Jade Dragon (15 page)

Ropé covered his derision with a sip of champagne.

When it was over, when the women began to clean themselves down, Deer
Child entered and dutifully handed Mr Tze a fresh robe.

“I have ascertained the origin of the stolen smartcard,” said the Mask.
“It belonged to a grade three accounts executive in Section F. What
manner of severance package would you prefer me to implement?”

Tze gestured at the bloody walls. “Bring him up here. Keep him for our
next recreation.”

“As you wish.” Deer Child gave a slight incline of his impassive
porcelain face toward Nikita’s pale, trembling form. “Disposal for this
one?”

Tze considered the question for a moment. “No,” he said finally. “Throw
her back. An object lesson to be seen and considered by any other
pickpockets or grade three executives with poor judgement.”

“Your will.” Deer Child picked up the catatonic girl and carried her
away.

Tze watched them go, fingering the spot where the wound in his chest had
already healed.

See these mighty buildings, all shall be torn down, shattered,
splintered, split.

[static]

The Earth herself will tremble and the masses will go hungry.

Their bellies bloated, skins hanging in folds.

The sky will open upon itself unto darkness.

These are the birth pains. No flesh will be spared.

No flesh will be [static]

No lives will be spared but for the Elect. No lives but the Cabal. And
they will know The Coming.

And the Beast will task his agents to a mission to gather together
their cohorts.

The city of the sleepers will dream in their name, [static] war between
the agents of blood will conclude. The new void will rise to smother the
old.

Intercepted transmission #5932–02, recorded by Maritime Offensive Force
submersible Ameratsu, broadcast location unknown.

Ko had the small of his back pressed into the corner of the holding
cell, legs pulled up on the foam cot, knees to his chest, his head flat
against the cold wall. With mechanical boredom he was ripping pea-sized
balls of material from the mattress and flicking them across the short
distance to the stainless steel toilet bolted on the far wall. The dots
of foam landed in the murky, stinking bowl one after another. The
plastic-coated sides of the cell were made of some kind of wipe-clean
germicidal supersynthetic that was way past the need for replacement.
Decades of enterprising criminals had whiled away their confinements
scoring their names into the plastic or leaving obscenities that railed
at their petty injustices. Mostly, the graffiti was of the kind that
suggested certain law officers engage in anatomical impossibilities, or
attempt sexual congress with their mothers.

The depressing familiarity of the narrow room weighed down on the young
man, and he masked a heartfelt sigh with a move of his hand, letting his
fingers wander across his face and through the dark spikes of his hair.
Ko carefully probed the places on his ribs and legs where the coppers
had struck him. There would be a colourful horde of bruises there to
greet him when he undressed.

He considered Second Lei for a moment. How badly had he punished that
half-witted fool for his arrogance? Something had opened a floodgate to
every jibe and ridicule Ko had ever turned a blind eye to. He’d always
thought he was big enough, cool enough to rise above that sort of thing;
Ko imagined that the slights and snipes just rolled off him, vanished
into the air. But that wasn’t how it went at all. On some level, deep in
his marrow, he remembered every one—and when the moment came, they
returned in a hurricane of fury. Even now, here in this small place,
hurting and cramped, a faint smile came to Ko’s lips as he thought of
how much he had enjoyed beating seven shades of shit out of that fat
prick. The smile faded as he imagined what Poon and the Cheungs and the
others would say about it, though. Ko had broken a Rule. Quite how or
where the Rules got codified or created was beyond him. Somehow, the
group would unconsciously come to accept that a certain thing was just
the way it was, that certain words or deeds would not come to pass
within the sphere of their tribe. Mouthy, overconfident Second was a
living avatar of that mindset. He was the self-styled big dog of the Pak
Sha Road Posse, a braggart whose only real superiority over the rest of
the gang was that he had slightly more money than the rest of them.
Truth be known, if Second was so damn cool, then why the hell was he
hanging out on street corners, fucking kogals and hustling Z3N? Second’s
ambition ranged to getting recruited into the 14K triad and that was
about it. Ko didn’t dwell on the fact that his own life goals were even
less defined.

