Jade Dragon (6 page)

Monkey King flew them around the dagger-like shape of the China Bank
building, giving the sheath of protected airspace around the fluted
NeoGen pyramid nearby a wide berth. The rotorplane turned and made an
orbit of the YLHI tower. The company headquarters resembled a column of
creamy green jade rising like a pillar of heaven; bright ribs of lunar
steel studded the sheer walls, and at the level of the ninetieth floor
the ultramodern lines of the tower suddenly stopped. Capping the
building was a reproduction of a Qin Dynasty castle, deposited there
like something from an ancient legend. Only the discreet clusters of
satcomm dishes and ku-band antennae seemed out of place. As the flyer
approached, a helipad unfolded from a hidden balcony to accept them, a
bee settling into an open flower.

Alice read a message from her watch and beckoned Frankie. “Mr Tze will
receive you in the library.”

They were met by one of Monkey King’s counterparts. This one had a mask
of green with red and white detail, a little trim of gold here and
there. Frankie searched his mind and came up with a name: Deer Child, a
mountain guardian from an opera that he couldn’t recall the title of.
Deer Child was shorter and stockier than Monkey King, but they were cut
from the same cloth. The masked man had the same smooth gait and
effortless sense of menace about him.

Frankie followed Alice into the castle and Hong Kong vanished behind
him. Inside, the building was warm and close, full of the natural noise
of feet on stone floors and creaking wooden doors. Tapestries and art
hung on the walls, and there were suits of armour at each intersection
of corridor. Frankie wondered if they were more than they seemed; if an
alarm sounded, would they suddenly leave their plinths and stand to the
defence of the castle’s master?

He glimpsed other rooms as people passed them along the way, doors
opening and closing with flashes of glass and steel, banks of
holographic monitors and server farms. Behind others came the snapping
of wooden practice swords and the patterns of voices from sparring
fighters. They emerged in the library and Frankie wandered to the centre
of the room to get the measure of the place. Books lined every inch of
vertical space, rising far out of reach to the ceiling. Trios of
full-size terracotta soldiers, some holding weapons, guarded discreet
lamps in the corners of the room, looking on across the centuries with
blank stone faces. Frankie hesitated by the low table in the middle of
the library and something made his eyes fall to the oak platform. A box
made of brushed aluminium sat there, shiny and out of place.

From behind him there came the thud of a heavy door and an intake of
breath that was deep and sonorous.

“Francis,” said Mr Tze. “Welcome home. I am so sorry we were required to
meet under these terrible circumstances.”

The radiator complained as Ko turned the temperature up a notch or two,
the elderly pipes rumbling and knocking. He padded through the apartment
in his socks, the quiet routine of breakfast so as not to disturb his
sister ingrained in him. He microwaved a couple of meatpockets and made
strong tea. The atmosphere inside the apartment was patchy; where the
kitchen and the closet-sized bathroom lay against the outer wall, it was
chilly and damp from the rain; the two bedrooms and the living room—the
patch of space Nikita laughingly called “the lounge”—were warmer, closer
to the central courtyard in the middle of the block where caged heat
from the lower floors wafted upwards. The apartment felt gloomy and
confined, as if the resonance from their argument on the way home had
followed them in and leached into the walls. The sullen ambience in the
room was infectious.

Through the walls he could hear the woolly sounds of the Yip family next
door, the strident noise of the mother ordering the kids out to school
and the usual arguments in return. One of Ko’s other neighbours had told
him the Yip boys both had ADHD, but Ko was less inclined to be so
generous. The kids were just noisy, unruly and argumentative, and the
Yips and the Chens had come to loggerheads over it on many occasions.
Nikita didn’t help, with frequent bouts of playing her musichip
collection at ear-stunning volume. Plenty of times Ko had come home to
hear the strains of some Petya Tcherkassoff ballad reaching down the
stairwell from the eleventh floor. He hated that whiney sovpop. Ko’s
musical tastes ran to rapcore and PacRim turbine bands like Nine Milly
Meeta, 100 Yen or the Kanno Krew.

