The Walled City

JIN LING

I’ve never slept this long. Nights in the Walled City are short. Dreamless. But here — swallowed in feathers, sheets, and tubes — I can’t tell what’s dream and what’s reality. So many faces pass. Some visit and talk: Dai, my mother, Mei Yee. Others — the nurse and Dai’s father — just stare and fill the room with their footsteps. Sometimes I feel Chma curled against me, warmth and purrs. Other times my father looms over the bed. When he disappears, I wake up soaked in sweat and shivering.

Then the waking truly hits. My eyes open and my head is clear. Fogless. I look up and see that the bags of medicine are finally gone. No more drugged sleep. I sit up, stretching my muscles slowly. There’s still pain just under my shoulder. Hot and harsh, but bearable. My tendons and joints are stiff. Like rope left too long in the sun. Bones grind and pop all over my body.

How long have I been asleep?

“Hello?” My voice cracks. It must be days since I spoke aloud. Maybe longer.

My call echoes against the bare wood floors. It’s weird to be in a place so quiet after years of city song. Even at the farm there was always wind blowing or the bubble of water boiling for tea.

This place is as silent as a grave.

“Hello!” I try again, this time louder.

A woman steps into the room. She’s not old, but she isn’t young, either. She looks the same age as my mother — just less worn. Untouched by sun and a drunken husband. I look for traces of Dai in her face. There aren’t any.

She bows when she reaches my bed, and I decide she’s the family maid. “What can I get for you?”

“Is… is Dai here?”

The maid frowns. “He left some time ago. I can get Mrs. Sun if you would like. She’s here preparing for the New Year’s party.”

My stomach gives a sick, empty lurch. At first I’m not sure why. But then the memory leaks back. New Year’s: the day everything will change. The day Dai has to get the ledger. The ledger I promised to help him steal.

Dai saying good-bye. Leaving without me.

“When…how long is it until New Year’s?” I start clawing at the tape. My teeth grit as it tears back, tugging out hairs, jerking the needle under my skin.

“Two days.” The maid’s eyes widen.

I freeze. Half-peeled tape hangs from my hand. A brownish bruise peeks from under it. Two days until New Year’s? That can’t be right. I’m dreaming again—

“You’ve been here for eight days,” the maid says, eyeing the torn tape.

I stare at the old hurt on my hand. Try to understand what she’s saying. Eight days. How did I lose an entire week?

“Are you feeling all right? Should I call in the nurse?”

My fingers tear the tape. This time it pulls all the way off. I tug the tube next. The needle slides out. I ignore the burn in my hand and the worse pain in my shoulder. Climb out of bed.

“What — what are you doing?” The maid puts her hands up. Tries to block me. Not that she needs to. My head spins, makes it hard to stay on my feet. I shut my eyes, wait for the spell to pass.

“I have to go back to the Walled City. Now.”

The maid’s face falls apart with panic. Her arms start flapping, like a bird dancing over a pile of gutted fish. “You can’t go back. You’re supposed to rest. The doctor wants you here another four weeks. He has to take out your stitches.”

The world feels steadier when I open my eyes. I look down and realize I’m not wearing much — just a thin, cottony shift. Rest. I should rest. That’s what Dai told me to do. My body still feels like chicken meat beaten tender with a mallet. But the window of time to find my sister is slipping… slipping away. And Dai might think he can steal the ledger alone, but I’ve been inside Longwai’s den. I’ve seen how impossible it is.

“No!” I force out the word as loud as I can. I can’t fail Dai now. My body might be hurt and aching, but I can’t lose this last chance to find my sister. I’ll rest when she’s safe. “Where are my clothes?”

The maid frowns, moves between me and the door. “You’re in no condition to be going back to that place.”

My first instinct is to run. I consider dodging her. But the long, low burn in my side tells me not to. Plus I have no idea where we are. We could be miles, maybe even provinces, from the Walled City. Without my orange envelope and my boots, I’m as good as chained here.

The only weapon I have left is the truth. “I have to go help Dai. He has things to do before New Year’s. Very important things.” I swallow. My throat feels ground to its nerves. Raw from talking so fast. “If I’m not there to help him… it could end very badly for him.”

The maid’s weight shifts. Foot to foot. The floor groans under her. She’s eyeing me like I’m a mangy dog. I wait for her to say no. To run for the nurse.

But she keeps shifting. It’s as if the wood is talking to us in its own tortured language. Back and forth. Back and forth. Until finally, “I couldn’t get all the blood out of your garments. I had to dispose of them.”

I feel the thin shift under my fingers. I wouldn’t survive ten minutes in this. “Is there anything else I can wear?”

“Hiro was about your size when he left for school. They’re boys’ clothes…”

“They’ll do.” I can’t imagine going back to the Walled City in a dress. Not after all this. “What about my boots? The envelope and the knife?”

“There was no knife.” Her look changes. Instead of a dirty mutt, I’m a wolf with bared yellow teeth. “The rest of your things are on that chair.”

She’s right. My boots sit on shiny wood — two beaten leather soldiers. The envelope is wedged between them. Still orange. Still fat. And behind that, the star book Dai gave me.

“I’ll bring you some clothes. Then I’ll see about getting you a car.” The maid bows her way out the door.

I walk to the chair. My steps are slower than I’d like. Every breath reminds me of the fight. A flashback to the empty, gaping awfulness of Kuen’s face. Of course my knife isn’t here. It’s back in some alley. Buried deep in his muscle and bone. Rotting away with everything else.

City blurs past the windows of the Suns’ car. There’s so much sky and sun. The only clouds above are the tiny scars left by airplanes, notching white numerals. Everything seems clean. Women walk around in pointy heels and nice dresses. Tiny white dogs pull on jeweled leashes. Men clutch their briefcases, steering through sidewalks of food stands and electronics hawkers. Buses and taxis weave and merge across smooth asphalt. Lanes come together and part like zippers.

All around are signs of my lost time. Shops are covered with scarlet lanterns and elaborate paper cutouts of snakes. Vendors walk around with carts full of mandarin oranges and incense. In two days the streets will be bursting with red, cakes, and drumbeats. Fireworks will explode. Lions and dragons will dance over pavement — men in costumes warding off evil spirits.

The Walled City isn’t hard to miss. Apartments stack high like shabby bricks. All of them are covered in bars. Cages on top of cages. After the Suns’ mansion, the place looks uglier. I can’t imagine how Dai felt, coming here after a lifetime on the hill.

The driver stays seated after he pulls up to the Old South Gate. I open the door, let myself out. Trash, mildew, and waste flood my nose all at once. They smell horrible. But they smell like home.

It takes a long time to reach the doorway to Dai’s apartment. Every five steps or so I have to stop, catch my breath. The fire in my side grows. Burns my back and ribs. The air shimmers cool, but my face still shines with sweat.

The front gate is locked tight when I reach it. I slouch on the step, almost relieved. There’s no way I could’ve made it up all those stairs. My head is swimming again. Blue and yellow bursts paint my vision.

There’s a seafood restaurant next door. Full of sea salt, sliced fish, and smoking patrons. I watch the customers talk to one another over blue plastic tables. They pick at steamed snapper and garlic-covered eel with their chopsticks. Shove them thoughtlessly into their mouths. Like every other meal they’ve ever eaten.

Will this really be over in just two days? It’s hard to believe. Sitting here, I wonder, if these people knew about the ordinance, what would they be doing instead? Would they search for new jobs and homes? Or would they carry on until change forced them elsewhere?

Both searching and carrying on seem too much for me — here on the step. I suck in the pain of my side and ignore the stars in my eyes. I can’t run. I can’t fight. I can’t look for my sister.

All I can do is sit and wait.

DAI

Two lines.

I stare at them, legs crossed, fingers twitching. They stare back, thin and black. Like a pair of burnt, limbless trees or the pupils of a cat.

I’m god-awful at waiting. Four days is a long time to second-guess a plan (or in my case third-, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-guess it). For four days I’ve sat, looping through our plan on repeat, playing out every possibility in my head. One hundred times I’ve ducked into the brothel, made away with the book. Taken Mei Yee’s hand in mine and run. A hundred more times I’ve been caught, gutted on the end of Fung’s knife while Longwai smiled on.

It could go either way, really. So much is on the wire. One wrong move and I’m done. We’re done.

I make a noise at the marks. Chma lifts his head at the sound, ears pricked and paws edged straight in front of him.

He’s been more than a little skittish these past few days. But I guess I’d be jumpy, too, if someone carved a chunk out of me with a blade.

I expected the cat to vanish into the next alleyway once he finished my bag of buns. But, like any self-respecting feline, he did the contrary — stuck close, claimed every inch of my apartment as his own. His fur wreaks hell on my allergies, but I don’t have the heart to send him away. We’ll all be out of here soon enough.

Chma stands, does an impossibly arched stretch that makes me want to move, too. A purr rattles the far reaches of his chest as he slinks over.

“Hungry?” My eyes stray over to the last meal we shared — a container of chicken drizzled in sticky, sweet sauce. One of Mrs. Pak’s creations. It was finished off hours ago. “Guess it is about that time.”

I haven’t been hungry for days. There’s so much worry in my stomach that there’s no room for anything else. I buy food for Chma’s sake, eat a little for the ritual.

“Downstairs then.” Chma is already at the door. Eyes alert and expectant as I pull out my keys.

We trot the stairs together, twelve whole flights, before Chma breaks formation. I look down and he’s gone, a silver flash. It’s the first time he’s left my side in days. My sinuses rejoice, but my eyebrows furrow. Something’s off.

I can think of only one thing, one person who’d make him move like that. This thought makes me move faster down the final flight, so that I’m not really descending the steps but leaping them.

Chma’s paws splay against the bottom door, claws making invisible needle marks in the water-worn wood. When I open it and unlock the gate, he pulls away, darts like a rat into the street.

No. Not into the street. Into Jin Ling’s lap.

I don’t recognize her at first. She’s wearing Hiro’s old clothes. They’re a bit big on her — the jeans bulge out like parachutes and the jacket swallows her altogether. From the back — with all that baggy fabric and mussed hair — she looks just like him.

But then she turns. The illusion vanishes like that last question mark breath.

Not Hiro. Jin Ling. The one I saved.

Now that I know, I can’t unsee her girlness. The turned curve of her nose, the slant of her cheeks. How her eyelashes curl up just so. It would be a mistake to think that any of these things mean she’s fragile. The very fact that she’s sitting here, eight days after being stabbed, is testament to that.

“Jin?”

Her fingers are running through Chma’s sterling fur. She looks up at me. There’s a smile on her face. “You found him.”

“Yeah, I’m about one day away from becoming a crazy cat hermit. What are you doing here?” I look to her side — the one that was slashed like a victimized tire. There’s no sign of hurt under the vinyl of Hiro’s old winter jacket. But just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

“I promised I’d help you get the…” Her eyes dart to the chewing mouths of the seafood diners and the noodle-makers covered in flour. “The thing you need to get.”

“You should be resting,” I tell her. Even sitting on this step she looks exhausted. An extra shade of white. “How’d you even get here?”

She ignores the question, squints up at me. “Is this because I’m a girl?”

