Lion

by Matt Rogers

  ‘How much?’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘To spend the night here.’

  ‘A full twenty-four hours will cost you one million Hong Kong Dollars.’

  ‘I can do that,’ Slater said. He rummaged in his pocket and came out with a pale orange casino chip. ‘These are the equivalent of—’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the man said, taking the chip with a wry smile. ‘USD chips. For the convenience of our American guests. A service we provide for peace of mind.’

  Slater plucked a second chip out of his pocket and handed it over in succession. ‘That comes to two hundred thousand USD, which is one-point-five million HKD if I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘Will you be needing change?’ the woman said.

  ‘I was wondering if you could throw on a few bonuses for a hefty tip.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Two girls. For twenty-four hours. And as long as they’re still breathing after, it doesn’t matter what physical condition they come back to you in. How’s that sound?’

  Slater’s insides churned with every word, but maintaining a poker face had become something ingrained into his subconscious. He raised an eyebrow as the pair considered the offer, twirling the two casino chips in their thin fingers. They glanced at each other momentarily, then the man nodded to the woman to proceed.

  ‘It depends what you want to do to them.’

  ‘Whatever I want. I’m paying for privacy.’

  ‘No permanent injuries.’

  ‘Nothing they can’t recover from. With time.’

  The woman shrugged. ‘How about this? Another pair of these chips and you can do anything besides kill them. Permanent injuries will be on the table. We want to appeal to anyone’s kinks if the price demands it.’

  Slater paused.

  Did they know he only had four hundred thousand on his person? Had that information been passed up the chain, from the concierge to the head of security on level 22 to the staff on level 44?

  Whatever the case, it confirmed the moral integrity of the people he was dealing with. He’d sunk to the darkest level he could think of, and they’d followed him down.

  Now, there was nothing else to do but locate the product.

  He would protect as many of these girls as he could.

  And he would tear this floor apart to do so — the entire casino, if he had to.

  Pure fury settled over him as he extracted the other two pale orange discs and passed them across. ‘We’ve got ourselves a deal.’

  The pair smiled, and rose from the leather couch, the transaction completed. Slater imagined a hefty commission would be headed their way for the sale.

  In a few minutes, they wouldn’t be around to receive it.

  He got to his feet, barely able to control himself, and raised an eyebrow in question.

  Where to?

  The man smiled — a sickening gesture. ‘Not on this level, sir. The product is kept below the complex. Underground. We have a whole sub-level dedicated to satisfying your needs. If you would please follow us.’

  Slater sauntered after the pair, his hands balled into fists, his veins pulsating in his neck.

  He thought of the raw strength powering his system, and how effortless it would be to beat both staff to death with his bare hands.

  Not yet.

  That would only be two.

  He wanted every involved party lined up on the chopping block.

  In that moment, he wanted nothing but vengeance.

  So he followed them to a private elevator shaft cordoned off from the rest of the floor, and accompanied them into a smaller cable car devoid of the luxuries afforded to the usual Mountain Lion customers. It was a soulless metal box with harsh fluorescent lighting, and it whisked the three of them down into the depths of the skyscraper.

  Far underground.

  Far from public access.

  40

  Slater couldn’t understand how the staff weren’t able to sense the raw anger pulsating out of his every pore.

  Perhaps they were used to operating in tense atmospheres, where paying customers lapsed into silence given the nature of the deeds they were here to carry out. Perhaps they could sense his fury but had no way to excuse themselves from the situation, roped into doing their jobs even if they had to handle a volatile customer.

  They thought they’d seen it all before.

  Not like this.

  Not like Slater.

  There was no display on the interior of the industrial-style elevator to indicate what floors they were passing, or where they were headed. Slater imagined this cable car was reserved for a short express trip to a pre-determined holding facility.

  Deep underground.

  Burrowed away from detection.

  ‘There’s no need to be nervous,’ the man finally said. His voice barely rose above a whisper but in the pure silence of the cable car it jolted Slater, along with the woman to his left.

  Ah, Slater thought. You’re misinterpreting this situation, my friend.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s not my first time doing this kind of thing but it still feels like I might get caught.’

  ‘There’s no need to worry about that,’ the woman said. ‘We’ve accompanied hundreds of men down here. None of them have been caught. You have nothing to fear.’

  Slater screamed at himself to delay the retribution — every fibre of his being felt like driving the woman’s head into the far wall of the cable car hard enough to split her skull open.

  You bitch, I’ll show you what it feels like to feel fear when—

  His thoughts ceased as the elevator reached its intended destination and the doors powered open.

  They stepped into a featureless corridor — this one more workmanlike than the floors above ground, without the expensive carpet or the ornate decorations or the attention to detail. Instead the floors were concrete, and the walls were concrete, and everything resonated with the indescribable stench of fear.

  Slater’s stomach groaned as his insides churned. He battled down the sensation and stepped into hell.