He glanced over his shoulder as Nikita’s door opened and she clattered
into the bathroom. Ko tried to think of more pleasant things as she went
through her regular purge ritual in there. Watery morning sunshine
filtered in through the peeling UV sheets on the window, casting a faint
cage of shadows across the floor where the safety bars crisscrossed
outside. Ko wandered over, nibbling at his food, letting the hot tea
warm his chilled fingers. In the dull glass he saw a frowning
reflection, and peered past it, scanning the street below. The wan
daylight revealed skinny tower blocks looking like something from the
building set of a patient but unimaginative child, tall rods of
polymerised stone growing out of the face of the Kowloon hillside, their
footprints barely enough to cover the acreage of a conventional two-tier
home like the ones in the walled enclaves. Through the gaps between the
other towers, Ko could spy parts of the city beneath its constant cowl
of yellow-grey smog. Soon that view would be gone forever. Another new
housing project was already sprouting on the hill, a series of con-apts
that would rise to twice the height of Ko’s block. Right now, they were
just greenish humps in the middle distance, fuzzy shapes like desert
cacti from the vat-grown bamboo scaffolds that concealed them. In a few
months they would be finished, and a hundred thousand new citizens would
feed into Hong Kong from across the border. The city had slowly been
advancing out from the bay for centuries, gradually consuming every bit
of spare land from the outlying New Territories. There would come a time
when the Hong Kong Free Economic Enterprise Quadrant would collide with
the ferrocrete wall that marked the edge of True China. Ko did not want
to be here when that happened; for a moment his brain flashed on that
idea, of he and Nikita as wizened little eldos, still here, still
fighting, but too old to go anywhere else.

He forced the thought away with a shudder and did the three-click finger
snap that made the television switch on. Ko paged through the channels
with the sound on mute, passing the multiple ZeeBeeCee feeds, Panda
Vision and NBO. Most of the stations were carrying clips from the new
Juno Qwan album and Ko chewed his lip. The singer had a weird
attract-repel quality to her, with the way she would yo-yo between
hi-fashion pop diva one day to gothic lolita the next. Ko would never
admit it, but he actually liked some of her stuff. She did this song—it
was a b-side, maybe?—called “Doppler Highway” that had just the right
kind of lonely in it, conjuring up the same melancholy freedom that Ko
got from a night ride through the hills. He hesitated, watching the
silent vid. Juno was wrapped in a holodress, the outfit morphing and
changing as she walked along a sun-dappled beach, planes of light
shifting to reveal just enough flesh that you knew she was naked
underneath. She moved over sand raked into geometric shapes and
water-smoothed stones. There were trains of letters and numbers on her
clothes, moving and warping. Cool, perfect blue waves lapped at her bare
feet and overhead was a cloudless cerulean sky. Juno’s smile was relaxed
and calm, but her eyes were a little sad, as if she felt sorry that you
were not there on that idyllic beach with her.

“I’m the perfect smile. Touch my thoughts and flow, there’s no world we
can’t know.” Nikita walked into the room, singing along with the silent
starlet. “I love her stuff. She’s so deep. Didn’t think she was your
type.”

“She’s not,” Ko changed the channel and found a weather report.

Nikita made a face and gathered her jacket off the threadbare sofa where
she had deposited it the night before. She produced a fold of crisp yuan
and held it out to him. “Rent money,” she explained. “There’s extra in
there, too.”

Ko made no move to take it. “Where’d you get that?”

She blew out a breath. “I don’t want to do this, Ko. Just take the damn
cash.”

He wanted to; part of him really wanted to say no more and let it go.
But that wasn’t how it was going to play out. Before he was even fully
aware of what he was doing, Ko’s mouth was running away and they were
sliding straight back into the same patterns they had followed since
they were children. “Let me guess, you were exceptionally good at
selling drinks in the Dot? Or perhaps you gave that bald loser a
blowjob—”

The slap came from nowhere and stung him with its ferocity; but the
anger in the swipe wasn’t reflected in his sister’s eyes. All he saw
there was fatigue. “You don’t have the right to lecture me on what I do,
Ko. You’re a thief, little brother, and you’re not a very good one at
that. If you grow the hell up, you might just understand enough to have
an opinion, but until then, shut up and
pay the rent!
”

He pointed at his chest. “Thief? What does that make you, Niki? You want
me to say it?”

