by Naomi Paul
Without a word, Yeung swung his flashlight so the beam fell on Eva, seated at a school desk in the corner of the room and bound to its chair with plastic riot cuffs. Her mouth had been stuffed with a wad of cloth, and duct tape had been wound around her head to gag her. Eva’s black-rimmed eyes were wide and panicked, and she was struggling, clearly trying to say something that Lian couldn’t begin to make out.
“The memory stick,” Yeung repeated. “Now.”
“What about Zan?” Lian asked. “I want to see him, too.”
Yeung strode purposefully over the corner and held his handgun to Eva’s knee, just above her boot. “You are finished making demands of me. Give me the memory stick, immediately, or know that you’re about to cause this young lady a great deal of pain.”
Eva wriggled and shook her head. Lian tried not to think about what a gun that size might do at point-blank range. When the light swung back to her, she held up one hand in a gesture of surrender, and moved the other one very slowly to her pocket.
“A rabbit’s foot?” Yeung said, like a machine trying to approximate amusement.
Lian twisted it to expose the USB connector and then bent down to set the stick on the ground.
Before she’d stood all the way back up, two men had appeared from the shadows behind her, grabbing her and pinning her arms behind her back. She shouted and kicked at them, but they took no notice. The men smelled like aftershave and gasoline, their muscular arms covered by track jackets emblazoned with that hateful H logo.
They dragged her across the room and forced her into an empty desk near Eva. Lian felt the plastic cuffs dig into her wrists and then into her ankles. She thrashed in the small chair but to no avail; one of the men pushed the desk hard into the wall, and Lian grimaced at the impact. She was face to face now with the captive Eva, but still couldn’t understand what she was trying to say.
“Let us go,” Lian said, wrenching her neck to look at Yeung. “I did everything you asked. I came alone. I brought the only copy of the data. So set us free.”
The overhead fluorescent lights switched on suddenly, and the inky blackness before them coalesced into the smiling form of Rand Harrison.
“Lian, Lian, Lian,” he chided. “My associate already told you, you’re done making demands. And here I thought you were such an intelligent girl. I’m disappointed that we have to repeat ourselves.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think about my intelligence,” Lian spat back. “I was smart enough to beat you.”
“Beat me?” he said with a laugh. “One of us has the dead girl’s file, the multibillion-dollar corporation, and the wherewithal to keep the former from causing even a moment’s concern to the latter. And the other of us?” He put one expensive loafer up on her desk and leaned down to meet her blazing eyes with his black ones. “The other of us has nothing. No data, no escape, no hope. No reason to go on living at all. So how, exactly, do you imagine that you’ve beaten me?”
Lian set her jaw defiantly. “It doesn’t matter if I don’t walk out of here tonight. I’m part of something bigger than myself, and our whole focus right now is taking you down, Harrison. You and your backstabbing son.” She inclined her head toward Eva. “When we don’t report back, another activist named Blossom will pick up where we left off. And Blossom is cautious, completely anonymous. You won’t have any idea who they are, or how to stop them. But I promise, they will destroy you.”
Eva squirmed and made a noise that Lian took as agreement.
“You know,” Harrison said, taking his foot off her desk and walking a few paces away. “I take back my doubts. You’re a very intelligent girl, after all. Because that, I must say, is a marvelously apt description of your friend Blossom.”
“Please,” a familiar voice said from behind Lian. “That name sounds so ridiculous out here in the real world.”
Footsteps drew closer to her, and then a smooth hand in an expensive suit fell on her shoulder. The cufflink was polished silver, an embossed oval surrounding the stylized H. Lian couldn’t turn enough to see the speaker’s face, but she didn’t have to.
“I’ve told you,” he said. “Just call me Zan.”
TWENTY-NINE
“No,” Lian said as the realization washed over her. “No, this can’t be right.”
Zan stepped up next to her desk and crouched down to look at her. He was wearing an impeccable black suit with thin silver pinstripes, over a rich blue dress shirt. His hair was perfectly styled, and he was clean shaven. His aftershave was the same one the muscled goons were wearing. It made her gag.