“No. It’s because you were stabbed with a knife. Only a week ago.”

Her fingers are lost deep in Chma’s fur. I can hear his purr from here. “I’m here. And I’m going to help you. I gave you my word.”

“I never asked you to promise that. I’m handling it. You need to rest before your stitches tear open.”

Hurt colors her face, stabbing me. Chma looks at me, too, with narrowed, too-bright eyes. They glare like spoiled sunshine, like I didn’t just spend the past four days feeding him and trying to pour hydrogen peroxide on his tail stub while acquiring about twenty new scratches and two fresh bites.

Too stubborn to heal. Like cat, like girl.

“If you think I’m going to sit back and lose this one chance to find my sister…”

Jin Ling’s last word pushes me to an edge. To tell or stay silent. I feel like a child standing on the center of a seesaw, trying impossibly to make it stay straight. I want to give her hope. But if it’s false — if the Mei Yee behind the window isn’t who I think she is, or worse, if she is and I can’t free her — I don’t know if I could take it.

“What?” Jin Ling straightens. She must see the tension playing through my face. I’m not as good at hiding this stuff as I used to be.

It’s the secrets I can’t take anymore.

“Your sister. Mei Yee?”

She looks at me like she’s dangling over the rooftops, clutching only a rope and I’m holding the other end. My lungs freeze, like I’m being pushed deep into ice-cold river water. I’m barely able to get the words out. “I think I found her.”

MEI YEE

I water the cypress tree every day. I’ve done this four times since Dai left. The tree is already dying; its green-laced leaves are spoiling. Dropping into the mud below. Maybe I’m watering it too much, but I don’t think that’s the problem. Trees weren’t meant to be crammed into dark, smoky brothels.

A sigh leaves me as I place the watering cup back on the table. I don’t know why I’m trying, really. The end is coming. Soon, whether we succeed or not, I’ll never see this tree again.

The girls are behind me, sitting in their usual places. These last four days have passed with silence and waiting. They still don’t know about Dai or the window or any of it. Four days is a long time to keep a secret in a place like this.

Nuo hears my sigh and the trouble behind it. “What’s wrong, Mei Yee?”

I stroke the tree’s tiny drying limbs. Leaves prick like needles at my skin. “There’s something I have to tell you. Something I have to trust you with.”

All three of them are staring at me as I turn.

These four days have also seen me wondering, wavering on trust like stilts. These girls — these sisters — I know they’ve stared at the ceiling the same way I do. Wanting to be anywhere else. I’ve heard them talk about home and the sea and wall-less days with something like hope in their breaths.

But they also saw what happened to Sing. Stood beside me while she thrashed and screamed and drowned in pools of blood and heroin dreams. They felt the same fear I did, creeping through their veins like a drug of its own. A paralysis meant to last days, months, years. Meant to keep us here forever.

Telling them, trusting them with this plan, could go either way.

The one redeeming factor, the final weight in my decision, was their silence on Sing’s behalf. How they said nothing when our friend ran. It feels like so many ages ago we were sitting in the same circle and it was Sing speaking. Her lips moved so fast I could catch only so many of her words. I was transfixed by how flushed her cheeks were, how bright her eyes shined.

They’re quiet now, too. Waiting, waiting, waiting for what I have to say.

“I found a way out.”

“What?” Wen Kei squeaks, so tiny by my feet.

The girls stare, blink in turn. Suddenly I feel too tall, so I move back to the edge of my bed.

“Well, really, a way out found me…” I say, mostly to fill the silence.

“What are you talking about?” Yin Yu’s not sitting anymore, but halfway on her feet, like some cat ready to pounce.

My heart trembles, fills my head with a thousand warnings. The same ones that have whirled through my head, throbbed through my bruises these past two weeks.

Too dangerous. Don’t. There’s still time to back out. Still time to say yes.

So I do what I always do when the fears crowd in. My fingers dance across the crimson lengths of the curtain and pull.

The shell is still there. Outside looking in. Impossible to miss. My secrets through the glass, for the world to see.

“What — what is it?” Nuo leans into my mattress, trying to get a closer look through the grating. The way she’s staring reminds me of how Jin Ling and I used to ogle the chewy, sticky slivers of rice candy in the province market.

Wen Kei answers for me; the word leaves her mouth more sacred than a prayer. “Nautilus.”

Both of my friends stare at the window as if it’s some kind of magic. But Yin Yu stays back. Her stare is different, not so much magical as wary. The way I used to stare at the stray dogs my sister always insisted on feeding. The ones that could turn and sink their teeth in at any moment.

“Where?” Wen Kei finally looks at me, the entirety of her small body turning in her excitement. “How?”

“A boy gave it to me,” I tell them. “He’s been coming to see me for a while now. We’ve been trading information.”

“Information?” Wen Kei squeaks.

“About the Brotherhood.” I make a point to look at Yin Yu as I say this. “I didn’t take your duties because I want to be Mama-san. I did it because I had to spy. Get information.”

“You’ve been”—Yin Yu stops, lowers her voice to even less than a hiss—“spying? On the Brotherhood?”

“What did he want to know?” Nuo asks.

“At first it was just names. Then he wanted to know where Longwai keeps his ledger.” It’s not until I see the three pairs of eyes grow wider at the sound of the master’s name that I realize I’ve been using it.

“He says he’s going to get us out. All of us.” My words crash like stones into a still pond. They fill the room with trembling faces and ripples. Nuo and Wen Kei look at me as if I just unlocked the front door myself.

Yin Yu doesn’t move. “What’s his price?”

“We have to get Longwai’s ledger.”

Silence. More trembling.

“The red book? The one with the dragon on it?” Nuo’s fingers dance over her thigh, playing some unheard song. “Why does the boy want that?”

I ignore the question I can’t answer. It’s easy for me to trust Dai — the electrifying burn of his eyes, the deep of his voice, and his no matter what through the glass. I know the girls won’t take his mysteries as easily. “Longwai keeps the book upstairs, in the top drawer of his desk. We have to steal it tomorrow night. Well, I’m the one who’s actually going to take it. But I need you girls to help.

“The boy is going to buy time with Nuo and wait in her room. I’ll take Yin Yu’s keys and sneak into the office while Wen Kei makes sure that Longwai and Mama-san are distracted. When I get the book, I’ll drop it in Nuo’s room and the boy will walk out with it.”

Nuo and Wen Kei flinch at the sound of Longwai’s name. Yin Yu is unaffected. Bangs fall, black and short, into her eyes. They mute some of her hard, hard stare. “And where’s the part about us getting out? How do we know he’s not just going to walk out and leave us? When the master finds out his ledger is gone…”

“The boy is coming back for us. He gave me his word.” My voice fights against shake. I hope it’s enough.

“And you’re going to just trust some starving vagrant? He’s using you, Mei Yee!”

“He’s not!” I wish, now, that Dai had given me more words to work with. Something solid and concrete. I can’t translate the feelings in my chest so easily. “There’s something going on, Yin Yu. Something bigger than us.”

Yin Yu rises, her serving dress gleaming red as hellfire. “Let the boy handle his own problems. We’ll handle ours.”

Her words are an absolute. A challenge meant for me to bow or quail. A few weeks ago I might have, but my spine is stiffer now. I stand as well.

“This is it, Yin Yu. This is our chance. There might never be another.” I look at the other two girls huddled on my bed like chicks. “Even if you don’t want to do this, you have to let them decide.”

Nuo nods. “I’ll help.”

“Me too.” Wen Kei’s petite face pinches in a scowl. She’s staring at Yin Yu. “I don’t want to stay here.”

“No.” Yin Yu takes a step toward me, then pauses. “We’re never going to leave! Don’t you understand that! This is our life now. The only way out of here is on a beggar’s mat or in a body bag. You saw what happened to Sing. Don’t think the master won’t do the same to every single one of us. We’re all disposable!”

Eyes flash, blacker than night. Darker than a room without light. I look into them and realize she made up her mind a long time ago. When Sing screamed and thrashed and the needle burst poison into her veins.

I keep staring, trying not to get lost in the deep despair of her eyes. “We’ll do it without you, then.”

“No.” She reaches out, grabs the door handle. “You won’t.”

The pit in my stomach suddenly grows, stretches as if it’s outside me. I thought, at the worst, she would refuse. But now, seeing her long white fingers on the latch, pushing down, I know she’s capable of much, much worse.

“Yin Yu. Don’t.”

I see all of it slipping away, sliding down with the handle. She keeps pushing.

“I can’t let this happen again. I can’t let you destroy us! Destroy them!” Yin Yu looks to Nuo and Wen Kei. “One day you two will understand. I’m doing this to protect us.”

She looks back at me. “There is no escape, Mei Yee. The master will know. We can’t fool him. He’ll find out what happened, and then he’ll inject each and every one of us. Maybe even kill us.”

She keeps pushing the handle. Pushing, pushing, pushing. And a sick fills me, welling up like slimy black oil. It coats every fiber. Every vein.

I’ve never fought before. Not like Sing. Not like my baby sister. All fists, teeth, and dart. But something inside me snaps, propels me forward. Suddenly I’m at the door, shoulder slamming into its wood. My hip bone pins Yin Yu’s wrist into the handle so hard that something cracks.

At first she’s surprised. Then she shoves back. Her free hand flails, rakes at my face. I feel the sharp of her nails forging a path down my cheeks. I push out, use all my strength and more to slam her against the wall. Her tiny, wasted frame is no match for what woke up inside me.

“No.” I hold her tight against the wall. “No, no, no, no.”

It’s all I can say. This one word. Even as I say it I see my chances, my life beyond this, my sister and her stars, Dai and his sea… I see all of it consumed. Swallowed by the dark of Yin Yu’s eyes.

“What are you going to do? Kill me?” Her questions are calm and detached. The same way she floats through life here. “I’m surviving. That’s all you can do here, Mei Yee! Keep your head down and follow the rules! Survive!”

I hold her there, every muscle straining. Every piece of me shaking. She’s right. I can’t stop her. Not without rousing Longwai and Mama-san’s suspicions. Not without condemning Wen Kei and Nuo.

I can’t hold Yin Yu here forever.

“We can get out,” I manage. “We can go back home. See the sea.”

The other girl looks at me as if I’m speaking some foreign language, telling her things she can never understand.

I look back at Nuo and Wen Kei. I let go.

Yin Yu steps aside. My door unlatches and swings loose. She slips into the hall, a flash of red swallowed into the dark.

“Mei Yee…”

My head doesn’t feel like mine anymore. It swivels down toward the rug. Finds Nuo staring at me. Wen Kei is curled next to her, trembling.

“Go,” I tell them. “Before they come back.”

“It’s not right. She can’t do this.” It’s Wen Kei who’s talking. I realize, from the way the words come out, that she’s shaking because she’s angry.

I kneel back onto the bed, knees bending in a half collapse. “Yin Yu is doing what she thinks is right. She’s trying to protect you.”

They look at me. Nuo’s hands are fidgeting again. Wen Kei is breathing fast; her chest heaves in and out.

“Go,” I say again. “Please.”

“But what about the boy?” Wen Kei insists.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over.”

