Jade Dragon s-5

by James Swallow

  “I know the feelin’,” he admitted. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I won’t hurt you, you understand that?”

  She nodded; the mere idea that he would harm her seemed laughable. It seemed to her that she’d always known that about him. “Of course not. That’s not why you’re here.” And if Juno thought very hard, she could just about understand why he had come. What it was he wanted. What it was he was offering her.

  “The dreams, they happen in the day,” he said, careful and matter-of-fact. “Angels in the glass and the snakes, sometimes.” He gave a shudder. “Stronger now.”

  Juno’s hand reached out and took his. It seemed like the right thing to do. “The days… When I’m in the now it’s all so clear and vivid, but the days before are cloudy and dull. The further back I try to see, the darker-” Her breath caught. “I don’t want to look back.”

  Fixx pressed a card into her hand. She ran her fingers over it. “The High Priestess. Is that me?”

  “Could be. You have the look of her.” He reached over and took the green and gold box. “Will you do somethin’ for me, Juno? Make me a promise?”

  “If I can…”

  He rattled the box, the pills whispering inside it. “No more. Don’t take the blue anymore. That’s where the dark is coming from. It’s not helping.”

  Juno heard herself speaking, as if someone else were animating her. “I believe you.”

  He smiled warmly. “That’s a good start. Now, you gave me trust so I’m goin’ to give you a thing in return, okay?” He gently cupped his mahogany fingers under her chin and met her gaze. Juno felt the material real of the club become gossamer and faint. The depths of his amber eyes held her transfixed. “I’m gonna give the past back to you, girl. It’ll be slow and it won’t come easy-like, but in the end… You’ll know who you really are.”

  “I want that,” she breathed. More than anything, she wanted that.

  “Then, child, listen to me. Listen to me. Listen. Listen. Just listen.”

  Phoebe Hi, there under the glow of the lamps in Tze’s library. Her plastic smile, the too-perfect face on the dumpy little body. I worked closely with your brother. I hope to do the same with you.

  “Bitch…” hissed Frankie, half in anger, half in shock. “Why? Why the hell would she do that?”

  Ko chewed his lip. “Happens all the time in HK, man. You’re a corp, you know how it is.” He made a fist. “Like in history, when guys in the palace did shit to each other so they’d look preem in front of the Emperor, make the other sucker take the rap.”

  Frankie got up in a rush and he wobbled, the revelation making him dizzy.

  Ko grabbed his shoulder to steady him. “You all right?”

  He shook off the hand. “Don’t…” He tasted bile in his throat. “I… I gotta think…” Frankie could barely hold the thought of it in his head. His suspicions had been raging for days, and while he knew that YLHI were no strangers to dirty tricks, it still hit him like a sucker punch. It was one thing to sanction something on a rival or apply pressure to a client-but to hire criminals to kill a high level executive in the same corporate clan? On some level of denial, Frankie had been hoping that the obfuscation of the truth was some attempt to protect him from a darker threat, something that had cost Alan Lam his life; but now his certainties rocked around him. Hi had ordered Alan’s murder! Had she done it alone? Who else might be involved? Alice? The Masks? Even…

  “Tze?”

  A round of clapping came from the lower floor, drawing their attention. The clientele were toasting a new arrival, a gaunt figure flanked by a broad man in a dark green suit and a woman in a white strapless dress. The man and the woman wore shimmering Peking Opera masks.

  Frankie’s heart shrank in his chest. “Speak of the devil…”

  Ko spat. “You set me up.”

  “No, no,” insisted Frankie, “I didn’t know he was going to come here!”

  But the thief was already moving, snatching up his reward from the table and sprinting for the spiral stairs to the lower level. When Frankie looked back from the balcony, Tze was staring up at him. The older man gave him a nod and knowing smile.

  Ko had the case in his hand when the cloakroom floor rose up to meet him. He rolled, the black attache skating away from his grip.

  “Hello again.” The rasping voice came from behind Deer Child’s mask, newly repaired after the melee in the car park. “Remember me? You have unfinished business with Mr Tze-”

  Ko did a scissor-kick that put a boot in Deer Child’s crotch, and spun, coming to his feet in a rush. He ducked to dodge a salvo of fast blows to the chest and head, marvelling at the speed of the bodyguard.

