Hong Kong

by Mel Odom

  “We do those things,” Kindly Cheng said. “But to be fair, we also operate the Walled City’s black market. You might not be alive today if not for the lifeline we provide.” Reaching out for a mahjong piece, she plucked it from the table and examined it. “There is a Red Pole—a sort of enforcer, yes?—on the inside. His name is Strangler Bao. Bao is a strong man, a good man, but he has forgotten his place. I need you to remind him.”

  I asked, “How are we supposed to do that?”

  Reaching into a pocket, Kindly Cheng took out a memory stick and tossed it to me.

  I caught it.

  “This is a message for Bao,” she said. “You will deliver it to him in my name, and then return to me. Remember that Bao’s men are my men. By rights, they should be serving me. I would prefer it if you did this quietly, and without killing them. I have no use for dead soldiers.”

  I nodded.

  Kindly Cheng turned to Gobbet and Is0bel. “One of you will go with these two Westerners to the Walled City. Help them locate Bao and show them the ropes. The other will remain here with me. I have several degrading and menial tasks that need doing around the establishment. No matter who goes and who stays, you’ll both pay for bringing an APB to my doorstep.”

  “Yes, Auntie,” Gobbet replied.

  “Yes, Auntie,” Is0bel said.

  I glanced at them, thinking maybe they didn’t realize why Kindly Cheng was really keeping one of them with her. Then I saw the fear in their eyes, and knew that both were aware of the lethal nature of the situation.

  “Now,” the triad woman said, “I’m gonna find out who ordered the hit on Nightjar and do some dentistry on him with power tools.” She closed her eyes and smiled. “That boy was my favorite. He sang to me sometimes.” She opened her eyes and sneered. “That other one I don’t give a shit about. Gutshot was an asshole.”

  Her callousness didn’t surprise me. You didn’t get to be a triad boss by being sentimental.

  She waved us away with a hand. “That will be all, my darlings. Return to me when you’re done.”

  I looked at Duncan, then picked Gobbet to go with us. Is0bel looked disappointed at not going, or maybe she was just scared about getting left behind.

  I wasn’t certain she would be there when we got back. Or even if we’d get back. We were still being hunted, after all.

  Chapter 15

  The Walled City

  Outside the mahjong parlor, we emerged into the deep shadows and kept moving. Without a word, Gobbet took the lead. The rats clinging to her shoulders slid through her hair, picking up on the nervous energy fueling her. Rain still drenched the sprawl, falling in steady sheets that would soak us in seconds. The troll still stood guard over the parlor, and if the rain bothered him, he gave no sign of it.

  I nodded at Duncan, signaling that he should keep watch. He nodded back, but he was obviously distracted by the recent changes in his life and the loss of his partner. Worrying about the old man was in there, too.

  I slipped into stride with Gobbet, matching her with ease. My eyes roved constantly, taking in the boats out in the water only a stone’s throw away. People watched from them, and they watched from the alleys. Some marked us fearfully, but other gazes held predatory anticipation, needing only a sign of weakness to encourage them.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” I told Gobbet. “We’ll go do this thing and get back to your friend. Null sheen.”

  Her eyes blazed at me, and for a moment that curious itch that always filled me whenever I was around astral energy vibrated through me. My hand dropped to my pistol, but I didn’t let her see that. I was determined to wait to see her next move.

  “You make it sound so easy,” she snarled.

  “It’s a deal,” I stated. “Kindly Cheng strikes me as a businesswoman. She’s got a good thing going with you and your friend, and she just lost two of her top operators. She doesn’t want to lose two more for no reason.”

  “No reason?” Gobbet shook her head and the rodents scurried to latch onto new purchase. “You were on the verge of disrespecting her. She would have killed you and him.” She nodded at Duncan. “Me, too. And Is0bel.”

  “I know where the lines are. I didn’t step over them.”

  She blew out an angry breath and pointedly ignored me. Turning left at the next corner, she lengthened her stride. I let her go and settled back into a trailing pace because talking to her now wasn’t going to work.

