Jade Dragon

11. Saviour of the Soul

Fixx let the road do the driving, allowing the turns and changes to come from the world around him, travelling without moving, conscious but unseeing. The black Korvette seemed to understand its new master, and behaved as a good horse should, cantering unhurried through the canyons of the city. Lucy had done him proud.

There came the point, just as Joshua expected, when the road ended, and there he turned off the motor and let the surroundings talk to him. Hours passed without his notice, instead his mind dwelling on the fragments of time from the mallplex; the pieces of sensory recall from there and the same moments from the Hyperdome collided and merged in his mind, an ocean of floating jigsaw pieces connecting, disconnecting, seeking patterns in each other. In the car, in the service road between the concrete warehouses, in the place of silence-such-as-it-was, Fixx recovered the deck of cards his sainted grandmother had bequeathed and began to play out a reading on the empty passenger seat beside him. The patterns started to emerge, and he chewed his lip. All this time, and still Fixx felt like he was unready, like he was waiting.

“Stage ain’t set,” he said aloud. “Players ain’t ready yet.”

His mind was so focused on the tarot matrix that the shadow crossing the window by his head was a sudden surprise.

The Korvette had one-way surrounds of black glass, and with the car dormant as it was, a person might be forgiven for thinking it was empty. Fixx paused, an unturned card in his hand, and studied the raggedy youth working at the door lock. The Chinese kid had his tongue pressed between his teeth in serious concentration. He looked strung out and wasted, a nasty blossom of blood down the front of his shirt, constellations of bruises on his face and neck. He was wet through, his clothes plastered to him; but most of all the fear was coming off him in waves.

In spite of all that, Fixx took a look at the card, even though in that moment he knew exactly what it would show. The sanctioned operative flipped the latch and the Korvette’s gullwing door rose.

The thief jerked in shock as he realised the car was occupied. “Oh. Shit.” He blinked and skipped back a few steps as Fixx got out. “Hey, uh. This isn’t my car!” He faked a frown. “What a silly mistake!”

Fixx handed the tarot card to him. “Here. This seem familiar?”

The kid read the name on the bottom, eyes narrowing. “Knight ofWands. Huh. He kinda looks a little like me. ”

“How ’bout that?” Fixx grinned. “Yeah. Curtain’s going up now.”

There were footsteps coming and they turned to see a group of men in spaciously cut suits approach at a run. All of the new arrivals were carrying guns, and they exchanged confused looks at the sight of the black man and his car.

“Hold it, Ko, you little punk!” snapped one of them. “You brought this on yourself!”

Fixx raised a hand. “A moment, gentlemen. If you’ll just allow me…” He drew the bones from his pocket and scattered them across the Korvette’s bonnet. The op bent low, examining the turn and placement of them. He glanced at the youth. “Ah-yuh.” In a flash, he gathered the bones back up again. Papa Legba had told him what it was he had been waiting for.

One of the men came close, reaching out a hand. “Keep out of this-”

Fixx broke his gun arm and the enforcer’s pistol fell at Ko’s feet. As the kid scrambled for it, Fixx punched the triad gunsel off balance and bounced his head off the Korvette’s roof.

The other men opened fire, and Fixx cut low, the SunKings leaping into his hands. The boy was letting off wild shots, doing the best that he could. Fixx went for short, controlled bursts from his silver pistols.

Close misses keened off the bulletproof windscreen and the dirty concrete. Fixx drilled each enforcer in turn, going for disabling hits when he could, outright kills when he couldn’t. The kid, this Ko, emptied the revolver and then ducked in cover behind the car.

Fixx shot the last man in the leg and strode back to the Korvette, reloading as he went. Mercifully, no stray shots had gone into the vehicle’s electronics. The op took his seat and opened the passenger door. “So,” he said conversationally. “You need a lift.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’ll take my chances, thanks.”

“No you won’t. You’re smarter than that.”

The youth gingerly got in. “I’m Ko,” he coughed.

“Joshua Fixx.” his hand. “Pleasure.”

Ko still had the tarot card. “You, uh, want this back?”

“In a while.” The sports car growled into life and raced away.

Fatigue engulfed her in a slow, warm wave, drawing Juno down on to the bed and into the cool embrace of the silken sheets. She had a brief moment of sense-memory, there and then gone, just the quickest taste of Frankie’s musk upon her lips; she wanted to hold on to it, but it disintegrated beneath her scrutiny, the way that ancient paper became dust when you crushed it in your fingers.

