by Nova McBee
“Naturally.” He clears his throat. “Tomorrow, perhaps.”
“Here.” I hand him a report. “A few profitable investments for you to consider.”
“Xie Xie.” He hands me a bag with several boxes inside. “A gift from the company.” I peek inside. Clothing. Shoes. A coat. Didn’t I tell him I wanted to do my own shopping?
Kai walks in. His tie is off now, and his collar is open. His hair, to my surprise is out of place like he has been wrestling all day.
“Kai will drive you home.”
On the drive home, Kai makes small talk about the only thing we have in common—his father’s company. He’s polite, but emotionless. It’s obvious he’s only there because his father wants him to be. For a second, I think about asking Kai what he wants to do with his life, but reconsider. Instead, I change the subject and ask him about Yu Tai, the doorman at Chan’s company. The way he doesn’t act like a doorman is still like an itch in my brain. I want to learn more.
“Who? You know his name?” He’s surprised. “Sorry. I don’t know anything about him. He’s just the doorman.”
“So, not worth knowing, huh?” I snap. In the Pratt, recognizing clever can be a life-saving skill. It bothers me that people can be written off so easily.
“I didn’t say that,” he says. “It’s just that we have nothing to talk about. We’re different, that’s all.”
“The sun and moon are different too,” I say staring out the window, “but they both bring light into the world.”
Kai whips his head in my direction, heat in his stare. “Where’d you learn that saying?”
His reaction startles me. A lump gathers in my stomach but I keep a straight face. I’m not fool enough to pin Red as its author. “It must be some old saying I picked up living here in China. Why?”
“I’ve never heard anyone say that except my mother,” he says, wrinkling his brow. He shrugs it off. “You must be right. China has hundreds of old idioms. Anyway, we’re home.”
I should shake it off too, but I can’t. A lingering feeling tells me his mother learned that saying from the same person I did.
When we pull in through the gate sixteen minutes later, I thank Kai and rush into the villa. My head clouds with equations of danger. Meeting Madame face to face is too risky. She’ll recognize me.
Inside the villa, everything is foreign except the scent of lilies and the familiar stitch of Madame throbbing in my side. I maneuver to the bedroom and lock the door. My eyes close and my knees hit the floor beside the window. Outside the last hint of light fades as Madame shows up like a black hole. There’s no other way to take her down. Come what may, I will have to become a buyer.
Red’s voice echoes in the far corners of my mind. Destiny brought you here…
Fine. Did it also bring me here to make me suffer? To kill me trying to bring justice? What would Red want me to do?
I made a vow to Red to make the wrong things right—to stop King, to bring down Madame, to use my gift for good. Red was a man of faith. He believed in what he couldn’t see. What if his lofty ideals of destiny and justice aren’t real but just myths from old poems? What if he believed too much in what I could do?
What's real is the thorn in my side, twisting and burning and screaming to be removed. And in six weeks, I will remove it. Even if it means I join Red.
Streetlamps turn on, and my eyes turn from the light. Before I fall asleep, I make sure to close the curtains.
When ten o’clock the next morning comes, I open the door and Kai is there. Woodsy-scented cologne floods my senses. It’s a smell that men should have, I think. Like they have been hard at work in the mountains, surrounded by fresh air and stone and forest. Only the boy before me looks like he has never left the city in his life. Black suit and tie pressed and ready to devour dollar signs for lunch.
“Zao shang hao, Kai,” I greet him good morning.
Kai stops short. His eyes trail from my eyes all the way to my heels. My cheeks flush. The dress and shoes Mr. Chan bought for me are far too fancy for my style, but my old clothes were forming adhesive ties to my skin, so it was an easy choice.
“Nice dress.”
“Xie Xie,” I thank him, embarrassed. I make a mental note to go shopping later. We stand there silent for three beats until Kai seems to interpret my discomfort and opens the door, leading the way to the garage.