  But if Strangler Bao was as dangerous as Kindly Cheng intimated, Gobbet and I would be talking again.

  Soon.

  We continued past the MTR station, and ended up at a sec gate that closed off the street. Beyond the electrified wire mesh barrier, the dulled outlines of the Walled City sat hunkered in the shadows like a broken giant. Wreckage of buildings stood on uncertain foundations amid a vast tide of poverty and squalor slightly illuminated in spots by fires burning in metal trash bins. Even the air held a more sour, more desperate stink here.

  Two cybered up triad gangers in armor guarded the gate. Both were young and carried scars from past skirmishes that had involved guns, knives, and fire. They’d earned their positions.

  The shorter one, an elf with goggles pushed up onto his head, stared at me. His hands remained out of sight beneath his coat. One of them came out smooth and steady and tapped his earpiece.

  “Auntie Cheng said you’d be coming. You can pass.”

  Duncan grunted in response, but—like me—he never took things on face value. Maybe Kindly Cheng had reached out to these guys, and maybe she hadn’t.

  While we’d been walking to our destination, I’d talked to Gobbet about the Walled City. It was slightly less than a third of a square kilometer housing more than forty thousand people in high-rise tenements that should have been called deathtraps. The government didn’t collect taxes, but it didn’t provide services either. The inhabitants existed solely on what they could gather from nature, steal, or trade black market goods or flesh for.

  The place looked even worse than the Barrens in Seattle.

  Gobbet took the lead and passed through the armed gates. I followed close behind and a step to the right so I had room to work quickly if I needed to.

  Moving quick, alert to the area around her, Gobbet threaded a path through the narrow, trash-choked alleys. Many were dead ends, or filled with small groups of dangerous people who eyed us with territorial wariness. The skill with which she avoided all of them was impressive, and showed that she was no stranger to these streets.

  In a few minutes, she led us up onto a rooftop. Being up there afforded a better view of the sprawl, but I also felt trapped. Being on a rooftop limited options if you had to run or fight. Piles of rodent-filled rubbish stood in stacks against the next story, and as I met the feral gazes of the creatures, I wondered if Gobbet and her small clan had any friends there.

  An undercurrent of noise hummed through the area. Yells and screams of people in pain mixed with angry tones and with those of others who were in the throes of ecstasy. Gunshots punctuated the crash of breaking glass.

  Duncan wrinkled his nose at the odor, and I didn’t blame him. I was mouth breathing to cut down on the stench.

  “Raymond said prosperity is in the Walled City,” Duncan said, “but I don’t see it. Why the hell would he want to set one foot in this place?”

  “You got me.” Gobbet didn’t seem as standoffish now. Passing through those gates into this place had evidently reprioritized her thinking. Grudges couldn’t be held in the Walled City if she wanted to survive. “As I said, the Walled City is the worst slum in the eastern hemisphere. Maybe in the world.”

  One of the rats hidden within her clothing poked its head out and squeaked plaintively. She dropped a hand to its smooth head and stroked it with her fingertips.

  “There’s something wrong with this place.” She lifted her gaze to the dark skyline. “It isn’t just a slum, it feels…poisonous, somehow. On an astral level. It churns my stomach to even co
me near it.”

  Duncan growled in that way he had. “Okay, you were right. This isn’t the Barrens. It feels…I don’t know…thicker.”

  I’d been feeling the same way, but I hadn’t been able to put my finger on the word until he said it. This place did feel thicker. More dangerous.

  “Which way?” Duncan asked.

  “The Lotus Den. That’s what Bao calls his little corner of hell. I don’t know where it is off hand, but I have a way of finding things.” Two more rats shoved their heads out of Gobbet’s clothing and she petted them as well.

  “They probably aren’t expecting anyone to come in force,” Duncan said. “We can kick the door in, drop the guards, hand over the message, and get the hell out.”

  “Kindly doesn’t want them dead,” Gobbet reminded. “She wants them to remember where their loyalties lie. It’s tough to remember much of anything when you’ve got a bullet in your head.”