Was it daylight outside? She couldn’t tell any more. After all the travelling, every rootless moment of motion inside and outside, she had gone beyond a point where she could reckon herself against a watch. She lived on Juno Time now, where every hour was Me O’clock, her needs fulfilled as long as she never stepped outside of the bubble. And why would she? Out beyond the safety zone that dear old Heywood and the nice men at RedWhiteBlue granted her, well, she knew there were people there who loved her, but there were also the scary ones. The ones that posted dead animals to the fan club, or sent her emails of themselves wearing clothes of hers that her maids had stolen to sell on iBuy.

Still. At times she felt the urge bubbling inside her, the need to go and walk in the real world without legions of cameras and men whose only jobs were to plot and scheme over the content of her every breath, her every move. She could get out if she wanted to, really wanted to. Juno knew a way.

She shifted and felt the bed move with it, gently closing around her. She blinked, trying to shake away the dark shades hovering at the far edges of her vision, there in the pools of inky shadow behind the hotel suite’s curtains, or in the places where light didn’t fall beneath the furniture. Her mouth was suddenly arid. She felt… she felt… She felt wrong somehow, uncomfortable no matter how much she moved, as if it were her skin that fitted her wrongly, not the cloying touch of the silk.

The woman kicked at the bedclothes with sudden violence. She wanted them off her, but they refused to budge. Juno rolled over and pulled. The bed shifted back with tendrils of gossamer material and dragged her down. Juno opened her mouth to cry out, but her lips, her dry lips were stuck together.

Outside the window there was the sound of cats yowling, the whispering of voices that came from placid porcelain faces, hidden eyes under unmoving masks. Juno flailed for the edges of the bed and couldn’t find them. Her hands sank into pools of brilliant blue capsules, glittering candy-coloured shapes that tingled when she touched them. The dusty interior of her mouth craved them, begged for the refreshing bursts of fluid inside. Invisible hands. Know zen. Bubble in the stream.

The room had become dark while her mind was elsewhere. The curtains, thick and heavy brocade flapping in a pre-storm breeze, they came open now and then to show her glimpses of a distant green mountaintop, and beyond it a purple sky lit by silent lightning. Where was the thunder? Why wasn’t there any thunder?

Juno pushed very hard at her lips and forced a word out of her mouth; it came apart in fragments, blue and black and green and yellow. She spoke in colours and not sounds, rainbows of light erupting. It made her cry.

Balling the slick sheets in her grip, Juno forced her way up. Her eyes would not close, no matter how hard she tried to seal them. By chilling inches, the contents of the room began to haze over and change, turning from wood and paper and cloth into glass and glass and glass. Everything had edges like razors, all of them pointing inwards to scrape at her eyes.

Mirrors. Everywhere there were mirrors. Talking mirrors that screamed and cried or made sounds that could have been songs.

And here came the shapes again, the moving things in the shadows under the glassy madness. The Angels of Pain. The serpents and the worms, and over her head, somewhere in the rafters kilometres above, a dragon made of dark jade, watching. Waiting for something. Waiting for her to sing to him. The Lord of Bliss ready for her to serenade…

Juno forced herself up and curled her hands around her naked, shivering form, fighting to shake off the dream; but it clung to her like a film of oil, coating every surface, reflecting pieces of her life back at her.

Ocean Terminal, the screaming crowds. The upturned faces in the Hyperdome. Outside the Yuk Lung tower. Heywood’s hands around her throat…

She choked, her back arching with pain; and suddenly she saw that moment, watching it unfold from a place behind the frosted door in the upper deck of the limobus, the lights of the Lantau Expressway flicking past outside. She observed…

Herself? Juno Qwan, behind a pair of Minnuendo sunglasses, the Inverse Smile chapeau, the Dior dress, the Westlake pumps. Her face taut and morose. Juno Here watching Juno There, detached, an observer.

The Other Juno is irrational and she’s making high-pitched noises that could be words, but she sounds like she’s underwater. Other Juno reaching for a bowl of the gorgeous blue pills, so many of them. Heywood stops her, there’s a blur of motion and those Minnuendos, a two thousand yuan limited edition from the Fall Catalogue, they fall from her face as he strikes her with the base of his hand.

