Jade Dragon

by James Swallow

  Dawn was coming up over the skyline of Hong Kong Island, turning the mirrored towers honey gold. The light moved across the walls of Alan’s former apartment, illuminating his tasteful Mondrian prints. Carefully, Frankie slid himself out of the bed without disturbing Juno’s sleep and padded across the room, grabbing a dressing gown. He gave her another look before he went into the bathroom, watching her at rest there. Man, she is gorgeous!

  But what was going to happen next? Was it possible that a guy like him could actually have some kind of a realistic relationship with a woman like her, a pop star whose face was on the bedroom walls of a million teenagers? Hadn’t he seen something last month on Tiplady’s screamsheet, about Juno dating Brook Beckham? Maybe this would be a one-night thing for her, an amusement park ride, there and then gone. Something for him to tell his grandkids about—yeah, Juno and me, we had a thing—but nothing real. When he thought of it like that, it made Frankie’s chest ache. He didn’t want it to end that way, wham bam thank you salaryman. He thought of the look in her eyes when they kissed, the melancholy, the loneliness. It made him want to hold and protect her. She wanted more than that, he was sure of it. He saw the mirror of his own isolation in her, the same disconnection, the same darkness.

  Darkness. Frankie looked into his reflection over the bathroom sink and frowned. Now he found his thoughts drifting back, past the thrills of last night and into disturbing recollections of the party at the YLHI tower. The sense-memory of blood came back to him with such force, for a moment he gripped at his hand, convinced the knife cuts had opened up again. Half-seen things began to unfold at the corners of his vision, and Frankie snapped his fingers to halt them, shaking the thoughts away. Forget that. I’m here now. With her. Not my business.

  He went to work washing his face, then halted when he couldn’t locate any soap. There was a cabinet within arm’s reach and he peered inside. Rooting through dozens of bottles of expensive aftershave and skin balms, his fingers closed around a plastic disc. He brought it to eye level and peered at the object.

  Inside the coin-sized case was a memory spike, and on the flag of its tail was a single word printed in tiny characters.

  Brother.

  The police trooper walked Ko through the detention section and up the broad stairs to the main level of the precinct house. The place was alive with the morning shift, young men in green uniforms and slow-eyed older guys who had the paunchy, ex-boxer look of career detectives. The actinic glow of dozens of monitor screens gave the place a chilly look at odds with the sweat-warm temperature. It was a single open room fenced off into threadbare cubicles with proper offices boxed off around the outer walls. Watery sunshine leached from skylights across the ceiling. The station was a mess of retrofitted Twenty-first century technology and clumsy beat cop hardware from the Eighties, fat plastic telephones side-by-side with datascreens.

  A squad of Special Duties Unit constables were gathered in front of a stuttering holotank as he passed them by. The men were all featureless beneath full spectrum gas masks and the blank bands of optical rigs. They wore matte black clamshell armour festooned with snap-clips for ammunition packs, grenades, heartbeat sensors and leaflet dispensers. On their backs were the sponsorship logos from their corporate partners, a pattern of symbols like those on the jumpsuits of arena drivers but rendered in discreet grey-on-black. They carried guns that blinked and whirred in standby modes. The heads of the SDU men bobbed and moved as they talked among themselves, but Ko heard nothing; their helmets were sound-sealed and they communicated on encrypted radio frequencies.

  By contrast the trooper who nudged Ko along the way was at the opposite end of the spectrum. He had the puppy-fat and slightly moronic look of a mainland country hick, filling out the dull khaki uniform of the Army of the People’s Republic of China, Incorporated. There was a holster at his waist and in there, Ko knew, was a palmprint encoded CNI 10mm revolver. He’d seen the damage those pistols wrought on human flesh more times than he liked. The copper stopped him outside an office and rapped smartly on the door. A voice inside called out and the trooper jerked a thumb. Ko sighed and entered.

  The man behind the desk wore the same uniform as the bored trooper, but his epaulets showed the silver badges of a chief inspector. The officer waved Ko into an empty seat across from his desk as he finished something on his screen. The teenager didn’t need to study the face of the inspector. He knew it well. The jowls where he was getting old beyond his years, the false tightening of skin from treatments at the NooYoo Clinic. The man had the sort of schoolboy face that seemed better suited to a funnyman on the vid than an aging cop.