Nuo is shaking her head. At first I think she means to disagree with me. Then I see the wet in her eyes. She leans in, wraps her arms around my shoulder. Her hair smells like cinnamon and cloves.

We don’t say anything else. There’s no time. I hug Wen Kei and then they’re gone. Scattered like propeller seeds to the wind.

Dai’s face appears in my memory — glowing and strong behind the window. I think of how he’ll return and wait and never know. How I failed him.

The nautilus is still there, of course. Unchanged by this massive shift in my world. Behind bars and glass, still untouchable.

I look back over my shoulder at this room of useless, beautiful, dying things. Searching for something strong enough to break the glass. On the vanity is a jade hairpin, the ambassador’s second gift to me. I bring it to the grating, its sharp end slides neatly into the gap.

I need to warn Dai. I need to touch it.

My hand jams against the pin, sends it through the window. For a short, stunning second the glass sings. Pieces fly and spin and scatter like jewels across the sill. A few of them even spit and shine across my bed.

Then comes the cold. It swarms through the hole, and I realize just how warm I’ve been. Winter slides under my skin, infecting me with feelings fresh and free.

My fingers slip through the grating, past the glass’s angry edge. They reach all the way to the shell, keep pushing. And for a moment I’m touching the nautilus, feeling its smooth on my skin, hearing Dai’s promises over and over:

I can get you out.

I want you to see it, too.

I will come for you. No matter what it takes.

Then the ledge ends and the shell falls, tumbling far from my sight. Lost and gone.

My finger catches the glass. I don’t even feel the slice. But by the time I stuff one of my silk dresses into the hole, my finger is more blood than not. The curtain falls back for the last time.

I sit still on the edge of my bed, stanch the blood, and wait for them to come.

JIN LING

There are moments you wait for. And then there are moments you wait for. Moments you spend every other moment preparing for. Points of your life that click and turn. Push you in a completely new direction.

Dai and I stand at the end of the alleyway. My breath is short and the never-ending burn keeps digging a hole in my side. I ignore these things. Look down the river of trash. Count how many steps it’ll take to get to my sister.

My limbs shake with too much emotion. Dai leads the way and I follow, using one hand to steady myself on slimy stones. I’m glad Dai’s ahead. I don’t want him to see how hard it is for me to keep up.

A few feet in front of the window, Dai pauses. His body dead still. My foot lands on a loud, crunching soda bottle. His head whips back. Almond eyes narrow at me while he puts a finger to his lips.

My heart picks up: from trot to canter to gallop. Something’s wrong.

We stand still. Listen into the shadows. I hear nothing. Dai takes a few more steps forward. Skips through the trash like a cat. The window’s light colors him unreal scarlet. Dai looks at the shattered glass as if he’s seeing a ghost. He crouches down, fingers diving through old wrappers and bottle caps, picking up something all curled and hard. A shell.

“What’s that?” I hiss. “What’s wrong?”

His jaw clenches. Another finger goes up to his lips and his eyes warn, Be quiet!

I’m angry, ready to hiss again, when a noise rises up from the other side of the jagged glass.

“Has she admitted to anything?” Longwai sounds oddly awake through the curtain. Smart, sharp, alert.

“Mei Yee? Of course not. She’s just sitting there like a dullard.” A woman is speaking, her voice thin and reedy. Horribly bitter. Hearing her say my sister’s name makes me cringe. But it leaves no room for doubt. My sister used to be here. Behind this glass.

“And your search of the room?”

“There’s a hole in the window. It was stuffed up with one of her dresses. No sign of the seashell, though.”

Dai’s fingers lock around my arm. He pushes himself flat against the wall, just under the window. I follow. My stitches slam into cinder block and I try not to cry out. I bite through my lip instead. Salt and iron swim across my tongue. The alley goes blurry with tears.

The light above us changes. Falling from red to a weak yellow. Shadows spring on the opposite wall, shapes of Longwai and the woman bending closer to the glass.

“Even if it broke by accident, why would she keep it a secret?” The woman’s voice is clear. Close.

Dai’s hand is still on my arm, squeezing tight. I don’t dare move. Not even to look over at him. I hear Longwai’s breathing. Heavy and thick. Unbearably close.

“Does she have a cut on her hand?”

“I–I didn’t notice.” The woman sounds startled. “Why?”

“Blood.” Longwai says only one word. But it’s enough.

“Do you think…”

“I’ll send Fung outside to check the alley.”

This time I do look over at Dai. He’s staring at me, too. His face is a scarecrow’s: lips stitched tight, patchworks of feeling all over. His eyes dart to the end of the alley. Keen and meaningful.

We have to get out of here.

“What should we do with Mei Yee?” the woman asks.

“Keep her where she is. I’ll be in to see her in a minute.”

“And if the ambassador shows up?”

“Tell him she’s ill. Offer him another girl.” He says this and I feel sick. I have to swallow it down. Keep that last little roll of rice and tuna the Suns’ maid handed me inside my stomach. I always knew Mei Yee’s hell was worse than mine. But listening to Longwai sell my sister like meat makes it very, very real.

My heart burns hotter than my stitches. I’m sick and murderous and ready to run.

The light sinks back into red. Voices trail off with footsteps, cut short by squealing hinges. Dai is on his feet, pulling me up. I feel like I’m moving in a dream: exhausting muscles and will, but not really going anywhere.

“Come on, Jin Ling.” Dai tugs harder and I’m standing. “You have to go.”

“We’re just going to leave? But Mei Yee—"

He cuts me off. “You heard Longwai. Fung’s coming.”

I can’t think straight. Not with the pain. Not with his tugging and pulling like this. “But Mei Yee. The book. We can’t leave!”

“Jin Ling. Look at me.”

It’s the only thing I can do. Everything else is spinning like a child’s toy top. I choose a point, the wrinkling gap of skin between his eyebrows. Focus on it.

“We are not leaving. You are.” Dai digs deep into his jeans’ pocket. Out comes a small wad of bills. “You get out of here and you take a cab back to Tai Ping Hill. Go to number sixty-two. Ask to see Ambassador Osamu.”

The ambassador? The one who would show up for Mei Yee? Use her… My mouth goes dry at the thought. My shoulders start shaking.

Dai’s hand grips tighter, steadies me. “Tell him Mei Yee is in trouble. He needs to come get her.”

“That’s all?”

“It’s enough. It will get him to come.” He crams the money into my jacket pocket. “It will give us the distraction we need to make things right.”

I feel undone. My head is spinning the way it was that first day in the Suns’ guest suite. The world lurches even when I’m standing still. “And what are you going to do?”

Dai’s walking again. His arm guides me like an ox pulling a plow. Trash churns under our boots while we make our way to the main street. When we reach the end, Dai lets go of my arm.

“The best place for me right now is inside that brothel.”

I don’t think I hear him right, but his hands return to mine. Metal — cold and hard — brushes my skin. Weight falls, sudden, into my fingers. I look down and realize what Dai has given me: his revolver.

“Keep this for me.” He presses the gun into my palm. Heavy, heavy power in my grasp. “If Fung finds it on me, I’m done.”

“No! I’m not leaving you here. I promised—"

Dai shoves the gun harder into my hand, cuts me off. “I know what you promised. And I know what I promised. But there are two of us, Jin Ling. That’s two chances to get your sister out. If we go in there together, that’s screwed; and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you go in first.”

“But, Dai—" His name falls out of my throat. “Longwai. He’ll kill you.”

The older boy keeps talking. Doesn’t miss a beat, “If he does… don’t worry about the ledger. You get your sister out. Get as far away from this city as possible. Don’t look back.”

That was always the plan. But suddenly it feels like an impossible thing to do by myself. There are no words. I just look at the older boy. My throat is thick and my side hurts. My hands are heavy with his gun. His last protection given to me.

I’m shaking again. “I–I don’t know how to use it.”

“Pull the hammer, pull the trigger,” he says sharply. “There are six shots, so save them until you can’t anymore.”

I don’t want to leave him here. Alone. Without a weapon. I want to stay with him and fight. But my splitting side tells me that’s no longer an option. I have to go. I have to let Dai do the things I can’t.

“Get your ass back here fast. Osamu’s, too.” He swallows. Looks over my shoulder. Where the entrance to the brothel lies.

I don’t know if I can do this. But I have to. My fingers close tight around the gun.

“Remember. Tai Ping Hill. Number sixty-two. Ambassador Osamu.” Dai drills the information deeper into my skull. Not that he needs to. Every word is already there, blazed in challenge and fire. “And take these just in case.”

He presses the keys to his apartment into my hand and lets go. Pushes me away. “See you soon.”

I hope he’s right.

I’m running, even though my side splits and I don’t remember telling my feet to move. The gun is tucked deep in my jacket, slowing me with its impossible weight. Every step is awful. But my boots keep pounding. Through streets and shortcuts. All the way to the Old South Gate.

MEI YEE

Half of me expected to be taken to the lounge, made an example of right there and then. I was ready for it — ready for the belt to choke up my arm. Ready for the syringe to slip into my vein and introduce me to an entirely different universe. I was ready for other things, too — the hard nose of a pistol against my head or the dead-thin edge of a knife across my throat. I was ready for it to end.

The only thing I wasn’t prepared for was Sing’s room.

Keys shake in Mama-san’s bird-boned hand as she twists the lock, shoves the door open with her hip. Even with all the powder and paint, her face is clear; every horrible emotion she’s ever felt is strung across it like prayer beads. I’ve never seen her like this, not even when Sing was bloodied and broken on the floor.

I think of that night. Of the snap and the scream when we left her alone with Longwai. Of the bruises she tried so hard to bury with powder and sharp-tongued words. It doesn’t matter that she’s holding those keys. None of them lets her outside. She’s just as trapped as any of us.

With the open door comes a smell not even incense can mask. Urine and waste and sick. The air is thick with it, clawing into my nose, down my throat. I smell all the days Sing has been here, rotting beneath a single flickering lightbulb.

The room is bare, stripped of all furniture and decor. The only thing that isn’t walls or floor is a pile of filthy pillows in the corner. Sing’s body — wasted from a fortnight of heroin and little food — melds almost invisible into the poor light and stained fabric. She’s stretched across the floor with a stillness like death.

Mama-san seems not to notice, her nose long used to the stench. She looks at me and her face hardens. “You stupid girl!”

I expect questions. Or maybe a slap. But not this. Mama-san is glaring at me, lips pursed and coated with her fiercest shade of paint.

“You could have gotten out of here. If you’d played it right. You had the ambassador wrapped around your pinkie finger.” She holds up her smallest nail. It’s the same color red as her lips. “You had the chance and you wasted it. Threw it away like it was nothing!”

“I didn’t do anything.” I flip the switch inside me. The one I use when the ambassador crawls into my bed. The one that makes me feel dead inside and out. “Yin Yu is jealous of me. She’s spreading rumors.”

There’s no guilt shifting through my veins when I say Yin Yu’s name. Not this time.

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand? Where there are rumors, there’s hope. And when there’s hope…” Her finely filed scarlet nail points to the heap on the floor. Where skin and bone and pillow stew in what’s left of Sing. “It’s not allowed in a place like this.

