Jade Dragon

9. Days of Being Wild

There were entire microcommunities living within the confines of Ocean Terminal. People crammed into the spun ferrocrete dorm blocks retrofitted to the upper decks, if they were rich enough, and beneath the waterline if they were the poorer folks. Parts of the terminal were turned over to maintaining the armoured corporate liners that rolled in from the South China Sea bristling with anti-pirate hardware, or the exclusive submersible party boats that sailed about the Golden Triangle on endless loops of debauchery. A liner was there today-the NeoGen Delphi, out of Osaka. Her decks were crammed with salarymen and their one-partner, one-child families, forbidden from disembarking but free to observe the city from their sealed viewing bubbles. While the NeoGen wageslaves looked down, the people who lived and worked in Ocean Terminal looked up. Almost everyone in the terminal was an employee of the Chinese State Corporation, never without the subtle red bracelet on their wrists bearing the happy face of the CSC’s Panda spokestoon Di-Di. The smiling bear beamed down from the walls of the dorms, above the school clutches and the clinics, inside the toilets and shared washrooms. The Panda provided; the terminal complex was a city-within-a-city, wrapped around the edge of Tsim Sha Tsui on Kowloon side, extending out into the bay like a giant growth of smooth white fungus. The Panda didn’t encourage people to quit life inside the terminal, once they’d been born into it-after all, why venture outside when the place you lived in had it all? It wasn’t uncommon for people to be born, to live and work and then perish without ever having crossed outside the boundaries of the massive mallplex. Ocean Terminal had grown so large that it had its own microclimate, its own emerging subculture. People living outside the ’plex in Kowloon called the residents “termites” and made fun of them on the late night comedy vids; the Panda’s people in turn watched the rest of Hong Kong go in and out of the thousands of stores and entertainment centres, and laughed amongst themselves as they took their money.

There were a lot of stories about Ocean Terminal; that it would one day break off and become an island, or expand to smother the whole southerly tip of the New Territories; some said there were gangcults on the lower levels who traded in human cargo, and indeed the APRC would make vague but unspecific comments when the question of abductions came up; others said that the Panda salted the drinking water in there with chemicals that made you need less sleep, so you could work more. But the story that kept circulating on the screamsheets, the one that had recently risen to the surface and failed to fade away, was about Juno Qwan.

She kept her private life private, and in interviews Juno would often give a coy smile and ask people to respect her wishes. That did nothing to deter the armies of stringers and newsnets eager to fill vid-time and fax pages with every iota of data they could unearth about the pop star. The rumour was that Juno was a former Panda Girl, a termite chick spotted by a talento hunter from RedWhiteBlue during a shopping expedition. The young Qwan, bussing tables at a Burger Konig and singing in that crystal clear voice, had been plucked from obscurity and thrust into the global spotlight.

It made for great copy and it played big with the natives in Hong Kong, that whole “local girl does good” angle. The odd thing was, there were forty-three Burger Konig franchises within the mallplex, but none of the managers had ever admitted to having the pre-famous Juno on their waitstaff. Reporters who tried to track down the fast food joint she worked at got dissimilar answers, conflicting shots of different yellow and blue storefronts for their webcasts; and if you scratched the surface, dug a little deeper, it was hard to find anything about the girl before her explosive debut at the top of the charts. But then the termites were terrible that way, weren’t they? Not very talkative to outsiders, a bit slow. They trusted in the Panda, and like everyone else who cheered Juno’s limobus as it slid to a halt on Canton Road, they had short memories. They didn’t remember the other performers that had topped the charts two, three, four years ago. Lisle Yep; TriniTriniTrini; Cressida; the Lovely Angels. Musichips bearing the names of these idols didn’t even appear in the bargain bins anymore; they’d been crushed and used for landfill.

Juno stepped out into a chattering swarm of camera drones and photographers, beaming her smile and casting out handfuls of kisses to the crowds. Heywood Rope hovered at her side, the careful look on his face never changing, the distance from Juno’s shoulder never lengthening. Every gallery and balcony was packed, and below piezoplastic barriers corralled the fans that had been there since the night before, hands clasping the rails, on tiptoe, desperate for any breath of her. A CSC agent from the terminal manager’s office presented her with a bunch of flowers and a plush toy version of Di-Di. Juno gave it a coquettish hug and twirled it around in her arms. Her audience ate it up.

No one thought of the others who had gone before her, who had played the same kinds of songs and offered the same kind of hopeful distraction to the same kind of people. They loved Juno today, and in that moment it seemed like they would love her forever.

Fixx had a sour taste in his mouth, and his lip twisted. It wasn’t the mud-coloured slurry that Burger Konig called coffee. There was a taint on the air like rancid meat. He pushed the half-finished drink away from him across the cracked plastic table, suppressing a shiver even though the interior of Ocean Terminal was always a summery thirty-five degrees. For a moment, the ghost of the sensation he’d felt at the Hyperdome was about him, there and then gone. He glanced around at the laughing, clapping people. Their faces were the same as the fans in Newer Orleans, they shared the distant look in their eyes, desperate to capture some tiny fragment of Juno Qwan.

On this level, the view of the singer was decent. She was talking into a handheld microphone and waving. The crowds called to her, and even the cocky cluster of go-gangers drifting near the open patio couldn’t help but crack smiles. Fixx shifted to get a better angle and adjusted the gain on his espex. He took a breath, one hand dipping into his pocket to finger the bones, collapsing his view of the world down to the space between him and her. Fixx let Juno’s aura find its way to him, gentle and slow. He forced away the ill scents in the air, concentrating on the woman.

