Hong Kong

by Mel Odom

  “Okay, so how should we handle this friend of yours?”

  Is0bel shook her head. “No clue, really. I’ve never met her in meatspace.” She smiled up at me. “Just be your charming self, I guess. I’m sure everything will work out just fine.”

  We stepped up to the apartment. The newest thing about it was the security door, and even that looked like a hand-me-down.

  Is0bel knocked on the door in a rhythm I didn’t recognize. After a moment, the door opened, and a slightly built young woman with blue feathers in her short-cropped blonde hair answered. She and Is0bel talked for a moment, then Is0bel waved me in after her.

  The interior of the apartment wasn’t a home. It was a squat, a place someone lived before they were uprooted and thrown out into the world again. There was a bed and a few crates that held a deck and a light. Mold climbed the walls in baroque patterns, and the stench was almost eye-watering.

  “Hey,” Emilie said.

  I nodded and smiled, making sure to keep my distance so she didn’t feel threatened in any way.

  “So,” Emilie said as she looked at Is0bel, “you’re Is0bel, huh? I didn’t expect…”

  “A dwarf?” Is0bel smiled. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

  “No, no,” Emilie said hastily. “I didn’t expect you to be so pretty.” Her accent was German, but it was faint. She glanced up at me and folded her arms around herself, suddenly afraid. “I should never have agreed to this, Is0bel. I should never have even responded to your message. If the oligarch swine who’ve been hunting me find out where I am—”

  “Hey,” Is0bel said, putting a hand on the other woman’s arm, “they won’t find out from us. We’re not oligarch swine.” She smiled. “In fact, if you want, I can have a guy I know provide some personal sec for you for a few days. His name’s Jean McKondor. He’s a good guy, and one of the best in the biz.”

  “Uh-huh.” Emilie watched me.

  “This is the guy I told you about,” Is0bel said. “The one who needs the software that you developed to inhibit your cortical implant.”

  “He needs what?” Emilie took a step back. “I don’t think I should be getting into this.”

  Is0bel looked at me.

  I decided to take the soft approach. This girl was already scared. Scaring her more wouldn’t help. “I need your help, Emilie.”

  “I got my own problems to deal with.” The response was automatic, no real thought behind it. She used it to keep distance between herself and others. “In case you’re not up on current events, I’ve got an army of mercs and bounty hunters after me. Messing around with the headware the Schockwellenreiter installed in me is the last thing on my mind.”

  I told her the truth, surprised by how easily it came out. “Look, this is important. I need the software you created so I can find out what happened to my father.”

  She lifted a hand to her lips and chewed her nails. “Your father, huh? Sounds rough. Is he dead?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “He’s missing, that’s for sure.”

  A small, sad smile twisted her lips. “Been there—or something like there. It’s the ambiguity that’ll kill you.” She paused. “Okay, gimme a minute.”

  Emilie took a seat in front of her deck, jacked into it, and sank into the Matrix. Her fingers created staccato clicks. After a few minutes, she jacked out, pulled a data stick from the deck, and handed it to me.

  “Here.” She reached under the table and took out a Taser with masking tape around the handle. “You’ll need this, too. Modify the Taser with it and use it on your target. The jolt should stop the memory wipe process before it starts.”

  I peeled five hundred nuyen from my pocket and held it out. “Here’s little something for the effort.”

  She hesitated, but took the money. “Thanks. It’ll help.” She sighed. “I wish every problem was that easy to solve.”

  She turned to Is0bel, they hugged, the dwarf gave her the bodyguard’s contact info, and we left, heading back to the MTR and—hopefully—answers about the old man.

  Chapter 75

  Ambush!

  Putting the gear together didn’t take long. We were efficient by now, talking in shorthand and relaxed around each other. Is0bel coded the Taser, and Duncan rigged up a carry for it.

  Then we headed to the maglev in the night to Shek Kip Mei for a chat with Kindly Cheng’s informant.