“Stupid,” Mama-san mutters, and shakes her head. She doesn’t even look at me again before she pulls the door shut.

There’s even less light now. I feel as if I’ve been sealed up inside a tomb.

Stupid. Mama-san’s word echoes in the new dark. Claws at me with its hints of truth. I never should have told the girls. Never should have expected them to have the same trust in a boy they’d never met…

A rattling breath rises from the corner, like a wind chime threaded with bones. Now that it’s darker, the pile of pillows has transformed into a crowd of hulking spirits, calling me over. Wanting to devour me the way they’ve swallowed my friend.

The breathing grows louder, like hundreds of dried leaves tumbling and crunching against one another. One of the pillows lurches, falls on its side as something moves behind it. Then there’s a loud, awful noise.

Heeeeeeesh…

“Sing?” I whisper on purpose, because I don’t know if I really want her to hear me. I think of the last time I stood by this door, on the other side. How she threw herself at it like a wild creature.

But I don’t think she’ll be doing that now. The pillow-demons stay still. There’s only the rasping struggle of Sing’s lungs to let me know she’s there at all. I take a few steps forward, wait for my eyes to adjust.

She’s whiter than a set of bleached sheets. So much lesser and faded from the girl I knew: a husk. There’s almost nothing left to her. I don’t know if she could stand if she tried.

But she does move. Her arm reaches out and, even though the movement is slow, I jump back. It’s a weak motion, taking everything she has to grasp out for my foot.

And the labored breaths turn into words. I have to strain to hear them. “M-m-more…”

“Sing.” I crouch down, keep my distance. “It’s me. Mei Yee.”

Her eyes are open, but dull, as if they’re not really seeing anything at all. She stares and stares. Her arm stays still, wrenched and twisted like a spare piece of string. She looks dead. Only her horrible, rattling breath tells me otherwise.

A shiver takes me, starting first in my neck and dripping down my back like rainwater. I go back to the door and sit, clutching my knees to my chest. My eyes shut. I wish my nose and ears could do the same.

The shell is gone. The boy is gone. And I’m like a star falling, falling, falling into darkness worse than death.

DAI

It was a split-second decision, staying behind. One of those ideas you can barely process while your brain is stringing out cusswords a mile long. I’m standing in the lip of the alley, where the trash thins out into the trample of the wider street. There’s no time for second thoughts, but they’re there anyway, sticking me all over like hot acupuncture needles.

I have no idea what I’m going to do once I get through those doors. How I’m going to distract Longwai long enough for Osamu to get here. All I know is that Mei Yee’s timetable has suddenly grown a hell of a lot shorter than mine. And I’ve got promises to keep.

My body feels so much lighter without my gun tucked into my jeans. Like a piece of me is missing. The nautilus shell is still jammed up a sleeve of my sweatshirt. More damning evidence. I kneel down and find an empty bag of dried seaweed bites. The kind Hiro and I used to toss at each other during study sessions. The logo — a cutesy cartoon cat licking its lip — is long faded. No one would bother to pick this up.

I slip the shell in — shove it to the far edge of the wall. The cellophane wrapper crushes hopelessly under my boot. Crunching against a wreath of shiny, jagged glass. The pieces are as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. Perfect for peeling back skin, slicing veins.

My hand hovers over them, twitching as I weigh the risk.

I can go in there without a plan, but there’s no way in hell I’m walking in without a weapon.

I grab the largest fragment of glass, shove it into my front pocket.

Better not get caught in the alley. My brain’s adrenaline highlights this point. With double underlines and stars in the margins, the way Hiro used to mark up his biology textbooks. I take note (the way I never really did when I was actually studying), slip out into the wider streets, and start walking.

I’m not as far from the alley mouth as I’d like to be when Fung rounds the corner. For such a hulk of a man, he’s fast. When he sees me, he shifts gears, lurches into double speed. I barely have a chance to flinch before he’s next to me, seizing my hoodie like a dog’s scruff.

“You,” he grunts. “What are you doing back here?”

“I was on my way to see Longwai.” I keep my voice level and long, like a ruler. Not the easiest feat when I can see Fung’s gun not-so-subtly strapped against his hip.

“Yeah?” The gangster’s eyebrow quirks, and the beast on his face moves like the New Year’s dragon dances. The ones that will soon take place in Seng Ngoi’s streets. “Funny thing. He wants to see you, too. You stood up his runs.”

Shit. The runs. How could I forget? Not that there was much I could do in any case.

Fung doesn’t let go of my sweatshirt. He tugs me back to the brothel’s yawning door, pausing only to discard our shoes. I feel like a squirming rodent being dragged back to an eagle’s aerie. Waiting to be torn apart by razor talons and beaks.

The lounge has a few smokers, but Longwai’s couch is empty — just a stretch of threadbare fabric and sagging cushions. Fung pulls me through the smoke. We pass couches and the upturned corners of rugs and even serving girls. I look into their faces, hoping against hope that one of them will be Mei Yee. That the words we heard behind the window were a terrible, unreal illusion.

But she isn’t there. Not holding a serving tray or behind the zither. She’s not even lurking in the shadows.

My chest feels like someone’s pumped it full of liquid lead. I see the same pain in the other girls’ faces.

Fung keeps walking, dragging me through to the hall.

The east hall.

We stride past doors full of nameplates, to the end, where stairs curl up. At the bottom step, the gangster releases my sweatshirt, prods me forward with a growl.

“Up you go.”

I conquer every step, trying not to think about whether Fung’s got a gun pointed at my back. I think, instead, of how close I am to the book. How freedom has never felt farther away.

When we reach the top, my pulse is scattered and uneven. Just like Fung’s thick-knuckled knock on the door.

Longwai isn’t wearing his lounging jacket when he opens the door. He’s dressed like Fung — only smarter. Buttoned-up shirt. A blazer. Slacks. All black. Like a Western businessman preparing to go to a funeral. Except Western businessmen usually don’t wear gold chains around their necks or guns on their belts.

And I’m really, really hoping there won’t be any funerals today…

The leader of the Brotherhood sees me. The knife scar on his face bulges along with his jaw, purple and shiny. This, with his smart dress, makes him look more like a predator than ever before.

“I thought I asked you to check the alley.” He shoots a sharp look past my shoulder, at Fung.

“I did, sir,” the guard says quickly. “Found this one skulking nearby.”

“I didn’t know Hak Nam’s side streets were off-limits.” I try my best to look bewildered.

“They are if I say so.” There’s no smoke weighing down Longwai’s eyes. No subtle sloth to his movement. If he was a cobra before, now he’s a mongoose. His gaze snakes back to Fung. “Keep searching. Leave the boy here for now. We’re long overdue for a discussion.”

My hands clench tight against my thighs as Fung walks away, moves back down the stairs. I feel the glass, sharp and pressing through denim.

Longwai walks away from the door, and the room comes into full view. The first thing I see are the guns and cruel-edged knives. A whole wall of metal and trigger, power and pain staring me in the face. The shard in my pocket is starting to feel like a bad joke.

I try not to stare at it too long. There are plenty of other things to look at. A large television screen crowned with rabbit ears and tinfoil. A tank full of aquamarine water and tropical fish that stretches across an entire wall. A hefty, lacquered writing desk. The top drawer with its delicate golden lock.

I’m so, so close. If Mei Yee is right.

Mei Yee. On my way up the stairs, I’d thought maybe she would be here. But the shadows of this room are empty things. She’s somewhere downstairs, behind one of the many doors.

Longwai walks to the middle of the room, where a glass-topped table stretches out. Perfect lines of white powder streak across it: albino tiger stripes.

Every inch of me is alert — fighting fear and the very real sense that I’m prey. Prey in the deepest corners of the beast’s lair. I put on the face I always wore when I was younger and my father decided to chastise me. Aloof, cocked brow. Like nothing in the world could stop me.

“Trouble?”

“Nothing that concerns you. Yet.” Longwai stands over the table, and I realize that the glass is really a mirror, shining his own towering height back at him. “I’m more curious about why you missed our last appointment. And the one before that.”

“My runner got stabbed. I haven’t been able to find a replacement. It’s not easy to find vagrants willing to work with you.”

“There’s a reason for that.” Longwai’s hands rise up to his belt line, lifting the jacket up with it. His pistol gleams against the aquarium’s tropical light. “You failed to honor our agreement. I’m not the forgiving type.”

“So I’ve heard.” I feel every ounce of blood in my head as my heart drills it through, beat by beat. But I keep my mask up. Stay cool. Don’t look at the wall of sharp, sharp knives. “But you kill me, and it’s a guarantee that no vagrant will ever run for you again. No matter how good the money is. Survival is the highest law.”

“You’re a dangerous boy. Clever.” Longwai’s hand pulls away from the weapon, goes up to cradle his hairless chin. “And here I was thinking you were the disposable one.”

It’s all I can do not to look over at the desk. So close. I’m so, so close. Just feet away from the book. All it would take was a distraction and a swift movement. Bullet or blade to the head.

But those guns on the wall probably aren’t even loaded. Not like the gun in Longwai’s holster. And even if I did get the book and get downstairs, I don’t know where Mei Yee is. I wouldn’t have time to look for her.

It’s not the right moment. But what terrifies me is the very real possibility that the right moment will never come. That this is it.

“I like you, Dai,” the drug lord says, “which is why you have all your appendages intact and a brain without a bullet lodged in it. You’re smart. You work the system. Get things done. I need men like you.”

Air grows stale in my lungs. I look down at the tabletop mirror. Where the lines of cocaine double, become more than they actually are.

“I need men like you,” he repeats, “but I also need to know I can trust you. I need to know you have my best interests at heart.”

“Is this an invitation?” I’m not faking the breathlessness in my voice. Out of all the things I was expecting when I was dragged through this door, an invitation to join the Brotherhood was not among them. Tsang would be peeing his pants right now.

“It depends on how you want to look at it. Try to see things from my perspective. Do you honestly think I can let you walk away from this operation? After how much you’ve seen? Anyone else would be in a body bag now. But you have guts and brains. I’d hate to let such assets go to waste.”

“So… I join the Brotherhood or get carved up and shot?”

“Let’s call it an opportunity.”

“Well, I am an opportunist.” I try to grin. I try not to think of Hiro and Pat Ying and Jin Ling and Mei Yee and all the other countless lives this man has destroyed. I try not to feel the endless pieces of shrapnel always shredding, always burning in my chest.

“Of course, there are the formalities before you become an official member. Background checks and oaths and such. And there’s the little matter of your loyalty. All my men must pass a certain test.”

“Anything,” I say.

“Anything?” His hand falls away from his chin, burrows into the pockets of his suit.

I nod and think of hundreds of things he could make me do. Hundreds of things I would hate.

“One of my girls has been giving me trouble.”

No. No. No. Anything. Anything but that. I feel like a surgeon has sliced me in half, hollowed me out, my guts spilling over his blue gloves like stringy pumpkin seeds. My head spins and I try very, very hard to keep my smile on my face.

Longwai starts pacing circles around me. “I think she’s been communicating with someone on the outside. We found a hole in her window just this morning, and one of the other girls claims she saw a seashell on the other side.”

