Jade Dragon

16. City on Fire

In the corridors of the hospital, a thousand screaming babies tore at the broken minds of the adults. Dr Yeoh collapsed, plunging into hell. In her room, Nikita slept restlessly; she was already there.

Ko stared out over the shining pinnacles of the cityscape. Juno Qwan’s voice smothered everything in a warm fog of noise. He felt her words invading him; she was crying, but he registered this in only the most distant of ways. Down in the metropolis, he could see her face everywhere, on the massive street-screens in Central, on the flickercladding of the Hotel Metropolita; her song played from radios in every apartment, every channel carried her words. The sound was worming its way into him.

He left the bike and staggered up the summit, through people screaming and crying and weeping and laughing. The freakish, sickening high he had shared with Fixx in the hospital was coming back tenfold. He could taste the Z3N in the air, the thick haze washing through his pores. It swelled his heart, made his feet light. The ecstasy of the crowd around him spilled into his mind, getting louder, becoming stronger.

Ko stumbled, his thoughts heavy and indistinct. “Why am I here?”

“For the King!” shouted a reveller, bloody and naked. “He’s come for our love and pain!” A chorus of people mumbled the same words.

Ko looked away, afraid to look out over the bay where the phantom-serpent was forming, coalescing wings and fangs and lizard-skin. The gossamer thing resolved as the people gave it their attention. The Jade Dragon hooted, the sound flattening buildings, shaking the landscape. Ko could not look; his head turned. He could not help himself.

A stinging slap brought him about and falling to the marshy ground. Feng stood over him, fists balled and his scruffy face alight with fury. “Wake up!” he bellowed. “You must not gaze upon the beast! It wants your eyes, it needs your spirit!”

Ko was sluggish as he got up. “She was right… Nikita saw this coming.”

Feng grabbed him, pulled him close. “Sorcery, like the black man said! It lives only through the minds of others! The Dragon is the demon man makes for himself!”

The Road Ronin’s sword was heavy in his hands. “I can’t fight that…”

Feng pointed toward the stage, to a place half-hidden in pools of sickly light. Ko saw Tze up there, lurking in the wings. “Then fight him! ”

Sifu Bruce called the boys to him, had them bolt the doors to the dojo tight and close the storm shutters. They gathered sticky rice to scatter around the perimeter of the building while the old man worked with quick and deft movements, drawing wards on paper banners in sweeping strokes of his brush.

The Jade Dragon arched its back and threw off rimes of frozen interstellar hydrogen. Blood spilt from hundreds of willingly slit throats came together in a wet cloud for the beast to suck in through its teeth. Clawed feet found purchase on skyscrapers; they did not yet fully exist in the plane of flesh, and so they moved ghost-like through the stone and steel, cutting out the souls of those they touched but leaving animate flesh undamaged. The mere presence of the Desire God’s aspect caused spontaneous blood orgies across a ten-kilometre radius from the demon’s point of intersection. Emerald chemicals of a kind that had never existed in this dimension dripped from the tear in the clouds and burned like acid into the streets. The Dragon was slowly unfurling, shaking off the dust of eons. Newborn and yet impossibly ancient, the King of Rapture was pleased to be here once again.

The girl performing oral sex on Hung never surfaced from the shimmering water, and he tried to shift his bulk to see the source of the light flooding in through the windows of the bathhouse. One by one, the other girls turned to him, and where their pretty faces had been there were only nests of worms.

Fixx kept his hands steady, waiting. Rope crossed his eye-line, without apparent concern over the fact that Blue Snake had not disarmed him. The op understood. Rope clearly didn’t think that detail was of any import.

“I’m curious,” said the thin-faced man conversationally. “Do we know the same people?” He recovered the ghost knife from the Mask’s corpse with a sucking pop.

Fixx turned in place, watching him. “Could say that. Crossed paths with the Josephites once or twice.”

“And you’re not dead. That says something for your strength of character… Or perhaps that you’re good at fleeing.”

He shrugged. “Little from Column A, little from Column B.” Fixx shifted his weight. He could get the crossbow from the stance he was in, but he doubted it would do more than just piss the guy off. “Papa Legba always said there’d be a price to pay for that. Just didn’t think it would be today.”