  Ko held a contrite look on his face as at last the inspector looked up at him. “Hey, uncle. How are you?”

  The policeman frowned. “Don’t call me ‘uncle’, Ko. You’re not a child anymore, even if you do act like one, picking fights in the street.”

  “Sorry, sir,” he said with a nod. “Inspector Chan, sir.”

  “Better,” replied Chan and shook his head. “Ko, what are you doing? I thought you were smart enough not to get caught? I know what you’re up to out there, boy, don’t think that I don’t. But I can’t turn a blind eye if you’re right here in my damn precinct!”

  “Sorry,” Ko repeated. “Things… got out of hand.”

  Chan made a noise of agreement and Ko saw a blink of images on his monitor: streetcam shots from the road showing the fight, stills from Second Lei’s juvenile arrest records. “That’s one way to describe it.” The older man blinked slowly and gave the youth a level stare. “You were eight years old the first time you saw the inside of a police station, do you remember?”

  Ko sighed. Here we go again…

  “Your dad brought you in to show you what he did for a living. I locked you in a cell just to give you a scare and you punched me in the gut for it.” He looked away. “Next time I did that, it was nine years later and you’d run a police cruiser off the road in Wanchai. And here we are again. How many times is this, now?”

  “You tell me, uncle. Uh, inspector. ”

  A scowl passed over the police officer’s face and he threw up his hands abruptly. “Ah, fuck it!”

  Ko blinked. He’d never heard his father’s old partner swear in all his life.

  Chan shook a finger at him. “I’m tired of giving you the same bloody lecture every time we cross paths, you delinquent! I don’t want to hear it again!”

  “That makes two of us,” said Ko.

  The older man moved faster than his years and dealt Ko a savage slap about the head. “Don’t get cocky, boy! The only reason you haven’t been sent down a dozen times over is because I owe your father my life! I promised him I’d look out for his kids… I can’t do anything about that wild sister of yours, but you…” He leaned closer. “What kind of man are you growing up to be, Ko? You’re a disappointment!”

  “More than you know,” said the teenager quietly.

  “I know you got good in you. I see the flowers you leave on the old man’s grave.” Chan sat back down, fuming. “Your father forgive me, but this is the last time. I’m not covering for you any more. From now on, you’re just another go-ganger punk to me, understand?” He rapped on the desk. “You need to get your head straight. You should be looking after your sister, not wasting time on the roads.”

  Ko felt something shift in his chest; he thought about what he’d said in the cell and there was a sudden surety inside him. “You’re right, uncle. I’m getting out.”

  Chan’s face darkened. “And Nikita? You’re not just going to leave her in the hospital?”

  Ko’s blood ran cold. “Hospital? What are you talking about?”

  The policeman’s face shifted. “Oh, hell. Don’t tell me you don’t know…”

  “Know what?” His voice rose in panic.

  Chan’s pleasant face turned sad and compassionate. “Nikita was admitted to Saint Theresa’s. They said it was a drug overdose. She’s critical. ”

  Alice had yet
to provide a replacement d-screen for the one Frankie had lost in the car, so he had bought a basic tourist PDA from the In-Shop Micromall in the apartment block. His throat went dry when he input the spike and a security program began a regimen of questions; it asked about people he went to school with, about where he’d hidden his copies of Playboy as a teenager, the name of the first girl he ever slept with. Things that only Alan would have known the answers to. He locked the door to the toilet and sat on the edge of the bowl, hunched over the book-sized screen, growing anxious with every passing moment.

  Finally, the programme was satisfied and it opened to him. There were gigs of data on the memory needle, and he flicked experimentally through them. Most of the files had warnings promising censure and contract termination if they were viewed outside a Yuk Lung Heavy Industries database. Frankie understood that his brother had plundered proscribed levels of the company’s deep storage, illegally copying a king’s ransom in sensitive data. Even from a cursory examination, he could see that there was enough here to earn billions of yuan on the open market. If the spike fell into the hands of a rival like Eidolon or GenTech, YLHI would be destroyed.