  Like the rest of Hong Kong, Sek Kip Mei was lit up, neon blazing in the darkness like a coal burning bright. Pedestrian traffic was slow but steady as people bought things they needed and hurried home.

  Rain pelted the streets, but we were safe under our ponchos. Not just safe from the precipitation, but from anyone armed with less than a tank. We’d read up on Xiaozhi, and learned she was a dangerous, conniving dwarf with a long line of bodies buried behind her.

  Once we reached the market building, I took the door, looked for sec cams and didn’t see any, and went in. We walked up to the roof, following the directions Kindly Cheng had programmed into our GPS software. Xiaozhi’s current location was in a building built on the rooftop of another building, one of many in the area.

  There weren’t any sec cams either, and I went inside with a pistol concealed in my fist under the poncho. Blue light lit the hallways. Duncan walked slack, and we stayed spread out in the hallway as we went. Open doors to the rooms we passed provided easy access to what was inside, but none of it was worth having. This had been a market once, but now it was a place for people down on their luck to get in out of the rain.

  Except for Xiaozhi. She ran her business out of a room at the end of the hallway.

  A hulking troll stood guard at the door. He looked us over and rolled a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “What do you want?”

  Duncan squared up with the guy, and he looked a lot stronger than the troll. “We’re here to see Xiaozhi.”

  “About what?”

  “Biz it’s better you don’t know about.”

  The troll looked like he wanted to make something of it, but there were four of us and he backed down. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “She’s in the back.”

  I walked toward the rear of the L-shaped room, past several computer workstations, stepped over fat electrical cables that snaked across the floor, and spotted Xiaozhi in front of a deck supporting a half-dozen screens.

  The female dwarf wore a fashionable suit, but it didn’t cover the hard, mean look on her face, or the greed in her green eyes. Her short-cropped hair was artfully styled. She turned to face me as I approached, and her hand dipped into a pocket.

  I figured she was trying to intimidate me with her icy stare, but she had nothing on Kindly Cheng.

  “Ah, yes, the new-on-the-scene runner,” she said in a sing-song voice as she rocked in place. “My friend in Heoi said you’d be coming to see me.”

  “I have a friend, too,” I said, “and she says you’re the one to see about finding Lee Tai-lung.”

  Xiaozhi’s eyes widened slightly, and she hummed a tuneless melody. “Very timely intel. Very timely. I have his complete up-to-the-minute itinerary! Where he’ll be, who he’ll be with, security coverage—the deluxe package.”

  I figured she’d put the arm on us for nuyen, so I wasn’t surprised. “How much?”

  “Unfortunately, the deluxe package is no longer for sale.” Xiaozhi smiled. “Nor is any information about him. So sorry! I received another offer—a better offer—to take it off the market. Just before you arrived.”

  “From who?” Duncan thrust his face down at the dwarf.

  “Lee Tai-lung’s client. I believe you know the company.”

  I didn’t know how Josephine Tsang could have found out about the meet.

  Xiaozhi shrugged. “I feel really bad about this, but the offer was too good to pass up. Way too good.”

  “You don’t want to work with Josephine Tsang,” I said.

  “That’s just the thing,” she said, “I do. Attaching myself to her is smart. Very smart
. Tsang’s big in Hong Kong, and getting bigger. She’s already on the Executive Council, and is a front-runner for the next chairperson position. All I need to do is make sure you don’t walk out of here alive.”

  For the first time, I noticed how Xiaozhi’s men had closed in on us. They drew their weapons.

  “Ambush!” Duncan roared as he swung his shotgun up from under his poncho.

  I split out from him, filling my hands with the pistols I’d brought and firing both at the nearest ganger. The bullets slammed into the man’s chest, knocking him backward, but a couple found his face and he went down bloody.

  Duncan fired into the ganger in front of him, growling curses and standing his ground in spite of the bullets that tore through his poncho and bounced off his armor.

  A short distance away, Gobbet threw a shimmering bolt into the face of another man firing at Is0bel as she ducked for cover behind a workstation. The stricken ganger went sprawling, and Gobbet hit him again before he landed. From the way he lay there, I knew his neck had been broken.