“I think this is what they call irony,” he said with a smile. “You swallowed everything I told you, and trusted every word Blossom typed . . . and yet when you find out we’re the same person, you just can’t believe it.”
Lian felt sick to her stomach. Her head swam. Her wrists ached.
“Hey, thanks for getting here so quickly,” Zan said. “Did you like the thing about the power drill? I just threw that in for flavor, but it sure got you to come running. Good old Komiko, always ahead of the timetable.”
Eva’s mouth was still stuffed with cloth, but Lian was pretty sure she was calling Zan a number of nasty names.
“I’d say I was sorry that I had to lie to you, Lian,” he said, stroking her cheek with his fingers. “But that would just be another lie in itself.”
She jerked her head away from his hand. “Eva was trying to warn me.”
“You bet she was,” Zan said, standing. “But she didn’t do a very good job, did she? She really needs to work on her communication skills.” He grabbed a handful of Eva’s dreadlocks and yanked her head up. “Learn how to type, you dumb bitch!”
“Stop it!” Lian shouted. “Don’t touch her!”
“Stand up and say that again,” Zan sneered.
Lian struggled in her seat, to no avail.
“Speaking of communication,” Zan said, “I should probably apologize for swiping your phone while we were on the run that first night.” He removed her old smartphone from his pocket, and she watched as he popped it out of its decorated rubber case. “I know it must have been a pain, having to re-upload all those apps and contacts. I wish I could do something to make up for your trouble.”
He threw the phone to the floor as hard as he could, where the glass cracked and one side popped open. “There,” he said mockingly. “Does that help?”
“Wait,” Lian said, shaking her head and trying to piece the deception together. “This doesn’t make sense. Blossom’s been active for months. We vetted the alias thoroughly before we extended the invitation into 06/04.”
“Oh, my God!” Zan exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “Do you really imagine you’re the only people in the world who know how to use a computer? Do you seriously think we couldn’t plant those stories, falsify the timeline, and create some sort of wide-eyed crusader out of zeroes and ones?” He smiled wickedly. “We even left you a little clue, if you’d looked for it. The first day of Blossom’s supposed history? The first time that character surfaced? It was backdated to the same day, the same minute and second, that your arrogant friend ‘Mynah Bird’ posted his first screed against Harrison Corp.”
It was such a weird little detail, such a bizarre digital signature . . . but as she thought about it, she realized he was right.
“The thing of it is,” Harrison said, “I don’t like being looked into. My secrets are my own. The backroom deals, the greased palms, the little favors that are done off the books . . . those are what business is built on, sweetheart. They’re what keep the machine running smoothly. Everything else is just for show.”
“And, hell, even the illegal stuff is more fun if you add a little theatricality,” Zan said, making a wide, sweeping gesture as if the schoolroom were a stage on which some pageant was nearing its end.
“At first, I couldn’t work out where 06/04 was getting its information on me,” Harrison said. “So Zan started researching and reporting back. It’s almost
embarrassing how trusting you people were of the fox in your henhouse. You tout your anonymity as your greatest strength, but there’s something to be said for knowing who’s on the other side of the curtain before you start shouting your secrets. And once I understood how the online activist community worked, I ceased viewing it as a threat and started thinking of it as a tool. One that was exceedingly simple to use.”
“What do you mean?” Lian said, frowning.
“The Drax Plastics takedown? The one that secured Blossom’s place in the group?” Zan said. “I asked around for a little info and got handed more than I could read in ten lifetimes. You show up on the Internet with a cute nickname and an axe to grind, and every wannabe crusader for the common man will fall all over themselves trying to cozy up to you.”
“And if Drax just happened to be making plans to expand into Harrison Corps’ markets—plans that, sadly, had to be scuttled when the company went under and its assets were sold for pennies on the dollar—well, what a nice little bonus for me,” said Harrison with a smug laugh. “Why pay for a piece of candy when you can have the whole candy shop at the same price?”