He’d had one of the waking dreams again. It came as he took the tunnel beneath the bay, the car dipping into the red-lit corridor, torrents of colour streaming over him. In there he’d seen webs come from nowhere, the reaching arms of things distant and older than space. They were gossamer, vanishing when he put his full attention to them; in among the ghosts he heard a woman screaming, tasted the bitter scent of things dark and alien.

“Juno,” he rumbled. It kept coming back to her.

She was singing, dancing through a rendition of “Capsule Lover” while overhead screens displayed directionless, watery vistas all blue and inviting. The waves became words: We Are Free, Break The Dark, Unstoppable. Fixx saw the aurora of Juno’s spirit, the faintest Kirlian glow about the woman. It was different.

He worried the bones a little more. Wrong. That is wrong. Fixx looked her in the eye at the Hyperdome, in that second of connection he had known Juno Qwan. That was the gift the loas gave him, the Sight. He could see a man and find the colour of his soul, turn it one way to mark a quarry or another to know a man’s intention. It had never failed him.

But the woman, the starlet down there wore a different aura from the morose girl he had faced in the stadium. Fixx frowned. It wasn’t like she was an impostor or someone disguised-no, he would have seen through that. Even a twin would have been visible to him. The colours of her were the same, but just wrong. Altered. Different. The experience was so new to him he couldn’t frame it in his mind. He knew with sudden conviction that he had never laid eyes on the girl on stage before.

“Who are you?” The words slipped from his mouth. Fixx shifted, for one instant his attention elsewhere, and bumped into one of the go-gangers, a skinny kid with a wired look and a wifebeater top.

The punk made a face and cocked his head. “Watch it, gwailo.”

There were three others, two who were obviously brothers. They exchanged loaded looks and the bigger one sneered. “Never saw a ‘white ghost’ as dark as him.”

“Break the dark,” mumbled the shorter one, tracing his fingers down to a bulge in his jacket pocket.

Fixx was back in the moment now. There was ample room on the terrace of the burger bar for trouble to unfold, if things went that way. He watched the first punk carefully; he would be the one to start it.

“You like Juno, huh?” said the skinny kid. “You like looking at our girl?” He stepped closer, looking Fixx up and down.

The sanctioned operative stayed very still. In the past, he’d seen what happened when a man made the mistake of underestimating packrats like these. In Mexico City, Fixx saw a rival gutted by a horde of Little Zulus, a fellow twice his weight taken apart by children under the age of ten. What kids lacked in experience they tended to make up for with speed and enthusiasm.

The last of the four finally spoke. “You know what I think? I reckon this guy doesn’t like Juno at all.”

Fixx, with slow and careful movements, stood up and smoothed the front of his coat. There was a flicker of concern on the face of the younger brother as he came up to his full height, but the other three were stone-faced. This was not going to end well. Nonetheless, Fixx felt compelled to try. “I’m a big fan,” he said. “She’s a dream come true.”

Big Brother made a flicky gesture that failed to get a reaction from him. “Gau’s right. This hwoon dahn, I bet he’s A4.” He approached. “Am I right, hwoon dahn? You here to mess with the gig like you did over there?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the ocean.

Fixx showed teeth. “I know what those words mean.”

“Yeah?” snarled the skinny one, getting into the swing of things, pointing his finger. “Do you know what these ones mean too? Fuck off ni-”

He moved. The troublemaker was suddenly on his knees and smothering a scream, his index finger pointing the wrong way where Fixx had snapped it like a twig. “Now, boys,” he said. “Let’s not say anythin’ we might regret. ”

The brothers came at him, the one called Gau blinking in surprise. From out of nowhere they materialised wicked balisong knives and cut high and low. For go-gangers, they were quick.

Fixx had the SunKings on him, but it was a safe bet that Ocean Terminal’s security would go wild at the sound of a gunshot. The mere fact that these boys had been able to freely enter with edged weapons told the op that the Panda probably turned a blind eye to the odd stabbing, as long as the shoppers weren’t deterred. Similarly, the flexsword would be too showy, would draw too much attention. He decided to remain barehanded. It would be good practice.

The big brother’s knife was one of those ostentatious toys with the faux-tribal laser etching on it, a blade with candy-colour anodization. Fixx caught his wrist and held it there for a moment while he used a sharp side kick to hobble the younger brother. Gau was pulling a spike-chain from his belt as Fixx turned the big brother’s hands the wrong way. He lost the knife and the op heard it clatter away across the table.

Skinny was getting to his feet, his face all puffy and crimson. Below them, Juno had gone into a powerful rendition of “Shade Me”, the crowd clapping along with the beat. “Unstoppable!” said the kid. “Break… Break the dark!”

Fixx drew the big brother in and crossed over his free hand; his elbow collided with the punk’s face and broke his nose with a solid crack. A fan of blood issued out of his nostrils and dribbled down his chin. Fixx reversed his grip and hit him again, this time with the back of his hand. He pulled the blow-but only a little-and sent the big brother down.

Gau threw the spike-chain at him, a glittering arc of mercury cutting air. It made a low whoop as it crossed the space before him. Fixx dropped and spun, ducking under the reach of the weapon, and stepped closer. Gau reversed the move, whipping the chain around his neck and swapping ends. Clever.