Rope sniggered. “What sweet delusion. As if pieces of cardboard and chicken bones could augur the future!” He made a dismissive gesture. “You think your silly gutter godlings sent you here, is that it? To what end?”

“To stop Tze. I go where fate sends me. I’m the fly in the ointment. Monkey in the wrench.”

“Then we want the same thing, Joshua. It has been my honour to serve the vision of Elder Seth, who sent me on my way so long ago from the Promised Lands of Deseret to this festering anthill,” he bared teeth in a sneer, “here, where I lay in silence, waiting for the day that Tze would recruit me, just as Seth knew that he would. I made myself the perfect minion. We play a long game, Joshua, a very long game. I am here to disrupt the plans of Tze and his conclave of idiots.” He balanced the knife in his grip. “I will stop them from binding the Jade Dragon to their will.” Rope pointed at Frankie with the blade. “This poor wretch, bred from antiquity to be a vessel for the blood that will cage the Lord of Bliss. He’s the last, and when he’s dead, the ‘pattern’ will fall apart. Tze will have nothing. He has compounded his error in trusting me with so vital a facet of his plan. ”

Fixx’s eyes narrowed. “Missing a bit o’ the tale, I reckon. You left out the part where you take the reins of that monster instead. Step in at the last second and leash the beast for yourself. Am I close?”

Rope let out a bark of laughter. “Why would we ever want to put a collar on such a magnificent beast? The Cabal thought they might treat the Jade Dragon like a milk cow, feed it the odd city and in turn suckle themselves off the beast’s teat. Such limited imagination. No, dear fellow, we’re going to release it. Can you imagine what will be wrought in His wake, the world in a rapture of sex and blood?” He licked his lips. “It arouses me just to think of it.”

Fixx eyed the other man. “I’m gonna kill you, you know that.”

Rope beckoned him from across the room. “I so want you to try.”

He went for the crossbow, and in the other man’s hand the ghost knife unfolded like a steel flower.

Ko kicked down the backstage door and vaulted inside, feeling Feng at his side. The sickening riot of sounds from the stage and the audience beat at him. He shook off the sensation.

“Danger-” said Feng, as part of the shadows detached and grew definition.

Monkey King appraised Ko with his expressionless mask, taking in the shabby go-ganger jacket, the Road Ronin katana. Ko thought of the white-masked woman in the parking garage, of her incredible speed; as if Monkey King had been waiting for that moment, the guardian attacked. He punched Ko down, dodging clumsy sword blows, making impact craters where his fist struck the floor.

Ko rolled away, swinging wildly. The Mask watched, measuring his movements, then came in again. Monkey King’s blows were swift, efficient, designed to break and maim. The youth took a glancing hit and stumbled.

“Aim for the weak points,” snapped Feng.

“Can’t,” Ko slurred. “Not a… swordsman.”

Monkey King paused, listening to him speak, then came on, preparing to strike a killing blow.

Close to his face, Ko smelt old leather, sweat and iron. “Then let me,” said Feng. The warrior’s hand slipped into the youth’s and faded into the skin. Ko jerked away “No! Get out!”

“Listen to me!” said Feng. “I know you, better than you know yourself! I know what you fear, why you hate those fools who warp their minds with drugs and wine-because it was one of them that killed your father!”

“Can’t ever lose control,” Ko muttered. “Can’t ever become like those animals!”

“And you won’t,” Feng was becoming smoke, melting around him. “We won’t. Let me in, Ko. Let me in. ”

A lifetime of restraint. Never once had Ko allowed himself to slip, to fall into the easy path that so many of his friends had taken. He had rejected it always, the moment of belief becoming crystal-hard when Chan had informed him, grave-faced and quiet, that his father had been murdered. The child he had been vowed never to have a waking moment where it wasn’t him in charge, in control. But now he felt Feng’s soul pressing into him, filling his body like water into a bottle.

Trust me!

I do, Ko replied, the answer surprising him.