  One punch shattered an oil lantern and in a whoosh of sound, a tapestry flooded with hungry flames. Ko moved to avoid more attacks, on the defensive as The Han’s clientele began to panic and flee.

  He was a second too slow, and Deer Child snared his throat, one large hand choking the life from him. “Teach you about pain,” said the guardian.

  In the confusion of the crowd bolting for the door, Ko saw motion, predator-quick and deadly. The glitter of a nickel-plated handgun. The muffled roar of a heavy gauge bullet.

  Then the pressure was gone, the grey mist fogging his brain receding. Fixx was carrying him out into the humid, screeching night.

  Ko saw flickers of Deer Child’s face though shattered porcelain. Flayed flesh, dataprobes pressed into optic jelly, lipless mouth over shark teeth.

  “Wait, the case…” he coughed. “The cash… ”

  There was a moment when Tze made the briefest eye contact with the black man who rescued the presumptuous little thief. His breath caught in his throat; the dark face, the hooded eyes. This face was known to him. He had plucked it from the songbird’s mind while little Juno slept. At the time, Tze had dismissed the moment as a spasm of random memory, bereft of any meaning-but his presence here, in the city, on the eve of the ascendance? Tze knew there were no coincidences, only synchronicity. Did the little doll sense something that I did not?

  The palpable aura of threat the dark man radiated made his jaw clench, but he had no time to dwell. The Masks would have to deal with this new variable, and swiftly, before it could expand to alter the pattern. He turned, sniffing archly at the commotion. “How disappointing. The standards here fall lower and lower.” He studied Frankie’s flushed countenance. “Francis, you look perturbed. Is something wrong?”

  The anger and frustration overtook any good reason in Frankie’s mind. “Alan’s death wasn’t a mistake,” he snapped, “he was murdered!”

  The older man’s face became sad. “Yes, son. I know. I was hoping to keep this awful truth from you, but you seemed so determined to find out for yourself. ”

  “You… you knew?”

  “Francis, there’s more to this than you understand. What happened to your brother, who was responsible… There’s a pattern to these things that you are only now becoming aware of. ”

  He rocked on his heels, giddy with emotion. “But Hi, what she did-”

  “She’s at the tower, right now.” Tze leaned in closer. “Blue Snake will take care of Juno. Perhaps you and I should have a word with Phoebe, yes? I’d like you to get a better handle on things.”

  Francis felt his hands coiling into fists, a sudden and potent fire kindling inside him. “Yes,” he said. “I want that.”

  “Come,” said the CEO, and pressed him toward the door.

  The Statue Park at Victoria Peak is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions. The park is a fantastic fusion of the modem and the ancient. Using design elements from Hong Kong’s stunning skyline combined with actual stonework and statuary dating back more than two thousand years, the Statue Park brings past and present together in one place.

  The layout of the park is based on astrological charts from the Qin Dynasty; those of you walking the route follow runes drawn by Chinese magicians, so breathe deep and you might take in a little “qi” of your
own! The exhibits at the Statue Park include stone temple guardians from the northern provinces, a troupe of authentic terracotta warriors and the preserved wood beams from a Ming warship. The park is free to all, funded by generous donations from corporate sponsors such as Buell Tool Inc, GenTech East, Yuk Lung Heavy Industry, and Lan Ri Foods.

  The Peak Rail Tram operates a half-hourly service. Tickets are available at the terminus in Garden Road. Gangcult activity, while at a minimum across the city, is distinctly possible late at night or during periods of activity such as concerts, festivals or eclipses. Passengers travelling at these times are advised to consider a personal defence device for peace of mind. The terminus gift shop sells a range of semi-lethal deterrents, including tanglers, taser-touch gloves and Nauseator™ gas dispensers.

  Excerpt from The Hong Kong Highlight Guide [2026 edition].

  13. Time and Tide

  “Miss, wait a moment-” Juno ignored the voice and kept walking, her feet clacking across the polished granite of the Yuk Lung tower’s atrium. She was aware of the guardian at her side, the woman Tze called Blue Snake. “Perhaps we should return to your hotel.”