The skinny kid was using his off-hand to finger a lanyard around his neck; he wasn’t a threat for the moment. The younger brother was turning, trying to keep on Fixx’s periphery while Gau used the chain to lash him. He was limping where he’d been kicked and it made him slow. Fixx saw him telegraph a move, the lunge coming in his shoulders before he did it. The op swept his hand across the table, catching the cup of disgusting coffee. He tossed it and a steaming streak of fluid spattered on the punk’s face and chest.

The chain thrummed at his head and Fixx shifted. All at once he felt his amusement with this little diversion fade. He snatched the end of Gau s weapon out of the air, ignoring the bite of pain from the cobra-tooth head, and yanked it. Gau didn’t let go quickly enough and was reeled off his feet. Fixx met him with a hammer blow punch that broke ribs and set him on the deck, choking.

Wiping searing hot coffee from his face, the remaining brother was distracted from the dark shape that came at him, coat flaring open in black raptor wings. Fixx used a throat grab to choke a lungful from the kid and then dropped him into a vacant chair. He took the boy’s knife-another gaudy weapon that looked like it came out of an arcade gatchapon game-and snapped it in two.

Skinny had recovered a little and stood blinking owlishly, waving a spade-shaped push dagger. “Ghost you,” he spat, pain making his voice rise. “I’m unstoppable…”

From the corner of his eye, Fixx caught sight of one of the glowing billboards, the trains of gossamer words fading in and out. He paused, turning his Sight on the punk; not the full strength of it, mind, just a little inch’s worth. The go-ganger was heavy with pollution, an oily blue swirling down deep in the wells of his irises. He’d seen the same on people in Newer Orleans, and sometimes, in the daydreams. He could sense it there running through his veins, the indigo taint of Z3N. The boy wilted under the hard-eyed gaze, the dagger drooping.

Fixx mulled over the idea of putting him down; but then in the distance he spotted the floating blobs of CSC security mobiles coming up for a look-see. He left the punk behind and melted into the crowds.

On the giant datascreens Juno came to the end of her set and the adulation from her audience echoed around the mallplex atrium like captured thunder.

Mr Tze had a private elevator set into the corner of the Yuk Lung Tower that faced the city proper and the span of the bay. Through thick armoured glass he could view Hong Kong as he ascended or descended the gleaming flanks of the corporate skyscraper. He liked to take a place just an inch from the bowed window; there, it seemed as if he were some powerful ghost-lord coming down from heaven, the city rising up to meet him in supplication. Such a conceit amused him, it brought the semblance of a smile to the hard lines of his warrior face.

Tze allowed no one to speak during the elevator journeys. He made it a point of law that there be silence for the short duration, keeping the moment as an oasis of tranquillity wherein he could marshal his thoughts. The Masks, as inventive as ever, would communicate with one another via sign language if the matter required it. Behind him now, Deer Child and Blue Snake, one of the female guardians, discussed the CEO’s security protocols with efficient twists of finger and arm motions. There were many things that clamoured for his attention, matters pressing as diverse as the effects of an arctic earthquake on YLHI’s seabed oilrigs to the issue of a local triad leader who was not showing the proper level of deference. But he found it hard to dwell on such trivia, not when the Great Pattern was coming together.

If he concentrated hard enough on it, Tze could find a small knot of boyish anticipation hiding the depths of his soul, past his careful, most serious persona. After so long spent in service to the core goal of the Cabal, at last he would see it come to its fruition. The idea was as breathtaking now as it had been when he first understood the scope of it, when the members had taken that first meeting in the ruins of a small town in the Gobi Desert. In that place, as they walked about inside hazmat suits turning over glassy fulgurites fused from sand, finding the bodies of couples merged into dead amalgams of flesh, Tze had been touched by truth. The knowing had set him free.

There, they picked through the remains of the failed summoning, they read the cantrips and reviewed the splinters of tape that had not been obliterated in the thermal bloom. They came to understand the mistakes that had been made. Tze, in particular, had embraced the challenge with the fresh, untrammelled zeal of a convert. It was nothing less than the key to the mastery of the human soul that was being offered to them. It dwarfed the dreams of empire that Tze nursed. The Great Ones offered not just the earthly powers of prowess, of wealth and influence-those Tze had earned already-but more. The road marked out by the King of Rapture was the gateway to lordship over the most primal of human emotions; desire.

Tze felt that now, a need so great it made his blood ache. It was sweet, a perfect salve for the ills that had coloured his existence. Oh, his had not been a life of tragic circumstances and terrible hardship, far from it. Tze had grown to manhood in the bosom of a moneyed mainland clan, fed and educated with the finest that could be bought. It was there he had come to understand the full might of intemperance, that the majesty of a man flowed not just from the breadth of his appetites, but also from the extremes to which he would be willing to take them. It was only on the edges of what lesser types called “morality”, beyond abstract, foolish concepts like “ethics” where a man could honestly know himself. And in that knowing would come mastery, not just of the self, but of others. All others.

He had no words for it then, in the days when they called him Black Tze behind his back, and scattered like birds when he came to take prey. But it made him strong; and eventually Tze came into the orbit of people who could open the way to him. The Gates of Sensation unlocked to his touch, and the ennui that had threatened to engulf him was wiped away. So much had changed since then. Tze’s marriage to the Cabal was a second birth, a gift giving that he would soon repay with the lives of the world.

He pressed his hands to the window. It was fitting that it would begin here, birthing from the skies above this city. When it was done, when Hong Kong was ablaze as New Gomorrah, he would be the one to ride the Jade Dragon’s back and take the first succulent taste of the world’s fresh terror.

