“You’re welcome to come along,” Kim called out from the bathroom on her side of their suite.
“I felt like a big enough fifth wheel last night. I’ll be fine. I’m going to visit Walter’s old dojo, maybe find someone who can explain what that business back at the cemetery was all about.”
“I won’t be able to translate for you and Mike at the same time. Not easily, anyway.”
“No, it’s fine. The translator license Mike got for Zoe freed up when she disappeared.”
Kim came around the corner fastening her earrings, and Tonya couldn’t help but laugh a little.
“What?”
“All this time we’ve known each other, and I don’t think I ever saw you in more than a sweat shirt and jeans in realspace. I had no idea you owned a suit.”
“Should I change?”
“No, of course not.” Tonya laughed again, but not before a slight twinge of tension snapped between them.
Tonya was a grownup, but she was also human. The truth was that what Mike and Kim had together made her jealous, which then fell over into embarrassment because she was a damned grownup, not some kid with a jealous crush. There wasn’t anything romantic between them; it was just that at one point she had Kim all to herself, and now she didn’t. At the bottom of it all, it bothered her because it bothered her.
She said a quick prayer. Faith had done more to rebuild her life than anything else. It was yet another thing she owed to Walter.
It all flashed through her in an instant, but gave her the center to let a real smile bloom. It was only when Kim relaxed that Tonya realized how insecure, how utterly out of her depth, Kim was in this situation. She was going out into the world, into China, and needed Tonya’s support.
“You look great.” Of course, honesty was important too. Kim’s improvised armor wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “Where’d your boxes go?”
She got tense again. “I have to pretend to be a professional interpreter, Mike’s assistant. He’s big enough to run interference.” She hefted her giant purse over her shoulder, and then patted it. “It’ll be him and this. I just have to hope it’ll be enough.”
“It will be. Just have a little faith.”
“Tonya, I wish I could. I’m so scared.”
She rushed up and wrapped one of the scarves she always carried around Kim’s wrist. “Shh. It’s okay. I’ll have faith for us both.”
This close, Kim’s fear was a physical thing. “He’ll say something stupid, I just know it.”
“It’s Mike, hon. It’s what he does.”
She rolled her eyes, then pulled away and changed the subject. “What does visiting a dojo in China involve?”
Being honest had different definitions. “I’ll do a workout at the gym, make sure Spencer and Shan don’t set anything on fire, and go to bed early.”
Kim raised an eyebrow, a sure sign she knew Tonya wasn’t telling the whole story.
The truth would set her free. “Being terrified in a suicide sled driven by a white girl who can’t be touched takes a bit out of a sister, ya know?”
Kim laughed with a sparkle, and all was right in the world again. “You’re such cowards. Okay. Stay safe. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Tonya made sure everyone else was on their way before leaving the hotel. The encounter at the cemetery had left her with a lot of questions; Tonya hoped the dojo would have people who might provide answers. Walter had left her its address, the place where he’d learned everything he’d taught her. Maybe she’d find out what the tomb meant and why that old woman had been so angry.
The dojo turned out to be in a much rougher part of town than the cemetery. There were no kindly old men trying to teach her folk songs here. Chinese hawked and spat everywhere like always, but now it was happening specifically in front of wherever she happened to be walking.
It didn’t matter that she was tougher than six of them put together. This was hate, pure and simple. Hate the way her grandmother described police acting in Baltimore fifty years ago, hate like her great aunts from Mississippi and Arkansas talked about. Hate that saw brave black brothers hanging from tree branches, because they looked the wrong way at the wrong time.
She’d just exited the subway when one of them managed to spit directly on her shoe.
She spun. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She was relying on a robot to translate this time. It came out flat, and probably wrong. There had to be twenty men around her now. They all laughed darkly. Intimidating, but not nearly as intimidating as what was behind them.
It was a man, maybe one from the cemetery, wearing the same black suit, with the same black sunglasses. She backed away from the crowd, watching him. He popped his chin up at her, and then nodded to a group of thugs that’d just walked out of an alley. They carried chains and clubs.
Someone grabbed her shoulder and it was on. She had two things going for her: they thought she was a starving African, and she had a ton of targets. Precision didn’t matter as much in a crowd. The problem was she had to be lucky every time. The crowd only had to be lucky once.
The first five were idiots. She sent them sprawling, one of them with a very satisfying thunk as his knee dislocated. Then three walked out, snapping to a stance that meant they knew what they were doing.
A punch to her kidney was savage, but she managed to sweep the legs out from under the guy who’d snuck up behind her.
She felt a dizzy for a second.
You really need to get out of there.
Tonya still had her phone on, and someone had logged into her private neural net. It wasn’t Kim, Spencer, or Mike, otherwise there’d be a signature.
The guy who hit the ground had a simple snap buckle on his belt. Tonya flipped it open and yanked the belt away, straight between the eyes of the guy behind her. She rolled with him to avoid everyone else.
Tonya replied, Tell me something I don’t know.
She somersaulted over a stiff arm and kicked two men away before she hit the street.
Find this.
A fire escape ladder flashed in her enhanced vision, on the other side of a crowd that was six deep.
