by S. A. Beck
Within less than five minutes, she held a perfectly grown daffodil in her hand while she leaned against the wall, panting and exhausted. Her swollen tongue stuck to the top of her parched mouth. After tearing the plant off her hand, she rushed to the sink and gulped down three glasses of water in quick succession. She knew she acted as the soil, somehow transferring from her own resources everything a plant needed—nutrients and water.
The power both enchanted and repelled her. She wanted to come to the greenhouse to relax, not to freak herself out. Her power could be dangerous, too. If she went too far, she knew she might kill herself from dehydration or malnutrition. Therefore, she wore two pairs of gloves to shield the plants from her touch and tended her garden like a normal human being. Then everything felt serene.
Taking care of delicate shoots that would one day turn into vegetables and flowers calmed her, pushing her rage to one side for a little while—at least for as long as she stayed in the greenhouse. Sometimes, she felt as though she never wanted to leave. The world outside was too ugly.
Every morning and every evening, she asked Stephen and Isadore to lend her one of the laptops so she could check the news. Despite being so picky about technology, they gave her what she wanted without a word. She could find nothing about Brett in the newspaper. Someone had put up a memorial page on Facebook, and a couple of kids at her school shared Instagram photos of him, but otherwise it was like he didn’t exist. None of the newspapers, magazines, or popular city blogs mentioned a thing about the murder after that one little story. The police hadn’t found the suspects, apparently, and murders happened every day in Los Angeles, so the press had gone on to cover other crimes, other victims.
Brett had become just another statistic.
Chapter 5
July 17, 2016, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
10:30 AM
* * *
By the second week after Brett’s death, Jaxon had recovered somewhat. The pain had ebbed to a low, background ache. She could function. With a terrible realization, Jaxon knew that things would eventually go back to normal. She would move on with her life, and Brett, while still mourned, would fade into the background. Their conversations would fade. She’d have to think for a moment to remember the punch lines to some of his jokes. By the time she was an old woman, she’d have probably forgotten the make of the car he had been so proud of, maybe even the color of his eyes. To think that everyone would be so forgotten in time, including her, was deeply disturbing. She felt as though she needed to do something with her useless life, to make a mark in the world. She didn’t want to be forgotten.
Once the weekend came, Jaxon asked for some pocket money, her phone, and a lift to the nearest bus stop. She wanted some time to herself and planned to wander around Chinatown. Stephen and Isadore, ever the overprotective foster parents, hesitated. Jaxon put on a face, feeling a twinge of guilt at playing the grief card, but she really needed some space. They relented.
An hour later, she strolled through the ornate red lacquered gate of LA’s Chinatown. The street was packed with people, only about half of them Chinese. The rest were tourists who gawped at the red paper lanterns hanging from wires strung over the street and at the colorfully painted storefronts topped with sweeping roofs made to look like pagodas. The smell of fried rice and roast duck wafted through the air.
Most of the signs were in both English and Chinese. As she stared at them and the brilliantly painted Asian façades, Jaxon wound her way through a crowd thick with Anglos taking selfies and making Bruce Lee jokes. Jaxon shook her head. She got the brunt of lots of black jokes, mixed-race jokes, and “just what the hell are you, anyway” jokes. At least she didn’t get Asian jokes. Her eyes slanted a bit in what was called the epicanthic fold, but most people didn’t see enough beyond her skin color to notice. Some middle-aged idiot was pulling the sides of his eyelids and talking like Fu Manchu while his laughing wife filmed him on her cell phone.
Suddenly, a wave of grief washed over her. She leaned against a wall, breathing heavily. Here she was sightseeing while Brett lay dead in the morgue!
But you’re not sightseeing, a little voice whispered inside her. You know why you’re here.
She shook her head to clear it.
Straightening her spine and taking a deep breath, she continued on her way, glancing to her left and right to check out the scene. The main pedestrian thoroughfare was a total tourist trap, with lots of cheap clothing stores and restaurants. As she penetrated further into the neighborhood, though, the number of Anglos reduced, and she saw more and more signs only in Chinese.
She paused at an Asian beauty salon. The window displayed photos of willowy Chinese models with perfect hair and makeup. Peering between them to look inside, she saw a row of little tables where Chinese women worked on the hair and nails of mostly Asian customers. She wondered how they would handle her hair and skin tone. She’d been told by more than one beautician that they didn’t know what to do with “black hair.” Strange that because she was mixed, people always saw the black before anything else.
Jaxon shrugged her shoulders and moved on from the salon. That wasn’t what she’d come for anyway.
As she turned, she caught a glimpse of some guy in a hooded sweatshirt ducking out of sight behind a group of tourists.
Jaxon paused. Had he been looking at her? She scanned the crowd, but too many people were blocking her view, and she lost track of him.
Don’t be paranoid. This isn’t some trashy neighborhood in the middle of the night. He was probably just checking you out.
Or not. Only Brett and Otto found you attractive.
Wincing with inner pain, she kept walking.