The light outside the lift vanished as the elevator dropped past the lobby atrium and through the basement sublevels. Tze caught a warped glimpse of his own face in the darkness beyond the glass and paused to wipe a thin line of drool from the corner of his mouth with a silk handkerchief.

With a chime, the lift doors opened and the Masks moved with him into the underground car park. Tze took three steps from the elevator before he stopped abruptly. “Intruder…”

It was only when he hid himself in the back of the delivery truck that Ko realised Feng wasn’t with him. He threw a worried glance up at the gap beneath the roller door and saw the swordsman as the vehicle pulled from the kerb. Feng turned his face away, like he was sad and angry all at once.

For a moment Ko was upset, but then he mashed that feeling down with the hammer of his churning rage. One thought of Nikita beneath the webs of life-support sensors and he was high with fury The anger had shifted and changed since he left the hospital. At first impotent and directionless, the call from the salaryman had provided him with sudden, perfect clarity. Now Ko was aimed like a laser, he had a name to give form to his pain. This Mr Tze, this phantom creep with his cashwhore flunkies, he was where the blame lay. That the guy on the phone from the expressway might have been playing him, maybe lying to Ko to get him jumping through hoops, that was something that the go-ganger never gave a moment to consider. This was not a matter of careful reflection and thought. Ko was a loosed missile, homing in on a target. He could not see past the moment of his rage’s release, destruction looming large in his mind. The thief had never felt the urge to commit murder so strongly in his entire life. Every other consideration was secondary to that.

Vengeance. This man is going to pay.

In a back street lock-up in So Uk, he turned over crates of old engine parts and cartons of fake Peacefuls cigarettes, dragging an oily toolbox from a shadowed corner. Inside there were two Beretta automatics and fistfuls of hollowpoint bullets rolling loose. Generally, guns were a last-ditch tool for go-gangers, the street punk code short on firearms and long on bare-hand fighting or bladed weapons. It was a holdover from when the gun was seen as a badge, something you earned the right to carry only when you stepped up to join the Bamboo Union or the 14K as a Red Pole. The triads and the cops didn’t like the gangers having guns; those were toys for the big boys. Ko loaded all the clips he had and weighed the weapons in his grip. The gun oil smell reminded him of his father, but he forced away any thought of that before the man’s face could fully form in his mind’s eye. In the back of the truck, he took out the guns again and looked at them. They hadn’t been fired for months, lying there in the dark wrapped in greasy rags, and now it was too late to test them.

Ko raised the weapons to shoulder height and sighted down the barrels. He had seen a picture of Tze, just once, on the cover of the HK Herald. He remembered it clearly because it was such a rarity, some photographer catching a split-second glimpse of the man. There had been a story that the guy who took the still vanished off the street the following day; so it went, the Herald had been sent more pictures, this time of the photographer, but not in the kind of state they could print in a national newspaper.

Ko’s face was a mask of concentration. He drew his focus inward, waiting. Now he lived on a clock from second to second, his mind framed on that face and nothing else. The robot truck rumbled through the security gate of the Yuk Lung tower and rolled down the incline to the lower levels.

“Tze!” Ko burst from the shadows of a concrete stanchion close to the CEO’s idling limo and opened fire, the pistols slamming out shots.

Deer Child reacted instantly, dragging Tze behind him and stepping into the line of the fire. Many of Ko’s bullets went wide, smashing into the walls and skipping off the limo, but a handful of rounds struck the chest of the bodyguard and a single shot fractured the perfect sheen of Deer Child’s porcelain opera mask. The guardian stumbled backwards, bleeding heavily.

One of the Berettas made a high-pitched noise and jammed. Ko let it drop and kept on firing, brass casings glinting as they ejected into the air.

Blue Snake produced a series of throwing knives from concealed wrist holsters and threw them at Ko. The kid was quick enough to dodge one, but not enough to avoid the second. The lightweight stiletto hit Ko in the sternum and threw him to the ground with the force of a freight train. Ko lost the other gun and lay there, wheezing.

Seconds had elapsed. Tze disentangled himself from Deer Child’s twitching form and found the duty security officer; neither he nor his men had got off a shot.

“Sir, I-” he began, his face flushed. Blue Snake had another knife, and she slit the man’s throat with it. Tze walked on to where Ko had fallen. He paused to brush a speck of lint off his suit as Blue Snake hauled the youth off the ground.

Tze examined him. “Ah, the folly of youth.” He leaned closer. “Do you know why no one ever tries to take me out, boy?” He smiled. “Because no one is that stupid. Except you, of course.”

“Go,” Ko managed. “Fuck yourself.” He spat a mouthful of blood and spittle into Tze s face.

The older man carefully wiped it away, and then licked his fingers, smiling. “That fat fool running the 14K… I think perhaps he can earn his way back into my good graces with this little urchin.”

“Sir?” said Blue Snake.

“Take this interloper to the docks and tell Hung I want an example made of him.”

Frankie started as his car rolled to a halt. He saw someone being bundled into a vehicle, bodies under sheets, and blood on the tarmac. “What the hell?”

Tze approached, smiling. “Don’t be concerned, Francis. Just a small security incident. A trespasser.”

He saw a face, just in the instant before the car door slammed, heard a string of gutter swearing. Oh shit. I know that voice. The car thief.

Tze patted him on the shoulder. “Take care of things here, will you? I have some business to attend to in the city.”