On the car ride, Kai tells me how his father taught him to trade stocks at age eleven and how everything he has done since then has been to prepare him to work at China Generation. The annoyance in his voice is not hard to detect—he obviously wants to do something else with his life. But he’s far from a typical eighteen-year-old boy. I’m certainly not an expert, but I remember boys this age playing video games and pushing girls into the pool; Kai likes martial arts and motorcycles. I guess that counts. If I’m honest, for a non-prodigy, his understanding of the stock market is really attractive.
I catch myself calculating even small things that I usually dismiss—his jawline, the small neck muscles leading into his shoulders. He looks so familiar. The same question returns from that night in the pool house. Who is Kai’s mother? How does Red know Chan? Why doesn’t Kai know about Red? What does Kai want for his own life? He catches me staring.
“Kan shenme?”
“Sorry. You just remind me of someone, only I don’t know who.”
“Interesting. Most people just see my dad. Or his money.” Kai sighs.
A twinge of empathy tightens in my chest. I know exactly how he feels. People back home always saw my father or my gift. I wondered if they ever just saw me.
“It’s definitely not your father I see,” I assure him.
“Well then, I hope it’s someone you like.” He flashes me a half smile.
We lock eyes for an instant. My insides swirl with positive numbers. It’s definitely someone I like. But I don’t tell Kai that and I don’t keep staring.
At the office, Chan knocks on my door immediately after I arrive.
“Phoenix,” he says approaching my desk. “The investments you made yesterday checked out. They’ll do nicely for spring quarter. So I’d like you to focus only on my company now. What’s urgent is the anomaly in my financial reports.”
That’s the last thing on earth I want to do but I made a deal. It’s most likely something small and simple, a mere stock problem. I’ll fix it, then move on with my plans. It shouldn’t take more than a day.
“All right, Mr. Chan,” I say. “I’ll find it.”
After he closes the door, I take a long deep breath and flip open the first folder.
The first hour is rather boring. I go over the company’s financial history from its beginning until the present. Chan is a classic Chinese Warren Buffet. He has stocks, owns more than a few multi-million-dollar corporations, invests in whatever he wants.
Next, I sift through the latest bank statements. There’s nothing unusual except a one-time personal wire transfer of 20 million to a bank with a country code of (+61). A click goes off in my brain. Australia. Like a pinball machine, my brain shoots through thirty-seven connections I have to Australia, including that number for the nursing home. Chan’s wire transfer, however, is designated to a Bob Lee, which could only be one person. I laugh out loud. Bo Gong didn’t make it too hard for me to find him.
Further down, there’s a column of payments recording Chan’s gifts to charity and holiday bonuses for his low-income employees. I wouldn’t have guessed he was so generous. Apart from this, everything is business as usual until I come to financial reports from the last six months and the numbers shift. I follow the declining numbers and a pattern jumps out at me—one I studied back in basic economics.
A few files later, I recognize the same pattern in businesses that are similar to Chan’s–some of the strongest businesses in Asia, all connected to one bank. Asia Bank.
Prodigy Stealth Solution hired me to solve a problem at Asia Bank. Could this be related? It’d been months since
I thought about Asia bank and PSS. What if the problem was never solved and now it’s far beyond control?
Hoping I’m wrong, I devise an equation to predict future income and losses.
Maybe it’s another recession, like the one in 2008 or 2017? 2022? If so, that would be easy to fix. But the pattern is different than the normal economic cycles of failure and growth. In fact, it’s almost identical to a pattern seen in history, only it’s incomplete, like a tree with a thousand branches but the picture only shows a few small twigs.
That’s where my gift comes in. While no experts or prodigy friends could predict the real outcome from this pattern—I can.
I don’t feel well. A horrible coldness courses down my chest and into my stomach, my arms, my fingers. I drop my head low, holding my face in my hands. Chan was right. His company will be bankrupt by the end of the year. But his company is not the problem.
The stakes are much higher. My fingers, now cold, start tapping on the desk as mathematical models form in my head, calculating the repercussions this will have in China, in America, and onto the rest of the world. Not to mention on me.