Half a block farther on, she stopped again. In the center of a little plaza next to the main street stood a big fountain sculpted to look like a mountain stream, complete with moss-covered stones. The water sparkled in the bright Californian sun and shone off several little golden statues of Buddha and other Asian figures she assumed were gods and goddesses. Scattered here and there in the water sat little half-submerged brass bowls. Each had a red plastic sign next to it with a phrase like “Happiness,” “Long Life,” or “Vacation.” Coins glinted within the bowls and in the water around them.
Jaxon smiled bitterly. A Chinese wishing well. She could’ve thought of a thousand wishes.
Beyond the fountain, set back from the street, stood an ornate building that could only be a temple of some sort. It lay open in the front, its interior half hidden by rows of red-and-gold columns and a haze of incense smoke. A giant golden Buddha statue sat, smiling and fat, against the back wall.
Only Chinese people seemed to be going into the temple, so she decided not to enter. She might be part Asian, but she didn’t really know and didn’t want to intrude on someone else’s religious space. The wishing well, though, had signs in English as well as Chinese, so she figured standing there was okay.
She pulled a quarter out of her pocket, aimed for the bowl labeled “Happiness,” and tossed the coin.
It splashed dead center into the bowl, but she had thrown it too hard, and the coin bounced out again, landing on the edge of the bowl.
She watched for a moment, waiting to see if the flow of water would push it into the bowl or knock it out, but the coin just rested there, unmoving.
Snorting with disgust, Jaxon turned and continued walking.
A flicker of movement at the edge of her vision caught her eye. He was there again, the guy in the sweatshirt, walking with his hood over his head even though it was ninety degrees. Was he really stalking her?
Nonsense. He was just going with the flow of the crowd, but she could have sworn he had been looking at her and glanced away when she turned.
She picked up her pace and wove through the crowd. After a couple of blocks, she didn’t see him anymore. Whether or not he’d really been following her, he was gone. The perv could go ogle some other girl.
The crowd was getting on Jaxon’s nerves. It was nois
y and annoying, and she realized she wouldn’t find what she wanted on a main street anyway. She decided to take a side street that looked less crowded.
As with her walk along Hollywood Boulevard, she was surprised to see how quickly the tourist crowd thinned out and the real neighborhood began. She was one of the only people in sight who wasn’t Asian, at least as far as she could tell without knowing her heritage. She could be part Eskimo, as far as she knew. Jaxon saw fewer signs in English, too. The smell of unfamiliar spices wafted out of one restaurant, and next door hung a sign showing a human figure with dots at various points and long explanations in Chinese. She supposed it was an ad for an acupuncturist. Beyond that was a bookstore that she doubted contained anything she could read.
Farther down the street, the gleam of metal blades in a shop window caught her eye.
Bingo.
She strolled over and saw it was a martial-arts store. The sign was only in Chinese, but the display told her all she needed to know. In the window hung a beautiful pair of swords with broad blades and red tassels on the handles. Marquis had taught her enough about martial arts that she knew those tassels weren’t just some frilly decoration. Twirling those swords would make the tassels spin in bright circles, distracting the unwary eye for half a second. Sometimes in a fight, half a second meant the difference between winning and losing, and you wouldn’t want to lose when faced with those heavy, razor-sharp blades.
Next to them were a pair of nunchucks, and beside those, a variation on the nunchucks that had three sticks instead of just two. Jaxon raised an eyebrow. Those looked tricky to use and seemed even trickier to block. She also spotted a pair of sai, which looked like metal batons about a foot long with two shorter prongs to either side. perfect for catching a blade and yanking it out of the attacker’s grasp.
If only Brett had had a pair of those.
She gritted her teeth. It was too late to help Brett, but at least she could help herself.
Stephen and Isadore had given her a hundred bucks, an unusually generous amount for them. She guessed it was pity money or they were trying to buy her affection. She’d had a few foster parents like that.
Whatever. She had enough to buy something here. She’d been sneaking looks at YouTube videos on various martial-arts weapons. With her natural abilities, she could learn on her own. That was why she had come to Chinatown—she wanted to find a good weapon. She had passed a couple of martial-arts stores on the main street, but the stuff all looked cheap and showy.
These weapons looked like the real deal. She’d have to be careful about using it in front of the Grants, but they were pretty clueless anyway. Despite all their weird rules, at least they didn’t constantly hover over her like some foster parents did.
She opened the door and stepped into the shop. Chinese music played from some hidden speaker. It sounded strange to her ear, with no beat or rhythm. She never understood the attraction of that type of music, but if one billion people listened to it, she might’ve missed something.
“May I help you?”
A middle-aged Chinese man with a big bald patch partially hidden by a horrible comb-over stood behind the counter, eyeing her suspiciously. Jaxon tensed. She’d experienced this so many times before. It was called Shopping while Being Black. She couldn’t count the number of times mall security had followed her or some retail snob had hinted that Jaxon should take her business elsewhere. Everyone who actually bothered to look at her could tell she was mixed, but when she entered a store, her skin color was all anyone saw.