  Frankie swallowed hard. Alan, an industrial spy? It hardly seemed real. He was set for life in his upper tier posting at Yuk Lung… There was nothing any other corporation would have been able to give him that was better. There had to be another reason why he had been collating data…

  A sudden, chilling thought struck him. The label on the spike. Brother. Alan must have left it for Frankie to find, a message of some sort. Had he known he was going to die? And what if…

  The palmtop shook in his hands. He could hardly bring himself to think it.

  What if Alan’s death wasn’t an accident?

  The knock on the toilet door made him jump with fright, and the little PDA slipped out of his hands and across the tiled floor. “Wait!” he piped, “Just, uh, just a second!” Frankie flushed the toilet and gathered up the PDA, stuffing it into the pocket of the gown. He wiped sweaty hands on the towelling and forced a smile as he opened the door. “Juno, hey—”

  “Mr Lam, good morning,” Monkey King filled the doorway before him, steady as a statue. “My apologies for disturbing you. ”

  Frankie utterly failed to keep the shock from his face. “What… ?”

  “Miss Qwan has an appointment at the Ocean Terminal Mallplex. I’m here to escort her.”

  “Yes. Of course. ”

  Juno emerged from the bathroom wearing a man’s tracksuit ensemble. She gave him a deep kiss and smiled. “I’m borrowing this, hope you don’t mind.”

  “No. That’s fine. It’s, uh, was my brother’s.”

  She traced a finger over his cheek. “I have to go.” Her face softened. “See me again, Frankie? Say you will?”

  He nodded, unable to find the words. Juno kissed him again, and followed the masked man out. On the threshold, she tossed him a jaunty wave and was gone.

  Frankie stood there for a long time, his mind in turmoil. The palmtop in his pocket felt like lead, heavy with terrible possibility. Alice had told him that Alan’s death had been a mistaken assault, but now a tide of suspicion was rising.

  I have to know for sure.

  His hands tapped at the air. But where could he turn for help? Hong Kong was an alien place to him now, and he had no doubt that Tze’s people would never give him leave to investigate on his own. He needed someone on the outside. Someone who knew the street.

  Someone who had connections.

  Ko felt the colour drain from him in a sick rush. In the hospital bed, Nikita was barely visible beneath a network of plastic tubes and sensor wires. Machines painted in the same leaf-green as the walls were clustered around the girl’s sallow face, chiming in time to her heartbeat. His sister’s chest rose and fell in ragged jerks, her breath disordered through the oxygen mask clasped over her nose and lips. Beneath closed lids, her eyes fluttered and moved.

  He staggered forward, some part of him wondering if Dr Yeoh had brought him into the wrong room by mistake. This pale thing in front of him hardly seemed real enough to be Nikita, dear Niki with her explosive temper and her flashing I-dare-you eyes. The woman on the bed was a faded copy of his sister, washed out and thin as tissue paper. This was some weak facsimile.

  “She was admitted in the early hours of the morning,” the doctor said, her voice calm and measured. “A police unit found her in Kowloon Park. She was very lucky. A few more hours and she would have died.”

  “Lucky.” Ko repeated in a dead voice. He reached out and ran a hand over her cheek. Her skin was clammy and cold. Nikita s mouth was moving, and he bent close to hear. She was whispering.

  “Your sister’s medical records are patchy, Mr Chen, but it’s clear she has a history of drug use. I’m afraid this is very serious.”

  Ko moved the oxygen mask and placed his ear to her lips. He felt tears welling up as he made out the peculiar litany.

  “Mountain and the blood, screeching cats. Where are the masks talking? Can’t see the lines on his chest, ropes and cutting knives.” The words came in gasps. “No zen. Invisible hands. Know zen. Demons, pieces that smell like dark.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Ko turned, his fists balling.

  The woman’s brow furrowed. “She’s suffered an overdose of a hallucinogenic. Her mind is struggling to make sense of it, but the drug effect tampers with conscious recall and perception, it creates a synesthetic overload.” She sighed. “It’s like the book of your sister’s life has been jumbled up. She’s lost in it.”

