Jade Dragon s-5

by James Swallow

  “Do you not see?” grinned Tze, pointing.

  At a size visible only on the highest magnifications, Frankie saw shapes that seemed embossed on the very matter of his flesh and blood, imprinted there like a makers mark: the repeated icons of a star with eight points and the same shape that was burned into the chest of Mr Tze. His stomach twisted.

  “Spilled blood marks the way,” intoned the other man, “and it must be of a vintage that the King prefers.” He snapped his fingers and Monkey King was there, strong, iron-hard arms snaking around Frankie s torso. “Don’t fear Him,” murmured Tze, “embrace Him. When your veins are opened and the Jade Dragon drinks of you, you will become a part of His Glory. You will seal the pact for us.” Tze’s eyes glittered with rapture and he pointed up at the ceiling. There were carvings of serpents and cruel angels up there, shadows writhing in the dim lamplight. “Alan perished too soon, he forced my hand. That error will not be repeated.”

  “You, every damn one of you, are absolutely out of your fucking minds,” said Frankie.

  Rope stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of Blue Snake, standing there in the middle of the atrium, her slender and dangerous hands moving in front of her chest like leaves in a gentle breeze. The bodyguard was watchful, patient.

  “Where is Miss Quan?” He demanded, striding toward the guardian.

  “She became unwell.” Blue Snake nodded blankly at the restroom. “She required privacy.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  She cocked her head. “Elapsed time: four minutes, thirty-six seconds.”

  Rope sneered and went into the toilet. Blue Snake walked warily behind him. The guardians were useful tools in the correct circumstances, but they were flawed. Drained of their humanity by the Masking process, they sometimes became slow, confused by emotions and reactions that they had lost the means to process. Tze’s ridiculous attachment to them had been shown for the idiotic affectation it was in the club tonight, his personal bodyguard downed by a mystery assailant; and now this, the female one failing to understand the mindset of the girl Juno.

  He slammed the stall door with his hand, kicking at the discarded coat with the tip of his boot. The smell of cooling puke tickled his nostrils; Blue Snake examined the remains, analysing them in a vague attempt to grasp the error she had made.

  Rope prodded her in the chest. “Seal the building. Locate her. But be discreet.”

  Blue Snake padded out into the hall and halted. “Tracking reports… target is ascending. Destination is Research and Development level.”

  He swore and pushed the woman out of the way, dragging a smartcard from his pocket. Rope entered a lift and gave chase.

  The chamber began to unfold. Where they stood in the centre of the room, the circular section of the stone floor remained static; but the rings of smaller flagstones around the edges of the hall folded back upon themselves and allowed twisting wooden pillars to emerge. Some of them were wet and they smelt coppery in the thick air. From the ceiling, extending from the carved bodies of snakes and worm-headed abominations, metal arms ending in the glass eyes of holojector lenses fell into place and emitted coherent light. Frankie saw the shapes of people forming in some of the glowing haloes beneath them, others showing black monoliths that reminded him of obsidian tombstones.

  Hi completed cleaning the bowl and allowed Tze to cut himself into it. The CEO removed the same silver box from beneath the oak table and Frankie suppressed a shudder. Out came the knife of manifold blades, into Tze’s hand with casual, dangerous motions.

  “You’re not going to die tonight,” Tze said in an offhand manner, whispering so that the other players in his sick little theatre did not hear. “Your bloodline is the most potent, the most vital. We have to be economical with it.” He smirked. “I am not a man for wastage.”

  Frankie struggled in Monkey King’s grip. “This is nuts! You’re telling me, my whole family is some line of sacrificial lambs for some psycho cult?”

  “Not just you. There are others.” Tze nodded at the holos. In one, Frankie saw a general in the uniform of the APRC carefully stabbing an elderly man; in another, a woman in a blue shipsuit was coring the eyes from a screaming child. He turned away, reeling. “It is just that your blood is the superior strain.” Tze took the knife and made shallow, stinging cuts on Frankie’s wrists, catching the ejecta in the bowl.

  Hi made symbols in the air and bowed. Tze waited for her to have her face over the basin, and in a single sweep, he tore the blade across the bare white flesh of her throat. Dark arterial spray fanned into the air and the music executive perished with a wailing, streaming gurgle. There was something like rapture in her dying eyes.

