Chyou managed a smile. “Thank you. You’re quite dashing in your tuxedo.” Keep it together.
Everyone climbed inside and Githinji pulled away from the curb, heading downtown.
“This is just one of my limousines. I have two others. One is a Hummer, and one’s a Cadillac. But I save the Lincoln for special events,” Yuan said. His lips curved into a self-satisfied grin. Soft music played from invisible speakers and the strong smell of Corsair cologne accosted her nostrils.
“Ah,” Chyou said. It was going to be a long night.
Yuan took two glasses from a side compartment and gave her one.
“To a magical evening,” he said, holding up his glass.
Chyou clinked her glass to his, but the sound drew itself out, as a key pressed down on a child’s toy piano. Her point of view skewed, shifting left, until she saw herself from outside her body, holding up the glass. She froze, disoriented.
“Are you all right?” Yuan said. He leaned in, as if examining her pupils. “Chyou?”
She closed her eyes and focused, willing herself back into her body. When she opened her eyes, her perspective had shifted back.
Yuan’s face had wrinkled up in concern as he searched her eyes.
Chyou plastered on a smile and touched him on the check. “I’m sorry, Yuan. It’s been a long day. To a magical evening.” She clinked his glass again and took a sip. Her hand shook. She upended the drink, finishing it in one swallow.
Yuan pointed a finger at her. “I know what you need.” He gathered the glasses and put them away, then pressed a button on the console in front of them. A small door opened and spat out a tray that held four lines of cocaine and a straw.
“Oh, I don’t know, Yuan.”
“Come on, live a little. Just something to straighten you out.
You’ll feel like you’re truly free.”
Dara had done cocaine a few times before, so she knew what to expect, but Chyou had never indulged. Although she was curious.
“Okay. Just this once.”
Yuan grinned and slid a hand down her leg. He was taking the bait, Chyou thought. She leaned over the tray and inhaled the drug, then handed the straw to Yuan, who snorted his share. They both leaned back, sinking into the cool black leather, and giggled. Chyou moved her hand over and squeezed Yuan’s thigh.
“Ooh!” he exclaimed. They laughed.
“Tell me something about yourself,” he said. He reached out a hand and began playing with her hair. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Purple,” she said. “Aaaand, I like important men. You are deputy assistant minister of public works, and your brother is the Minister of Commerce. Such an esteemed family.” She squeezed his thigh harder and Yuan shifted in his seat. Chyou pulled herself closer until his breath was hot on her face. He reached around and grabbed both of her butt cheeks as he bit her neck.
“In fact, I hear he’ll be in upcoming trade talks with the United States in Shanghai. Are you going, too?”
“Mmm hm,” Yuan said.
“Well, as an importer/exporter, I’m very much interested. Tell me, do you know what aspects of the trade agreement they’ll be talking about? Tariff rate quota system? Distribution rights?”
Yuan pulled her on top of him and began to dry hump her. “He said something about tariffs.”
“Rate reductions?” she said.
“I don’t know. You talk too much.” Yuan reached up and kissed her hard on the mouth.
She wasn’t getting very far with this tack, she thought.
Desperate measures were called for. She broke the kiss. “How about we skip dinner and go to your place?”
“I like that idea.” He ceased his humping and pressed the speaker button to instruct Githinji to make the detour.
#
They stumbled into his condo. It was spacious, with a large sunken living room situated opposite a long, curved kitchen.
“Nice place,” Chyou said. Yuan replied by grabbing her breasts and ramming his tongue into her mouth. Resisting the urge to push him off her and punch him in the throat, Chyou froze. You’re on a mission. You can do this.
She didn’t relish prolonging the inevitable, so she wrapped her arms around his neck and reached into her sequined clutch. The small dart she pulled out delivered 2cc of quanolarcum, which would predisposition him to answer her questions. Truthfully. His eyes widened in surprise at the sting, then he slumped against her, a beatific grin on his face. Chyou hauled him up and staggered over to the couch. She propped him on a pile of pillows.