“Just browsing.” She knew that was the worst thing to say because it made her sound evasive, but she didn’t care. Let this guy glare at her all he wanted.
Her gaze passed over a bookshelf filled with books in Chinese, then she found a smaller shelf of books in English. They were all instructional manuals for a bewildering variety of kung fu styles—dragon, snake, mantis, drunken monkey.
Drunken monkey? Some guy had told her about that once, but she thought he had been pulling her leg.
She flipped through the book. Each page had a series of photos of a Chinese man in a field going through various techniques. Apparently, with drunken-monkey kung fu, the fighter stumbled around as though drunk, but those stumbles turned into attacks and blocks. The body twisted and turned in unpredictable ways, making one hard to hit and keeping the opponent guessing about where the next attack would come from. The fighter looked harmless, comical even, but could be deadly.
A bit like me. Jaxon smiled. I look like a helpless little girl, but I can take a man twice my size. And I don’t even have to pretend to be drunk to do it.
She put the book back and picked up another about a kung fu style called wing chun. She’d heard Marquis mention that it was one of the deadliest martial arts. He’d spent many years learning it under a Chinese master. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the shop owner leaning on the counter, staring at her. She ignored him.
The back cover explained that wing chun is an aggressive style that focuses on close-quarter combat. It mixes straight-line punches and kicks with quick, deflective arcs to push away an opponent’s attacks. There were none of the soft, sweeping moves of aikido in that style of fighting. Jaxon’s eyebrows went up when she read that wing chun had been invented by a Buddhist nun named Ng Mui.
“You go, sister.” Jaxon chuckled.
The back cover went on to say that it was the favorite style of Bruce Lee.
“I’m sold.”
She opened the book. Like the one on the drunken-monkey style, most pages had photos demonstrating the techniques. She flipped through the first few chapters, studying the beginner’s moves one by one, and felt a growing sense of confusion that quickly turned into amazement.
That was the technique Marquis had been teaching her! He’d changed styles on her and hadn’t even mentioned it.
Jaxon’s brow furrowed. Why would he do that?
Wait, what had he said? Something about fighting for what was important.
Marquis was up to something, and her foster parents were in on it. No way of telling what their plans were, though.
She put the book back. She wouldn’t need that one.
Turning to the weapons, she looked them over again. She went over to the pair of sai and picked them up. The handles fit her grip as though they were made for it, and the balance felt perfect, like extensions of her arms.
“Don’t touch the weapons unless you’re going to buy!” the guy behind the counter said.
“I am going to buy something.” Jaxon glared back at him.
He gave a derisive chuckle. “You’re studying martial arts, little girl?”
Great, he’s gone from racism to sexism.
“Yeah, I used to study aikido, but now I’m doing wing chun. What do you study, drunken monkey?”
He gave her a look as though he had just sucked on a lemon. “Ha ha. Very funny.”
She turned her back on him and faced the window display again. Just as she did, she saw that guy with the gray hoodie duck out of sight.
Her skin prickled with fear. She’d been right. Someone really was following her.
Her fear faded, replaced with a steely calm.
Fine. Bring it on.
Squaring her shoulders and clenching her fists, she stepped outside.
Chapter 6
July 10, 2016, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
11:00 AM
* * *
Okay, don’t screw this up.
Otto shouldered through the Chinatown crowd, keeping his eye on the familiar figure in front of him. Jaxon walked just twenty yards ahead. If he called out her name, she would turn. If he ran up to her, she would be in his arms in just a few seconds.
Instead, he kept his distance even though every nerve in his body urged him to rush forward. It was time to make contact and get Jaxon out of the danger she was in, but Atlantis Allegiance had been ambushed too many times for him to just go blundering up to her like some lovesick puppy.
This could be a trap.
He kept his features hidden under a gray hoodie even though the sun baked down on him.
“See anything?” Otto whispered into the headset.
“Nothing yet, honey,” Vivian’s sultry voice whispered into his ear. He felt a tingling in his spine at how close it sounded, as though she were right up against him. He could practically feel her breath on his neck, which made him feel unfaithful to the girlfriend he was trying to save.
“Is Grunt in position?” he whispered back.
“No, I’m eating an egg roll five blocks away. What do you think?” the mercenary grumbled in his ear.
That got him out of the mood quickly enough.
Otto was talking into what looked like a hands-free cell phone, but Edward was far too paranoid for anything like that. Instead, the hacker had supplied him with a radio transceiver with a scrambled signal on a frequency sandwiched between two of the radio bands used by the patrol cars of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Otto had laughed when Edward had told him that. “I gotta hand it to you—you got guts!”
Edward had shaken his head. “Guts? Not in this lifetime. Too many dangers—too many hidden conspiracies. I put the frequency there because no one would suspect it. It’s not like anyone is going to monitor the police band except the LAPD, and their radios are tuned to set channel frequencies that can’t be changed unless you tinker with the radio itself. The cops won’t hear anything, and no one else is going to eavesdrop. It’s hiding in plain sight.”