She sent, Yeah, I might need a little help to reach that. Sink into it, think three steps ahead. Tonya knocked two more down and just barely dodged a fist aimed straight at her nose. There were so many of them.
The street exploded.
She blinked away the after images to find the entire crowd staring straight up, leaving her a perfect alley.
Didn’t have to tell her twice.
She ran, dodging through the crowd, trying to imitate Kim. Sideways here, skitter there, suck it all in, and then duck underneath. Touching anyone in the crowd might break the spell. It felt like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds. The faces tracked downward as whatever was in the sky fell. She jumped and clawed her way up the fire escape and through an open window.
Her rescuer was a small child with long dark hair, dressed in simple, clean clothes. The room was neat, if small.
“Who are you?”
The child’s English was perfect. “It’s complicated, and very confusing.” Tonya thought she could hear a Philadelphia accent.
The face seemed familiar, especially the eyes, like an actor she’d seen in a different realm drama.
A clang rang from the courtyard below.
The child looked over Tonya’s shoulder. “I can’t hold this frame any longer. Tonya, you need to get ready. You’re going down there again.” The child handed her an old-fashioned zippo lighter. “Take this. Don’t fall.”
“How do you know my name? Who are you?”
She grew genuinely frustrated. “I can’t tell you.”
Everything swirled in all directions; her eyes twitched, and her head spun with the gray clouds. But if a golden child told her not to fall, she was damned sure not to lose her balance. The way the ground shifted didn’t make it easy, though.
When everything cleared she was back on the stre
et. A wide, smoking hole was between her and the crowd. A manhole was a manhole no matter what country, but of course this one was about three times as big as the ones back home. The clang had to be the noise the manhole cover made when it hit the ground about three feet from where she stood. Fists and feet stuck out from under it, along with a river of blood.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of thugs.
The rest of them gawped at her, eyes huge in the streetlight.
Tonya needed to keep them off balance. She threw her arms wide. “I AM THE QUEEN OF SHEEBA!”
The crowd moved away from her. A lot of them grabbed their phones, probably trying to figure out a translation.
“MY ANCESTORS TAUGHT THE PHAOROAHS HOW TO BUILD PYRAMIDS!”
Yeah, huge exaggeration, but it bought her the time she needed to let her phone examine the smoke coming from the manhole. A lot of it was still methane, concentrated enough to cause warnings to flash. Now the lighter made more sense. She lit it while they pushed against each other to stay away from her.
“YOU WILL OBEY ME!”
Tonya tossed the thing into the smoke column and jumped away. A fireball roared straight up into its very own mushroom cloud.
Eyebrows were overrated anyway. She got up and found the crowd wasn’t interested in her anymore. It was nothing but backs and the soles of shoes as they ran; there was no sign of the man in the suit. The connection on her phone had cut, and there were no entries in her logs to show those messages had ever happened.
Explanations were for people who were in a better part of town. Tonya flagged down a beat-up autocab and plugged in the address for home.
Chapter 15: Zoe
The questions came at her from every direction.
“What is his name?”
“Where is he?”
“Who does he travel with?”
“What does he look like?”
“How do I find him?”
The pressure was unbearable. “You’re hurting me! Why are you doing this?”
Everything stopped, and then the constructs Zhang used to hold Zoe vanished. After a moment, the haptic field kicked up to the standard eighty percent. It finally allowed her to clear caches so full of field emotions they sloshed.
Zoe opened her eyes. The realm was spare, a simple room. She sat in a chair in front of a table. Zhang’s holo stood on the other side. She hadn’t fitted Zoe with any restraints, although that didn’t matter much, since the room didn’t have a door or any other sort of exit point.
Zhang’s expression was pained. Zoe could swear she blushed.
“You’re right. This is uncalled for. I apologize. You must understand, this is unprecedented. I had no idea there could be someone else in the world like me.”
“Oh, trust me, if you ever meet Mike you’ll surprise him just as much, maybe more.”
“His name,” she said quietly, leaning forward, “is Mike?”
Damn! One apology was all it took to pry that loose? She cursed silently at herself for a moment, but then stopped. This wasn’t Constable Zhang the scary Chinese cop. This was an only child who’d just been told she had a brother.
“Yes, it is. What’s yours?”
The question caught Zhang off guard; Zoe wasn’t sure she’d answer. After a moment Zhang seemed to come to her own decision about who to trust. “Helen. My Western name is Helen. Please, Zoe, tell me more about Mike.”
Zoe first explained exactly how Mike was in China. Helen’s hologram flickered as she gasped. “A realspace body? That is…miraculous. How did it happen?”
“He’s got this totally wack way of tunneling through the dimensions of the universe. It involves quantum anchors and Higgs boson scanners and you just wouldn’t believe the math.” There was no way she could explain it. Zoe was an artist, not a physicist. Helen stared at the table without speaking, so Zoe picked up the story again.
She was just getting to the part where Mike had found her family when Helen held up her hand and looked away. “Apologies, Zoe. I need to go.”
“You do? Where?”
“You were right about one thing. Being a rent-a-cop, as you so colorfully put it, isn’t my real job. I was being punished for a failure.” She smiled. “My job really is catching terrorists. There’s a hostage situation at a bank in downtown Chengdu.” Her holo vanished.