“What’s your node address and password?” “867A2.9. BigTits#325.”
Chyou shook her head. “Now, where does your brother live?”
She stood up and caught her reflection in a mirror on the far wall. It was Dara, with terracotta skin and curly hair. Chyou gasped. Heart pounding, she checked her arms, holding them up on front of her, but they were still white. And shaking. She hugged herself to make them stop. Shut her eyes and tensed her muscles, which only made the shaking worse. Relax. Breathe. Focus. She repeated the mantra to herself until her body stilled. When she looked back to the mirror, Chyou stared back.
“128 Saiba Road.”
Chyou sat on the couch and buried her head in her hands. It was finally happening. She was losing it. In the middle of a mission, at that. There was no time to waste if she hoped to salvage her assignment. She would have to transform into Yuan and visit Enlai to get the information she needed.
Shit.
She hated changing into a man, with the sudden onrush of testosterone, which gave her a renewed affinity to muscle-bound superheroes. But it needed to be done, and quickly.
She would have to grow a beard to compensate for Yuan’s square jaw, and cut her hair. Yuan had already fallen asleep on the pillows, which, thankfully, was one less thing to worry about. Chyou closed her eyes and focused her thoughts inward, on the nerves and glands. The familiar pain shot through the back of her eyes. The chills and sweat. Throbbing behind her eyes that worked downward. But it was not as intense as the previous transformation, since she was changing from ivory to light tan. But the worst was yet to come.
She messaged the pituitary gland as a dying pang of agony fired down her nerves. Testosterone flooded her circulatory system, and her body felt as if it were on fire. Chyou yelled as she bent and flexed her muscles, balling up her fists in defiance of some imaginary villain. Discomfort between her legs worsened to stabbing twists. She picked up a love seat and hurled it across the room, toward the kitchen. It wedged itself between the counter and the stove. She picked up the other love seat and threw it down the hall leading to the bedroom. It bounced off the corner and landed in the dining room, knocking over a chair. Then she picked up one end of the couch and held it aloft, thinking she had mistakenly called up adrenaline in addition to the testosterone. She focused again, concentrating on dialing back the adrenaline, and waited until the hormones balanced out.
Chyou lowered the couch as sweat streamed from her pores. Water.
Chyou headed for the bathroom, gingerly sidestepping the love seat and dining room chair. She stared at herself in the mirror. Oval eyes with smeared smoky shadow peered out from a light tan face. The lipstick had held up, a deep red staining her mouth, almost hidden behind a scraggly beard. She looked like a worn-out drag version of Yuan.
“I am Yuan Chin. I am a blowhard and a braggart, and I work as deputy assistant minister of public works. And I am a man!”
Hearing the bass in his voice and speaking the mantra helped to shift his perspective, but it never fully took. Acting lessons had helped a lot. He doffed his clothes, took a quick shower, and scrubbed off the makeup, then dried himself in the shower. His breasts had flattened into a flabby chest, his clitoris had elongated and thickened, and his ovaries had dropped and grown hair. It sickened him to look at them.
A hair stylist machine sat atop the toilet. He pressed the button for “Short Crop,” stuck the machine on his head, and waited.
Handfuls of hair dropped to the shower floor as the razors buzzed around his ears. A ring of green light blinked, and he took off the machine and rinsed the hair from his skin. Dried himself again and stepped out to look in the mirror. An improvement from the last time, he thought.
He walked back to the living room and stripped Yuan of his tuxedo. One last look in the mirror, but Dara stared back, with her terracotta skin and curly hair. He gasped and shut his eyes, tight. It couldn’t be. It was the insanity. Has to be.
He slowly cranked open one eyes, afraid of seeing the wrong reflection, but Yuan stared back this time. He sighed in relief, grabbed his purse, and ran out the door.
His driver was sitting on the hood of the car and upon seeing Yuan, reached into his jacket pocket. Yuan held up both hands.
“Whoa. It’s me. I left Yuan upstairs. We need to get to Enlai Chin’s house to hack into his files.”