She bleeds. The sunglasses are smashed into broken mirrors under Rope’s shoes. Rope puts his big white hands around Other Juno’s throat and he begins to twist and turn her head. This Juno, Watching and Observing Juno, touches her neck in reflection, detached, distant, not understanding.

How can this be happening? How can I be here and there at once? Why is she dying? Juno is a star. I can’t die.

And the Other Juno’s face turns florid and then slack as Rope twists and twists, he’s laughing a little as he does it, eyes wild and enraptured as he makes the kill last, teasing it out. The slow, slow cracking pops as vertebrae snap. The meat-sack thud as the body falls from his clawed hands. Juno. There dead. Dead.

Mirror is broken.

Heywood brushes back stray hairs made unkempt by the murder, straightens himself, calms down his arousal. He looks at her with kind, fatherly eyes and beckons Juno Here from behind the door. So she comes, because that’s what she must do. And This Juno sloughs off the shapeless plastic oversuit and gently undresses Other Juno, Dead Juno, Pallid and Forever Not Juno…

She was in the shower beneath a hot spray of water when she finally recovered enough to stop weeping. The needles of liquid massaged her body, pain making the dream fade. The punishing heat reddened her skin, but it forced the thoughts to retreat back into the dark pools and the black places. Juno shut it off and crossed to the full-length mirror, wiping away the patina of condensation, examining herself.

“Just… a dream,” she said aloud, her words taking on a peculiar echo in the cavernous bathroom.

Juno padded out to the suite proper and studied the display on her comm. It was still ringing, the call unanswered. Francis Lam-Temporarily Unavailable.

The girl swallowed the beginning of a sob and dressed, taking the most shapeless, the most basic clothes she could find. The room was tight about her, strangling.

Juno donned an eyeband and concealed her hair beneath a baseball cap. She slid out over the lip of the balcony, and edged over into the neighbouring room, where a fat billionaire from Minsk was sleeping off a binge on the sofa. She picked her way past him, and out.

From the outside, it had appeared to be just one more in a line of nondescript lock-up in a back street full of rusted roller doors and gates cut from corrugated steel. Somewhere a block or two back was the main crossroads of Mongkok, the constant rumble of traffic and the sounds of distant metro trains under everything, ebbing and flowing like waves. Ko found the gateway with the ease of someone who had done it hundreds of times, and Fixx ducked low to follow him inside, past hand-painted signs in unreadable characters and layers of flyposters.

Within it was a different story: an oasis of old history nestled there, a small courtyard and a couple of low buildings in an ancient style. The place was a little shabby around the seams but still impressive in its own way. Fixx mused on the fact that the space taken up by the temple could have easily been enough for a housing tower. Whoever owned this place had influence, money, or both.

There were a few boys and a couple of older teens, spinning out tightly trained katas with lionhead swords or halberds.

“A dojo,” Fixx said aloud. He glanced at Ko. “You train here?”

The thief gave him an uncomfortable look. “Not for a while.”

Ko made him wait outside while he went into one of the buildings, and the op watched the other pupils. They were very good, and their kung fu was something new to him. Fixx picked out elements of a dozen Oriental fighting styles, but all modified beyond their rigid origins. The kids with the halberds flowed like water, the pikes meeting with hollow clacks, never passing close enough for anything but a glancing blow.

He orbited the perimeter of the courtyard and came across a corridor. Along it there were framed photographs, glass cases that were home now only to spiders and nameplates where trophies might once have stood. He found a yellowed newspaper article and there in a dulled image was Ko, younger and happier, between a whipcord fellow in a yellow tracksuit and an older man in police uniform. The boy held up a medal. Further down there were other items that seemed out of place-a stained film script with the title Blood and Steel, and old movie posters, their lurid colours and vivid blocks of text all faded shades.

The op looked up as a figure appeared in the shadows. “Joshua Fixx,” said the man. “Who might you be?”

“Just passin’ through,” said Fixx. “Following an inkling, you might say.” The man walked into a pool of light and he saw the same face from the paper; the muscular cut of his posture was less than it had been back then. He had grey hair and that kind of wispy beard the old guys in this part of the world seemed to like. “The kid?”

“Ko.” The man shook his head. “Such potential. It saddens me to see him squander it on fast cars and street fights. Ah Sing will see he’s patched up.”