  Unlimbering her submachine gun, Is0bel stayed below the workstation’s surface and aimed at the feet of the gangers in front of her. When she opened up, both of them went down.

  The troll from the door waved a huge sword as he rushed me, ululating some weird chant. I aimed at him and squeezed both triggers, only to find out my pistols had cycled dry. With no time to reload, I dropped the suddenly useless weapons. With the wall behind me and no place to run, I bolted at the sword-slinging ganger, knowing that, if anything, I could take away the space he needed to swung his blade.

  I went down in a baseball slide just under the sword blade, shot between his legs, and caught one of his ankles. Stopping myself, I grabbed the long tail of his coat as he tried to turn, hauled myself up, and climbed his back. As I reached his shoulders, I slipped a combat knife from my boot and slammed it home at the base of his skull. He sank without a whimper and I landed on my feet, looking at the charnel house makeover we’d just delivered.

  Xiaozhi was almost to the door when Gobbet’s fire spirit covered her in flames. She died screaming.

  “No!” Duncan yelled, racing over to the burning corpse. “We needed to know what she knew!”

  Gobbet looked mortified as she banished the spirit. “Sorry. It was called here to protect us.”

  “No…” Duncan said again in a softer, anguished voice.

  “It’s all good,” Is0bel called out.

  Chapter 76

  Options

  The decker sat at Xiaozhi’s deck, already plugging her own deck in.

  “Xiaozhi left her computer unlocked. She has the Plastic-Faced Man’s complete itinerary here. This will tell us everywhere he’s going to be for the next twenty-four hours.”

  We joined her, staring at the screens and their nearly priceless information.

  “Anything promising?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” Is0bel answered, and a smile lit up Duncan’s face. “I just need to run some searches on these locations…see if I can get blueprints, photos.” She typed the whole time she spoke. “First, the bad news. He’s got a security detail that drives him from place to place—six corporate agents, plus the driver. Any time he’s on the move, he’s in a reinforced bulletproof limo. He’s also got a personal bodyguard with him at all times.”

  “Too many moving parts,” I said.

  “But there are some windows of opportunity we can take advantage of. When he’s going someplace, they drop him off and leave him in the hands of local security, if any. The bodyguard stays with him, but the other six guards stay with the driver.”

  “Better,” I said.

  “The detail itself is shared by a few executives, so they’ll be with someone else until his next pickup time. The convoys are on a schedule managed by the master system at Tsang HQ.” Is0bel paused a moment. “Okay, I’ve got three good leads here. I think we can run an extraction on any one of them.”

  “Just let me know when and where,” Duncan said.

  “Number one: the parking garage at Central Plaza. He’s there for a meeting in an hour. We could grab him on the way out. It’s still secured corporate property, so there will be resistance. But it’s the weakest out of the corporate properties he visits. On the plus side, there won’t be any civilians, access is limited, and he’s listed as a VIP in their system.”

  “We can be there,” Duncan said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to be in an open area like that. Too many things can go wrong. What’s next?”

  “Next one is a bit personal. Mr. Plastic has a mistress, visits her twice a week. Today’s the day. He’ll be at the Fa Yuen Tower building for two hours. It’s not corporate property, but it is privately owned. The management company has a security contract on it, so it’s likely we’ll have a fight on our hands trying to get out of there with him in tow. It’ll be less crowded than the parking garage, but the lady might complicate things.”

  “Interesting,” Gobbet said with a snarky smile. “Who goes for a plastic-faced guy?”

  “What’s the last location?” I asked before anyone could get sidetracked with speculation about the Plastic-Faced Man’s love life. Or any other synthetic parts he might have.

  “Well, we have to grab him before he gets home tonight,” Is0bel replied. “Once he’s there, we’re screwed. He’s staying in the Tsang Executive Arcology, guarded 24/7 by corporate security, and two blocks from the HKPF HQ. The final location we could grab him is his last stop for the evening. It’s a locally owned public simsense theater. A hole in the wall that specializes in underground horror flicks. He’s there for an hour and forty-five minutes, and his security detail will be all the way across town to pick someone else up. We’ll probably have to deal with local police only. But this is a public theater. It’s going to be packed with regular people just trying to take in a movie.”