Githinji nodded. “Oh, right. I was told you could…” He cleared his throat. “All right. Got an address?”
“128 Saiba Road,” Yuan said. He got into the back seat and tried to keep it together. His hands shook and a cold sweat had broken out under his tuxedo. A vague queasiness poked at the edge of his stomach, and he gripped his thigh to help quell the sensation.
When they arrived, Yuan jumped out and ran up the walk as Githinji followed him. He rang the bell, hoping Enlai was home. After several moments, a light came on inside. The door opened, light scanning the foyer. His brother stood in the doorway, dressed in a blue bath robe.
“Yuan? What the hell happened to you? You look terrible. Did you grow a beard?”
Yuan pushed past Enlai and stood in the living room. By now, he was shaking uncontrollably and sweat was rolling down his face. Githinji followed behind and shut the door.
“Can we talk? Are we alone?” Yuan said.
“Yes, but what is this all about? You need a doctor. Let me call one.” He tapped his thumb three times on his thigh to open up a line.
Yuan reached into his purse and brought out a dart. He stuck it in his brother’s neck. Enlai’s eyes rolled up in his head and he crumpled. Githinji caught him and eased him to the floor.
Yuan kneeled beside him. “W-Where are your p-plans for the upcoming trade t-t-talks?”
“On my node.”
“Download th-them and t-transfer to m-my node. And any other immm-portant d-documents.”
Yuan waited a few moments, shaking, and avoiding Githinji’s stare. This would definitely go in his report to Rona, Yuan thought. But it didn’t matter. He would quit after this assignment.
“Done,” Enlai said.
“Good.” Yuan used the address and password Yuan had given him. The documents blinked green in the verso, ready to open.
“Did you get them?” Githinji said. Yuan nodded. “Y-yeah.”
Githinji twisted Enlai’s head and a bone-breaking sound elicited a pang of nausea in Yuan. Enlai’s head lolled to one side, his eyes still open.
“The hell you do that for?” Yuan said.
“Let’s just say we have an understanding with the assistant minister. And now he’ll be minister. Is that a problem for you?” Githinji started to slide his hand in his jacket. Yuan sprang to his feet and bolted toward the back of the house. He cut through the living room and ran into the kitchen, which had a back door. He fumbled at the lock, then noticed it was biometric. Shit!
Footsteps headed his way. He broke left, toward the den, where a window beckoned. Yuan took a running leap and crashed through the glass and screen, landing on the lawn. Floodlights shone and dogs barked. Yuan sprinted toward the river that ran past Enlai’s house. If he could make it, he’d escape. The barking got closer and a shot rang out. It whizzed past his right shoulder, and he ducked left. He pumped his legs and arms harder. The river loomed ahead, the dark waters calling him. A growl sounded nearby and he long jumped, clearing the embankment.
He plunged into deep water, falling downward in the cold wetness. Faces loomed up in the dark. One with terracotta skin and curly hair. One with long hair that framed an ivory face.
One with short hair and a scraggly beard. They all began to laugh at him, their large white smiles cutting through the gloom. The laughter surrounded him, trapping him. He screamed. His lungs burned and he gasped for breath. But none came. The burn worsened. Stabbing pain started behind his eyes, then the throbbing in his spine, as he sank downward. But after a while, the laughter faded, the faces disappeared, and the pain dissolved to black.
#
Rona rolled her cigarette between thumb and index finger, blowing out smoke into the early morning air. A purple-tinged sunrise shone in the distance, reflecting off the undulating waters. She’d gotten a call from the embassy at 5:00 a.m. saying an American had washed up on an embankment. Guangzhou police had taken DNA from the body and matched it with a recent immigrant named Dara Martin. He watched as the coroner finished her preliminary examination and released the body for transport.
Two men in paramedic uniforms lifted Dara unto a pallet and flew it into the back of an ambulance. They would take it to the morgue at the embassy.
“Failed mission?”
Rona turned to see Jim Roberts, Counselor at the U.S. embassy.He wore a crumpled khaki suit with a blue shirt and yellow tie.