  “This guy Bao isn’t going to be a pushover,” I said. “And he’s not going to be constrained by the same rules we are.” I intended to do whatever I had to in order to survive.

  Gobbet must have read that on my face. I wasn’t trying to hide it. She gave a small nod. “I mean, we could kill them if you really wanted to. Technically, Bao is the only one who has to live. But I’d rather keep Auntie Cheng happy than piss her off again.”

  “We may need Kindly Cheng,” I said, to clarify things for Duncan, “but she doesn’t own us. We make our own decisions.”

  Some of the tension in Duncan’s face evaporated.

  Gobbet smiled a little. “You’ve got an independent streak. I like that.”

  “Damn right we do,” Duncan rumbled. “Now let’s get this done.”

  Wrapping her cloak more tightly around her against the rain, Gobbet took the lead. This time when I stepped up beside her to provide cover, she didn’t object.

  She ghosted across the rooftops, and across the fragile makeshift bridges that spanned the narrow alleys below us, and I felt the itch of astral energy so strong I wanted to sneeze. From the way the neighborhood vermin in the trash piles and lurking in the pools of water gathering on the rooftops squeaked at her, I gathered she was communicating with them somehow.

  I’d seen street shamans work before, I’d never trusted them enough to ask about their biz, and we’d never be friendly enough for them to tell me anything. The astral crowd likes to keep their secrets.

  But the rats gave up the Lotus Den.

  Chapter 16

  The Lotus Den

  Long minutes later, soaked to the bone but not cold due to the lukewarm rain, we reached a rooftop guarded by a small band of gangers. They eyed us suspiciously. A flickering, battery-powered emergency street lamp nearby glowed just brightly enough to lift their tattoos out of the shadows.

  Recognizing the narcissistic body language of the guy I figured must be the leader, I walked over to him. Tight, ’roided muscle covered him, but he didn’t have the loose stance of someone cybered up. He took a minute to finish whatever he was doing on his comm before glancing up at me.

  “You’re in the wrong neighborhood, tourist boy.” His tone was menacing, just short of threatening. His gaze flicked past me to Gobbet and Duncan. “You and your little tourist friends.”

  “I’m a local, jackass,” Gobbet said. “I work for Kindly Cheng. We all do. Show some respect.”

  “That so?” he challenged with an even sharper edge in his voice. “Then you already know you shouldn’t be here. That old fossil don’t run things ’round here no more.” He dropped his hand to his bulging coat pocket. “Best get moving, little girl. Before we hurt you real bad.” He grinned with yellowed teeth. “I’m not gonna tell you twice.”

  I took another step forward and his head swiveled to me. “We’re here to deliver a message to Strangler Bao,” I told him in a flat voice.

  He paused and pulled at his short beard, like he was thinking, but I already knew how this was going to go. He was just putting on a show for his buddies.

  “Hmmm…no, I don’t think so.” He shook his head with deliberate slowness. “We haven’t been told to expect anyone.”

  “We’re going in—through you or over you,” I told him.

  He smiled. “Now I’m gonna have to get my clothes bloody.” He moved quicker than I expected, but falling back behind a low trash barrier and reaching for a pistol. His two companions also sought cover, and a third joined them from the shadows of another building.

  I dove over the barrier and tackled the guy I’d been talking to because he was closest. The ganger managed to pull his pistol as we hit the ground together, but I slammed a forearm into his face and bounced his head off the tarmac. While he was dazed, I reached over and plucked the pistol from his hand before he could fight for it. I brought the muzzle to a pointblank position against his forehead and almost pulled the trigger.

  Then I remembered that Kindly Cheng wanted these slots alive if possible, that she had Is0bel, and that she was my and Duncan’s only lead to the old man.

  I drew the pistol back and slammed the butt into his temple. Blood spurted from a small wound as he shivered. His eyes rolled white in his head and his body relaxed.