The Mask grabbed a handful of the boy’s jacket and dragged him off the floor. Ko’s eyes snapped open and what Monkey King saw there made him hesitate. A new and iron-hard determination, ancient and inviolate.

The katana spun in an arc and took off the guardian’s hand at the wrist.

“It’s been a while since I cut meat,” snarled the youth, a strange dissonance in his words. “But you never forget how it’s done.”

The bodyguard fell back, momentarily confused, and the youth attacked with skilful, aggressive motions. Monkey King’s mask broke with a bone-snap crack as the polycarbonate samurai blade sank into his skull, cutting clear across the orbit of his right eye.

Old Yee hobbled from the cracks forming in the street, his barrow falling into a void spitting with noxious smoke. The noodle seller tripped and fell. Overhead, in the low and hateful clouds, he glimpsed something huge and monstrous. A tail the size of a metro train clipped the hippo Centre in passing, and the old man died in the rain of glass and concrete.

The quarrel lodged between the second and third of Heywood Rope’s ribs, to no ill effect. Fixx discarded the crossbow and vaulted away from the Josephite’s attack, rolling and drawing the SunKings. Selecting three-round bursts, he followed Rope across bookshelves, blowing fists of confetti from the rare and antique volumes.

“Philistine,” snorted the killer. Rope jerked his wrist and the blade of the ghost knife shot out on a wire, hissing furiously. Fixx fired at the thing, but it wove around the bullets and cut dozens of shallow nicks before retreating. He moved and went to fully automatic; a metre of yellow flame shrieked from the muzzles of the pistols as he unloaded the rest of the magazines. High-impact armour-piercing rounds punched chunks from stonework and blew out windows as the Josephite evaded. The op adjusted aim on the fly and found his target. Bullets ripped away great ragged lumps of Rope’s left arm and shoulder, drawing out a howl. The breeches on the SunKings locked open, spent and fuming. Fixx let the empty guns fall from his hands and went for his sword.

Rope came hard as the monomolecular blade whispered free of its scabbard. Edge met edge with a glass-shattering impact, hot metal sparks stinging. They fought sword to knife, strike and feint, lunge and riposte.

Rope made a snake hiss and Fixx glimpsed a momentary ghost-glitter of silver sunglasses, of burning hellfire behind his eyes. The op pressed the hilt of the sword forward and twisted it, baring his teeth. Fixx didn’t much like holdout weapons-unsportsmanlike, really-but there was a time and a place for that sort of behaviour. Like now.

The one-shot ScumStopper Xtreme hard-jacketed slug in his sword hilt discharged into Rope’s chest with such force that it blew the man back into a hanging d-screen, bringing the flickering console down upon him. Burnt plastic and cordite gusted through the air.

Fixx limped to the young executive handcuffed to the oak lectern. “Mr Lam?”

“Fuh-Frankie,” came the reply.

He tapped the cuffs with the sword. “Hold out your hands, Frankie.”

“Wha-?”

The sword whistled through the air and the casehardened chain split beneath the blade, scattering links across the stone floor. Frankie swallowed hard and pulled himself away.

Fixx nodded at the room. “You know a way outta here?”

The exec’s face telegraphed his terror even before he could give it voice. Fixx turned on his heel, bringing up the sword as a shape exploded from the wreckage of the screen. Rope flew across the room, pressing the ghost knife down in his grip. The red orchard of slash-wounds across the sanctioned operative made him seconds too slow.

“Stab stab stab stab!” Rope collided with him, burying the ritual weapon in Fixx’s torso over and over, fast as lightning. He felt the sword tumble from his nerveless fingers, felt the velocity of the attack shove him across the tiles. Blood slicked the floor, and Fixx’s chest and gut contracted as the auto-routines built into his armour kicked in, dosing him with shots of TraumaNix.

Rope hazed into view. “This amusement pales, pagan. I must get back to my work.” The ghost knife’s blades shifted and changed, fractal edges turning like origami razors.

In the Yip apartment, there was the whispering hiss of cutting flesh. The boys had made a good job of slicing out each other’s vocal chords, and now they were painting a pentagram in their mother’s blood. Through the heat-hazed windows, the cilia of a starborn thing followed them about the grisly work.