  Tze gave a pious nod to the other members of the Cabal. “The altar is anointed. As the pattern speaks, we will allow the stone and wood to drink their fill, preparing themselves. We Open The Way.”

  “We Open The Way,” came a chorus of voices from hidden speakers.

  “In the wastes of America, a fool tries and fails. So-called Elders with their petty, limited ideals bark like dogs believing they have the attention of men. They have nothing but the contempt of the Dark Ones. It is only we who will succeed. We, who light the path. We, who will thrive where Seth fails.” He showed a mouth full of white, razor teeth. “The Jade Dragon rises. It is ordained.”

  Juno had never been here.

  She had been here many times.

  She had no idea what number to key into the security keypad.

  The code was 7-9-5-7-3.

  Juno remembered the glass and steel rooms with floors of hollow plate.

  She was terrified at her first sight of the facility.

  She was scared the security drones would see her.

  She knew where to stand to avoid them.

  The tarot card in her hand. It seemed to merge with her flesh, become insubstantial. The image of the High Priestess was a brand, a tattoo done in acid inks. She let it lead her in, muscle memory taking Juno deep into a place of quiet, patient machines and liquid glows.

  Inside, the laboratory was lit in a watery yellow, a series of light bars set in the floor casting shadows around a collection of large spherical modules. The orbs were transparent, and in each of them was a naked human body, coiled and floating in a green ocean. Juno recoiled, almost falling over a low console. The sphere closest to her held a child, a girl, and as she watched, Juno could see the slow movement of her chest and the occasional twitch of fingers and toes. A flat mask covered the girl’s eyes, and a pair of thick, semi-organic cables extended into the liquid medium. One was attached to her navel, and the other disappeared into a fluffy matt of hair at the back of her head. Juno felt her stomach turn over again and put out a hand to steady herself, inadvertently touching the wall of the sphere.

  The sensation was instantly familiar, and her mind swam with the faintest recollection of a thick, warm sea. She retched, tasting plastic in her mouth, the horrible memory of pipes snaking down her gullet and into her stomach.

  Behind her the door hissed open again, and a gust of warm air wandered into the chamber with Heywood Rope at its centre.

  “Oh dear,” he said, lilting and mocking, unconcerned and hateful. “Don’t you know it’s wrong to peek behind the curtain?”

  Juno began to cry. Her world was coming adrift, huge icebergs of her personal reality breaking off and sinking.

  Rope came close, snatched the tarot card from her stiff grip and shoved her down. “What have we here?” He raised it to his nostrils and took a long, deep sniff. “Where did you get this?”

  Juno shook her head, backing away.

  His face twisted. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you know. There’s no time for the pattern to be altered. You’re going to do what you were made for, you little bitch.”

  Tears streaking her face, she glanced at the glassy spheres, the sleeping girl and the other, unfinished things. Rope answered the unspoken question.

  “Them? Oh, they’re just
leftovers, darling. Remnants and remainders. Understudies, you might say.”

  She found her voice again. “I’m not… going to help you. You kill people.”

  He laughed and the sound made her whimper. “I’ve murdered you in a dozen different ways, each sweeter than the last. So know that. Know that you will do what I tell you. You don’t have a choice.” He rolled a Z3N capsule between his thumb and forefinger, and she wanted it more than anything in her life.

  “I hate you,” she wept, collapsing in on herself.

  Rope knelt by her, the horrible facade of his outward face coming to the fore again. “Don’t,” he said mildly. “I’ll give you what that witch doctor offered. You want to know yourself, Juno? Here you are.”

  He bent close to her ear and whispered a word. The command made a post-hypnotic suture in her RNA tear open and bleed memory. Juno went into quiet shock as she remembered…

  The songs fading. The channel into her sealed and dark; disconnected, the world ending.

  Around her, the slow thick ocean pulling, dragging as she turns. New sensations of movement and direction, and the ocean falls away.

  Muscles spasm. A burning stream of pain from her belly, out in a plug of expelled jelly. Weight pulling her into places and directions she’s never known. Cold hardness pressed into the length of her, light flooding over, coming in some impossible way from outside of her head. Fluids dripping out of holes in her body.

  Something digs into the skin of her face and the light blazes inward like the ignition of a supernova.