“What’d you do, sleep in your clothes?” Rona said.
“Pretty much. Long night doing prep work for the trade talks. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“On the contrary. We hauled in more than expected,” Rona said. Dara’s downloaded files blinked in Rona’s periphery. A scan of the documents revealed that most were related to the trade talks, but at least two were marked Top Secret and contained the seal of the Ministry of National Defense.
“Well, I’m sorry for your loss,” Jim said. “Actually, I’m a bit excited.”
“Excited?”
“Yes. There’s a new program the government’s overseeing. Downloadable consciousness. We may be able to transfer her personality and memory to another body and start over.”
“Huh,” Jim said. “A sort of reincarnation. Are you sure that’d be something she wants?”
Rona shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what she wants. She signed a contract. Her body parts are ours.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
Rona threw her cigarette on the marshy ground and stepped on it. It sank into the watery grass with a hiss. “If I let all the shit that should bother me, actually bother me, I’d be a raving lunatic. Have a good one, Jim.”
Asunder
by Lori Titus
Growing up in Chrysalis, South Carolina, you don’t really think about the stories people tell in the same way anyone who lived in a normal town would. When you are raised with the Moon Festival, which celebrates the local Werewolves, your mother’s half-sister practices necromancy, and your cousins are likely to swipe a strand of your hair during playtime to insure you do them no harm, you don’t look at things in the way other people do.
For me, magic and its power are as natural an occurrence as anything else in the order of life. Magic simply exists, and if you’re lucky, you will never have the misfortune of needing to explain it to people who don’t understand.
I had to leave Chrysalis and go to college in Georgia before I realized just how different my home was. My best friend, Janelle, who comes from New Orleans, says it sounds a lot like Louisiana to her. Not the cities like New Orleans or Baton Rouge, but some of the backwater places where no one visits, towns barely designated as spots on the map.
Janelle doesn’t really understand. The old magic is still there, lingering and thriving in both memory and presence. It lives in some people, as much an inherited trait as freckles, cleft chins, or eye color. I always told myself when I grew up I would move away and never come back, other than to visit my obstinate mother. But two semesters in, and I was already missing home. Instead of traveling with friends as I had done the year before, I packed my bags and wen
t home for summer.
“I don’t know what you could be thinking, or why anyone would want to bury themselves in that town, girl,” Janelle said, snapping her gum in my ear. She was all the way on the west coast by then, but the warmth of her disapproving voice made her feel as if she were at my elbow. Janelle was one of those friends who disapproved of everything I did, but she was happy enough with letting me stumble into whatever trouble I got myself into. “Just tell me you’re not taking Tariq with you.”
“And introduce him to my family at this point in the game?” I snapped back. “I don’t think so.”
“Good girl,” she said. “At least you’re trying to get him out of your system. Is there anybody back home who might be worth sampling?” Her voice dropped two octaves on the word, sampling. “Hell, there weren’t any to speak of when I left, but hey, most of my senior class was leaving for college and parts unknown after graduation. You know. People come back and forth.”
“Maybe you’ll meet someone passing through.”
“I doubt it,” I told her. “I wouldn’t go back there looking for a man. Because when you break up with him, everyone from the lady at the grocery counter to the mailman knows what’s going on with you.”
#
I didn’t tell her I wasn’t going home to find another man. I was more interested in making things work with the one I had.
Tariq and I had been dating for little over a year. Track and field captain, part time manager at an athletics store, Business major and all around fine looking man, he was the kind of guy who made other women jealous.
We started up in fall. I was so in love and enjoyed simply being around him. Tariq was whip smart, and it was fun to be with someone who could keep up with me, challenge my expectations and ways of thinking.
Things got real a lot quicker than I intended when I moved in.
Okay, that may have been stupid. No one in her right mind messes around with a man for a month and then moves right the hell in. Tariq made my knees cave and damn near stopped my heart. With ease. On a regular basis.
Otherwise, I probably would not have done it.
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