  A dozen doorways on either side of the long hallway led into private rooms — certain doors were closed, and others hung wide open. Slater didn’t know how to interpret that, but he caught a glimpse inside one of the empty rooms on the way past and studied a collection of plush couches arranged in semi-circular fashion.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘Waiting rooms,’ the man said. ‘While the girls are prepared.’

  ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘We keep them in one of the larger rooms before calling them through. But, because you paid handsomely, we’re happy to fast-track you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Slater surged forward with feigned enthusiasm, and at that moment his knee decided to buckle, landing with awkward weight on one of the ligaments. He grunted in discomfort and righted himself, straightening up as beads of sweat sprouted out of the pores at each corner of his forehead. He hadn’t fully collapsed to the ground but it certainly threw the staff off their game. They stared at him, bewildered.

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Bum knee.’

  ‘Not a problem, sir.’

  It didn’t help to become aware of his injury. With each subsequent step he second-guessed himself, wondering if he could beat down everyone on this floor if he risked blowing out a tendon with each sharp movement. Some of the pent-up frustration leeched out of him, replaced with worry.

  He fought for control of the anger in his veins as he followed the pair of staff past the final waiting room at the end of the hallway.

  He had to hold onto the rage.

  Slater glanced through the open doorway as he passed by, his ears picking up a low murmuring that could only mean one thing. He stared at a quiet procession of men in a consistent wardrobe of business attire — they were mostly older Asian men, with a few Europeans and a handful of Caucasians thrown into the mix. All civilians, dressed in suits with the
ir ties unfastened and their collars open. There were eight or nine of them — Slater didn’t have time to make a precise headcount given the brief look he was afforded — but they all sported the expression of deer caught in headlights.

  The customers.

  The high-paying visitors.

  They clearly didn’t want to be hanging around with similar-minded men, either due to shame or introversion. They had come down here to conduct private dealings, and they had all been set on edge by having to sit in the presence of others.

  Maybe it was a tactic to whittle more money out of them once they were called through to the next leg of the journey.

  Because Slater had — as the man put it — paid handsomely, he carried straight on, striding after the staff, afforded his own privacy instead of being forced to hang around in the company of other sick and twisted minds. In the back of his mind, Slater made a mental note of the room’s location.

  He would come back for them.

  The rage had started brimming again.

  They led him through a maze of twisting corridors — he committed each turn to memory so he was able to find his way back on his own — and came to a halt in a narrow, claustrophobic concrete hallway that seemed more sinister than each of the previous ones. There were a handful of locked doors built into the wall at random intervals, each of the entrances flanked by a pair of heavyset bodyguards. Slater counted six members of additional security in total, each dressed in turtlenecks and suit jackets with leather holsters at their waists.

  They were all armed.

  And they were all bigger than Slater.

  He noted the details, but barely paid attention to them. He’d expected resistance. None of it would faze him. All the guards stood frozen in place, still as statues, staring at the opposite wall without even a shred of interest in the arriving parties.

  They’d clearly been told not to make eye contact with the guests.

  ‘You can make your selections here,’ the woman said, her voice hushed. ‘Two girls. Take your time — there’s no rush. We’ll get them ready for you and have them delivered to one of our suites, where you can spend twenty-four hours with them. All the amenities will be provided — we provide a full service. Any questions so far?’

  ‘None,’ Slater said, barely managing a response.

  His veins tingled in anticipation for what was to come.

  The pair of staff produced a set of keys between them and each unlocked a separate bolt on the nearest door. They stepped straight through, gesturing for Slater to follow suit.

  He hurried past the pair of guards flanking the doorway and stepped into a darker space.

  He laid eyes on a sight he wouldn’t forget for the rest of his life.

  41

  It was a miniature cell block, constructed in a cramped, stifling fashion due to the size of the prisoners. Slater cast his eyes over two rows of emaciated young girls, most of them Asian but a handful sporting a wide range of ethnicities to accomodate any preferences customers might have. He counted eleven in total.

  They stood motionless in their cages, watching him with dead expressions. Their gazes were placid — they were drugged to the eyeballs with the same cocktail administered to Shien.

  Right there, right then, every ounce of common sense shrank away, replaced by something intense and animalistic and primal. Slater didn’t care how many men he had to fight through to make it out of here. Whatever the price, he would pay it. The realisation that Shien had been heading for these cages hammered home, and it all culminated into a single boiling point.

  He couldn’t contain himself any longer.

  After a brief pause, the woman said, ‘Do you like what you see? Any of them can be yours.’

  Slater didn’t allow any sign of suspicion to leak, signifying what was coming. One moment he stood rigid with his hands by his side, frozen in between the pair of staff as the man to his right shut the giant steel door behind him, sealing them off from the corridor outside.

  ‘Take your time,’ the guy said. ‘There’s plenty of options, as you can see. All of them will fulfil your every request.’

  And, just like that, Slater snapped.