“What do you plan on doing with her?” I’m glad I gave most of my meals to Chma, because my stomach is churning like the waters at the stern of a ferry. A chaos of waves, cut to pieces by an engine’s sharp blades.

“You don’t keep a rotten apple in the bin. Though I’m beginning to think they’re all rotten. It happens every few years. Some girl decides to run and all the others get riled up. I’ll probably have to replace the whole lot.” He shakes his head, like he’s getting rid of the side thought. “But if she was talking to someone through that window… I need to know what she said. Who she was talking to.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“You—" Longwai pauses and walks over to the corner where a miniature refrigerator hums away its benign existence. “You are going to help me get the truth.”

The refrigerator door opens with the clink of bottles and a crack of too-bright light. Longwai grabs something I can’t really see. It’s small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, hidden as he nudges the door shut.

“I’ve already given her some time to preview her fate if she decides to keep quiet. You and I — we’re going to go downstairs and ask her some questions.”

“But what — what do I ask?”

“The questions are my job. If she doesn’t answer, I want you to use this.” His palm opens, like an oyster giving up its pearl. Only it’s not a precious gem in Longwai’s soft hand. It’s a syringe, slim as a pencil, filled with liquid the color of beef broth. The drug lord is careful to keep the needle far from my skin as he hands it to me.

The syringe is cool poison on my palm. I try to keep my hand from shaking.

Heroin.

He wants me to inject her.

“Don’t worry. It should be a simple-enough job.” He’s smiling as he says this. “After all, like you said, survival is the highest law.”

JIN LING

The cab I flag down isn’t nearly as nice as the Suns’ car. But I sit in its seat and feel as if I’m going in circles. Around and around. Backward, forward, back again. The city spins by, the same as before, except now it’s night. When the cab starts climbing Tai Ping Hill, all of City Beyond is glowing. Neon fire blazing against black night. Dark sea. I try to look for Cassiopeia, but it’s lost. Swallowed in electric fog.

The driver looks over his shoulder. “What was the number again?”

“Sixty-two,” I answer, and try to pretend that my world isn’t falling apart. That Mei Yee and Dai aren’t trapped in Longwai’s brothel. Surrounded by henchmen and guns. That I’m not there to fight for them.

It’s just like every other run, I tell myself, even though I know it isn’t. Do it well and they’ll be safe.

But there’s no quick exchange. No drugs for money and then done. I’m going to get a man who visits my sister. The man who pays money to Longwai so he can — no. I can’t think about it. Not with a gun hanging heavy in my pocket.

I pick at a hangnail instead. Tearing and rooting at it with anxious teeth. When we pull up to number sixty-two, there’s a chunk of skin missing from my thumb.

“Want me to wait?” asks the cabdriver.

I shake my head and hand him the cash. The driver leaves me on the side of the road. In the dark. Under stars and towering pines. By the open gate.

The house is up a hill, through a thick screen of trees. It’s a building made more of glass than metal. Light shines through transparent walls, makes everything around it glow. Dozens of people mill inside, like tiny dolls. The women are draped in gowns. The men wear crisp black-and-white suits. A lot of them are foreigners — with light hair.

A party. The ambassador is throwing a party.

The people behind the glass move like fish, swimming round and round in a tank. This world — these people with their jewelry and drinks — is almost more terrifying than a line of Longwai’s men. The men who are probably holding guns at Dai’s and Mei Yee’s heads.

I suck in a breath. Hold in the tears of fear and pain. I walk up to the door.

The doorman sees me. His smile turns into a frown.

“Please,” I manage before he can say anything, “I need to talk to the ambassador.”

“He’s busy,” the servant says. His voice is tart. Like his face.

“It — it’s about Mei Yee.”

“Young man, I don’t know who you’re talking about, but you have to leave.” The door starts to close. “Before I call security.”

I catch the door with my left, good side, and slip through. The doorman cries out. I give him a sharp kick in the shins and run.

I scramble into the middle of the party like a frantic piglet. A few of the Western women scream softly — words I don’t understand.

“Osamu!” I yell, because I don’t know what else to do.

The guests freeze. I feel more stares than I can count.

“What is the meaning of this?” One man surfaces from the rest. There’s a quiet thunder to his words. Dim, controlled anger. “How did you get in here?”

He’s older than I expected. His hair is silvering. There are more creases than smooth on his skin. More of an almost-corpse than husband or lover. Bile rises into my mouth. I swallow it back. Make room to speak.

“Ambassador Osamu, I need to talk to you.” I bow, even though I feel more like pulling out Dai’s gun and pointing it at this man’s chest.

“This is hardly the time or place, boy.” Those old, wrinkled lips pull tight. He’s looking to the back of the room. To security that will drag me off at any moment.

I decide not to waste any more time. “It’s important. It’s about Mei Yee.”

When I say her name, his eyes widen. His jaw grits. I’m not sure if it’s fear behind his face or something else.

The ambassador grabs my bad arm, pulls me away. We pass the glaring doorman massaging his shins. We end up outside, in front of his house, by a trickling fountain. Our breaths cloud each other’s faces.

“Where did you hear about her? How dare you come into my house and jeopardize my honor in front of my peers and my wife!” My. My. My. He spits the word over and over into my face. His saliva flecks my cheeks.

I look straight at this man. At the puff in his chest and cheeks. The hard pride in his eyes. I look at him and I hate him. The feeling spoils me, running through my arms. Curdling my chest and gut. It’s as if every other hatred I’ve ever felt is pouring into me: Kuen, my father, Longwai. I can barely speak because of it.

“Mei Yee is in trouble. Longwai caught her doing something she shouldn’t, and he’s going to punish her. He doesn’t want you to know.” I treat every word like a world of its own. Try to balance it. Keep it even.

The ambassador’s fingers clamp onto me, squeezing harder than a rattrap. There’s power in his stare. He’s trying to intimidate the truth out of me. “And how do you know this?”

“I–I run drugs for Longwai. One of the other girls in the brothel wanted me to tell you. She said it was urgent. A matter of life and death.”

These final words seem to sway him. Osamu lets go of my arm and returns to the door. I look back to the window-walls, where a bunch of primped, pale faces gaze through the glass. Staring at me.

The ambassador exchanges words with the doorman and takes a thicker jacket to cover his party-wear. His fancy leather shoes cut past me with quick steps.

“Come,” he calls at me over his shoulder. Like he’s summoning a dog. I have no choice but to scramble after him.

He doesn’t even look down when I reach his side. “I swear to the gods, boy, if you’re wrong, I’ll have you stashed away for a long time.”

Threats mean nothing right now. My face is bathed in sweat. Side literally splitting. Hiro’s old shirt is damp with my blood. I don’t know if I can keep going.

I do manage to crawl into the ambassador’s car, feel the lump of Dai’s gun when I collapse against the leather seat. It digs into my side. Reminds me of the six bullets. Six chances at getting my way. Getting away.

MEI YEE

For some time there’s only dimness and the ragged tempo of Sing’s breath. I begin to wonder if that’s all there is. Just the in and out of her drug-riddled lungs, taunting me with her fate. The rhythm is almost hypnotic. After minutes and minutes of it, my eyes begin to close.

And then the door next to me opens — an explosion of wood and anger, jerking me awake. I struggle to my knees and then my feet, eyes full of the blurry series of legs filing in.

I stand and see their faces. The ones who’ve come to question and judge. Mama-san’s makeup, Fung’s tattoo, Nam’s gold tooth, Longwai’s violet scar. But there’s a fifth face, one I have to focus on to recognize.

I see him and wonder if maybe I’m dreaming. But no, I rub my eyes and he’s still there — in the flesh, without glass or metal between us. The golden skin. Hair peaked and jutting everywhere. Sharp face full of plans and cunning. Eyes that hum and shine like phoenix song.

Dai. What’s he doing? Did they catch him, too?

Those eyes find mine. His chin quivers — side to side — in the smallest of shakes. I snap my stare down to the floor, away from him.

“Mei Yee.” Longwai sounds disappointed, but thrills still manage to weave through my name. “Mei Yee. How could you do this to me? After everything I’ve done for you.”

I keep my head down, study the crevices in the floorboards. There are years of dust and suffering wedged between them. Places even Yin Yu’s broom couldn’t reach. “I–I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”

“No?” Longwai steps close. I feel his eyes all over me, as scathing and peeling as they were the very first night he inspected me. He reaches out, his fingers cool and clammy against my wrist. “Then how did you get this slice on your finger?”

He holds my hand up for the room to see. It takes everything I have not to flinch back from his touch.

“We know about the hole in the window. Who was behind it?”

Down. Keep your eyes down. Don’t look at Dai. “No one, sir.”

“You’re lying,” Longwai says, as if it’s the most obvious fact in the world. “Yin Yu said you showed her a seashell. How did you get it?”

“Yin Yu is a liar. I’ve told you before. She’s jealous.”

“She’s smart enough not to keep secrets.” Longwai’s nostrils flare wide, like a horse that’s run three li at full gallop. “I’m giving you a choice, Mei Yee. Tell me the truth and I’ll let Ambassador Osamu take you away to Seng Ngoi. If you choose to keep lying…”

He gestures to where Dai stands, a bit apart from everyone else in the room. He’s not looking at me, not meeting my eyes. I look into his hand and see why.

This syringe looks exactly the same as the one they stuck inside Sing’s arm. Pumped full of liquid ruin and loss. The sight of it curled into Dai’s fingers makes my heart clench.

Is it betrayal? Was he playing me this entire time? Plying me for information only to discard me in the end?

Every one of these questions feels like an arrow cracking through my breastbone. An entire quiver of sharpness splitting me open, right through the middle. I try, try, try to meet his eyes and find answers, but he doesn’t look at me.

Longwai mistakes the wreckage on my face for fear. “I’ve allowed you some quality time with your old friend to make the gravity of your choice a bit more real for you. So, Mei Yee, it’s the truth or that syringe. Which will it be?”

I could tell. All it would take is one finger, aimed straight as an arrow back at Dai’s chest. One word, one point, and the needle’s end would slide away. Guns turned on Dai.

Then what? If Longwai kept his word, I would be whisked away to City Beyond. Caged in the ambassador’s penthouse for a lifetime of bruises and pieces of the sea. It’s not freedom, but it’s better than ending up as a living skeleton on Longwai’s floor.

I look at the syringe, now almost completely visible under Dai’s strained knuckles. The skin over his bones is a thin, sharp white.

It’s a gamble. All of this. I have no idea, no guarantee that Longwai’s promise will hold. And Dai… I focus on his fingers. How they shake.

It all boils down to a single question.

Do I trust him?

I look down the line. At Fung’s offset jaw and hunched shoulders. At Nam’s four peeling cheek scabs and gleaming eyeteeth. At Mama-san’s body wrapped tightly in her slinky silk. At Sing’s hair rippling over the floor like grease-drenched ribbons; her eyes are open, some shine returned as she looks at the syringe in Dai’s hand. At Longwai’s too-big belly stretched tight against the buttons of his shirt. Back at Dai.

He’s looking at me this time. It’s just a split second of our eyes locked together. And I know.

No matter what it takes.