“Wait! What about me? Helen!”
The holo reappeared, but it was fainter than before. “We still have to get your papers sorted. These are probably just country hooligans. I imagine you might need to do some downloading.” Storage tunnels opened, although not big enough for her to escape through. “I won’t be long,” she said, and then vanished.
Time dragged on. Quick must have a different definition in China, or maybe they weren’t just country hooligans. Great. Trapped in a room with no door. Zoe was full of smooth moves lately.
The haptic field shot up to one hundred percent. Zoe fully manifested in a blank cell, complete with a one-way mirror and a door. It was definitely not where Helen had left her.
The door slammed open; the harsh light of her cell cast a wedge into the complete black on the other side.
A familiar voice came out of the darkness. “You stupid, stupid girl.”
“Fee, oh my God, I’m so sorry!”
Heels clacked closer, and then Fee walked through the door. “You had one job, one job, and you screwed it up.” She was dressed in black with a long leather jacket and matching boots. “Do you have any idea what it took for me to get here?”
“Fee, please!”
“Don’t you say another word. I did not just spend fifteen hours in a frozen hell for you to blow it apart with another screw up.”
“Fee, you won’t believe what I found!”
She grabbed Zoe’s shirt in her fist and pulled her close. “I know exactly what you’ve found. If you want to survive the next three minutes, you will say nothing.” Fee let go and spun to face the door.
The voice was liquid power, but Zoe remembered the accent. This was the contact Fee had given her.
“You have your minion’s freedom. Daughter has made contact.”
Minion? Really?
Fee replied, “Is my realm ready?”
“Zhu already moves toward Nanjing. The plan proceeds in spite of your minion’s incompetence.”
Okay, that was just seven different kinds of bullshit. Zoe opened her mouth only to have it clapped shut by Fee’s hand.
“The sanctuary is next, yes?”
“Yes.” The voice was deep and synthetic, a combination of bark and tar. There was death inside it. “Daughter will lead them there. You will have your subject once we have secured the package.”
Great. More riddles.
“We’ll be ready,” Fee said.
The presence yanked away and then the realm dissolved. When it cleared, they stood in a sumptuous den with hardwood floors and tapestries shot full of red and gold.
“Fee, why are we still manifested?”
“Do not question me.” Fee glowered. Her left hand trembled, harder than nerves or even actual checksum errors should’ve caused. Zoe barely managed not to stare at it. “I have a new set of jobs for you, if you think you can manage them without getting arrested.”
Every mistake she made got picked up and thrown in her face. Nobody ever let anything go. “I’ll be fine. What do you need me to do next?”
Chapter 16: Kim
“This is ridiculous,” Kim said. “Why can’t we do it all in realm-space?”
“One, I still can’t connect,” Mike replied, “and two, it’s a Chinese thing. These sorts of partnerships require a ton of paperwork, and it all has to be officially stamped. The stamp lives in the bank, so we go to the bank.”
The subway would’ve been the logical choice to get there, but Kim had never been brave enough to risk the Metro back home, let alone a Chinese system. Just the thought of a train car filled shoulder to shoulder with people made her queasy. They’d be fine wi
th a cab that dropped them right in front of the bank.
The ubiquitous construction and gridlock caught them again. They sat for half an hour with absolutely no sign of movement. It was faster to get out and walk.
This older part of the city had shallow sewers, so the whole place reeked in spite of the clean, wide sidewalks. It smelled worse than downtown DC after a heavy rain.
She kept Mike ahead of her and to her left, and her standard purse-slash-shield on the right to move through the crowd. It would’ve worked, but Mike marched along too quickly, making her normal dance impossible. “Stop walking so fast, damn it.”
He stopped and she had to scramble to avoid him. “Oh, I’m sorry. Why don’t you get Shan to come out and help you?”
He wants to do this now? In front of China? Fine. “Why don’t you get that interpreter to come out and…interpret for you?” Okay, it wasn’t the best comeback, but still.
He walked up just close enough to edge against her defenses but not far away enough for her to miss his cologne. Staying angry had never been a challenge for her until she met Mike. Just the smell of him was all it took.
“The difference is, Kim, I didn’t know she was going to do that. Just like I didn’t know you were going to spend the whole night standing as close as you could to a complete stranger.” He walked away like that was the end of the argument. Not a chance.
The nerve he had bringing that up. She had spent months dealing with someone who wasn’t really human, cleaning, teaching hygiene, explaining Walmart, making sure he walked out of the apartment with the right shoes on…
But that was in the past, and he was mad about what had happened last night. And he was right. Some part of her had been happy at the way he scowled the entire time.
The crowds closed in. Without him as a shield, she was left half naked on a sidewalk full of people. Kim shouted his name just as a bus driver laid on his horn. People bumped against her purse. Every stumble was a dodge against searing pain, and they were everywhere. She couldn’t get away from them. Their faces distorted as her heart thundered, and her throat went dry.
“Hey,” Mike said, just inside her comfort zone, bumping against the people that walked past. “It’s okay; we’re here.”
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