I request lunch in my office again and keep digging. I search for anything that might sway the numbers. Chan arrives at the end of the day. “Phoenix, did you find anything?”
I consider telling him, but I can’t yet. This is not something you share casually over a cup of tea. Then again, there’s no perfect setting to share news this bad. Still, I can’t say anything to Chan, or anyone, until I’m absolutely sure. I can’t rely on theoretical mathematical predictions. I need proof. I need a solution.
“Sir, I want to finish this first,” I say without lifting my head, hoping the worry on my face doesn’t show. “I’ll get a cab.”
He nods. “I will have the executive restaurant send you dinner.” He closes the door and I continue working. Only when my stomach growls do I realize it is far past dinnertime.
Before I eat, I compare everything: numbers, theories, banks. I compare American economic history to the history of modern-day China, until there’s no doubt left in my mind that the glitch in Chan’s company is a far bigger problem than I bargained for.
I bite the knuckle of my thumb, cursing the odds. Why does disaster always find me? I don’t want to focus on this. I don’t have time to solve this. I have one goal—take Madame’s empire down, then start my life over.
I rest my elbows on the desk and exhale loudly. Twelve minutes, eleven seconds pass as I stare at the wall. A picture of Seattle comes to mind—slipping once again out of reach. It’s not just a plane ride across the ocean anymore. It’s across a sea of a billion numbers, mouths, bodies, buildings, economies, nations, and dreams.
What kind of life would I have there if I returned? Could I really start over again near my ocean? Before this morning, home felt so close. But now…
The clock reads four in the morning. After a dozen cups of tea, cold water, and a small amount of pinching, my body shuts down. The couch by the window looks more comfortable than the chair I’m sitting in, but I’ve avoided it because it looks like a black hole trying to suck me back into the Pratt.
After several minutes of cringing, I lie on the couch and give into my exhaustion.
This office may be nicer than Madame’s or King’s, but the news is just as bad. I wish I could dismiss what I found as just a theory. But I can’t. Because if I’m right, a global economic crash will hit before the end of the year and it looks as impossible to stop as an avalanche. If there was any hope to stop it—any solution to be found—it would take someone like me to find it. But that would mean delaying my plans to stop Madame, and that is something I cannot do.
15
Past: Double-Eight
THE PRATT, SHANGHAI, CHINA
My last memory would be of King’s hands. Rough, hard, wicked. Hands that had killed before. Hands that would kill me now. Hands that kept me under water—60 seconds, 70, 80...
My throat capsized under the most wretched hands on the planet. In less than ten seconds water would flood my lungs and I would drown. Important dates—Lily’s birthday, my parent’s anniversary, the day I learned to swim—bubbled up as I fought to hold on.
Pain, like firecrackers, pinched me as blood vessels popped in my face, but it was nothing to the burning pain in my lungs—water had entered.
Gasp! King pulled me out. “Why were you so special to Madame? What did you do for her? Why did she send you to me?”
I heard the questions. I was willing to answer but my head spun, and I couldn’t stop coughing. My head went back under water before I caught my breath—30, 40, 50…
My mom floated in the water beside me. Lack of oxygen was making me hallucinate. Her eyes told me to fight. To hold on another minute. To answer King.
I was yanked out by the throat. I crumbled to my knees, convulsing. There was an 85% chance contusions on my larynx would interfere with my ability to speak. Water spilled out of my lungs. I heaved, and choked, and spit, still half-drowning, still contending to breathe, still calculating if death beat the odds over a life with King.
He backhanded me across the face. Pain mixed with numbers splitting apart my world in which there were two options: I wanted to die. I didn’t want to die.
“Last chance to tell me everything, little girl,” he growled. “Or your next date with water will be your last.”
Tapping. All I could do with the numbers spinning possibilities in my head was tap. My leg. The ground. My lip. I tapped, but I managed to force out a hoarse, choked whisper.
“Money. I make her lots of money.” As much as I could through a damaged throat, I told him everything he wanted to know.
