‘You look tired,’ Billy commented.
‘I am tired. How long was I asleep?’
‘Three, almost four hours.’
‘Feels like ten minutes. What are they doing?’
Billy sighed. ‘They’ve been hitting triad businesses more or less at random. Not many survivors at any of the locations. They aren’t being subtle.’
‘Any of ours?’
‘One. That turned into quite a firefight. We’re not sure, but we think at least four of the troops went down, but… Golden Dragon is pretty much impervious to gunfire. Once he goes in, no one comes out.’
‘I have a few tricks he may find less easy to resist. Tell our people to go on the defensive. Hole up and wait this out. If we’re lucky, Golden Dragon will take care of the others for us.’
‘I don’t think our luck is that good. He’ll come after us eventually.’
‘Probably. Get some forty-niners up here to keep watch. I’m going to try to get some more sleep. Wake me as soon as they show. If they show.’
Billy nodded. ‘Yes, Midnight.’ He watched her return to her room and then reached for his phone. He would get people in to stand guard, but they both knew none of their people could stand up to the great Golden Dragon and a bunch of spec ops soldiers. He was calling in men to die slowing down the enemy. The only person in the entire triad, even including the Ultras, who had a chance of standing up to China’s national hero was Midnight. It was all going to rest on her.
~~~
Andrea watched the interplay between Midnight and Billy with interest. The little thug Midnight seemed to have dragged out of the gutter to be her proxy was obviously brighter than he looked. Then again, he looked like he was in over his head and well aware of the fact. Had he figured out that ‘Midnight’ was the one who had started all this? He could have looked in on her while Andrea was out causing trouble. Would he have said anything if he had?
‘I doubt it,’ Twilight commented.
Andrea glanced back at her shadow. ‘He’s in too deep. If she falls, he knows he’ll go with her.’
‘That’s my reading. Are you going out again?’
Andrea waved away the image hanging in the air in front of her. ‘No. She needs some rest. She is probably going to have to face Golden Dragon tomorrow, maybe tonight. She’ll need her wits about her.’
‘It’s a good plan.’
Nodding, Andrea turned away and then paused. ‘I hate what she did to you. I wish you were really here.’
Twilight giggled. ‘I’m still here. Always will be. You can’t lose your shadow.’
‘No,’ Andrea said, looking up at the shaft of light still burning through the clouds. ‘I guess you can’t.’
~~~
‘Your glorious Golden Dragon is not what he used to be,’ Midnight said. It was late evening and she had been up for several hours. She had been out watching the progress of the war for several of those.
‘You think he’s weaker?’ Billy asked.
‘He may be. He’s certainly more deranged. I’m sure the official news reports I’ve seen have cast him in the most legendary light possible, but he always looks serene when he appears on TV. The guy wandering around Hong Kong is a wild-eyed fanatic. He’s killing people because he wants to. He seems to be taking great pleasure in wasting Ultras and he beat some guy to death who had nothing to do with the triads. As best I could tell, it was because the guy wasn’t Chinese.’
‘Uh, you’re an American Ultra.’
‘That combination of attributes had not escaped me, Billy, but I don’t think he knows that’s what I am yet. I don’t think it’ll make that much difference, to be honest. He’ll want me dead anyway. Luckily enough, I’m not that easy to kill.’
That was certainly true enough. ‘Are you going out?’
‘Yes. I’m going to thin the herd a little and keep an eye on Jīnlóng. Have you ever read Sun Tzu, Billy?’
‘No.’
‘I have. I need to know my enemy.’
~~~
Jīnlóng stepped forward and drove his fist through the 8G 49er who had been trying to riddle him with bullets. The man made a convulsive gulping nose, a look of surprise on his face, before the light went out in his eyes. Jīnlóng pushed his victim off his arm, ignoring the gore dripping from his hand, and looked around.
The safehouse was in the Quarry Hill district and there had been some twenty 8G members hiding in it. Now there were none. None living anyway. Jīnlóng had been taking a more active role in the combat since he had lost three men to a grenade: one of the triad members had set it off to take some of his enemies with him. Such a tactic might have hurt the great Golden Dragon, but not seriously. There was another reason too, a reason which had cost him even more men since night had fallen.