“Once I’d ingratiated myself to you guys through the Drax thing, it was just a matter of steering the conversation back to Harrison and figuring out how the information flowed,” Zan said. “And now that we’ve closed that loop, we can get back to business as usual.”
“So how do you close that loop?” Lian said. “You kill us?”
“How do you think this ends?” Zan said with a shrug. “Oh, and what’s worse,” he continued, “is that you won’t even get to die a martyr because nobody’s left to carry on in your wake. Your ‘insurance policy’ is null and void.” He shot his cuff to check an expensive-looking silver watch. “3:18 A.M., Hong Kong time . . . Blossom has logged off.”
“Wait,” Lian said again. “Your sister . . . ?”
Zan threw his head back and laughed harshly. “You cannot be this naïve! No, Lian, I’m an only child.”
“Then the dead girl . . .”
“Was nobody. Some small-town girl who won’t be missed, a blank book of a person that I filled with my stories,” Zan said. “She was as much flotsam in life as she was in death. The most useful thing she ever did for anyone was to turn up on that beach and get the do-gooders sniffing around Harrison Corp again.”
“She was somebody,” Lian said defiantly. “Her name was Kong Nüying. She came from Lau Fau Shan. She was a human being, you monster.”
“She was bait,” Zan snapped at her. “Unintended, yes, but you bit nonetheless.” He came over to her again, one hand on either side of the desk, looking right into her eyes with something like glee. “The fact that you were on that beach, Lian—that Komiko herself was first on the scene—that was a gift from the gods. A one-in-a-million stroke of luck. That made things personal. You weren’t going to stop until you got to the bottom of it.”
“And now you’ve gotten to the bottom of it,” Harrison interrupted. “And you’re going to stop.”
“But . . . why have Zan working us, online and in real life,” Lian asked him, “when you already had Matt as Torch, telling you every move we made?”
“I said, you’re going to stop,” Harrison growled. He turned on his heel. “The press conference is in five and a half hours, Yeung. Take care of this in your usual manner, and you’ll still get five hours’ sleep.”
Yeung nodded to Harrison, then motioned to his goons in the track jackets. They disappeared into an adjoining room and quickly reemerged, each carrying two gas cans. Yeung moved to one side as the men began to douse the walls and floor with gasoline. Zan stood next to him, arms crossed, enjoying the scene. Harrison exited through the front doors and into the night without looking back.
Lian shot a wide-eyed look at Eva. She’d never seen someone looking so afraid.
The goons emptied their cans and tossed them aside, then made for the door as well.
“Ladies,” Zan said. “I’m so glad we could have this official send-off party for 06/04. But it’s getting awfully late, so I think I’d better be on my way.”
Yeung had taken a Zippo lighter out of his pocket and snapped open its cover. With the barest hint of a smile, he flicked the thumbwheel.
Nothing happened.
He cursed, shook the lighter, and tried it again, but it didn’t even spark.
Zan sighed and rolled his eyes melodramatically as he reached into his suit jacket. “What would you people do without me around, Yeung?” he said, handing the fat man a matchbook. With a droll wave, Zan opened the door, and then switched off the overhead lights. The room plunged back into a darkness broken only by the rectangle of the open doorway framing the traitor.
Yeung tore a single match from the book, closed the cover, and struck it. It flared up and danced, excited to be set loose on this stage, the final act before the curtain dropped.
Leaning between the two girls, Yeung tucked the matchbook into the pocket of Lian’s pants, like some paltry exchange for the rabbit’s foot she’d had there. He straightened up, looking first at Eva and then at Lian, his face unreadable.
“It’s nothing personal,” he said, his placid features flickering in the tiny light. “Just good business.”
Then he walked to the door that Zan was holding, tossed the match over his shoulder into the room, and was gone.
THIRTY
In an instant the pitch black of the schoolroom gave way to violent orange. Flames raced over the concrete floor, curdling the bits of trash into ash-gray husks, and chased up the walls to devour arithmetic charts and inspirational posters. Lian watched as a photo of four multiethnic hands gripping one another by the wrists split up its middle and fluttered from its thumbtacks. TEAMWORK, the caption read.