  “Eyes are open.”

  Convulsing. Burning coming up again, a million times worse.

  “Got your smock?”

  Out in a rush, a torrent of agony.

  “Aw, shit!”

  “I told you, always point the head towards the drain. Stupid. ”

  Voices? Moving her mouth, pushing and pulling at her muscles. The slow waters are gone, a cold, invisible ocean around her. Wet hiss from her lips.

  “Meat’s awake. Dose it, then.”

  “There’s a lot of blood in the ejecta. Shouldn’t we-”

  “Just get it done.”

  Light breaks apart into shifting pieces, growing large or small.

  “Uh, okay.” Something at her neck. Hard. Sharp. “Full dose.” It bites her.

  Sound like a pressure leak sings out of her mouth, dropping into a thick gurgle.

  “Juno Seven decanted at fourteen-forty. No anomalies, cleared for processing.”

  “Let’s go, hurry it up.”

  Movement. Light falls away. Touching her belly, there’s a fleshy stub, crusted with drying fluids. The cord is cut! She spits out bone-jarring coughs, ejecting droplets of dark colour from her mouth…

  “Do you understand now, little doll?” whispered Rope. “Little plastic girl?” He took a handful of her hair and pulled her to her feet. “You’re nothing but a wind-up toy, the ballerina on the music box. We made you.”

  “Yes,” she cried, her body shaking with fear. “Oh, yes…”

  Frankie shivered, feeling scattered droplets of Phoebe Hi’s blood cooling where they had spattered on his face. Monkey King’s inviolate grip held him erect, and all he could do was turn his head away as Tze came closer. “I want you to comprehend, Francis,” he said. “I want you to appreciate how special you are. Those others are just the first morsels of the banquet; you are the delicious feast. The gift you are given will be sweeter than anything the rest of us can imagine. The King of Rapture will take you into himself…” Tze shook his head. “Such a glory.”

  He used the fluids in the bowl to write shapes on himself. One of Tze’s other minions, a man in a spotlessly clean laboratory coat, offered up a tray bearing a stone bottle and cups. Tze poured out equal measures of thick syrup. The fluid was sparkling blue.

  Frankie saw what was coming and struggled, but the Mask tipped back his head. Tze threw back the liquid Z3N and tipped the other cup into Frankie’s mouth.

  He tried to cough it out, but the fluid tingled like cold fire in his gullet and it surged into his body. Monkey King let him go and he fell to his knees.

  Frankie’s vision swam, his senses became woolly one second, ultra-sharp the next. Tze crouched down to face him, grinning. “Yes. Don’t fight it.”

  He’d done drugs before, but the stories that came with the Z3N caps had always scared Frankie away, of how it was used at sex parties and bloodclubs, of the mad psychedelic high and the weird way it made people speak alike, act alike, think alike. Something about the blue had always seemed invasive to him.

  Tze started laughing, and Frankie felt the echo of it in his chest. He couldn’t stop himself from joining in, the bitter humour overtaking him. In the haze of his vision he could see dark tendrils unfolding from the old man, whip-fast and sharp. They penetrated Frankie’s skull and wormed into his mind. Tze was in there with him, sharing his thoughtspace.

  You see? boomed the mindspeech. This is His gift to us, the means to unchain the psyche and marshal it to our cause.

  He heard Juno singing, somewhere very far away. Touch my thoughts and flow. There’s no world we can’t know.

  Tze roared, and Frankie had no choice but to shout with him.

  ROLL CREDITS

  ANNOUNCER: Live! From Ocean Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui! Panda-Vision presents Musical World, with Xing Xing Xing!

  FX: APPLAUSE

  PANNING SHOT: AUDIENCE

  ESTABLISH MEDIUM ANGLE

  XING: Hi-hi-hi! It’s my super-happy pleasure to introduce my special guest! Let’s hear it for Juuuuuuuuno Qwaaaaan!

  FX: WILD APPLAUSE

  JUNO: Hello Xing, how are you?

  XING: Better-better-better now that you are here! Phew! She’s ice-hot, huh guys?

  FX: MALE LAUGHTER

  JUNO: You’re making me blush!

  XING: Ha-ha-ha. Juno-Juno-Juno, China is happy-wild to have her famous singer-babe home at last. Did you miss us, bwah?