The weird state of grace in the group, the idiotic dynamic of it, the
whole thing seemed progressively dumber the longer Ko thought about it.
Second didn’t deserve to be the top gun. He had a good car, sure, but he
wasn’t that hot on the road; he was like the annoying kid who owned the
ball when you wanted a kickaround. You had to let him play and throw his
weight about, just because he could take it home if he wanted to.
Everyone just turned a blind eye to it, they just let it go because it
was easier to eat his shit and ignore it than it was to deal with the
alternative. And now, Ko had crossed that line and extradited himself
from the only friends he had.

“Friends? That’s a joke.”

He saw it now, plain as daylight. It was inevitable that one day the
button would have been pushed, that Ko would lose it and turn the kung
fu he’d learnt under Sifu Lee’s tutelage on the supercilious asshole.
Second hadn’t even put up a good fight. If the police hadn’t come along,
there was no telling how it might have ended.

He glanced up and there was Feng, rail-thin and glum, standing in the
opposite corner of the cell. “Those people are worthless,” said the
swordsman. “Be glad you’ve left them behind. You were wasting your life
with them.”

Ko wanted to be; but instead Feng’s words annoyed him. “I don’t want
another bloody lecture from beyond the grave.”

“You know it isn’t a lie. Those fools were all wastrels.”

“And you’re not?” Ko snapped, the anger of the evening returning to him.
“The proud, noble ancestor, warrior of the ancient days?” He mimicked
Feng’s voice. “Things were better in my time. We had honour and courage.
Did you shit! You’re just as bad as me, greedy and self-indulgent!”

Feng’s face clouded. “Don’t take it out on me because you’re a failure,
boy!”

“Why? What are you gonna do, haunt me some more?” Ko shook his head.
“You ain’t gonna do that, who would you get to buy you smokes?”

In spite of himself, the swordsman licked his lips.

Ko’s head drooped, his anger fading. “Ah, screw it. This is it.” He
prodded the ragged mattress with a finger. “Enough is enough. I’m
getting out of here. I’m sick of living like this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This place, Hong Kong. I’m done. I’m going to escape from this city
even if it kills me.” He leaned forward. “I’m going to get money and go,
take Nikita and leave it behind.”

“How will you do that, exactly? You’ve got, what? A dozen yuan to your
name?”

Ko gave Feng a hard look. “I’ll find a way.”

The warrior’s head snapped up to face the heavy steel door. “Company.”

The observation slot in the metal hatch irised open to reveal a
bored-looking trooper in APRC fatigues behind an inch of armoured glass.
“On your feet, citizen.”

Frankie rolled over as gently as he could manage, keeping his eyes
closed. He wanted to make sure that it hadn’t been some kind of strange
fever-dream, a weird melange of fantasy created by too much jetlag and
too little sleep; but no, as impossible as it seemed, there she was at
his side. Her chest, unblemished like newly fallen snow, rose and fell
above the edge of the silk sheets, and gentle breaths escaped the pursed
flower of her lips. Juno Qwan lay naked beside him, as stunning in
repose as she was on the billboards around the city.

“Wah.” Frankie whispered, and a grin emerged on his face as the evening
rewound in his mind’s eye. They had fallen into the apartment entwined
around one another, a peculiar hunger for human contact compelling them.
Her kisses were electric on his lips and her skin, her perfect flawless
skin, rose up under his touch. She discarded clothes worth more than a
year of his former salary in ragged heaps as they crossed the lounge.
With steady hands, she steered him toward the bedroom. They fell into
each other, and with the lights of the city cast through the windows of
the chamber, Frankie and Juno had made love, orbiting the room until
they set down on the bed and began again.

He saw it in snapshots: the strobe of a passing advertisement blimp
painting red and blue across her breasts as her back arched. Her hands
on him, guiding him in. Juno’s hair, free and wild, crossing his chest.
The taste of her. The sparkling chemical impact as they met orgasm
together, synchronised and stormy. Everything else but her seemed faint
and pale in comparison, faded images held against a vivid holograph.