  He sucked up everything that had been building in his chest ever since he’d stepped out onto level 44 and transferred all that kinetic energy into his right leg, which he used to hammer home against the side of the woman’s throat in a twisting roundhouse kick. Technique and the power of rage sent his shin bone into the delicate tissue around her neck with the force of a turbo-charged baseball bat, wiping the smug expression off her face in an instant. An audible thwack ripped through the space, and the woman collapsed against the bars of the nearest cage. The young child inside darted back, out of harm’s way, withdrawing into the shadows.

  Slater caught a glimpse of the suffering in the girl’s eyes and used the anger to follow up with a scything front kick, dropping his lead leg to the floor, loading up, and then smashing the flat heel of his boot like a steel piston into the woman’s face. Already permanently injured by the high kick to her neck, the front kick finished her off, punching her nose into the back of her skull and breaking all manner of bones in her face.

  She died on impact — there was no doubt about it.

  As her corpse slumped to the cold floor of the holding cell hallway Slater pivoted on the spot, searching for the man behind him with a laser-targeted jab. He simply flicked his balled fist in a straight line into the bridge of the guy’s nose. He hadn’t put any power behind him, but he utilised enough momentum to shatter the guy’s septum with a half-hearted flick of the wrist. The guy froze in place for a half-second, prevented from calling out for help by the force of the punch.

  Slater had never intended anything with the jab other than to keep the guy in place for the single moment in time it took to line up and launch another kick.

  He thundered the same shin bone into the side of the guy’s temple, putting his soul into the kick, throwing it with such ferocity that it landed with enough force to keel the guy over where he stood. He dropped like a stone, face first into the concrete, shut off at the power switch by the roundhouse kick.

  Slater stumbled back into the steel bars, thrown off balance by the staggering effort he’d put into the single strike. It had landed with pinpoint accuracy, and might have even killed the guy on the spot. For good measure he stomped down on the man’s throat, thinking of every time the guy had ushered rich sociopaths into this very room.

  With a spluttering wheeze, the man suffocated as his vital organs caved in.

  Slater felt nothing. He sensed the gazes of nearly a dozen children on him, but no-one said a word. Maybe they’d been trained not to speak.

  He conducted a rudimentary search of each body, but no weapons turned up. Having crossed over into operational mode, tearing his gaze from corner to corner with a feverish pace, he turned and soaked in the sight of the closed metal door. There were no sounds of commotion outside — just silence. He imagined every room in this section of Mountain Lion was soundproof — they all sported the same dark, decrepit aesthetic with minimal lighting and deep shadows. Slater didn’t know what they were trying to achieve by making the concrete surroundings appear so sinister, but he vowed to use it to his advantage.

  He paused, turning to the room — all the girls were staring at him with wide eyes and pursed lips. They were hungry, scared, and drowsy.

  ‘Anyone speak English?’ he said, keeping his voice quiet to prevent detection.

  A couple of them nodded.

  ‘I’ll be back for you all. In a few minutes. I need to take care of something out there, then I’ll be back. You’ll all get home safe.’

  None of them offered any kind of response. They continued to stare.

  Much like Shien had.

  Detached from reality. Co-operative. Unresisting.

  Slater tasted cold fury on his tongue.

  He turned, took a deep breath, and yanked the steel door open.

  42

/>   Six men, Slater remembered before he stepped back out into the corridor.

  All armed.

  But their jobs consisted of standing around and appearing menacing to the guests. An intimidation tactic, of sorts. They were down here to convince any newcomers not to try anything brash.

  But had these hard, tough men ever needed to act in the heat of the moment?

  And if they had, did it simply involve dragging a scrawny irate businessman back to the surface?

  Slater would find out.

  He carefully pulled the steel door shut behind him, concealing the pair of bodies laying inside the holding cell from view of any curious onlookers. He stepped directly into the presence of the two bodyguards, flanking him on either side, both in the realm of six-foot-three with powerful builds and tight clothing to accentuate their musculature.

  Slater had a powerful frame underneath his jumper, too, but he didn’t feel the need to show it off.

  He bowed his head, a sheepish expression on his face as the bodyguards glared at him.

  He turned to face one of them, still refusing to make eye contact. ‘Uh, there was a bit of an accident in there, and, uh…’

  ‘What?’ the man spat, a single syllable that sliced through the air, demanding answers.

  ‘The woman fainted — you got a doctor around? It’s her birthday too.’

  None of it made any sense, and it resulted in the bodyguard brushing past Slater in a flustered hurry, shouldering him aside to see what had happened for himself. As soon as he forced the door open Slater had a hand around the Beretta M9 at his waist.

  He wrenched the gun free almost before the guy had recognised what was happening, thinking, Fifteen rounds.

  The bodyguard to his left noticed the action first, so Slater twisted at the waist and fired two rounds at an upward angle through the top of his head. Before he’d even begun to collapse Slater pivoted back to face the man — now weaponless — wheeling around in the doorway, involuntarily flinching away from the sound of the gunshots while his mind attempted to process the dead bodies inside the holding room.

  Slater put a bullet square between his eyes to save him the trouble of realising what was happening.