“I’m telling you the truth.” There’s no shake in my words as I look back at Longwai. “There was no one behind the window. There was no shell. My window broke and I cut my finger stuffing the silk in it to keep the cold out. Yin Yu saw it and made up wild stories so she could profit.”

This clearly isn’t the response Longwai is expecting. His lips slide into an almost-frown. His eyes dart from Dai to me and then narrow. “And this is the truth?”

“Yes,” I tell him.

The drug lord’s head swivels back in Dai’s direction. With one hand, he grabs my arm again, the other he uses to wave my window-boy over.

Dai is so close I can feel the heat of him. So different from the clammy cool of Longwai’s touch, or the slick sweat of the ambassador’s chest. This heat is like a cooking fire on a winter night — the close, simmering comfort of home.

I close my eyes, bask in it as Longwai stretches my arm out straight. Somewhere I hear the snap of a band. Then I feel it, squeezing tight against my upper arm, choking all blood back down into my wrist, palm, and fingers.

My eyes open to see Fung tying a complicated knot into the band. Longwai is staring at me. Expecting me to beg: all quail and quiver at his feet. Instead I stare back, meeting the hollow hardness of his eyes.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he says.

“No.” I feel every heartbeat slamming against the tightness of Fung’s tourniquet. “It doesn’t.”

The spine in my voice makes him snarl, and I know it doesn’t matter if he thinks I’m telling the truth or not. Mama-san’s right. Courage and hope can’t exist in a place like this. Longwai grinds them to powder under his heels.

It wasn’t Yin Yu who did this to me, not really. It was this man.

He looks at Dai and points to the blue veins bulging beneath my skin. “Do it.”

DAI

Back on my apartment wall there are two marks left, but it doesn’t matter. I’m out of time. No days or hours remain. Not even minutes.

The numbers are different now. I add them up, doing quick calculations in my head as my fingers clutch the syringe.

Six people.

Three guns.

One syringe.

One shard of glass.

One book.

It’s an uneven, impossible equation. No matter how many times I run through it, I can’t come up with the perfect answer. The book and the girl don’t go together. After the equal sign, it’s only me or her. No us.

Longwai makes a living by lying through his teeth, but he was right about one thing: I’m the disposable one. I’m the sacrifice, the queen in a brutal game of chess.

Turns out there’s a law higher than survival. And I don’t know what it is, but I feel it surging, throbbing, burning away the rest of my doubts and fears.

No book. No me. Just Mei Yee.

The syringe of heroin has lost the chill of the refrigerator. It shakes, filling with dozens of tiny bubbles in my hand. If anyone is looking at me, it should be all they see. Shakes and bubbles. But my left hand is sliding ever so carefully into my pocket, where the glass piece saws through denim. Its razor edge bites into my palm, ready.

There are so many veins in Mei Yee’s arm — dredged to the surface by Fung’s too-tight knots. She doesn’t fight as the drug lord splays out her arm like an offering.

“Do it.” Longwai points to the blue web under her paper-thin skin.

I take a breath, unclenching the syringe in my right hand while gripping tight to the glass in my left. If I time it just right, I can get the shard deep into Longwai’s neck, grab his gun, and take care of Fung and Nam. A big if. And then there’s the matter of every other Brotherhood member with a holster crawling through this place.

Getting out of here alive is a long shot, but it’s the only shot I’ve got.

I pretend to watch the needle as I guide it close to Mei Yee’s flawless skin. But really my eyes are searching for other veins, the thick cording ones gathered in Longwai’s neck.

There’s a cry and suddenly — a girl. A girl where I didn’t even know a girl was. She rises from the corner, looking like a witch with her loosed black hair and gaunt face. Her eyes are both bulging and sunk in — fixed on one thing only. She lunges with a speed too fast and impossible for her bony limbs.

“I need it!”

The syringe is torn from my hand by this wild resurrection of a girl. I don’t even have to pretend to stop her. Her fist clenches tight around the needle, jams it into her arm. But there’s no vein to carry it through. Heroin and blood braid down her skin. The girl shakes, stares at it. She’s trying to lick it up when Nam rips the hollowed plastic syringe from her palm.

I slip the glass back into my pocket.

“Get Sing out of here!” Longwai yells at Nam. I’ve never seen him like this, so angry his face is flushed full of autumn colors.

“But where—"

“I don’t give a damn!” Longwai roars. “Put a bullet in her head for all I care! And fetch me another syringe while you’re at it.

Nam grabs Sing by the hair and starts to drag. The girl’s face shifts into a violent, ugly thing — as if she’s possessed. From the way she moves, I could almost believe it: kicking, clawing, screaming, twisting. Nam’s grip on her hair slides free and she’s off. Out the door faster than a mouse.

Now. The time is now.

My hand wraps around the glass shard again, pulls up, and out to strike.

“What is all this?!”

A new roar causes my arm to freeze, midair. It isn’t Longwai — the expression on his face is set and silent. He stares behind me, at the shadows crowding the doorway, blocking all ways to freedom.

For once I’m thankful this glass is so small. It hides perfectly beneath my knuckles, betraying nothing. I hold it tight and look around.

Osamu. My Plan B. Jin Ling did her job.

The ambassador is in familiar garb. I’ve seen him wearing the same style of tuxedo since I was too young to really know who he was. What always stood out to me were his gold cuff links, how they twinkled under the torchlight in our rock garden as he sipped cocktails and flirted with every woman there. Including my mother.

He doesn’t recognize me — I doubt he even sees me at this point. Osamu’s anger is bullish. So focused he didn’t even remember to remove his shoes at the entranceway. His shiny leather oxfords stamp into the reeking room, shaking every floorboard.

“What’s going on, Longwai?”

“Brothel business,” the drug lord bristles, but the yell has left his voice. I notice his free hand is tucked to his side. The one his gun is hidden on. “None of it concerns you.”

I’m so close to Mei Yee I can hear her breath changing. It gets faster in a way that the threat of Longwai or a heroin needle couldn’t spur. It’s the closeness of him — the way a rabbit’s heart explodes under the stare of a hunter.

The ambassador’s eyes travel up her arm, taking in Longwai’s fingers still on her wrist, the bulging vein, and Fung’s knots. “Mei Yee is my concern. I thought I made it very clear to you that she wasn’t to be touched.”

“I’ve respected your wishes for as long as it’s been convenient. That time has long run out. Lest you forget, Osamu, I’m the one who owns this brothel and these girls. Mei Yee included.”

The men stare at each other, like two silverback gorillas facing off on a single piece of territory. Ready to tear each other apart. A dramatic nature-show moment in the flesh.

Mei Yee shakes beside me. I wish hard, hard, hard that I had my gun.

Osamu reaches out, wraps his hand around Mei Yee’s wrist. Their skin is so different — hers white as snow, his covered with age spots and wiry hairs.

“Name your price,” he says, and I think of all the many bruises I saw on Mei Yee’s skin that night at the window. How they match his touch exactly. I don’t mean to, but my grip grows tighter, pushes so my skin is torn apart by the glass.

“It’s not about the money anymore, Osamu.” Longwai’s voice is both hard and peeling, like callused skin. “She’s up to something. Keeping secrets. I want to know what it is.”

For a long moment all is stillness. There’s the quick avalanche of Mei Yee’s breaths. The old woman in her clingy silk, taking everything in like a spider on a web. And my hand tight on glass.

“Secrets?” Osamu is looking around, eyes wide and clearing, like a man who just woke up. Glimpse by glimpse he swallows the room: the filthy pile of rags, Longwai’s gun, Mei Yee, me…

And then his eyes dart. Back and forth. Back and forth like one of those plastic table tennis balls, ricocheting between Mei Yee and me.

“I see how it is,” he says softly.

I feel the heat of my own blood swimming across my palm.

“It’s information you want?” Osamu’s voice is a lake. Placid and calm on the surface, plunging to unknown depths. “You’re not going to get it from Mei Yee.”

His eyes set like stone on my face. “This is the one you want. Sun Dai Shing. What is the heir of Sun Industries doing flirting with the likes of the Brotherhood? I’m sure he has more than enough secrets to keep you entertained for the rest of your miserably short career.”

Goddamn Osamu. Not a very good Plan B.

All the heat and threat that Longwai was pouring onto the ambassador shift, unload like dragon fire on my shoulders. The drug lord lets go of Mei Yee and draws his gun in a fluid, lethal, mongoose movement. The barrel stares at me — hard and unforgiving.

Game over.

He pulls the trigger.

JIN LING

I can’t keep up. The ambassador is gone. Vanishing into the Walled City before I can release my seat belt. Even that’s hard. My right arm bursts with pain. Weakness. There’s a dampness in Hiro’s shirt; my side’s bleeding again. Tears of pain fill my eyes. Make everything dazzle. The lights, the darkness, the flaring red lanterns of New Year’s. Everything is shining. Mixing together.

I feel done. But my sister’s face, her voice, is the clearest it’s been in years. I see her smiling behind the steam-wisps of our weakened tea. I hear the lullabies she sang over me after Father’s thrashings.

I think of Mei Yee and get out of the car. Leave the stink of rich cologne and leather. I’m walking, dragging through the Old South Gate. My walk feels like a twisted dream, into the heart of this unreal city. Through the last two years of my life:

The sewer grate where I made my very first camp. The shops I stole from, the stoops I haunted. The window I used to peer into every few mornings to watch cartoons. The alley where I rescued a gray kitten from his vagrant tormentors. The second alley, where I rescued him again. Mrs. Pak’s restaurant and Mr. Lam’s junk store. Mr. Wong’s dentist chair. The hidden corners where I pitched my tarp. And on. And on.

Over soon. It will all be over soon.

The gun hangs heavy in my jacket pocket. All six bullets weigh my steps, make each foot forward seem more impossible than the next. I keep going. Because that’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done.

Only this time — this crucial, final time — I don’t think I have the strength.

My boots plow over puddles of ice. Step, step, pain. I stop. Lean against the apothecary’s door. Try to focus on the dozens of jars with dried roots and bits of animals through the bars. My vision is double — smears of light and color and dark.

I’m almost there. One more turn and I’ll be at the mouth of the dragon’s den. It can’t be more than twenty steps, but it might as well be a completely different country.

An empty can, riddled with rust holes, clatters down the street. Causes my neck to snap up, alert. I can’t see much. Just the fog of my breath and the dark. Blurring together.

“There he is!” someone shouts, and I hear footsteps.

One by one, I see them. They come from all directions. A ring of boys and rags and knives. Their faces are pale and whittled. Carved by flickering lights. So sharp and bony that I’m not even sure they’re human. Maybe they’re demons. Evil spirits come to swallow me down into the fires of the afterlife. To devour my soul for what I did to the jade dealer. To Kuen.

My hand fumbles, sliding from the doorframe down toward my pocket. Toward the revolver.

But there are more than six of them. Even counting through my double vision.

One of the boys comes into focus. He’s squinting at me, lips screwed to the side. His blade is a sick shade of silver, slashing the night in front of him. “You sure it’s him? Looks different to me.”

“Got new clothes is all. Nice ones, too!” a voice calls from my left.

“Ho Wai’s right,” another boy says. “That’s him. The one that gutted Kuen.”