  “The worms gathering, the mirror sea,” whispered Nikita, “Mirror see. See mirror. Mirror. Bubble in a stream. Jade. The Jade Dragon.”

  “Can’t you help her?” he demanded. “Can’t you… fix her?” Ko blinked furiously, impotent and frustrated.

  Dr Yeoh’s kind face set in a frown. “Nikita has suffered severe neurological damage. There is a possible remedy, but it’s beyond my skills. I can give you a referral but you must understand, the cost is very high. Have you ever heard of the Zarathustra Clinic?”

  Ko gave a bitter laugh. “Do I look like millionaire? I don’t have the kind of yuan they charge!” He gave the doctor a hard look. “Who did this to her? I want to know!”

  The woman was silent for a long moment. “This isn’t the first case I have seen like this. Your sister’s reaction is to a street narcotic, zee-three-en. Do you know it?”

  “Zen.” He screwed his eyes shut, remembering the tingle of the spilt drug on his fingers.

  “Other users haven’t been so fortunate. But it’s difficult to stem the flow of this poison. The police look the other way. The corporates…” She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Yuk Lung and the others, they help proliferate the drug but their high-level government connections put them above the law. All we can do here is pick up the pieces.” Yeoh turned away. “I’ll give you some time with her. Talk to her, it may help.”

  Ko stood over Nikita, vibrating with pent-up anger. “You motherfuckers,” he said to the air. “I’ll kill every last one of you for this!”

  Feng rested against the window. “Ko. You can’t help her that way.”

  He rounded on the swordsman. “Look at her! She’s a mess! One of those cashwhore bastards made that happen to her, just for shits and grins! Don’t try to calm me down, dead man! I’ll give them payback, a hundred rimes over!”

  “Look to the girl first,” said Feng. “You get yourself killed and who will care for her?”

  Ko’s angry retort died in his throat as the sound of a nightingale rang through the air. His hand wandered to the pocket of his coat. The cellphone. It was still there, forgotten after the events on the expressway.

  He flipped open the device, illuminating the miniscreen and the camera pickup. “Who the hell is this?” he snarled.

  “Remember me?” said Frankie, pressing himself deeper into the public phone booth. “We had a little chat about cars a couple of nights back.” He s
quinted at the screen, making out the shape of a well-lit room and what looked like a pile of machines on a bed.

  “You,” said the youth on the other end of the line, pouring burning hate into that single word. “You got balls calling me.”

  “Listen,” Frankie said. “If you weren’t just bragging about being hooked up with the triad societies, I could have a deal for you. I need a job done.”

  “The fuck?” spat the other voice. “You piece of worm shit, you do this to my blood and then you call me up trying to play me? I’ll fucking ice you!”

  Frankie blinked. This wasn’t going how he had expected it to. “Wait, what are you talking about?”

  The camera view wobbled and rushed in close to the bed, and with a start Frankie understood what he was looking at—a haggard woman on a life-support machine. “What was it, huh?” snarled the car thief. “Is this your way of getting your own back on me for jacking that Vector? You pump my sister full of that blue poison and leave her to die?”

  A cold trickle of recognition shot through the executive. The woman’s face was familiar to him. “I know her… I saw her at the party…”

  “What d’you say?” snapped the thief. “Tell me, damn it! Where did you see her?”

  Frankie stuttered, wrong-footed. “Uh, with Mr Tze. At the Yuk Lung tower… But she seemed fine then.”

  “Tze? I know who he is,” came a growl.

  “Wait, no—” The screen went dead, and Frankie was left there in silence.

  Ko snapped the phone shut and pocketed it.

  Feng gave him a narrow stare.

  “Boy, don’t do anything foolish.”

  “I’m going to get a weapon,” he said, his voice low and loaded with menace. “And then I’m going to kill a man.”

  Next on ZeeBeeCee Ultrasports Daily, we go Hue to Sao Paolo for the World Series of Celebrity Cockfighting. But first, live coverage of the day’s endorsed highway combat matches in the Denver Death Zone, including the triumphant comeback bout for John Knoxville and the surprise result on the Hasselhof Memorial Circuit—