Stepping out of the room he had finished the last man in, Jīnlóng looked around, checking his people. They all seemed to be there, including Seeker. Officially she was Dǎo Yǐn Tóu, but most referred to her by the English version of her name. She was a moderately pretty Chinese girl – straight, shoulder-length, black hair and brown eyes, and a slim build – who had grown up on the streets of Shanghai until the Ministry of Public Safety had discovered her talent. Given a chance to create a psychic ‘lock’ on someone, Seeker could find them more or less anywhere in the world. Given that someone with a remarkable ability to vanish seemed determined to kill his men, Jīnlóng had decided to bring Seeker in to trace the assassin to whatever hole they called home.
There was a scream from the doorway and Jīnlóng turned in time to see one of his soldiers standing there with a sword blade sticking out of his chest. Black flames curled around the metal. The blade was withdrawn, the body fell, and… Clearly, the assumption that the assassin was male had been wrong; Jīnlóng saw a slim woman clad in what looked like a bra and leggings. She seemed almost to be part of the shadows which now seemed to fill the hallway and her eyes… She flicked blood from her sword, smiled, and stepped back, vanishing into the darkness.
‘Cào!’ Jīnlóng snapped. His gaze shifted to Seeker. ‘Tell me you have her.’
Seeker shrank back a little, shaking her head. ‘She… was not there. I saw her, but I could not feel her mind at all.’
Someone – Jīnlóng could not identify the man, which was lucky for the speaker – said, ‘Like a ghost.’
‘No,’ Seeker said immediately. ‘Not like a ghost. I have encountered “ghosts” and been able to sense their minds. This woman is something else. She is part of the darkness, it seemed. We need more light.’
Jīnlóng smiled. ‘Now you are earning your pay, Seeker. Flare grenades. We need flare grenades.’
~~~
‘Clever,’ Andrea commented with a smile. Midnight had just discovered that the Golden Dragon’s troops were now covering their entry into buildings with flares fired from handheld grenade launchers. The bright beacons were meant to illuminate battlefields and were almost too bright in an enclosed space. They did a relatively effective job of cutting out shadows, or they did if the soldiers stuck to the illuminated areas. The shadows the flares cast were often darker than those caused by the room lights and that was allowing Midnight to watch.
‘It is,’ Twilight said, ‘but he doesn’t know she can–’
‘Yes, but she’ll save that for when it’s needed. She won’t show her full hand until she has to.’ Andrea cringed at the card game analogy and vaguely wondered what Diamond was up to. Not her problem just now.
‘They’ll wait for dawn to take her on.’
‘Almost certainly. I would. Well, I wouldn’t, obviously, but… Anyway, she’s still pretty effective in daylight. She’s not nearly as damage-resistant as Goldy, but I think she’s actually faster. It’s going to be interesting.’
‘You realise that you’re relying on her for your own survival.’
‘Yes,’ Andrea agreed, ‘but I think if there’s one thing I can rely on her to do, it’s to save herself.’
7th November.
Midnight stared out at the lightening of the sky and then closed the curtains. ‘They’ll come soon,’ she said. She knew that the Golden Dragon and his people had figured out where she was. The fact that they had not yet arrived suggested they were waiting for dawn. They would come soon because there was no one else left to come for.
‘We could leave,’ Billy suggested. ‘They’ve more or less wiped out the 8G. Those left alive are in prison. There’s nothing left here for us.’
‘You’re right, but it’s too late now. If I can stop him, then perhaps we can salvage something.’
Billy was not exactly hopeful, and he had the strong feeling that Midnight was the same. Still… ‘Yeah, maybe,’ he said, and then the waiting began.