Frankie watched them go, the stink of fresh cordite and violence in his nostrils.

The distinctive colourations of Chinese Opera masks have a series of layered significances that go beyond the mere portrayal of a given character. A blue face (such as that seen on Xia Houdun) is indicative of someone possessing the traits of dedication, ferocity and shrewdness; a green face (like Zheng Wun) means the character is reckless, likely prone to sudden violence and a surly nature; figures like Guan Yu (a noted Chinese warrior) bear a red mask, which highlights the soldierly traits of fidelity, valour, heroism and decency; yellow (such as Tu Xingsun) indicates a level-headed person but also someone with the qualities of ferocity and determination; black masks like that of Judge Bao Gong indicate selflessness as well as a coarse, aggressive manner; white (traditionally a colour associated with death in the Far East) marks the villain of the piece, highlighting the sly and the wily, the underhand and treacherous (such as the fiendish Qin Hui); finally, the special colourations of gold and silver are employed only on characters who come from beyond the human realm, such as gods and ghosts. The function of the mask in these plays is not only to provide cultural cues to the audience but also to establish a palette of known archetypes, in stories that form a key part of the myths of the Chinese people. On some level, the masks create an aura of power for the performer wearing them, a way in which they can subsume themselves into the role and tap into the pure strengths of the character.

Excerpt from Painted Faces, Swords and Gods: The Mythology of Chinese Opera by Georgina Golightly

10. Warriors Two

The executive operations suite was decorated in the style of a stately English library, heavy with polished teak and mahogany, rich with deep oxblood leather chairs and brass lamps. Ornate desks lined the walls between subtle privacy dividers. Only the screens seemed out of place, and even those had been disguised in wood mounts similar to portrait frames. The keyboards were hidden in the leather blotters on the surface of the desks, illuminating from below when Frankie took his seat. The other men in the room were subvocalising into hidden microphones, but Frankie disabled the voice circuit and got to work typing.

Under his cuff he had a piece of tissue on which he had scribbled a dozen strings of numbers. Code keys copied from the data spike that Alan had left concealed for him, these were permissions that allowed entry into parts of the Yuk Lung mainframe that would normally be far outside of his sphere of influence. Frankie had not dared to bring the precious needle with him, or even to upload the smallest part of its contents to another computer. He was afraid to contaminate himself with the material, at least until he had a clearer idea of what his brother had been doing with it. It seemed quaintly low-tech of him to actually jot the codes down on a scrap of paper instead of entering them on his PDA.

The files. What he had glimpsed in there made him shiver. Alan appeared to have been making two distinct collections of information. The largest of the two was broad in scope, a collation of details on YLHI’s corporate battle plans, notes on what investments they would be buying and selling in the next year. It held highly secret reports on the performance of the conglomerate’s subdivisions, the sort of data that a rival like Eidolon or NeoGen could easily use against them. The second, smaller file was more eclectic. It consisted mostly of laboratory reports fromYuk Lung’s genetics labs on the mainland, some peculiar transcripts from ancient tablets, metallurgical scans of meteor fragments, even audio samples that sometimes seemed like music, other times like voices. Frankie had almost given up with paging through it until he saw his own name amid an indecipherable block of medical-speak. Alan’s name was there too, along with a couple of other people from their graduating class. The others, he had heard, were dead now. Something about an accident in the wilds, a company team-building exercise that went badly wrong.

What were you doing, brother? Frankie asked the question over and over. The planning files, that was the kind of stuff that a man would assemble if he were thinking about jumping ship. With that information in his hands, Alan could have struck a deal with any of the Big Six Multinats, got them to exfiltrate him from YLHI and set him up somewhere with a new identity and a billionaire lifestyle. But why would he? Yuk Lung had been very good to Alan Lam, so why would he ever turn on them? Frankie was sure that the answer to that question was in the second set of files, if only he could comprehend it.

He entered the codes, licking dry lips. On the screen, pools of information filled, presenting themselves for his examination. If the data on the spike had been the first trickle, then this was the flood. Frankie cast a look around, fearful that he would be seen for what he was doing; but none of the other men paid any attention to him, all of them engaged in their own private infospheres.

Frankie pushed on, beginning a search protocol using himself as the subject. Layers of files fanned open, some of them the ones on the data spike; but there were others. He started to read.

Ko’s face met asphalt and he rolled into it, grit scraping the skin of his cheeks. He tried to right himself, but with his hands strapped together behind his back it was nearly impossible. A random boot met his thigh with a shocking impact and he let out a grunt of pain. Strong hands took hold of his arms and dragged him off the ground. As much as he tried, his attention was fixed on the three inches of stainless steel protruding from his breastbone. Each breath he took was a lungful of razors.

All at once his hands were free as they flapped uselessly at his sides. Ko wobbled unsteadily, taking in what he could through eyes gummed with dried blood. Blue Snake’s associates had not been careful with the youth as they stuffed him into the back of the town car.

He smelt saline, diesel oil, the faint stinks of old rot and rust. He could make out boxy shapes all around in bright primary colours, the building blocks of some giant toddler. Distantly, the rumble of robo-trucks reached his ears.

A familiar voice crossed him. “Ah, Ko. What did you do this time?”

“Rikio? That you?” he asked thickly. Blood was working its way back into Ko’s hands and he wriggled them, fighting off pins and needles. By painful inches, his vision began to unfog.

