Jade Dragon (16 page)

The man behind the desk wore the same uniform as the bored trooper, but
his epaulets showed the silver badges of a chief inspector. The officer
waved Ko into an empty seat across from his desk as he finished
something on his screen. The teenager didn’t need to study the face of
the inspector. He knew it well. The jowls where he was getting old
beyond his years, the false tightening of skin from treatments at the
NooYoo Clinic. The man had the sort of schoolboy face that seemed better
suited to a funnyman on the vid than an aging cop.

Ko held a contrite look on his face as at last the inspector looked up
at him. “Hey, uncle. How are you?”

The policeman frowned. “Don’t call me ‘uncle’, Ko. You’re not a child
anymore, even if you do act like one, picking fights in the street.”

“Sorry, sir,” he said with a nod. “Inspector Chan, sir.”

“Better,” replied Chan and shook his head. “Ko, what are you doing? I
thought you were smart enough not to get caught? I know what you’re up
to out there, boy, don’t think that I don’t. But I can’t turn a blind
eye if you’re right here in my damn precinct!”

“Sorry,” Ko repeated. “Things… got out of hand.”

Chan made a noise of agreement and Ko saw a blink of images on his
monitor: streetcam shots from the road showing the fight, stills from
Second Lei’s juvenile arrest records. “That’s one way to describe it.”
The older man blinked slowly and gave the youth a level stare. “You were
eight years old the first time you saw the inside of a police station,
do you remember?”

Ko sighed. Here we go again…

“Your dad brought you in to show you what he did for a living. I locked
you in a cell just to give you a scare and you punched me in the gut for
it.” He looked away. “Next time I did that, it was nine years later and
you’d run a police cruiser off the road in Wanchai. And here we are
again. How many times is this, now?”

“You tell me, uncle. Uh, inspector. ”

A scowl passed over the police officer’s face and he threw up his
hands abruptly. “Ah, fuck it!”

Ko blinked. He’d never heard his father’s old partner swear in all his
life.

Chan shook a finger at him. “I’m tired of giving you the same bloody
lecture every time we cross paths, you delinquent! I don’t want to hear
it again!”

“That makes two of us,” said Ko.

The older man moved faster than his years and dealt Ko a savage slap
about the head. “Don’t get cocky, boy! The only reason you haven’t been
sent down a dozen times over is because I owe your father my life! I
promised him I’d look out for his kids… I can’t do anything about that
wild sister of yours, but you…” He leaned closer. “What kind of man
are you growing up to be, Ko? You’re a disappointment!”

“More than you know,” said the teenager quietly.

“I know you got good in you. I see the flowers you leave on the old
man’s grave.” Chan sat back down, fuming. “Your father forgive me, but
this is the last time. I’m not covering for you any more. From now on,
you’re just another go-ganger punk to me, understand?” He rapped on the
desk. “You need to get your head straight. You should be looking after
your sister, not wasting time on the roads.”

Ko felt something shift in his chest; he thought about what he’d said in
the cell and there was a sudden surety inside him. “You’re right, uncle.
I’m getting out.”

Chan’s face darkened. “And Nikita? You’re not just going to leave her in
the hospital?”

Ko’s blood ran cold. “Hospital? What are you talking about?”

The policeman’s face shifted. “Oh, hell. Don’t tell me you don’t
know…”

“Know what?” His voice rose in panic.

Chan’s pleasant face turned sad and compassionate. “Nikita was admitted
to Saint Theresa’s. They said it was a drug overdose. She’s critical. ”

Alice had yet to provide a replacement d-screen for the one Frankie had
lost in the car, so he had bought a basic tourist PDA from the In-Shop
Micromall in the apartment block. His throat went dry when he input the
spike and a security program began a regimen of questions; it asked
about people he went to school with, about where he’d hidden his copies
of
Playboy
as a teenager, the name of the first girl he ever slept
with. Things that only Alan would have known the answers to. He locked
the door to the toilet and sat on the edge of the bowl, hunched over the
book-sized screen, growing anxious with every passing moment.

Finally, the programme was satisfied and it opened to him. There were
gigs of data on the memory needle, and he flicked experimentally through
them. Most of the files had warnings promising censure and contract
termination if they were viewed outside a Yuk Lung Heavy Industries
database. Frankie understood that his brother had plundered proscribed
levels of the company’s deep storage, illegally copying a king’s ransom
in sensitive data. Even from a cursory examination, he could see that
there was enough here to earn billions of yuan on the open market. If
the spike fell into the hands of a rival like Eidolon or GenTech, YLHI
would be destroyed.

Frankie swallowed hard. Alan, an industrial spy? It hardly seemed real.
He was set for life in his upper tier posting at Yuk Lung… There was
nothing any other corporation would have been able to give him that was
better. There had to be another reason why he had been collating data…

A sudden, chilling thought struck him. The label on the spike.
Brother.
Alan must have left it for Frankie to find, a message of some
sort. Had he known he was going to die? And what if…

The palmtop shook in his hands. He could hardly bring himself to think
it.