  By the time I stood back up, Duncan caught a man with flying kick that was almost too fast to see because of his cybered reflexes. The ganger’s jaw shattered with a loud pop, and he went down. The third ganger got a shot off, but it ricocheted from Duncan’s armor and cut the air near my head. Duncan caught the guy by the wrist, stripped the gun from his hand, crimped the wrist in a come-along hold, and introduced his face to the nearby wall with a loud crunch.

  The guy dropped like a bag of flour.

  A shimmer in my peripheral vision caught my eye, and I turned toward it to see a fire spirit manifest near the remaining sec man. The thing stood three meters tall, all of it ugly and wrapped in red and yellow flames. It wound up and tossed a fireball at Duncan, who tried to dodge aside, but ended up getting hit on the side and down his right leg. He flew off balance and crashed behind a pile of crates.

  I brought up my pistol and opened fire, thinking the shots wouldn’t draw any more attention than any of the other sprawl noise around us. Three bullets slammed into the spirit’s chest, causing it to jerk a little with each impact.

  Unfazed by the attack, it wound up again and tossed another fireball at me. I dove to the ground as the flaming sphere passed overhead and struck the next rooftop. Fire and water warred in a pool on the tarmac, and I knew the rain was going to change the odds.

  Hunkered low, Duncan ran behind the piles of crates that littered the rooftop and vectored in on the ganger shaman.

  Gobbet gestured and mouthed words I couldn’t hear over the steady hiss of the rain and the raging fire spirit. Blurry lines took shape in the rain, then coalesced into a large, rounded shape that looked vaguely human.

  My skin itched all over.

  At the rat shaman’s direction, the air spirit lumbered toward the fire spirit. I couldn’t see all the details because they moved too fast, and astral energy was hard to see by anyone who wasn’t skilled in it. I didn’t know which of them, if either, was getting the upper hand.

  I pushed myself up and ran toward the ganger shaman, joining Duncan in the effort to put the threat down through the flesh and blood conduit keeping it manifested on the physical plane.

  Duncan reached him first. Ducking below the man’s outstretched pistol, he slid into the thug’s feet, taking him down. As the ganger fell, Duncan caught the back of his head and slammed his opponent into the rooftop. Broken, bloody teeth scattered across the tarmac and the air emptied out of the man with a whoosh as he passed out.

  The fire spirit immediately vanished back to wherever it had come from. Gobbet made her air spirit go away as well.

  She pointed toward the unmarked door across the roof that the gangers had protected. “Strangler Bao is in there.”

  I nodded and looked at them. They were as ready as they could be. I reloa
ded and holstered my pistol, then headed for the entrance to the Yellow Lotus Den.

  Chapter 17

  Don’t Kill the Messenger

  I opened the door and peered into the gloomy hallway. Garbage lined the walls and the cluster of rooms in the center of the area. Hallways ran in both directions, framing the center rooms. That also meant an attack, whether planned or a reaction to our presence, could come from any quarter.

  Duncan and Gobbet stepped in after me, and when the door shut, all the outside noise went away. We stood there for a moment, water from our drenched clothing puddling at our feet.

  I was tired and sore from the long flight and everything that had gone on since I’d touched down in Hong Kong, but adrenaline kept me moving. Whatever we’d stepped into, wherever the old man was, he was in big trouble—and we might be his only way out of it.

  I stepped forward and waved Duncan into position to my right. He moved soundlessly, weapon at the ready. We were going to leave Bao alive if possible, but we hadn’t come here to die.

  I glanced at the open door to my left and cautiously moved inside. I didn’t want to leave unknown quantities behind us, and if there was anyone inside the room, he already knew we were in the building because of the noise made by the opening door.

  I held my pistol level as I went through the doorway, flicking my gaze around quickly.

  The room looked like a barracks, with bunkbeds and small dining tables sitting among the refuse. I ducked back out and let Duncan and Gobbet know we were clear. We followed the hallway to the right, stringing out so we weren’t grouped together. I listened carefully, but we were the only ones making noise, and we made very little.

  An open doorway in the corner ahead of us led to a simsense room. I glanced over the chairs and along the wall where the simsense vending machines sat. No one was in this room, either.