The sound of automatic weapons fire came about ten minutes later. ‘Stay here,’ Midnight told him, and then she vanished into the nearest shadow. Billy picked up his pistol. It was a chrome-plated .45 ACP which he was rather proud of. Midnight had told him that more modern cartridges gave better penetration for less recoil, but he liked the weight and general intimidation factor of the big handgun. It seemed less impressive when he was going to be facing off against trained soldiers with the latest assault weapons. Still, there was the possibility that Midnight could take out the soldiers before they got to–
There was a crashing sound and Billy turned to see a man landing lightly on his feet having smashed through one of the windows. Jīnlóng. Of course, the Golden Dragon could fly. Why would he need to come up the stairs? Jīnlóng’s eyes narrowed when he saw Billy’s pistol. ‘Put it down and get on your knees.’ The command was delivered in a calm, even tone which nevertheless brooked no argument. Billy was on his knees before he realised what he was doing. ‘Good. Now stay–’
Darkness enveloped them like a shroud, filling the room completely. Billy knew that darkness and hated it, but Jīnlóng had never met it before. The great national hero of China found himself lost in the blackest of nights, but not alone. There was something in here with him, something so ancient that it predated even the creatures he was named for. It had been there since there had been people to fear it, except that now it had a new shape. The woman was there with him and she wanted his soul…
The door crashed open and there was a scream, probably as the first of the soldiers blundered into Midnight’s darkness. Then there was a chorus of loud thuds and light blazed through the room, blinding and white. Midnight flinched back from it, away from Jīnlóng. The great hero’s costume had been slashed open and there was a line of red on his chest behind it, but it was the look of weariness on his face that really spoke volumes about what Midnight had managed to do to him. The soldiers froze for a fraction of a second, and that was all the time Midnight needed. She glanced once at Billy, and then she bolted for the nearest door, the door to her bedroom. Bullets flew after her, followed by a flare, but when the men had worked up the courage to enter the room, she was gone.
By that time, Billy was lying on the carpet, more or less hoping that the Golden Dragon had forgotten him. He looked up as a woman walked into the room and made her way over to him. The first thing he saw were her rather unassuming shoes, but he looked up to see a pretty young woman in the uniform of an MPS officer. They were not generally seen in Hong Kong. She peered down at him for a second, glanced in the direction of Jīnlóng, and then started barking orders. ‘Get those fires out! Search the building. She may still be here. If she is, find her. Someone get this one in cuffs.’ Seeker turned and watched as her boss lurched out onto the balcony through the window he had broken. She followed, waiting until he stopped, his closed eyes lifted toward the rising sun before speaking. ‘Are you well, Jīnlóng? She managed to cut you.’
‘Flesh wound,’ he replied. He was keeping his voice low to avoid the soldiers overhearing. ‘She did something else to me. I feel as though I’ve been frozen down to my core.’
‘That is an… unusual power.’
‘There was a report of an American who cast shadows about her and carried a sword which flamed like this woman’s. She was one of their heroes, however. Twilight, they called her.’
‘Why would she come here to work for a triad.’ Behind them, in the once-opulent lounge, the flares finally burned themselves out.
‘I have no idea, but I want her found so that I can eliminate her. I owe her a lot of pain.’
‘We have her Dragon Head. Interrogating him may lead us to her hideout.’
‘Yes.’ Looking like a man who had just run a marathon and come in last, Jīnlóng turned to return to the lounge. He stopped when he saw the soldiers standing around looking as though they had suddenly become very confused. ‘What are you men doing?’ he asked in what might have passed for a shout.
One of the soldiers lifted his head, his face obscured by a gas mask. ‘It’s the prisoner, sir. He’s gone. He was right here, and now he’s gone.’
A growl began in Jīnlóng’s throat, but Seeker silenced him with a word. ‘Excellent.’ He turned to look at her, frowning when he noticed that she was smiling. ‘She took him,’ Seeker explained. ‘I can’t get a lock on her for whatever reason, but I have him. I know exactly where he is.’
‘Again you earn your pay,’ Jīnlóng said. It was about as much of a compliment as she could expect from him. ‘Have this place searched. I will await the reports before we follow.’ Sighing, he started for the apartment’s front door and the elevators. ‘I need a hot shower.’
Shenzhen, China.
Billy staggered out of the shadows, his breath frosting the air. His hands were still cuffed behind his back and it left him unbalanced. He fell, sprawling onto rough, cheap carpet. Turning, he looked up at Midnight. ‘You came back for me. I thought–’
‘No,’ she said. ‘She was going to leave you. I came back for you and she is going to be really angry. So, just listen to me, okay?’