When I was done, he rubbed his hands together like he’d found his golden lamp with a genie inside. As greed took possession of King, Madame’s command to kill me became void. I’d entered a new dragon’s lair now and his mountain of gold was already piling up.
“I’m going to keep you, lucky girl, to test your powers.” A cruel smile spread across his face. After another initiation of sixty seconds underwater, I entered his employment.
Thirty-eight days later…
The Pratt’s tunnels were dark, musty, and cold. The smell of cigarettes, sweat, and mildew caught in my nose. I covered my face with my sleeve as we walked.
We came to the end of the corridor and passed a different guard station. This section of the tunnel contained two rooms apart from the rest. One of the cells was empty; the other was mine. Each time I entered the room, it hit me like a death sentence. The clank of the lock behind me was loud and heavy. It was so absolute, like a tombstone being laid over my grave.
I could speak again, but I couldn’t breathe here.
My clothes, the same leather jacket, gray jeans, and sweater I wore the day I left Madame’s, had been dry for thirty-eight days, but I was still chilled to the bone. Terror had permanently moved into my body. I’d become jumpy.
Besides the tremor in my hands, I didn’t feel anything anymore. I was numb. As soon as I understood King would spare me if I produced great sums of money, I sold my soul. Working under a threat, like everyone else who worked for King.
A pain in my stomach urged me to eat, but I had no desire for food. I’d tried playing Seagulls here, but it didn’t work. Rarely seeing the sky might have had something to do with it.
My eyes were so bloodshot I lost vision. I fell on my metal cot and pulled the thin blanket over my bony frame. The darkness folded around me. Not even numbers could occupy my mind. I had calculated everything in this room, these halls, four hundred and sixty-three times already. My mind already slept. I slipped into oblivion, hoping that against all odds, I’d stay there.
After a couple hours of cold, fitful sleep, I woke to two eyes staring at me through the bars of the neighboring cell. I jerked backwards to escape them. They didn’t feel like eyes but arms reaching out to me—to help or hurt me, I didn’t know. I was scared, but when I looked again, the man’s eyes drew me in.
They were not dark and cavernous like Celia’s. Not wicked and devouring like King’s. Maybe I was delusional and half dreaming, but his whole being glowed like a candle in the night. He was still, gauging me, as if a keen sixth sense was at work. I wondered what he saw.
He stood slowly and opened the door to his cell. For a fifth of a second, I questioned how it was unlocked but quickly calculated an 84% chance of him speaking. I was weak, but I swung my legs over the side of my bed and sat up, clutching at my blanket. His face contorted. He was in pain at what he saw. That answered my question–I must have looked even worse than I felt.
He approached my cell door and gripped the bars. “You can trust me.” It was all he said, in a low, nearly perfect English accent, before he returned to his metal-framed cot to lie down.
Then I knew I’d dreamed him, because it sounded too good to be true. I didn’t know if I could trust anyone, ever again.
In the morning, Guard San returned and placed a bowl of watery rice before me.
“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing across the hall.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Crazy Hong?”
“Is he a prisoner or an associate?” I asked. “His cell’s unlocked.”
Guard San didn’t answer or give me an extra glance before he walked away laughing. I grabbed my bowl and choked down each bite.
For the next three days, the old man walked in and out of his unlocked cell, always throwing a look my way. He watched me too, especially when Guard San fetched me on the occasional afternoon to work for King.
On the fourth day, the old man came over to me, holding a small white bowl. To my surprise he offered it to me.
“Rice porridge?” He sat on the ground next to my cell, his hands holding the bowl between the bars. “I’m Hong Rui. You can call me Red.”
I looked at the bowl because I was starving. To my disappointment, it was full of what they’d served me the last three days. Watery, mushy rice soup. Xifan, is what they called it. No flavor, lukewarm, texture like baby food. There was a stringy green vegetable on top, slimy like seaweed and a pungent smell, like it had been pickled. Last night it made me nauseous. My lips puckered and my nose turned up at the smell. He saw the look on my face. I didn’t mean to look ungrateful or disgusted, but I couldn’t stomach the food. I felt sick just looking at it.