  I thought it over as the others pitched their ideas at me. Only one of the scenarios sounded attractive to me. “Let’s hit the mistress’s apartment. He’ll be weakest there, not to mention distracted, and if we can get inside undetected, we should only have one other person to deal with. We need to take him alive.”

  I looked at Duncan. Whatever arguments came, his would be the strongest.

  “We only get one shot at this,” he said.

  “I know. This is the one we should take.”

  He nodded. “All right, then. Let’s get it done.”

  Chapter 77

  Extraction

  We got through the private sec at Fa Yuen Tower with fake identification Kindly Cheng provided through one of her assets. Of course, she told us she would take the cost out of our next paying run, but no one cared. We all had the Plastic-Faced Man on our minds. A street sam Duncan had met gave us the building’s layout and vulnerable spots. Svetlana Markova impressed me as a consummate professional, and I trusted her intel.

  After making online reservations for room with the fake IDs, we arrived at the tower individually, then met up on the floor where the Plastic-Faced Man’s mistress lived on his nuyen.

  According to our timetable, we were arriving there twenty minutes or so after the Plastic-Faced Man was set to reach his destination.

  “This soon after he got here,” Gobbet said, “he should be busy.”

  I stopped at the keypad and entered the passcode Is0bel had turned up on Xiaozhi’s computer. The maglock cycled, then opened with a barely audible click. The green light was more of an indicator.

  The room’s floor plan was simple. Svetlana had delivered it as well. The main living room, filled with large, expensive-looking leather furniture and some equally-large vases, was straight ahead, with a bedroom to the left, and an office/study to the right.

  We headed for the bedroom, but changed directions when we heard a man’s voice in the office/study. Duncan followed me on the right, and I waved Gobbet and Is0bel into position in front of the closed bedroom door.

  In the office/study, the Plastic-Faced
Man stood in front of a large aquarium filled with brightly colored fish. He stood as though transfixed, hands clasped behind his neck.

  Like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Anger flooded through me then as I remembered how he’d shot the old man in cold blood. Or at least that was the way it had been made to look. I still wasn’t sure what was going on.

  I took out the altered Taser and readied myself to take the shot. Even after the charge hit, Emilie had explained it would take time to shut down the Plastic-Faced Man’s consciousness.

  Before I could fire, the Plastic-Faced Man spun and drew a large-caliber handgun lightning-fast. The only thing I could think of was that our reflection in the aquarium had to have given Duncan and me away.

  Duncan cursed and opened fire, aiming for the Plastic-Faced Man’s chest, trusting the armor there would hold him. I stepped in and steadied the Taser, then fired. The prongs leaped forward and bit into the man’s cheek and I pressed the button, firing current through him.

  Almost calmly, the Plastic-Faced Man ripped the prongs from his synthetic face and fired at us. He was good. His bullets peppered us with killing shots, but our armor saved us. Then he shifted his arm, adjusting his aim, going for headshots.

  Duncan lowered his shotgun and fired into the Plastic-Faced Man’s legs, knocking them out from under him. I shot forward and threw myself on him, grabbing his left arm and jacking it up between his shoulder blades. I knew it had to have hurt, but he didn’t say a word.

  Out in the other room, Gobbet and Is0bel suddenly had their hands full with the girlfriend, who was a troll. An actual troll. Evidently the Plastic-Faced Man liked his playmates extra-large.

  Duncan stepped on the Plastic-Faced Man’s arm and ripped the pistol away. He placed a knee in the man’s back and held him down while he put handcuffs on him. By the time he was finished, our prisoner collapsed into unconsciousness.

  “Is he alive?” Duncan asked.

  I put my fingers to the Plastic-Faced Man’s neck and felt a pulse. I nodded. “He’s fine. Just out.”