  Juno stopped suddenly and stamped her foot. “No. I want Frankie. Where is he? Mr Tze brought him here, I know it.” She rocked as she shouted at the bodyguard, feeling flushed and faint. In one hand she was still clasping the tarot card the dark-skinned man had given her. It was hot against her fingers.

  Blue Snake hesitated. Juno knew the woman was trapped by her orders from her master, and like a robot with conflicting commands, the guardian stood watching her rather than initiate a choice that could be the incorrect one. Juno looked at the blank eyes inside the azure and gold mask and thought of the other one, the big man with the green faceplate. She had heard the gunshot, saw him falling with a trail of ruddy matter streaming from the back of his head. Then the fire, the screaming. Calling out for Frankie…

  “I want Francis Lam!” she snapped, her voice pitching up. “Now.” Her throat felt dry. “I’m giving you an order.”

  “Perhaps I can locate him and bring him to you at the hotel,” Blue Snake tried again, cocking her head like a dog.

  “No!” Juno shouted like a petulant child and slapped the guardian, the unexpected impulse of anger shocking her. Her hand connected with the mask and she staggered back a step, her palm stinging. Blue Snake flinched, unsure of how to proceed.

  Bile bubbled in Juno’s throat and she swallowed metallic spittle. “I… I have to…” She ran for the washroom concealed behind the banks of elevators and crashed into a stall. Juno was barely over the steel bowl before she vomited, a thin purple fluid of spent cocktails and half-digested food streaming out of her.

  The girl slipped to the cool white tile floor and shivered. Her clasp bag was somewhere out in the limousine, but in her hand, there was the card. Burning her, even though she couldn’t dare to let go of it.

  Juno looked at the careworn image, the priestess in her courtly robes, hands open and cupping arcane energies. The card shimmered, as if she saw it through tears.

  “What did you do to me?” she piped, licking tainted lips.

  I’m gonna give the past back to you.

  Fixx’s words rumbled in her bones, as loud as if he were there inside her skull. She was afraid, trembling on the toilet floor. She wanted Frankie to be with her, to hold her, to tell her it was all fine.

  Instead, there was a rising tide of terror. It welled up from a secret place in her heart, and there came an awful moment when Juno realised that it had always been there, always waiting. The man with ebony skin and dark, deep eyes, he had known that. He unlocked something in Juno, just with a touch and a word. With a picture and a card.

  High Priestess. High. Higher…

  The ink from the card was staining her fingers, stinging them, passing through her skin. Memory came upon Juno in a tidal wave and she choked.

  Sunglasses smashed. Rope’s hands around her throat. Slow, slow cracking pops. Vertebrae snaps. Body falls dead. Beckons her from the door. Gently undresses the dead. Taking her clothes. Becoming her. Becoming the dead. Reborn. Renewed.

  I am you now.

  “Fuck!” The word came out in a tight animal screech. Juno scrambled from the toilet stall and slammed into the rack of glass sinks, the room swaying around her, her balance hazy and faltering. She could not release the card. He had done something to her, like the street magicians who made people sleep with a snap of their fingers. The dark man had reached into her thoughts and pulled out the stops.

  Juno hung on to the sink, the room spinning about her so fast she was afraid that gravity would throw her off if she let go. She raised her head and saw mirrors.

  There were silver ovals on every wall, perfect and flawless reflections of her pathetic scarlet face and eyes of smeared kohl. In each her irises glowed amber, staring back at her. The mirrors ranged away into a curved tunnel of infinity. She was here and she was there; she was dead and she was living. Image and real. Reflection and reflected.

  She was one and she was many. The girl tasted alien fluids in her gut, for one phantom moment feeling the distant sensation of tubes in her mouth, probes in her nostrils, thick oils dragging on her naked skin.

  Her equilibrium returning in slow, painful ticks, Juno discarded the coat about her shoulders and pushed out through the doors. There were jade pillars dotted about in this part of the atrium, and with slow, careful progress, the girl kept herself from the line of Blue Snake’s sight, finding an elevator to the tower’s upper levels. She seemed to be escaping, but to where she had no idea.