The Jade Dragon grew, its tail looping through the streets, crossing over the bay and back. The demon embraced the waves of hate and desire on the air, tasted the foetor of the blue as it rose up in the minds of its food-thralls. Flexing its muscles for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years, it released experimental thrusts of power, warping local pockets of reality. It picked a man at random and had him explode into a horde of questing tenticular masses, probing and penetrating through the corridors of a tower block. In the dark night overhead, the King of Rapture disintegrated orbital spy satellites from a dozen different multinats; across the world, the operators jacked into them in Novograd, Seattle, Kyoto, Dublin and Sydney died instantly from serotonin overdoses. Transcontinental airliners vectored straight into the runways at SkyHarbor, swan-like fuselages turning into balls of fire and steel as the flight crews tore each other’s hearts out. The Dragon’s influence washed out across the water, sinking junks and sampans, forcing the simple bio-brain of the Macao hydrofoil ferry to drown itself. These things it did without really thinking about them, these small mischiefs easy like breathing for the beast.

Ise made it to the doors of the church just as Father Woo was pushing them shut. The priest held a shotgun like he knew how to use it. The go-ganger thought the padre was going to leave him out there, out on the street where the shadowy crawling things and maddened people ran riot; but then the priest beckoned him sharply. Ise threw himself through the doorway as the gun barked, killing something behind him.

It was only a fragment of the Lord of Lusts, a mirror-piece of the Master of Ecstasy’s monumental horror; but still the Jade Dragon boiled with inchoate power, the bubbling potency of unbridled animal hungers spilling into the world. The city reeled and went mad. Those who saw the beast in dreams over the past weeks gave it their minds, never understanding that to believe in it only made Him more real. Those who had been fortunate enough to avoid the taint spread by Tze’s Cabal were fortunate no more. There was nowhere in Hong Kong where the touch of the blue did not reach. Each mind formed another link in the chain, released more caged passions and horrible secrets. Millions of people found themselves hating and loving, needing and yearning for bloodshed and lust.

With great care, Alice nailed her feet to the floor and arranged it so she could seat herself on the bed. She drew the last of the cabbalistic shapes on the milk-pale flesh of her forearm with the shard from the mirror, then took the gun and rested the muzzle on her lower lip. The weapon tasted of oil and steel, and she had to fight back a gag reflex. Teasing the end of the barrel with her tongue, she squeezed the trigger and waited for heaven.

The song pealed around her mind, never-ending, looping in an infernal circle. Juno tried to stop herself from speaking the words, but they forced themselves from her mouth, the unstoppable meme washing out across the audience.

“We adore you, Juno!” came the screams. “You complete us! We love you!”

They echoed her, line for line, beat for beat, a flock of worshippers growing by the second as more minds in the city fell into the power of the Jade Dragon. The throbbing subliminals in the backbeats and the flickering hypno-commands in the screens made slaves of them, and Juno was at the core of it. Floating camera drones and emplaced lenses followed her every movement across the stage, holding her and broadcasting the image citywide.

She was the catalyst, at the heart of the expanding reaction. For every person who joined in the chorus, for each mind that willingly surrendered itself to the touch of the Z3N, the creature’s manifestation became stronger. Against her will, Juno led the city into a hive mind designed and directed by the will of the beast. It was circular, a self-reinforcing metaconcert-and soon it would reach a critical mass of human thought and make the Jade Dragon fully real in the material plane.

Juno touched the very faintest corona of the demon-thing’s psyche, and it sickened her beyond all words. She understood only that to pierce the veil of dimension from the Outer Darkness where it originated, the beast needed believers. It could only become tangible when men and women gave themselves over to the desires that it embodied, the blood-soaked, conflicting needs to procreate and to destroy.

As the lyrics came around again, Juno saw the flesh-city and the glass monsters of her waking dreams forming, and rejected them with all her might. “I’m the quiet muh-mind in-inside,” she stammered. “Pretty… pretty…” Her chest tightened, the muscles rebelling. She tasted blood in her mouth and screamed, fighting the compulsion, forcing the words to shift and change.