“Don’t you dare…”

“You want me to call you what you are?” His voice was rising, and so was
the fury, coming on hot and strong. “I’m not the one behaving like a
child! Which of us is the one living in a fairy tale, sis? Who is the
one looking for a prince charming in a laser-cut suit?” He waved a hand
in front of her face. “I live in the real world, not the stupid plastic
dreamland those corp bastards do!”

“Wake up!” Nikita snapped. “Look around, Ko, the corps
are
the real
world! They
run
the real world! You’re not part of that machine, you
get hammered down!”

“I’d rather be poor and free than in their pockets!” he replied.

“And it shows! Look at you! You watch those stupid movies and you play
like you’re some hustler ronin, but you’re going nowhere! I’m making
something of myself, Ko.” She advanced and prodded him in the chest.
“I’m ready to do whatever I have to. You? You’ve got nothing but a bunch
of half-assed principles and a downward spiral.”

He tried to frame a reply but nothing came.

“I’m not ending up like…” Nikita stumbled over the words. “I’m not
going to stay here for the rest of my life. I’ve
got goals
.” She threw
the money at him and he caught it.

“You lie with pigs, you become dirty,” Ko said in a low voice. “Your
boyfriends at the Dot, it’s their kind that is screwing us all, not just
you and me, the whole damn planet! You want to be part of that?”

She snatched up her bag and drew a silver card from within. “I
am
part
of it, Ko. I’m connected.”

“What the hell is that?”

Nikita waved the smartcard in the air. Ko recognised the design as a
single use corporate security pass. When he was younger, he’d often
picked them from the pockets of drunk salarymen in the bar district. “I
wasn’t going to tell you because I know you’d blow your stack, but what
the hell, you’d find out eventually.” She leaned in. “I’m moving up, Ko.
I’ve got a patron.”

He swore explosively and grabbed at her, snatching the strap on her bag.
Nikita kept hold of the other end and an angry tug-of-war ensued. “I’m
not letting you go uptown! I forbid it!”

“You what?” she sneered. “You can’t order me around, Ko. I’m the eldest,
I do what I want to!”

“You stupid bitch—” The bag strap tore and the contents scattered on the
floor.

Nikita dropped to her knees, gathering up the stuff. Something plastic
flashed in her grip, a disc of bubble-packed capsules. Ko’s hand shot
out and he grabbed her wrist. He had height and weight over his sister,
and she squealed as he turned her arm the wrong way. “Stop it!”

Ko tore the packet from her hand. There were nine bubbles, three of
which had been emptied. The other six contained ice-blue pills made of
clear gelatine. They glistened in the sunlight, and the letters Z3N were
clearly visible on them. The packet bore no manufacturer’s markings.

“Give those back!”

Ko crushed the pack in his fist and turned a furious glare on his
sister. “You stupid, stupid bitch! Did he give them to you? That bald
bastard, was it him?”

“No—”

“I’ll fucking kill him. I’ll find that wageslave and run the fucker
down.”

“Those are mine.” Nikita shouted at him, and the words hit like a shock
of cold water.

“What?” Ko’s rage disintegrated.

“They’re mine, you idiot!” His sister pushed away from him; anger and
despair, frustration and regret framed her pretty face. “You are so
naive, Ko.”

The blue fluid seeped around his fingers from the cracked capsules.
Where it touched his skin, it tingled. Ko threw the packet into the
burner and ran his hands under the sink in the bathroom.

While he was there, he heard the front door slam, loud like a gunshot.

Tze advanced across the room and enveloped Frankie’s hand in his. Rough
skin, hard like old leather crossed the younger man’s pale office-worker
fingers. Tze leaned into him, and Frankie felt profoundly naked beneath
the man’s flinty gaze. The CEO of Yuk Lung had hard amber eyes set deep
in a face tanned by exposure. Tze wasn’t as tall as Frankie had been
expecting, but the man was thickset and broad across the chest. He
looked more like a wrestler than a corporate executive, and it wasn’t
hard to imagine him as the Mongol warrior some compared him too. Frankie
imagined Tze in horsehide and armour and knew he’d be as comfortable
with it as he was here and now in his spidersilk Tommy Nutter original.