for easier logging, bottom left held a stripped-down map with blue dots for allies, and the top line carried a time-over-date counter. ‘Not bad…’ Lau thought to himself, reminded of Cyberpunk 2077, as he popped open the phone mount on his ballistic vest, keyed in his Alessia passcode—his daughter’s birthday—on the iPhone 12 Pro. A 250711 later, he was into the HKPF Tracker app, still running in the background from before. He clicked the link to bring up the live feed, but just before it loaded he heard and saw one two DJI M40-XP drones spool up on the roof, rotors already spun, the crafts tilting once and then going full-boost at lightspeed to get scanning quicker in absolute silence. ‘Unit 11, video-feed from both DJIs are stable. Confirm EU and Gold Command’s visual on it, over…’ Lau said, clicking the push-to-talk module on the top-left of his armour vest. ‘Understood, 31…’ was CIB-A11’s response.

Lau approximated how many floors the drones were climbing as they ran a spring-like search pattern up to find the men Element One was looking for. It was a slow and exacting process, and it was not because the ICBC Tower was parallelogram-shaped from above, or the largest building, but because Citibank Plaza Tower, a big fat trapezoid from the air, sat in the way: forcing awkward and roundtrips. Luckily, there was two drones instead of one, meaning the search time wouldn’t be nearly as bad… or hopefully, made even better by the fact the drones were equipped with laser microphones to eavesdrop… provided they actually worked on first try, as most of the goodies Element One had were prototypes being fielded rather than proven kits. And 3 minutes later, Element One got it. ‘All stations, 40th floor south-facing, Drone 2 spotted a suspicious gathering. PID in progress…’ CIB-A11 said through everyone’s radio, and Lau watched the 480p footage as both drones close distance and adjust for a cleaner feed. Everyone caught a look into an office finished in white with grey carpet, more specifically a large desk space with 8 men and one positioned at the top, all sitting behind what looked like a small kitchen area. It was only a brief glimpse, because one man, appearing to be in his 40 or 50 and wearing a black suit, whom CIB was already running through facial recognition, reached for a concealed control and pressed a button that triggered the curtains to close automatically from side to side, cutting off any attempt at positive identification. ‘Failed ID attempt on count one, suspicious person in a black suit, deploying microphone…’ CIB-A13 said, and that voice belonged to Nigel Tsui himself.

SECURITY ISSUE - The Transgressive Crime Novel extract

ACT 1: UNPROVEN ANTIDOTE FOR DESTRUCTION

07/01/2026

538/3500 Pages To Go