“I’m the lying fiend inside!” she spat wildly, “hateful voice! I’m the bloody smile! Touch my thoughts and die, there’s nowhere you can hide!”

Juno clutched at her skull as spikes of pain wracked her. The singer’s piercing shriek was repeated by the first fifteen rows of the concert audience, each of them falling into psychic synchronicity with her.

“I won’t sing!” she snarled, tearing the microphone tab from her cheek. “I won’t help you any more!” The camera drones closed in, curious at her sudden change in behaviour.

Juno’s angry cries died in her throat as the brilliant sodium lights of the stage were snuffed out, plunging the platform into blackness. She saw a shimmering curtain fall, cutting her off from the audience, and suddenly the screens blared out new tunes, picking up and repeating the words to “Touch” over and over. The live feeds from the cameras were abruptly severed.

From the deep shadows of the wings emerged Mr Tze, his face bright with rage. “You dare defy me?” he roared, his voice beating at her over the blare of the music. “You vat-grown, clockwork bitch. You’re just a grandiose sexclone, a fuck-toy for my bidding.” He brutally backhanded her. “Sing, damn you. I order you to sing. Infans simulare! Infans simulare. ”

“No more.” she cried, her words strangled and sobbing. “I won’t do it.” Mad elation filled her, a sudden sense of lunatic freedom.

Tze spat and drew his sword. “Very well. The King is coming, it is too late to stop it now. If you will not obey him, you will bleed for him.”

“Listen to me!” she screamed at the cameras, begging her fans to hear her. “The Jade Dragon will destroy you all! Don’t let it in! If you ever loved me, don’t-”

Tze’s ceremonial blade flashed in the spilled light from the screens and opened her throat to the air. Juno staggered backwards and fell, hands at her neck, struggling to hold in a flood of rich, hot crimson.

There were bright flickers of pasts and lives that she had not experienced, the death and death and death of other Juno Qwans, an endless loop of them, lives of engineered soulnessness bereft of human warmth. Laughter. Applause. The punishing glare of fame. In the grey haze, her mind collapsed to a single point, to the touch of a man’s hand on her face and the look of utter truth in his eyes. Francis…

Voiceless, she collapsed and died there on the stage, a blossom of red expanding about her.

“The songbird is silenced,” snorted Tze. Above, the unblinking glass eyes watched and recorded.

Only the goggles over Professor Tang’s eyeballs had stopped him from gouging them out when the green fires fell from the air, but now he was pleased, giddy with the sight as he raped the corpse of the lab assistant he had shot in the stomach. All the secret things, all the keys to the monstrous desires in his head were free, and he had no more need of human values.

Fixx felt his breath coming in shallow, brutal gasps. There was blood all around him, making the stone tiles slippery. His vision was misty, as if everything around him was made of felt. He tasted copper. The sanctioned operative made his hands work with fierce concentration, fishing in his coat pocket for a weapon, a touchstone. His fingers found a ragged tear in the kevleather and nothing else. With effort, Fixx pushed himself off the floor, leaning up.

“Looking for something?” asked Rope. The Josephite had the ghost knife held up high. He tipped back his head and let drops of red fall from the shifting blades on to his tongue. The killer came closer, nodding at the bones scattered on the floor. “Lost your precious things? How sad.” With exaggerated care, Rope brought his shoe down on the fetishes and ground them into powder. “All gone. Now how will you know what to do, Joshua? You’ll have to make your own mind up for once.”

Fixx had a dagger in his boot, but it might have well been on Mars. Agony churned in his gut as he dragged himself backwards, pressing against a jade pillar. Dimly, he was aware of a sour breeze sluicing in through the broken windows, heavy with death-scents, sirens, singing and the noises of human despair. A rough chuckle escaped his lips. “This… not goin’ exactly how I planned.”

“You had a plan?” sneered Rope.

“Nah,” admitted Fixx, “always been a kinda make-it-up-as-I go sorta guy.”

Rope toyed with the knife, flicking a glance at Frankie where he cowered by a console. “Perhaps there’s something to your ridiculous religion, Joshua. You might be right. Perhaps your loas did bring you here for a reason-just not the one you thought it was.” He bared teeth. “You’re here to die, Joshua Fixx, to fail. Look.” Rope pointed at the d-screens that were still functioning. The displays were fed from cameras at the Peak. He saw the audience, the weeping black skies, the stage.