The goons had left the small area around the desks free of accelerant—the better to prolong their captives’ suffering, Lian thought—but the heat was upon them, and the smoke was everywhere. She and Eva strained at their plastic cuffs, rocking the desks in their panic. Lian’s vision doubled and trebled as she blinked away sweat and stinging tears. The smoke and the stink of the gasoline filled her nose and mouth, tore at her lungs, left her coughing and sputtering.
Eva screwed up her eyes, and her pale face went bright red. She was only breathing through her nose, Lian realized; she must be coughing up soot, too, with nowhere for it to go.
The flames touched the acoustic tile of the ceiling and began to crisp the squares and warp their plastic frames. Lian throttled back and forth, making the desk move in little hops, but she couldn’t get enough distance from the wall to do any good.
One last, hard kick, and a sharp pain shot up her leg. She looked down, confused, to see that the sole of her sneaker had become lodged in the mortared space between bricks. The pressure she was putting on her foot just by sitting was excruciating. Not thinking, just acting, she hurled every ounce of her weight away from the wall.
The desk moved, but the shoe stayed.
It was enough. She bruised her knee as she wrenched her leg up rapidly toward the underside of the desk. The loop of plastic around her ankle caught for a moment on her sock, and then her left foot was bare and unbound.
If she hadn’t been crying from the smoke, she might have wept for joy. Her other foot was bound tight, and her hands were pinned behind the chair. But with her free foot, she could drag herself in a tight arc until her desk was behind Eva’s, their backs to one another.
The flames were growing curious about this mystery play in the corner of the room, coming closer to investigate. Lian swore under her breath and paid for the sin with a wracking cough. She pushed herself backward, and her fingers found the riot cuffs at Eva’s wrists.
If I can’t save myself, Lian thought, maybe I can save my friend.
She blindly felt around the cuffs, trying to understand how to release them without being able to see them. Without being able to see much of anything, really; the smoke was getting thicker, and it seemed to pry into
her through every pore. She couldn’t find her breath. Her fingers fumbled. Fire kissed her bare toes.
Bizarrely, the room felt as if it tilted for a second, all of the flame bowing briefly toward the door. A shape appeared at the edge of Lian’s vision, darker than the dark gray, more insistent than the blaze. Above the roar and crackle, she heard the horrible, high-pitched whine of a power drill.
Yeung, she thought. Come to finish us off. Just good business.
And then, glistening even through the plumes of smoke, she saw a white smile.
“Don’t move,” Matt shouted. “This is delicate work.”
He forced the drill bit into the plastic that bound her ankle to the leg of the desk, and her whole body thrummed with the vibrations. But in fifteen seconds he was through it. He grabbed the chair and swung it out so he could free her hands as well.
She leapt from her seat the second she was able. Matt began working on Eva’s cuffs, and Lian dashed around him to check on her. The girl’s eyes were bloodshot slivers ringed in sticky black. Her head lolled on her neck. She seemed to be on the verge of passing out.
“Eva, I’m so sorry,” Lian said, her hands on Eva’s shoulders. “This is going to hurt like hell, but it’ll wake you up.”
With both her hands, Lian grabbed the loose edge of the duct tape wound around Eva’s mouth and pulled as hard as she could. The tape gave way with a sick, sticky sound, and stole two small blue dreadlocks from the back of Eva’s head before it let go. The skin around her mouth was a deep red rectangle of burst blood vessels. Her eyes were wide open now, and as soon as Lian pulled the wad of cloth from her mouth, Eva unleashed a stream of expletives that caused even Matt to pause in his work for a moment.
“You were right,” Eva rasped. “That did hurt like hell.”
Matt severed her last ankle bond, dropping the drill and helping her to her feet. Lian got on Eva’s other side to prop her. As quickly as they could, the threesome made for the door, staying close to the one brick wall that the fire had not yet consumed. Burning ceiling tiles and wisps of pink insulation rained down on them. Matt gave the girls a sudden shove and took the brunt of a falling wall clock on his back.