“He’ll be cool. He’s tougher than he looks.”

The old man cocked his head. “You can tell that from just meeting him?”

Fixx showed his teeth. “I’m what you might call a good judge of character.”

He held out the tarot card. “Ko asked me to return this to you.” The man examined it. “You a fortune teller, Mr Fixx?”

“I have my moments.” He paused. “I’m not responsible for Ko’s state, if that’s what you’re thinkin’.”

The old man shook his head. “I know that. If you were, we wouldn’t be having this pleasant conversation.” There was an edge of challenge in the words that gave Fixx pause. “These are dangerous days for the unwary. The streets of my city are filled with foolish men and easy roads to jeopardy. Ko, and the others… I try to teach them to seek a path of enlightenment, not darkness.” He came closer, and Fixx saw the subtle cues in his posture that showed he was ready to take things to another level, if that was how it played out. “But I am asking myself, why would a man like you rescue a streetpunk like him from out of nowhere?”

“Like you said, the lad’s got potential he don’t even know about yet.” Fixx took the card and returned it to the pack, careful to remain easy and unhurried. “Kid’s got a role to play, neh? Like all o’ us.” He tapped the dusty glass, reading the only English text he could find on the movie posters. “ The Silent Flute. I never seen that flick. That’s you there, right? The leading man?”

“Long time ago,” admitted the old fellow. “Times change.”

“Yeah,” said Fixx, sensing a kindred spirit. “Not always for the better. ”

Ko’s teacher beckoned. “We should talk, Mr Fixx.”

“Call me Joshua. ”

The old man smiled. “I’m Bruce.”

The interior of the church was silent when she slid between the heavy oaken doors. Her footsteps made gentle tapping sounds on the tiled floor as she moved deeper into the building, passing the ranks of oaken pews, empty of worshippers. The chapel seemed strange and out of place in a city of towering glass and steel, a tiny knot of ancient beliefs crowded out by the new temples of the corps.

Juno tried to clarify the impulse that had brought her here and found nothing that could explain it. It was the silence that drew her in, the sense of tranquillity inside the ancient building. In here, the rest of the world seemed far distant. She thought of the old ideals of sanctuary on hallowed ground.

At the altar there were constructs of gold and painted plaster; saviour and cross, seraphs and saints. They appeared stern and unforgiving, and Juno kept her head down, the bill of her cap pointed at the floor.

Someone nearby took a breath. “It’s traditional to take your hat off inside the House of God. ”There was gentle admonishment in the voice.

Juno looked up to see an old priest. He had a pleasant face with concerned eyes that peered from a dark cassock. “Would you mind if I didn’t?”

The priest smiled. “I’m sure we can let it go this once.”

“Can… Can I sit? I’m not…” Her words trailed off. This was all new to her.

He found a place on one of the pews and gestured around. “It’s a slow day. We have plenty of room.”

She sat on the bench behind him, perched on the edge in case she felt the sudden urge to escape. “Thanks.”

“First time?” he asked, and got a nod in reply. “Well, we never close.” The priest patted the wood. “We’re always here.” He offered her his hand. “I’m Father Woo.”

There was the sound of fluttering and she looked up. Birds moved in the rafters, caught by shafts of light through the stained glass windows.

“Doves,” explained the priest with a wan smile. “They roost up there, despite my best attempts to entice them to leave. We have an understanding now. They behave themselves and I don’t chase them with brooms.”

Juno found herself warming to the old man. He was the last thing she expected to find in a city as ruthless and as rapid as this one. “Is it always this quiet?”

Woo sighed. “We’ve never been the busiest of branch offices, if you take my meaning. These days… many people are finding other idols to give their love to.”

She swallowed hard at his choice of words. “It’s peaceful.”

He nodded and steepled his fingers. “How can we help you, child?”

“Why do you think I need help?”

Another smile. “I’ve been doing this job a long time, my dear. I’ve developed an eye for my visitors.”

“I have dreams,” she began haltingly, “bad dreams, about death and destruction. I see terrible things.”

“Dreams can’t hurt you,” said the priest, “a nightmare is just your mind ridding itself of waste.”

“This is different,”she insisted. “These visions… I think I see the future, sometimes the past. But there are memories of things that seem out of place, like they belong to someone else.” Juno took his hand, her eyes glistening. “Father, I think something terrible is going to happen to me, to all of us. I’ve seen it.”