Rikio shook his head, the same Ushanti SMG still glued to his side. “I warned you about this. I told you, you don’t get with someone, you’re against everyone. Out in the cold.”

Ko shivered involuntarily. “Didn’t spect you to understand. About honour, see? Man drugged my sister!”

“You’re an idiot. What, did you reckon you could just tippy-toe up to a zaibatsu warlord and pop him like some yokel right off the ferry? That’s your problem. You don’t think. ”

“Got close,” he said lamely.

“Yeah. You go right on believing that.” The Red Pole looked away to where the woman in the suit and the blue opera mask was holding an intense conversation with Big Hung. The old man had a rock solid expression of displeasure. One of Hung’s men approached and pointed at Ko.

“Boss is sick of looking at this maggot,” snapped the guy. “Put him in a can for the time being.” Rikio began to march Ko away, but the other man halted him. “Just a sec.” He reached down to Ko’s chest and jerked the knife out. “She wants her blade back.”

Ko fell in a heap, pain flashing through him and blood spreading under his fingers.

“What we gonna do with him?” he heard Rikio say.

The reply was disinterested. “Probably just some waste disposal, nothing serious.”

At first it seemed like bloodwork, more medical stuff, the kind of paperwork that any corporation would keep on an employee. But there was just so much of it. Frankie found the reports from his quarterly health checks at the LA office, all of them stretching back to his very first posting there-but there were layers of other files, dates that didn’t tally up to visits to the clinic or the dentist. He saw reports that spoke of “bio-surveillance” and found fluoroscopes of hair samples, soiled chopsticks, stool samples and Band-Aids. In the most recent he came across a polymorphic scan of a used toothbrush that had gone in the trash a couple of weeks back. Some anonymous lab somewhere had dismantled it and done intensive DNA sweeps of the cell material he’d left behind. There were workups on women that he’d dated, spectrum analysis of their physiology and intensive scrutiny of their sexual histories.

Unnerved, he read on. Frankie expected the file to end with his very first medical at the corporate academy, but it was the tip of the iceberg. The data went back and back and back, through his teens and his childhood, every broken bone and skinned knee, every schoolboy illness and sick day; and still it did not stop. There were bloodline charts, great multileveled things spread like inverted trees, root systems of birth, death and marriage unfolding down through the generations. He stopped, trying to steady the shaking in his hands. Yuk Lung had not only tracked every living moment of Frankie’s life, but that of Alan and the whole of the Lam family ancestry. He flicked down the scroll bar, hopping decades in an instant, rolling back hundreds of years. Still the pages unfurled, through the dynasties of ancient China and into the haze of pre-history. He halted the file with a gesture and swallowed hard, the acid taste of bile burning in his throat.

His own company, his own corporate faction had been shadowing him to a level far beyond the bounds of normality, like some omnipresent stalker peering back into the past. He felt naked and sickened.

After a moment Frankie’s eyes focussed on a pop-up window at the side of the screen. It was more of the same, layer upon layer of G-T-A-C coding, but the form of it was different. A blinking tag linked this separate page with Frankie’s, some vague connection that he couldn’t read from the reams of medical jargon. He recognised the name at the top, though. There was no way he couldn’t have.

“Project: Juno.”

He wiped the screen and entered those words, using the highest code from Alan’s secret records.

“Access Restricted.”

For a second he could smell her there in the room with him, the warm flowery scent of her perfect skin, the feel of it under his fingertips. Frankie savoured the moment of sensory recall before it faded. If someone was keeping such a close eye on him, it wasn’t hard to imagine that the same would be true for Juno… but why? What possible purpose could there be for such a thing? He and Alan, they were just two unremarkable salary-men, two Hong Kong brothers who’d pulled themselves up off the streets to make a better life. Nothing about either of them warranted such scrutiny…

Or did it? What if Alan had found something he shouldn’t have? The spectre of his brutal, pointless death cast a chill over everything, magnifying the guilt Frankie felt at their estrangement. If there was a chance that the triads had silenced his brother for a reason, not because of some blind error, then he had to know for certain. He owed Alan nothing less; even after all the distance between them, he was still his blood. Someone wanted him silenced, Frankie thought, and they had him murdered.

The only question was: how far did it go? Whose finger had been on the trigger?

The trilling of his phone made him start, and he grabbed it clumsily from the inner pocket of his suit jacket. The motion drew some arched looks from the other execs; it clearly marked him as a new boy.

His vu-phone was the latest model, a replacement for the one he’d lost, with top-of-the-line encryption and executive level pass codes. On the readout was a name he hadn’t expected to come across again. “Incoming Call: Burt Tiplady.”

“Yes?”

“Frankie?” It was rare to hear that tone in Burt’s voice, his usual braggadocio replaced by nervous indecision. Digital whispers across the satellite link to Los Angeles fluttered under the words of his former superior. “Or do I have to call you Mr Lam, now you got yourself promoted?”

“No… Burt, what do you want?”

“Been trying to get you for the best part of a day. Seems all your baggage ain’t caught up with you yet.”

Frankie sighed. “Burt, this is a bad time. I’m right in the middle of something.”

“Uh, well,” Tiplady’s voice wavered, and Frankie knew what was going through his mind. He wasn’t sure how to react. Lam had been his subordinate for a long time and he was finding it hard to take on the notion that their roles were now reversed. “It’s just that, there was a comm that came in on your old office email here. One time signal, couldn’t forward it.” An embarrassed cough. “The thing is, I kinda accidentally opened it.”