The boy directly in front of me steps closer. His knife moves with him; its edge hovers dangerously close to my throat. “Well, well, Jin.” A grin splits across his sharp, starved face. “Fancy seeing you here.”

MEI YEE

Longwai’s pistol points at Dai. I want to scream, but I can’t find my voice. Or maybe I do scream and I just can’t hear. The sound of the bullet leaving the gun pulses everywhere. Nothing — not the filthy gaps in the floorboards, not the makeup caked in the corners of Mama-san’s eyes, not the aching, bursting vessels of my heart — escapes it.

So many things happen at once.

Dai is falling, falling, falling down. He’s on the floor. Not moving. The floorboards under him seep out, stretch into a color like my curtain, like my nails. My ears hum and ring and scream, This can’t be right. Longwai steps over the body, the pistol is pointing down now. This time it’s aimed at Dai’s head.

The ambassador’s fingers are around my wrist. He’s pressing the way he was before, breaking things unseen, calling up colors and hurt.

But he’s not just pressing. He’s pulling, too, tugging me away from Longwai’s gun. Away from Dai. He yanks my wrist so hard my joint pops and sparkles pain. Sparks of light shiver like tadpoles across my eyes, follow me all the way out the door, down the hall, and into the lounge.

I could’ve touched him. We were that close.

“Hurry up.” The ambassador drags me through this nightmare of smoke and couches. And I don’t know how to fight him. Not when there was so much blood soaking the floor and I knew that Dai was there for me. No matter what…

Sing didn’t make it far. She’s on the floor of the lounge, her face pressed hard into the rug. Longwai’s men are so busy with her that they don’t even notice as the ambassador drags me through the room.

But someone in the lounge does notice. I stumble forward, watching Yin Yu watch me. The wrist I slammed into the door handle hangs limp at her side. Bangs fringe over her eyes, and I’m too far away to see the expression on her face. I can’t tell if she’s sorry or sad or completely vindicated. She doesn’t move as the ambassador takes me away.

We’re out of the lounge, down the south hall, heading toward the door. I’ve been dreaming of this moment for days, stepping out and away from this place. Only the fingers on my skin were gentler, as warm and endless and electric as his eyes.

We could’ve touched.

And then there’s a noise that could end all other noises. Again it tears through everything: the winter air, the hallway’s floorboards, my chest. It makes the ambassador jump even though we both knew it was coming.

The second gunshot rattles through my ears like cicada wings — over and over and over. Killing again and again and again. I squeeze my eyes shut, as if that could stop the noise. But all I see is Dai crumpled on the floor with Longwai’s gun at his head. No chance of running.

“Let’s go.” The ambassador keeps tugging, as if I’m some stubborn donkey yanking against its halter. “Longwai might change his mind now that he’s done with the boy.”

Done with the boy. His words freeze my bones. As if the air whistling through the front door is actually cold enough to fuse my muscles together. I’m more ice than girl.

“What? Sad? Don’t try to hide it. I saw the way you two were looking at each other!” The ambassador’s hand crushes harder with every word, as if he can squeeze me back into submission.

“You killed him…”I don’t mean to say it, but the thoughts slip out. Shock words as sheet white and shaking as I am.

“I just saved your life,” the ambassador hisses. Pain shoots through my wrist like a thousand needles jammed at once. “Yours for his. You’re mine. No one is going to stand in my way. Not Longwai, not Sun Dai Shing, not even you.”

I wish he were wrong. That the tender blooms of courage and fight that have been poking out of the soil of my soul for the past few days hadn’t just been torched at the sound of Dai’s death. I wish I could stop him. Stop everything that’s happened in the past few hours.

But some things just weren’t meant to be. No matter how hard and how fierce you wish them.

JIN LING

My whole hand is numb as it dives into the pocket of Hiro’s old jacket. I must be touching the gun, but it’s impossible to tell. My fingertips are clumsy and slurring. The way my father always was after bottle number three.

All the boys are closer now. As if they’re the wheel and I’m the hub. Their knives could be spokes. Pointed against the jacket’s vinyl.

“Where’d you get those clothes?” The vagrant they call Ho Wai edges in. Looks me over.

“Probably the same place he got the boots!” the center boy says. “Now shut up!”

“You shut up, Ka Ming!” Ho Wai barks back.

I can feel the gun now. The boys — Ho Wai and Ka Ming — aren’t paying attention to me anymore. They’re facing off. Like a pair of beta dogs. Putting on their best displays of snap and snarl for the group.

I take a breath of damp air. My sight is settling, coming together. There are eight of them — flanked around me like a half moon. Eight knives to six bullets and an unsteady hand.

Not good odds. Best just to answer them.

“I got these clothes from a house on Tai Ping Hill,” I say.

Ka Ming and Ho Wai stop glaring at each other. All eight pairs of eyes are on me now.

“No way.” Another boy to the left shakes his head. “He’s lying!”

“How do you think I’m still alive?” I shrug. The vinyl of Hiro’s old jacket sings friction. “Dai took me there. It’s where he’s from.”

“Tai Ping Hill? The rich people’s neighborhood?” Ho Wai frowns. His knife lowers just a hair. “Dai’s from there?”

“Yeah…” I draw out my words. Let my mind work. If the boys were set on killing me, I’d be a corpse by now. Left to rot. But these boys… they don’t have Kuen’s claw and hate. They’re just starving faces. Looking for a way out.

“Turns out he’s a rich kid. Has a huge house and all that.” I think of the cash Dai stuffed into my pockets. I wish I hadn’t given it all to the cabbie. My own money in the orange envelope is sitting in the corner of Dai’s apartment. Far from here. “And lots more clothes where these came from. You let me go and I can make sure you get some.”

Wordless questions are thrown across the ring of vagrants. Glances bounce between knives and stone-cold faces. Most of them are aimed at Ho Wai and Ka Ming. It seems the spot Kuen left is too large to be filled by a single boy.

“How do we know you’re telling the truth? That you aren’t just gonna run off?” Ka Ming’s knife slashes the air to each of his syllables. Reinforcing every point.

I don’t have the energy to come up with any more excuses. Any more lies. “You don’t.”

Ka Ming and Ho Wai look at each other. Stares sharper than razors. Thinking of all the reasons my life is worth keeping. Worth snuffing.

Another, smaller voice pipes up behind me. Bon, the kid I almost stabbed. “C’mon, Ho Wai. It’s not like we actually liked Kuen anyway. I think Jin’s telling the truth. Dai did take him out of the city I followed him that day. He’s gotta have money.”

Ka Ming’s arms cross over his chest, his blade no longer flirting with my throat. “Clothes are nice. But not as nice as cash.”

“I say we keep ’im hostage!” Ho Wai barks. “Find Dai and get ’im to give us some cash to keep his little friend alive. That way it’s a guarantee, if Jin’s telling the truth.”

Dai — my throat grows thick as I think of him, somewhere in those glowing red halls, risking his life to save my sister. He needs his revolver. He needs me.

I don’t have time for this.

My knuckles tighten hard around the gun.

MEI YEE

Outside is a strange, new world where the air is threaded with an endless braid of smells: incense, seafood, decay muted by cool. Darkness is everywhere, pouring into the street corners and alleyways, crowding against the lines of electric shop signs. And the sounds… I’m sure there are more sounds, but all I can hear are both gunshots. Over and over again. They boom and crack with every heartbeat. Still ringing and singing the impossible in my ears.

Dead. Dai’s dead.

He can’t be, thrums my heart.

But he is, cries my mind. He is.

The thin silk of my dress means nothing to the winter air. Its chill curls into me the way a cat settles onto its master’s chest. All the warmth Dai gave me is gone. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t hold on to it.

But the ambassador is still holding on to me, pulling me hard down the street. The numb of shock is wearing off. My wrist throbs and my silk slippers are useless against these paths of gravel and glass. My feet collect blood, cuts, and regrets with every step.

Osamu won. He got his wish while watching mine die, in a metallic flare of gunfire. And I could have stopped it. If I’d said yes all those days ago, Dai wouldn’t have come for me no matter what. He wouldn’t have stared down the barrel of Longwai’s gun. He wouldn’t be dead.

We turn a sharp corner, my wrist bending in agony. The ambassador stops, and I jostle hard into the stiff fabric of his suit, see the reason we’ve halted.

There’s no room for us to keep going.

The path of cinder block walls, shop entrances, and hanging pipes is crammed full of street kids. The ones Longwai used to tell us about. They look nothing like Dai. They’re stick and bone, pale as ghosts, and hung with rags.

Staring at us with nine pairs of hungry, dead-coal eyes.

“Out of my way!” the ambassador growls. His free hand waves as if he’s swatting away a swarm of flies.

But the boys don’t move. It doesn’t take long for me to notice their knives, how they glint against the darkness.

“Move, you little bastards!” The ambassador’s roar is barrel-chested. It rattles the pipes above our heads and shivers the glass around my feet, but it doesn’t move the boys. The only thing that changes is their eyes. The hunger that was so leaden is now a gleaming thing. As bright as the golden cufflinks on the ambassador’s suit. As sharp as the daggers in their hands.

JIN LING

Years of empty doors and hollow corners. Months of dark and black. Nights of shivering wet and dead rats roasting on a spit. Days of running and stabbing and running and snatching and running.

It was not for nothing. There’s a moment where I can only stand and stare. Wonder how I ever doubted I would find her.

The first thing I see is her dress. As red as dragon scales under the streetlamps. Brighter than blood. Her hair is longer now. Braided to her waist. Her face is smoother, sadder. There’s a heaviness in her eyes. A weight on her shoulders that wasn’t there before.

But she’s still my Mei Yee. Still my beautiful, beautiful sister.

My sister is a beauty, but the ambassador’s a beast. Full of hot air and smoke. Puffed big and bad for show. For all his bellowing, Osamu reeks of fear. Vagrants know the scent well. The knives honed in on my throat now point at him. Eight strong.

“I’m a government official and my men are just behind me. If you don’t move, I’ll have them shoot you all on the spot,” the ambassador snarls.

“He’s lying.” I speak clearly. Loudly. My hand is still tight on Dai’s gun. “It’s just him.”

The ambassador notices me for the first time. His eyes pop almost out of their sockets. Like a rat skull crushed by a boot. “You! You set this up, didn’t you, you little—"

My hand comes out of the jacket. It’s not shaking or spinning like the rest of me. The revolver’s barrel points straight at the ambassador’s chest.

The gun does something eight knives can’t. The ambassador falls silent. His face turns as pink as raw meat. Full of very real fear.

The revolver stays steady, but all my insides are shaking.

Do it. Do it. Do it.

But my finger won’t move. Won’t pull the trigger. I stare at the ambassador’s meaty face, and all I can see is Kuen’s leer. So horrible, blank, and red after what I did to him.

And just like that, my chance is gone. The ambassador clutches my sister. Hides behind her like the coward he is.

MEI YEE

The ambassador is unraveling, like a ball of yarn no one can catch. All the perfectly selected masks he put on for me, for Longwai, have been shucked away like played cards. Now he’s just standing in the cold — the age spots on his face are tinged purple, the way my bruises were — staring at the boy and his gun.