Frankie felt the lazy beginnings of an erection as the fresh memories
surfaced; but there was more to it than the sex. He felt strange, a
peculiar sense of ease here with her, a realisation that there had been
a missing piece to his life and now here she was, completing him. He
shook his head and looked away, smirking. Where did that come from? he
wondered, I’m mooning like some love struck idiot!

Dawn was coming up over the skyline of Hong Kong Island, turning the
mirrored towers honey gold. The light moved across the walls of Alan’s
former apartment, illuminating his tasteful Mondrian prints. Carefully,
Frankie slid himself out of the bed without disturbing Juno’s sleep and
padded across the room, grabbing a dressing gown. He gave her another
look before he went into the bathroom, watching her at rest there. Man,
she is gorgeous!

But what was going to happen next? Was it possible that a guy like him
could actually have some kind of a realistic relationship with a woman
like her, a pop star whose face was on the bedroom walls of a million
teenagers? Hadn’t he seen something last month on Tiplady’s screamsheet,
about Juno dating Brook Beckham? Maybe this would be a one-night thing
for her, an amusement park ride, there and then gone. Something for him
to tell his grandkids about—yeah, Juno and me, we had a thing—but
nothing real. When he thought of it like that, it made Frankie’s chest
ache. He didn’t want it to end that way, wham bam thank you salaryman.
He thought of the look in her eyes when they kissed, the melancholy, the
loneliness. It made him want to hold and protect her. She wanted more
than that, he was sure of it. He saw the mirror of his own isolation in
her, the same disconnection, the same darkness.

Darkness. Frankie looked into his reflection over the bathroom sink and
frowned. Now he found his thoughts drifting back, past the thrills of
last night and into disturbing recollections of the party at the YLHI
tower. The sense-memory of blood came back to him with such force, for a
moment he gripped at his hand, convinced the knife cuts had opened up
again. Half-seen things began to unfold at the corners of his vision,
and Frankie snapped his fingers to halt them, shaking the thoughts away.
Forget that. I’m here now. With her. Not my business.

He went to work washing his face, then halted when he couldn’t locate
any soap. There was a cabinet within arm’s reach and he peered inside.
Rooting through dozens of bottles of expensive aftershave and skin
balms, his fingers closed around a plastic disc. He brought it to eye
level and peered at the object.

Inside the coin-sized case was a memory spike, and on the flag of its
tail was a single word printed in tiny characters.

Brother.

The police trooper walked Ko through the detention section and up the
broad stairs to the main level of the precinct house. The place was
alive with the morning shift, young men in green uniforms and slow-eyed
older guys who had the paunchy, ex-boxer look of career detectives. The
actinic glow of dozens of monitor screens gave the place a chilly look
at odds with the sweat-warm temperature. It was a single open room
fenced off into threadbare cubicles with proper offices boxed off around
the outer walls. Watery sunshine leached from skylights across the
ceiling. The station was a mess of retrofitted Twenty-first century
technology and clumsy beat cop hardware from the Eighties, fat plastic
telephones side-by-side with datascreens.

A squad of Special Duties Unit constables were gathered in front of a
stuttering holotank as he passed them by. The men were all featureless
beneath full spectrum gas masks and the blank bands of optical rigs.
They wore matte black clamshell armour festooned with snap-clips for
ammunition packs, grenades, heartbeat sensors and leaflet dispensers. On
their backs were the sponsorship logos from their corporate partners, a
pattern of symbols like those on the jumpsuits of arena drivers but
rendered in discreet grey-on-black. They carried guns that blinked and
whirred in standby modes. The heads of the SDU men bobbed and moved as
they talked among themselves, but Ko heard nothing; their helmets were
sound-sealed and they communicated on encrypted radio frequencies.

By contrast the trooper who nudged Ko along the way was at the opposite
end of the spectrum. He had the puppy-fat and slightly moronic look of a
mainland country hick, filling out the dull khaki uniform of the Army of
the People’s Republic of China, Incorporated. There was a holster at his
waist and in there, Ko knew, was a palmprint encoded CNI 10mm revolver.
He’d seen the damage those pistols wrought on human flesh more times
than he liked. The copper stopped him outside an office and rapped
smartly on the door. A voice inside called out and the trooper jerked a
thumb. Ko sighed and entered.