“Accidentally,” Frankie repeated.

“Yeah. Uh. Sorry.”

He frowned. The last thing he wanted was this dolt wasting his time with trivia. There were bigger things at stake than some lost piece of junk mail.

“It must have got held up in that big server outage last week, delayed in the system I reckon. It… It’s from your brother.”

Frankie felt his blood turn to ice water. “Read it to me.”

“It’s not much, just a couple of words. It says, uh, ‘Don’t ever come home.’ Did you piss him off, or something?”

The room suddenly seemed tight and confined. Too late, Alan, said a voice in his head, I’m already here. “Burt, listen to me. Erase it and close down the line, okay?”

“Sure, sure,” said the other man. “Say, listen, I was wondering if maybe you could put in a good word for me with head office, now you’re there? Y’know, if you might-”

Frankie folded the phone shut and sat there for long moments in the darkness, surrounded only by the murmuring of the other users. After a while, he toggled the datascreen’s security protocols menu and asked it to locate Blue Snake for him.

She was at the docks, it replied, conducting an unspecified errand for the CEO. Frankie studied the area on a digital map, and with careful deliberation, he began once again to dial his old phone number.

Rikio shoved him into the dark interior of the cargo container and Ko stumbled on the metal floor, his sneakers slipping on damp patches. The cold and rainy weather made the inside of the container feel like an icebox. The youth bounced off a wall and coughed. Every physical exertion made the injury in his chest hurt like fire. The front of his grey shirt was stained purple with blood.

“I’m bleeding…” he said.

At the doors, Rikio threw him a pitying look. “That’s the least of your problems right now.”

Ko shivered, at last a real sense of the depths of shit he was in coming to him. “Are you gonna kill me?” The words came out in a scared little boy voice. Rikio’s lip curled but he didn’t reply. “Dude, we used to play on the street together. You know me. We were friends.”

“We were never friends, Ko,” the gunman said sadly. “We were just kids. Doesn’t mean I owe you anything. ”

Ko started back toward the doors. “Riki-”

The Ushanti’s nickel-plated muzzle came up. “You stay right there. You just be quiet and you stay right there.” Rikio stepped out of the container and closed the hatches, throwing the bolt shut.

Even though he knew it was pointless, he tried the doors. Ko opened his mouth to call out, but the words died in his throat, escaping as a faint whimper. No one would hear him. No one would care.

He slumped to the floor and sat against the wall. Chinks of light from rust holes provided illumination as Ko went through his pockets, in lieu of having anything better to do. Scraps of paper and an old matchbook from the Dot. A couple of loose bullets-fat lot of good they would do him now-and a wallet with a handful of yuan. And…

Ko’s fingers closed around the cellphone in the instant it rang. He snapped it open in panic, suddenly terrified that Hung’s men would hear it.

“H-hello?”

“Is that you?” Frankie frowned the moment he asked the question. It was a dumb thing to say.

“Yeah.” The kid was muted and fearful. “This how you get your laughs, huh? Fuck with me and my family, and then phone up to gloat about it?”

“Where are you?” Frankie had the digi-map of the docks open in front of him. “Where did Blue Snake take you?”

“Dancing Dragon Pier. Big Hung’s docks. Like you don’t know.”

Frankie nodded to himself, running an image transform program. The satellite image became an infrared pattern of cold blues and moving orange blobs. One peculiar shape-green instead of human-red-was standing among a group of others. Tze’s guardian? “Tell me where you are. Exactly.”

“Inna cargo pod. Freezing an’ bleeding to death. Why are you asking me this shit?”

Frankie took a breath. What had they taught him in the academy? The best time to negotiate with a hostile source was when you had them on the ropes. “Remember what I said before? I have a job for you.”

“Huh.” Despite his dire predicament, Ko felt the urge to laugh. “You got great timing, mister wageslave. Pretty soon, I ain’t gonna be in any shape to do anything for anybody.” The soft glow of the phone cast faint shadows around the gloomy interior.

“I had nothing to do with what happened to the girl… Your sister.” The voice on the other end of the phone seemed genuine, or at least as far as Ko could tell. These corps, they lie for a living. “I could help.”

Ko fought off a shiver. The cold was leaching into his fingertips and toes. “What do you care? I’m just a thief, neh? A streetpunk for you suits to roll over like some bug. You don’t know me. What d’you want, huh?”

“You said you had connections with the triads, yes?”

“Yeah,” he nodded woodenly. “I know people in the Wo Shing Wo, the 14K, others. Not that it has done me any favours.” Ko coughed and spat out blood.

“I can get you out of there,” said the voice, “if you trust me. In return I want you to get some information. There was a hit… I need to know who ordered it.”

“You can’t do it yourself, mister big shot?” snorted Ko.

“I can’t take the risk of investigating myself. I need someone like you. I can’t be connected.”

“Like me,” murmured Ko, masking a wheeze. “Oh yeah. I see where this is going. You want some no-namer to do your dirty work, someone… disposable?”

“That’s about the size of it, yes.”

Ko forced a smile. “Yeah. You got yourself problems you don’t want your boss knowing about, so you gotta come down to the gutter to deal with it.” He shifted, fighting down the pain. “Sure. I’m your man. But I want something else.”

“I’m going to save your life,” insisted the corporate. “That’s not enough?”

“No. I want money. After what that rat shit Tze did to my sister, it’s gonna take some heavyweight paper to make her well again. You clean that mess up, too.”