“Juno!” Frankie gasped, staggering to his feet. “Oh god, no.”

The audio feed had been damaged in the firefight, and no sound was relayed; but they saw the anger ripple across the idol singer’s face, her sudden surge of rebellion. Frankie’s heart leapt as she flung away her microphone, freeing herself. “I knew you could do it!” he shouted. “Run, Juno!”

Rope rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you shout a bit louder, Francis? She might even hear you… ”

The live feed shifted as the stage went dark. For a second the cameras dithered, shifting to image-enhanced mode. In the corner of the display, the Live Feed overlay changed to Broadcast Suspended.

“Oh dear,” mocked the Josephite. “The slave has ideas above its station. Not that it matters, too little too late.”

He could not tear his eyes from the screen as Tze, resplendent in the cloak and finery of a Qin warlord, came into frame and berated the girl.

“Frankie,” said Fixx, “look away. Don’t… ”

The ghost of Tze’s blow made Frankie choke; he felt it as keenly as if it had been him that was struck. He saw the sword, and shook his head. “No, no, no, no-”

Juno looked into the camera, directly at him. He read her lips. If you ever loved me, don’t “No!” Frankie’s body went rigid with rage and shock. Juno fell away, life ebbing from her eyes, crashing to the stage.

Rope made an amused noise. “Your turn now Joshua. Take solace in knowing that your vitae will be put to good use. I’m going to paint a mural with it.” The knife fell and Fixx caught it, pushing all his strength into holding the razor tip away from his throat.

Rope licked his lips. “Don’t fight it. Believe me, this is a kindness I do for you… I’m sparing you the endless agonies of living in a world where the Dragon rules. ”

The blade pressed into Fixx’s skin; he felt his strength ebbing, and at the corner of his vision he saw movement. A flash of wet steel.

“Any last words?” said Rope, his breath hot and pungent.

“Yeah,” Fixx coughed. “Look behind you.”

“Bastard!” screamed Frankie, and sank Fixx’s sword into the Josephite’s back. The blade punctured Rope’s heart and burst from his chest.

Fixx kicked him away and fell back, forcing himself to his feet. Frankie was gasping, tears streaking his face. Black blood covered his hands and he stared down at them, shaking.

Incredibly, Rope was not dead. The ghost knife was forgotten as he fingered the blade, trying in vain to get a grip on the sword and pull it out.

Fixx hobbled to him and yanked on the hilt. “Mine, I think.” The sword came free and oily fluids spurted from the entry and exit wounds.

“Nuh…” Rope twittered, eyes misting. “No.”

“Yeah,” said the operative, and with effort Fixx gathered up the Josephite and hurled him through the broken window.

Rope fell a hundred storeys, plunging into darkness and fire.

“Tze.” The executive turned at the sound of his name to see the ragged thief crossing the statue park. He paused before the idling spidercopter. There was something different about the boy, a glint in his eye that had been absent there in the car park when he blundered in with guns blazing. A certainty, he decided. A surety of purpose.

“I’ll say this for you, lad. You’re a survivor.” Tze eyed the bloodied katana. “My servant?”

“Dead,” said Ko. “And you’ll join him soon enough.”

Tze drew his own blade. Juno’s blood still discoloured the edge. “Be wise. Take that sword and end your own life with it, while the choice is still yours. The world you know has ended tonight. The Jade Dragon is King now, and I am his keeper.” He idly ran a finger over one of the terracotta soldiers that stood nearby like a mute honour guard.

The action seemed to infuriate the teenager. “Maggot and shit-eater. You are blind and stupid. You sacrifice children to this foul creature and plot to set it lose on the world? Death a hundred times over is not reward enough.” He shivered and his voice altered for a second. “I’m gonna fuck you up, asshole. You and me got unfinished business.”

Tze frowned. The thief’s odd behaviour was vexing; but no matter. He would die as easily as the clone had, and then Tze would take his leave to the castle and await the final manifestation of the Dragon Lord.