The priest said nothing for a moment, surprised by her words. “We can’t grasp the future, child. That’s not for us to know. All we can do is look to what is right, to try and do the proper thing when the choice is laid out in front of us.” He squeezed Juno’s hand. “Life is about choice. That’s the gift God gives us. It’s how we use that choice that makes the world a better place.”

“Or a darker one,” she added.

“Yes,” he said sadly. “But if you do what is right, and trust in God, your soul will be saved.”

A gasp escaped Juno. She felt hollow inside. “But, Father… What if I don’t have one?”

The priest blinked. “Juno, everyone has a soul-”

She bolted up from the pew, clattering against the old wood. “You know who I am?”

“Of course I do. I’m not blind, child, I have a television. Your face is on billboards everywhere.” He frowned. “That doesn’t mean we can’t talk-”

“I have to go.” Juno scrambled away down the aisle. Above her, the birds left their roosts, disturbed by the sudden commotion.

The old man was still calling her name when she crashed on to the street and wheeled into the roar of the living city.

It was evening when Ko awoke. The watery day had given way to a drowsy sunset, pregnant with humidity. “Typhoon weather,” his sister always called it, glaring out of the window of the apartment and fanning herself furiously, as if that would lessen the chances of a tropical storm.

He frowned as he thought of Nikita and rooted through his clothes. The Sifu had got one of the younger pupils to wash his gear and hang it up in the corner of the meditation cell where they’d put him. The poultice of herbal remedies and treated bandages across his chest was moist and tight, but the pain from the wound was far less than it had been before. Quietly, so as not to draw any attention, he searched until he found the corporate cellphone. Despite the damage he’d done to it, the thing was still working, and-he hoped-the sat-locator circuits inside were still dead to the world. As he flipped it open, he heard a rough chug of laughter from out in the courtyard, and Ko leaned close to the window to take a peek. On the stone steps, his erstwhile rescuer was chatting amiably with his teacher, the two men grinning like they were old friends.

Ko watched Fixx. The way the guy had moved out there at the docks, and the hardware he was packing… He had to be a sanctioned operative, no question about it. But ops were rarer than virgins in this part of the world. The mere fact that Fixx was here in Hong Kong and that for some reason he’d chosen Ko to save from certain death was unnerving.

On the drive to Mongkok, he’d questioned the man. At first Ko thought Fixx was someone that the corp guy had recruited to get him away from the triads, but the op showed genuine confusion when Ko mentioned it. He insisted that somebody called “Papa Leg-bar” had sent him, and Ko had no clue who the hell that was.

But Fixx seemed to know things. Not like names or exact details, but he gave Ko a cool-eyed stare and told the youth that he knew he was looking for revenge, that he was in search of reparation for his blood. And however you sliced it, Fixx had saved his life out there. Ko wasn’t sure if that should make him pleased, or more wary.

He dialled Gau’s number; just before they stashed the Korvette, Ko had forwarded a file he found in the phone’s memory. Mister Wageslave had transmitted a copy of a police record about a hit-and-run in Mongkok during their phone conversation.

Gau answered on the second ring. “This is gonna cost you,” he said without preamble. “If Second knew I was talking to you-”

“Fuck him,” growled Ko. “You owe me, Gau. Remember Shek-O?” There had been a gang rumble on the beach at Shek-O a year earlier, when a Sabre Girl left Gau concussed. Ko had stopped him drowning in the surf and got him home alive. “What you got?”

There was a sigh. “I looked at the pix. I asked around. Spoke to my cousin.”

Ko nodded. Gau’s relative broke heads for the Wo Shing Wo, who ran most of the action in the Mongkok area.

“This guy who was clipped? It wasn’t a mistake like the cops say it is. Cousin says, it was ordered. Bought and paid for. The lie was so the corps didn’t lose face.”

“Who paid for it?”

Gau hesitated. “Listen, Ko. Once I tell you this, once I hang up, we’re done. Your name is poison, man. Second wants to cut you up, and anyone you hang with.”

“Gimme the name!” snapped Ko. “That’s all I want!”

“Cousin says she was some fat little bitch, big shot music corp or something. The boss called her Miss High.”

Feng watched from the shadows, glowering at him. teh jade DRAGON gonna rule HK enda the world

Graffiti seen in Lok Fu Metro Station.