  JUNO: Every day. America was fun, but XING: Whoa-whoa-whoa, those crazee ’merrikins! Too much red meat and too much drinky-winky!

  FX: LAUGHTER

  XING: Pop-pop-pop, I gotta six-gun! Jack Daniels and Cola! Ah shaw thunk yoo’s a reel purty laydee, missuhjuuuno!

  FX: LAUGHTER

  JUNO: Some of them are… a little… intense. But I love all my fans.

  CUT TO CLOSER ANGLE: TWO-SHOT

  XING: But-but-but to be Mr Serious for a moment. Hmmm. It was a trying time.

  JUNO: Yes. America is such a fantastic place, but many people there are living day by day. I hope that my music can bring some light to them.

  XING: Hmmm. Yes, yes-yes. I bet they wished they could live in China!

  JUNO: Well, maybe, but REACTION SHOT: AUDIENCE

  BACK TO ANGLE

  XING: Big question for you, Juno-peach. Wotta bouta Wyldsky? Are you gonna-gonna-gonna be there?

  JUNO: Well, Xing, I’m not sure I should say anything…

  FX: AUDIENCE CALLING OUT

  XING: Pwease-pwease-pwease? Pwetty pwease wid sugar on it?

  JUNO: The answer is yes. I’ve agreed to headline the Wyldsky show, even though some people have advised against it…

  FX: RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE

  JUNO: I just want to sing to Hong Kong XING: Super-super-super cooool-a-rama! Yay! Wow! Zee! And now we’re gonna hear Juno perform her hit song ‘Capsule Lover’!

  GO TO WIDE SHOT: CENTRE ON JUNO: ZOOM IN.

  14. The East is Red

  Ko sat in the corner of the empty courtyard, drawn as far as he could into the shadowed space beneath the arched beams of old wood and peeling red paint. It was raining lightly, and the gloomy clouds overhead matched the glowering, morose cast of the young man’s face. He watched the growing spread of a puddle, the patterns of ripples made by the raindrops, desperate to lose himself in the simplicity of it. The rush of the downpour was still not enough to blot out the recriminations echoing in his thoughts.

  “I hate my life,” he s
aid in a small and heartfelt voice. He wanted to be angry, or scared, to feel something, but Ko’s world felt hollow and cold. He was empty. He needed… a purpose.

  Feng stood a short distance away, amid the rain, untouched by it. He rested one hand on the hilt of his lionhead sword, watching the teenager. “What are you going to do now?”

  He didn’t look up. “I… I’m not sure. That cashwhore Tze knows Big Hung’s boys didn’t waste me like they were sposed to. I’m marked. I’ll be lucky to see out the week… And Nikki will rot away up in that hospital.”

  “It pains me to tell you this, but-”

  “Then don’t,” growled Ko. “Don’t say ‘I told you so’ or ‘you screwed up again, Ko’ or whatever you’re gonna say. I don’t want another damn lecture.” He sniffed. “All I ever get. Lectures.”

  “Wallowing in sorrow wins no wars.” Feng walked over, holding out his hands to cup the rain, the drops passing through unhindered. “A man is only without power when he believes it.”

  Ko shot him an acid glare. “Why don’t you just fuck off and die?” he said miserably.

  Feng tapped his chest plate. “I cannot. I am already dead.”

  “No, but you can fuck off. ”

  The swordsman whipped out his blade and swung it at Ko’s neck. The thief reacted instantly, the prickly sense of the phantom sword making him flinch backwards. “You are such a weakling.” He sniffed archly. “I smell the stink of mother’s milk on your breath, mewling little baby.” Feng advanced, rubbing at the stubble on his face. “Do you know how many men I had killed by the time I was your age? How many battles I had fought in?”

  “I’m sure you’re gonna bore me with the story,” Ko replied, his ire starting to rekindle.

  Feng looked up at the grey sky. “Heaven, tell me what crime I committed that this wastrel must be my companion?”

  Ko came to his feet. “Eat shit, you corpse! I never asked to be saddled with your prehistoric ass! Why don’t you go haunt a museum or something?”

  “If only I could!” Feng snapped back, “But you’re my penance! My stinking, worthless luck to be tied to you.”