The katana swung at him, missed. Tze made a riposte that hummed through empty air. “You’re quick,” he remarked.

“Two thousand years of practice.” snapped his opponent.

The swords crossed, polycarbonates and tempered steel biting. Tze snarled as he scored first blood, cutting a slash in the go-ganger’s jacket; but his victory was short lived as the boy wounded him on the arm.

Tze spat and attacked again, all pretence at play forgotten. This commoner had dared to spill his blood? There would be no quarter now. He released a flurry of blows, beating the thief back into the circle of terracotta effigies. Fear spread across his opponent’s face. “No cocky words now, eh?” he shouted.

“Go bugger yourself, you worthless old cashwhore.”

He slashed and caught the boy’s temple with a small nick, ripping away the dirty hachimaki headband in his hair. The youth stumbled against the sculpture of a swordsman.

“You are poor sport,” said Tze, drawing back for a killing blow. “No match for me, little boy.”

“My name,” growled the thief, “is Lau Feng, soldier of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor, ghost and undead, guardian of this life…” His voice shifted again. “I am Chen Wah Ko, brother of Nikita… And you owe me blood, motherfucker.”

“I don’t care who you are,” said Tze, and swung at his opponent’s neck.

Frankie was trembling, babbling. “Oh, god. Oh, god. Juno… She’s dead!”

Fixx gave a slow nod. “I’m sorry.” He had known it, somewhere deep inside. Fixx had understood that the girl’s fate was never to be a fair one. Juno’s life was a mayfly existence; bright, shining, fleeting.

“Tze killed her. He murdered her…”

“That’s right,” said Fixx, and he nodded at the damaged video consoles. “But it won’t mean nothin’ if nobody knows it.”

“I don’t understand. ”

“Show them, Frankie. Show the people the truth.”

After a moment, Frankie nodded and ran his hands over the panels. “The replay is in memory. The live feed is still intact. I… I can wide-band it to every screen in Hong Kong.”

“Do it,” said Fixx. “Let the city hear Juno.”

Broadcast Resumed.

The override from Tze’s command console had worms in every public communications protocol software across Hong Kong; advertisement screens, radio and vid, digital cinema, road signs and flickercladding. The Cabal’s reach extended everywhere, and Frankie used it to take revenge.

The loop of Juno Qwan’s defiance and her murder spun out over the city, played and replayed endlessly into the eyes and ears of a populace who loved her.

In the thrall of the Z3N, the gestalt needed focus, and Juno was the lynchpin; but the minds of the people at the concert and throughout the metropolis were stunned into silence as they watched Tze slit her throat again and again, in hundred-metre high, tint-corrected, high-definition ultra-colour.

“The Jade Dragon will destroy you all.” Her words thundered through the canyons of the city. “Don’t let it in. If you ever loved me, don’t-”

By the millions they watched Juno die, and with one voice they cried out for the idol they had fallen in love with. The potent blue surging through their minds came alight with grief, the flashing telepathic rush washing over the bay, a shockwave of misery that was anathema to the DesireGod.

In an instant, the Jade Dragon’s psychic bridge for rapture and elation shattered, ripping the demon-serpent apart. Screaming, clawing at the world, the thing tore towers down as the sky dragged it back into the darkness.

It left only destruction and mourning in its wake, as the citizens wept.

In the tower, Frankie spoke. “Listen,” he said, catching the sounds on the wind. “Hong Kong cries for her.”

Tze’s blade bit deep, but Ko was not there. He moved like lightning, and the killer’s sword cleaved through the terracotta warrior. The statue shattered like glass, spilling broken red rock across the pathway.

Among the ancient fragments there were bones, human skeletal remains sealed inside. Fragments of flesh, metal and leather centuries old puffed into dust on contact with the air. The ashen remains were caught by wind and gusted upward. Tze coughed as the choking dust stung his face and eyes. “Aiii! I cannot see!”

Ko felt Feng there beside him, the swordsman’s skill bleeding into his mind. The weak points in the corporate s armour were suddenly obvious to him, and he turned the katana into a stabbing strike, pushing the sword into a mortal wound.