Frankie choked back a laugh. “You’re in no shape to be setting terms.”

There was a dry, painful chuckle. “I gotta guy ten metres away from me with a machine gun gonna drill me any second now. I got nothing to lose. Pay up or get some other chump to be your errand boy.”

In spite of himself, Frankie smiled. This kid’s nobody’s fool. “Okay.”

There was a long pause. “Fine. Now how you gonna spring me, mister wageslave?”

A plan began to form in Frankie’s mind as he examined the data traffic streaming in and out. of the dockyards. “Can you swim?”

“Uh, yeah, but-”

“Be ready. And don’t lose that phone.” He stabbed the disconnect key.

“Oh man,” Ko breathed, staring at the silent cellphone. “What did I just do?”

The steel doors answered him, opening with a clattering squeal. Ko staggered backward, reflexively trying to make himself a smaller target; but there was no cover at all inside the cargo pod. The hatches opened wide and there was Rikio and another one of Hung’s boys, scowling from underneath a sepia-toned punch-perm. Rikio’s face was expressionless.

“Look,” Ko said, “there’s no need for this.”

Punch-perm nodded at Rikio. “That blue-faced bitch wants this tyke aired out. You gonna do it, or do I gotta tell Hung you’re not up to the job?”

“Hey,” said Ko. “Wait.”

Rikio licked his lips. “Naw. It’s okay. ”

Punch-perm kept talking as if Ko wasn’t even there. “So, then. You wanna use my gun?”

“Naw,” Rikio repeated, flicking off the Ushanti’s safety, “I got it.”

Ko heard a rumbling sound, getting louder by the second. Was that death, bearing down on him? “Please,” he implored, tears spiking his eyes. “Just let me go-”

Rikio raised the machine pistol; that was about the moment the robo-truck slammed into the side of the container and rode right over the punch-perm guy, wheels grinding the man into the asphalt.

The empty metal box shifted with ear-splitting shrieks, fat yellow sparks flying from the doors. Rikio tumbled into the cargo pod, narrowly missing the same fate as the other enforcer. Ko slipped and fell, his hands crusted with a film of dried blood.

He saw the front of the robot six-wheeler as it retreated back a few feet, huffing like an overworked dray horse. Written across the blank-faced prow of the truck were three words: “Yuk Lung Haulage.”

The vehicle came at the pod again and this time the impact threw it back two metres, pushing it back over the edge of the dock. The machine shouldered into the container and began the slow and steady process of tipping it into the bay.

Frankie worked the controls, licking sweat from his lips. On the thermal scan he could see the shapes of a dozen men sprinting across the cargo apron toward the truck, the cold shapes of weapons in their grips. It had been simple to open up the automatic navigation controls on one of the many YLHI drone haulers, and reprogramme the dog-smart drive brain to do his bidding; but now Frankie was having second thoughts about his impulsive choice of exit strategy. He could make out the two flailing orange shapes inside the box, so he knew the kid wasn’t dead-not yet. Pinpricks of bright white showed where the triad gunsels were firing on the truck. Behind them, the alien shape of Tze’s Blue Snake stood and observed, motionless.

The robo-truck smashed into the cargo pod one last time and drove it over the lip of the concrete dock. Vehicle and all, the pod struck the waters of the bay and vanished, the shape fading away into the blue sheen of the cold.

Ko and Rikio collided with each other and the walls, bouncing around like stones in a rattle. Rikio tumbled underneath him and Ko felt something break inside the Red Pole as he softened the impact against the steel box. Water gushed into the container, buoying up Rikio’s body. Ko noted the new angles in his arms and legs, the freakish tilt of the neck, but found it hard to summon any sympathy.

Ko pushed at the undertow of the seawater, but the icy cold and the searing bite of the wound in his chest bled the energy from him. Tilting, the box dropped beneath the surface, the tiny pocket of trapped air inside bubbling out in whooping breaths. He tried to swim, but there was nothing in him, not a drop of energy to spare.

I’m going to die. I’m sorry, Nikki. I let you down.

“Stupid, weak city boy.” The voice hammered into his head. “You’re not dead yet.” Something tugged at him through the chill water and Ko saw a shape drifting at the mouth of the container, leather cords and a long ponytail floating around him. “Swim, damn you,” snarled Feng. “The drowned never know peace! You want to spend eternity haunting this concrete cesspool? Come on! Swim!”

Ko’s leaden limbs moved, dragging him forward. The container dropped away toward the dark, and with agonizing slowness Ko felt himself rising toward the bland grey light of the surface. Feng beckoned him from the shadows of the dock stanchions, speaking without moving his lips. “This way! Come up here, quickly!”

He burst from the depths through oily water, sucking in great wet gasps of air. Ko’s fingers found a rusty rail and he pulled himself hand-over-hand, up and on to the concrete pier. Behind him on the next dock over, he could hear shouting and curses. A gunshot rang out, and a divot of stone cracked near his leg. He felt hollow inside, but somehow there was a secret reserve of energy coining from a place he’d never known of, and it propelled Ko forward, gasping and spitting up acrid water. Ahead he saw a chainlink gate lying open, and beyond that, a service road.

On the road was a parked car. The speedgeek part of his brain identified it immediately as a Korvette Impulse, one of the ’23 models that had the puny touchlocks on the doors. Ko felt a weak smile forming on his lips just at the sight of it.

Wild…

Wild…

Wyldsky!

One Night Only! Victoria Peak!

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The future starts here!