There’s something brutal, something familiar about the boy with the gun. He’s staring at the ambassador the way Jin Ling used to stare at my father: eyes full of poison, fists full of fight.

I think of my sister and find myself staring harder at the boy.

It can’t be… Not here…

The ambassador tugs me tight to himself, crushing me into his girth so that it’s my body blocking the bullet’s path. As soon as this happens, the boy’s features change, soften into the face I saw so many nights just by moonlight. When we shared the window together, hunting stars.

It can’t be… But it is.

The sight of my sister is the strength I need. She fills my insides with steel and bravery and the impossible. My freedom, my escape, is right in front of me. And I’m the only one who can seize it.

The ambassador’s arm is locked around my throat. His hand is just by my shoulder, the tendons cording and taut. I sink my teeth deep, deep beneath his skin.

He howls and the taste of his blood fills my mouth: all salt and bitterness. His arm yanks away and I rush past the boys and their knives. They don’t pay any attention to me. They close in around the cursing ambassador. I can see the ridged bones around their eye sockets. The knobs of their knuckles, too big around their knives. I think of the stray dogs in my old province. How hunger hollowed out their bones and created fierce, desperate creatures. Beasts that knew no fear.

My sister grabs me by the hand and starts pulling. We’re running down the street, sliding into a dark alleyway, when the ambassador’s screams start in earnest.

I’m not sorry.

Sometimes, when Father’s rage became too unhinged and his hits were murderous instead of battering, we would hide. Jin Ling always led the way: out the door, past the ginkgo tree, into the vast maze of rice field rows. We would dip waist-deep into the water, slink like the snakes that actually lived in those long waves of green.

I feel like that now. But instead of rice fields, Jin Ling leads the way past walls of slime and over hills of trash. Through gaps I didn’t even notice until she slipped into them, pulling me after her with urgent strength.

The ambassador’s screams are long gone by the time we finally stop. Jin Ling is breathing hard, much harder than she should be, and sweat drips from the hacked ends of her hair despite the cold. She’s still holding my hand, fingers wrapped tight around my thumb, the way she used to cling to me when she was first learning to walk.

We stop in a dark, empty corner and look at each other. Wordless. We stand, stuck in the moment. Staring and trying our best to believe.

“Mei Yee.” She says my name and holds my hand so hard I don’t think she’ll ever let go. “It’s me.”

After all I’ve been through, all that’s been done to me, I thought I had no more tears left. But the sight of my sister — the sound of her saying my name — is enough to break me. The water wells up, salty and free across my cheeks. “You came for me.”

Jin Ling doesn’t fit so well in my arms anymore. She’s almost as tall as I am. Her face buries into my shoulder as it did when we were little, but she has to bend over to do it. And I feel her bones more easily, despite the jacket she’s wearing.

When we finally pull apart and face each other, I study her. Not so many freckles anymore. And she’s grown into her nose. And—

“Your hair,” I gasp, and laugh through the rest of my tears.

“I cut it.” She swallows and smiles, but her voice is shaky. “When I first came to find you.”

“First?”

“I chased the Reapers’ van when they took you,” Jin Ling explains. “I cut my hair so I could pass as a boy. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

I don’t have the words. I look at her — my fierce, fighting little sister — and tuck a strand of her hacked hair behind her ears. The thought of her cutting it all off and coming here to look for me is too much. Impossible, even though she’s here now, saying it.

But I remember the way Jin Ling made her wishes. How she said I wish we could be together forever with the bite of a tigress. Nothing would be impossible enough to keep her wishes from being fulfilled. Not even the Walled City.

“How did you find me?” I say this and then stop. Know. I see the answer on my sister’s face, feel it on the insides of my chest where I’m crumbling to pieces.

My freedom cost so much more than a dying star.

“Mei Yee…” Jin Ling is looking at me again. “The boy, the one who came up to your window…”

I shut my eyes. It’s so, so cold, but I can’t even shiver. People only shiver when they remember what it means to be warm.

“Dai.” I say his name, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t bring him back to me.

“Yes,” my sister says. “What happened to him?”

“Dai.” I say his name again, but the empty space is still there. Jagged-edged and howling, like the hole in my window, letting winter’s chill slip in. I don’t want to say what I’ll say next, because if I do, what I saw will be real and true. But even words unsaid can’t take back two bullets from Longwai’s gun. “Dai’s dead.”

JIN LING

My sister’s words are like a knife to the gut. Hot and fast. Nothing but pain. It takes a minute for their truth to sink in. For the burn to start.

“The ambassador came and accused him of having secrets,” Mei Yee says. Her eyes are closed. Lids fluttering and white like moth wings. “Longwai shot him.”

Dead. Dai.

Those two words sound so alike, but I refuse to believe they go together. They don’t fit. I was just with him. In the alley. He looked so strong. So sure. So red and alive under the light of the window.

But he knew it was coming. You get your sister out. Get as far away from this city as possible. Don’t look back. He knew I’d have to do this without him.

Mei Yee breathes out beside me. Her breath sounds like the shudder of dead leaves, the rip of paper. I hear it and remember that she’s wearing nothing against the cold and her silk slippers are in bloody shreds. Dai might be dead, but my sister is alive. And I mean to keep her that way.

“Here.” I shrug off the jacket. Hand it to her. It’s drenched in my sweat, my blood, but the fabric still smells like lemon and green tea. Like Dai’s house. “We have to go.”

“Where?” Mei Yee whispers.

I don’t want to go back to Dai’s apartment. Face the vast, empty grunge of those tiles. The two black marks that will never be erased. But my orange envelope is there and Mei Yee needs good shoes. Proper clothes. And I have a feeling that Chma will be there, waiting. I can’t lose him, too.

But after that?

I think of our father’s house. Our mother’s herb garden littered with bottle caps and liquor glass. Hollow windows and doors. I imagine Father leaned against the doorjamb. Waiting. Cheeks redder than the setting sun. Fists curled. And Mother behind him. Always behind him.

I’m not ready for that fight. Not with a burn in my shoulder. A gun in my hand.

I don’t know where we’ll go. Somewhere far, far away from here. Somewhere we’ll never, ever have to look back.

“We’ll figure it out,” I tell her.

MEI YEE

Jin Ling leads the way again and I follow, my mind numb. Trying not, not, not to think of Dai and those final, awful moments. What he gave up so I could be running and twisting through these streets behind my sister.

I’m so busy trying not to think of this when Jin Ling stops, motions for me to be quiet. We’re in a sliver of space. It couldn’t even really be called a proper alleyway with how tightly we’re wedged in here. The cinder block scrapes against my back, my chest. If I breathe too hard, it will crush.

I want to get out because the stones feel as if they’re suffocating me, but Jin Ling doesn’t move. She stays wedged by the final opening and watches. The tower of free air in front of us is suddenly blocked, crammed full with a man’s face. A dragon inked in savage scarlet.

Fung.

My heart stops, but Longwai’s man doesn’t. He passes our gap, dragging something behind him. There’s the awful scrape, scrape of plastic and deadweight against the ground. My throat is lined with vomit, but I stand on my tiptoes, catch a final glimpse of the body bag as it’s jerked past our hiding place.

I try to swallow back the sick, try to breathe, but the walls won’t let me. Jin Ling slips her hand in mine, squeezes tight. As if she knows that her presence is the only thing holding me together.

The dragging sound stops too soon. Fung’s grunt creeps into the alley as he lets the bag down, brushes his hands off.

“This is what comes of crossing the dragon,” he growls at the body before his boots start their scuff back in the direction he came. “Better luck in the next life.”

Jin Ling and I wait long minutes between the cinder blocks, listening and watching. Finally my sister edges out into the wider street nose-first, like a mouse emerging from its hole. Pulling me out only when she’s sure it’s safe.

The bag isn’t even two arm’s lengths away, a pile of sad black plastic. I don’t want to look at it, the way it’s shoved into a corner where a door stoop meets a wall. As if it actually contained garbage and not the boy who woke me up. Set me free.

My sister creeps up to the plastic and kneels down. Her fingers out and touching.

“Jin Ling—" I don’t know what to say except that I can’t be here. I’d rather remember Dai as the life outside the window. Not as the body in the trash bag, kicked to the curb. “Please.”

Jin Ling frowns, her fingers digging deeper into the crumpled plastic. She starts tearing. The black splits apart easily under her nails. Like some sick cocoon: no wings, only death.

I catch a glimpse of skin — as white and hard as a china plate — and look away.

Jin Ling keeps tearing and the plastic keeps ripping. I keep looking at my bloody slippers, trying to ignore the sick emptiness of my stomach.

“Mei Yee…” There’s a rustle and the pulling stops. “Look.”

My eyes stay down, take stock of shredded silk and numb toes. I can’t look up. Don’t make me look up. This hurt — red skin and glass stab — is so much easier to take.

“I can’t — I can’t see Dai like this,” I whisper.

My sister swallows. “It’s not him.”

JIN LING

Not Dai. I stare at the bagged body. What the gangster just dragged through the streets — it’s more skeleton than girl. Greasy hair. Wasted face. A single scarlet dot between her eyes. “Sing,” Mei Yee gasps beside me. “The second shot. It must have been Sing…”

I drop the plastic back over the dead girl’s face. Look up at my sister. “What happened? The last time you saw Dai. Where was he?”

“We — we were in Sing’s room. The ambassador accused Dai of keeping secrets, and Longwai shot him. He fell on the floor and there was blood everywhere. Longwai stepped over him and aimed the gun at his head. The ambassador dragged me away, and I heard another shot and I thought…” Mei Yee folds a hand over her mouth. Stares at the trash bag. “The first shot. Where was Dai hit?”

“I–I don’t know,” she manages. “Somewhere near his chest. It all happened so fast…”

I stare at the crinkled black, too. But I’m not thinking about what’s inside it. I’m thinking about my next move. Weeks ago I would’ve run — taken my sister out of the Walled City and never looked back. Part of me — the survivor who’s kept me alive all these years — still wants that. Follow rule number one. Run, run, run. I’ve fought so hard, risked so much to get Mei Yee back. And now she’s here. My work, the reason I came to this place, is finished.

But I remember the promise I made to Dai, even though he never asked me to make it. I promised to help him get his book. His freedom. As long as he’s alive, that promise still stands.

Dai saved my life. My sister’s. Now it’s time for us to save him.

“Dai’s probably still alive. He’s got to be or else that gangster would’ve dragged two bags out.” I look back at Mei Yee. She’s standing still, swallowed whole in Hiro’s jacket. Her cheeks are wet. “And if he is, we have to get him out.”

I expect her to argue; instead she looks up from the bag to me. Her voice is so strong, so sure. There’s a fire in her words — in her—that was never there before. “I know. How?”

How. That’s the question. My mind is working. Spinning faster than a weaving loom. Taking all the individual threads and piecing them together. Braiding them into a terrible, delicate tapestry.

The ledger.

One more day until New Year’s. Mei Yee’s scarlet dress. Midnight.

Eight boys and their knives. Dai’s revolver.

So many pieces. Parts that could snag. Go wrong. The whole thing could unravel at any point. I try not to think of this.

Instead, I look straight at Mei Yee and tell her, “I have a plan.”