Tze flailed backward and swung at dead air with his blade.

“Finish him!” Feng’s voice came from somewhere distant and faraway. Ko understood that the dead man was giving him the right to take Tze’s life, to assuage the failure of before. Ko smashed Tze’s sword from his grip and stabbed him again, drawing a scream.

Tze stumbled, eyes focussing on the main screen atop the distant stage. On the vast display, the killing of the singer played with a chorus of anguish as accompaniment.

Ko saw the panic in Tze’s dark eyes, the sudden understanding that his life’s work was going to be undone within a heartbeat of succeeding.

The katana flashed in the air and Ko sliced through spine and throat. For the brief span of seconds the severed head remained aware, Tze’s last experience was the hooting screech of the Jade Dragon cursing him into the darkness.

Wave-Net: with broadcast to be giving worldly factoids!

From the Tokyo Sim-Centre Virtual News Environment, this is FarEastEye with your v-anchors Dorothea Matrix, Raymondo Trace and Webber Caste.

“Good Clockset. Our main stories tonight, a massive terrorist incident rocks the Hong Kong Free Economic Enterprise Quadrant, claiming hundreds of lives and leaving disaster in its path.”

“America’s President Estevez comes to blows in a White House press conference with a reporter, after allegations of financial irregularity turn ugly.”

“A diplomatic storm erupts as the Nippon Space Agency steps in to rescue a crew of Chinese taikonauts after an accident in orbit.”

“Residents in the city of Cologne report the apparent spontaneous formation of an insect group mind.”

“And the Neo-Aum Shinrikyo group officially announce their dissolution and absorption into the growing international faith known as the Church of Joseph.”

“But first, breaking news from the city-state of Hong Kong (please touch the blue dot on your d-screen for direct neural input of the raw info-feed. Infra-red and Greentooth settings are supported).”

“Today, this vibrant metropolis stands traumatized and silent after what General Jet Li of the Army of the People’s Republic of China called ‘an unprovoked and ruthless attack on this peaceful city’. At a press conference in Shenzhen, General Li, commander-in-chief of Hong Kong’s Domestic Security Directorate and Police Battalion, described how an anti-corporate faction launched a multi-pronged assault via internet denial-of-service attacks, the detonation of several timed bombs and the release of powerful hallucinogenic compounds into Hong Kong’s municipal water supply. Victims of this psychological onslaught suffered traumatic visions and mass hysteria, although the effects appear to be temporary. Mobile APRC medical squads have been deployed throughout the area to deal with the catastrophe, and crisis-management units from several major corporations are en route, although Beijing has flatly refused to allow United Nations MediForce teams to enter Hong Kong airspace. Among the key targets for the terrorists was the headquarters of Yuk Lung Heavy Industries, which was wiped off the map by a massive explosion. Yuk Lung’s reclusive CEO is among the dead at this hour. While the perpetrators of this terrible act have yet to be identified, some intelligence analysts suggest that the America Alone Alliance Army may have had a hand in the incident, after their failed attack on the Cantonese idol singer Juno Qwan earlier this month. Qwan, along with several thousand of her fans, perished at the Wyldsky free concert, which was taking place on Victoria Peak at the time-yet more victims of this terrible event. Other theories lay the blame upon anti-corporate factions who may have used the concert as a cover for the attack. Reports coming out of the city are sketchy; eyewitness blogs suggest that the destruction of the Yuk Lung skyscraper occurred several hours after the terrorist strike, some even claiming that the tower was obliterated not by an internal detonation as the APRC statement suggests, but by a missile fired from an unknown location. There are also unconfirmed rumours that elements within the Yuk Lung Corporation may have been fully aware of the attack and yet did nothing to prevent it. We will bring you more on this story as it unfolds. Over to you, Dot.”

“Troubling times, indeed, Web. Now, with more on that swarm of superintelligent wasps in Cologne, here’s our German correspondent, Sieben AufNeun.” bip bippa bip bip bip scree beeep bippa hip zzzzt

“We’re sorry, but Sieben appears to be experiencing technical difficulties. Back to you, Ray.”