  Phoebe Hi looked up and started as the doors to Tze’s library opened. She was cleaning the ornate bowl in the centre of the room with a sanctified cloth and a vial of tainted blood plasma supplied by an operative in a Kowloon children’s hospital. “Mr Tze! I, ah-” Her words faded as Frankie crossed the room toward her, his face murky with anger. The vial slipped from her fingers and rolled across the oaken table. “Francis?”

  He loomed over her, his fists balling and uncurling, his lips moving but no coherent words emerging. He was so utterly furious that his capacity to speak rationally had vanished. Hi shot a worried look at Tze. Frankie released a powerful backhand blow that knocked the woman off her feet and to the floor. “You fucking bitch, you killed my brother!” he screamed.

  Hi’s hand came to her lip and traced blood. She looked at Tze again, confused.

  “Francis deduced the train of events himself,” Tze said sadly.

  “Doesn’t he understand?” wailed the woman. She glared at Frankie. “It was necessary. He was going to destroy the great work. He was defecting.”

  “You didn’t have to kill him!” roared Frankie. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yes, I did.” Tze’s words cut through the air.

  Frankie turned. “But the 14K said she-”

  “Phoebe brokered the hit, yes, but on my authority.” He let out a small smile. “Did you not think that I would have some say in the disposal of so valuable an asset, Francis?” Tze shook his head. “I regret what happened, I really do. Alan was like a son to me. We are so close to the ascendance. Perhaps I could have overlooked things if only he’d kept faith with us.”

  “What?” Frankie rocked on his heels, a sick churn in his gut. “Why…?”

  Tze frowned. “Your brother was flawed, Francis. A bright man and very good at his job. Ruthless in the right places, careful in others. But there was a certain inner strength he lacked. The capacity to subsume himself to a greater cause. Alan did not have the courage to embrace self-sacrifice.”

  Hi was picking herself up, attempting to gather her dignity. “He couldn’t see the reach of the pattern.”

  The CEO of Yuk Lung Heavy Industries took off his jacket and began to unbutton his shirt. “The time is not right. We are early. But I see that rigid adherence to the letter of the pattern has only brought us grief. We must be flexible and adaptable, like our King.”

  And ve
ry suddenly, Frankie felt the world shifting around him. The nagging doubts, the faint fears, the splinter in his mind that screamed something is not right. All of it crystallised in this moment. He knew that these people were going to kill him, just as they had his sibling. His eyes flicked to the doors; Judge Bao stood there, the mask glaring back at him.

  “Few men have a sense of their own worth, Francis,” Tze said. He had his spidersilk shirt off now and the suntanned skin beneath seemed murky with lines of writing and whorls of colour. “Fewer still of their own destiny. I am blessed because I have both, and by that token, it is my gift to know your worth as well.”

  “Wh-what the hell are you talking about?” Frankie stuttered.

  “Hell.” Tze smirked. “Yes, indeed. My meaning, lad? It is no less than this. I know the colour of your blood, Francis Lam Cheung Yee. By the grace of the Dark Ones, I’ve tracked the threads of your bloodline across the weave of history.” He made a sweeping gesture. “Your family, your brother too. In both of you it runs thick.” The man came into the light and there on his chest one brand burned brighter than the others, a connection of circles, lines, arcs.

  Hi snorted. “He still doesn’t comprehend. He’s no better than the other.”

  Tze silenced her with a snap of his fingers. “There’s never been a time when we haven’t watched you, Francis. Even before your birth, the King’s Men observed, measured, tracked. And waited.”

  “The files,” Frankie blurted. “I saw them.”

  The other man nodded. “You and your kindred have something I could only dream of possessing, son. You are touched by Him. Your bloodline bares the mark. You are living avatars, the keepers of the Key to the Great Pattern, scattered across the world like seeds. Waiting to bloom.” He touched a hidden control on a wooden lectern. “Let me show you.”

  A d-screen dropped from the ceiling behind Hi and flicked into sharp reds. Frankie recognised electron microscope images of blood platelets, of twisting ropes of DNA. The view crawled closer.