‘What? Who? I don’t–’
‘Just shut up and listen. You don’t need to understand. I took control and went back to pull you out. She is not going to like that, but she’s going to like knowing I’m in here worse. You need to persuade her that she needs you. She’s going to need someone to keep an eye on her while she’s trying to get rid of me. You need to tell her that. Okay?’
‘I don’t–’
The woman who was clearly not Midnight grabbed Billy’s collar and yanked him to his feet. ‘I told you, you don’t have to understand. I can’t keep her locked up for long yet. She’s coming back and you need to say what I told you or she will kill you. No understanding, just talking. Clear?’ Billy gave a dumb nod and she let go of him, stepping back and turning. A shudder ran through her body and she spun on the spot. ‘You!’ She was already reaching for the knife on her left thigh.
Billy staggered back. He would have raised his hands, but they were cuffed. Even that one word had made him realise that he was dealing with someone else now. The Midnight he knew was back, and she was not pleased. ‘You need me!’ he yelped.
‘Oh, do I? I think I need you like a hole in the head. She went back to get you. She risked my life to save yours.’
‘But you need someone to guard you while you take her on.’
The knife paused, half out of its scabbard. ‘Told you that, did she?’
‘Yes.’
Midnight pushed her blade back into place. ‘She’s right. I have food, water, money, and a few other supplies here. It’s secure, even if they trace us. We can both get some rest and then move on this evening. I want to be well clear of Hong Kong before I finally nail that bitch for good. Shanghai. We’ll try Shanghai, I think.’
‘Who is she?’ Billy asked. He suspected asking was a bad idea, but he had to know. He was a little surprised when Midnight did not seem bothered by the question.
‘She’s who I used to be and it’s time I ditched her entirely.’
Hong Kong, China, 10th November.
Reality ripped apart on the sidewalk on Arsenal Street, rearranged itself into a swirling doorway
, and allowed Cygnus and Frostburn to step from one part of space–time to another because it preferred not to look that way while it was happening.
The display inside Frostburn’s helmet settled on a temperature and he let out a groan. ‘Seventy-five. It’s November and it’s seventy-five degrees. I’m not going to spend too much time with my helmet off around here.’ It was a good twenty-five Fahrenheit above his comfortable range. Not good, but the suit would keep him cool.
‘Might want to take it off for a couple of minutes,’ Cygnus replied. ‘Here come our liaisons.’ Frostburn gave a grunt, but he reached up to take his helmet off anyway.
There were two people walking rapidly toward the newcomers, both in Hong Kong Police Force uniforms of pale-blue shirts and dark-blue cargo trousers. One of them was obviously not a regular officer, however: her irises glowed in the night. She was far from tall, but trim, fit, and moderately attractive. He dark hair was kept short and the glowing blue eyes looked sort of wrong set amid her Asian features. They had been briefed on her: she was Lán Yǎnjīng, Blue Eyes, and she was a UoU member, their liaison in Hong Kong. Her sensory abilities also made her a valuable addition to the police force; she specialised in crime scene investigation.
Lán Yǎnjīng spoke first. ‘Welcome to Hong Kong. We were, of course, told to expect you. Please call me Mei-Xing.’
‘Thanks, Mei-Xing,’ Cygnus replied. ‘I’m Cygnus, this is Frostburn. You probably knew that.’
‘Call me Jacob,’ Jacob said. ‘I’m still not used to the code name. Uh, I’m going to put my helmet back on. It’s a little warm for me here.’
‘Of course,’ Lán Yǎnjīng said. ‘This is Senior Constable Jiang Jié. He will be accompanying us on our investigations. The past few weeks have been… stressful. Our superiors are concerned about the current situation here in the city.’
‘I can understand that,’ Jacob said, his voice turned slightly hollow by his helmet.
‘Shall we go inside and begin?’ Jiang suggested. He was a moderately good-looking Chinese man in his late twenties or early thirties. Black hair, brown eyes. Intelligent brown eyes. This was not someone to underestimate. His physique suggested he worked a desk more than a beat but, just like Lán Yǎnjīng, he wore a sidearm.
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