What if Alan’s death wasn’t an accident?

The knock on the toilet door made him jump with fright, and the little
PDA slipped out of his hands and across the tiled floor. “Wait!” he
piped, “Just, uh, just a second!” Frankie flushed the toilet and
gathered up the PDA, stuffing it into the pocket of the gown. He wiped
sweaty hands on the towelling and forced a smile as he opened the door.
“Juno, hey—”

“Mr Lam, good morning,” Monkey King filled the doorway before him,
steady as a statue. “My apologies for disturbing you. ”

Frankie utterly failed to keep the shock from his face. “What… ?”

“Miss Qwan has an appointment at the Ocean Terminal Mallplex. I’m here
to escort her.”

“Yes. Of course. ”

Juno emerged from the bathroom wearing a man’s tracksuit ensemble. She
gave him a deep kiss and smiled. “I’m borrowing this, hope you don’t
mind.”

“No. That’s fine. It’s, uh, was my brother’s.”

She traced a finger over his cheek. “I have to go.” Her face softened.
“See me again, Frankie? Say you will?”

He nodded, unable to find the words. Juno kissed him again, and followed
the masked man out. On the threshold, she tossed him a jaunty wave and
was gone.

Frankie stood there for a long time, his mind in turmoil. The palmtop in
his pocket felt like lead, heavy with terrible possibility. Alice had
told him that Alan’s death had been a mistaken assault, but now a tide
of suspicion was rising.

I have to know for sure.

His hands tapped at the air. But where could he turn for help? Hong Kong
was an alien place to him now, and he had no doubt that Tze’s people
would never give him leave to investigate on his own. He needed someone
on the outside. Someone who knew the street.

Someone who had connections.

Ko felt the colour drain from him in a sick rush. In the hospital bed,
Nikita was barely visible beneath a network of plastic tubes and sensor
wires. Machines painted in the same leaf-green as the walls were
clustered around the girl’s sallow face, chiming in time to her
heartbeat. His sister’s chest rose and fell in ragged jerks, her breath
disordered through the oxygen mask clasped over her nose and lips.
Beneath closed lids, her eyes fluttered and moved.

He staggered forward, some part of him wondering if Dr Yeoh had brought
him into the wrong room by mistake. This pale thing in front of him
hardly seemed real enough to be Nikita, dear Niki with her explosive
temper and her flashing I-dare-you eyes. The woman on the bed was a
faded copy of his sister, washed out and thin as tissue paper. This was
some weak facsimile.

“She was admitted in the early hours of the morning,” the doctor said,
her voice calm and measured. “A police unit found her in Kowloon Park.
She was very lucky. A few more hours and she would have died.”

“Lucky.” Ko repeated in a dead voice. He reached out and ran a hand over
her cheek. Her skin was clammy and cold. Nikita s mouth was moving, and
he bent close to hear. She was whispering.

“Your sister’s medical records are patchy, Mr Chen, but it’s clear she
has a history of drug use. I’m afraid this is very serious.”

Ko moved the oxygen mask and placed his ear to her lips. He felt tears
welling up as he made out the peculiar litany.

“Mountain and the blood, screeching cats. Where are the masks talking?
Can’t see the lines on his chest, ropes and cutting knives.” The words
came in gasps. “No zen. Invisible hands. Know zen. Demons, pieces that
smell like dark.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Ko turned, his fists balling.

The woman’s brow furrowed. “She’s suffered an overdose of a
hallucinogenic. Her mind is struggling to make sense of it, but the drug
effect tampers with conscious recall and perception, it creates a
synesthetic overload.” She sighed. “It’s like the book of your sister’s
life has been jumbled up. She’s lost in it.”

“The worms gathering, the mirror sea,” whispered Nikita, “Mirror see.
See mirror. Mirror. Bubble in a stream. Jade. The Jade Dragon.”

“Can’t you help her?” he demanded. “Can’t you… fix her?” Ko blinked
furiously, impotent and frustrated.

Dr Yeoh’s kind face set in a frown. “Nikita has suffered severe
neurological damage. There is a possible remedy, but it’s beyond my
skills. I can give you a referral but you must understand, the cost is
very high. Have you ever heard of the Zarathustra Clinic?”

Ko gave a bitter laugh. “Do I look like millionaire? I don’t have the
kind of yuan they charge!” He gave the doctor a hard look. “Who did this
to her? I want to know!”

The woman was silent for a long moment. “This isn’t the first case I
have seen like this. Your sister’s reaction is to a street narcotic,
zee-three-en. Do you know it?”

“Zen.” He screwed his eyes shut, remembering the tingle of the spilt
drug on his fingers.

“Other users haven’t been so fortunate. But it’s difficult to stem the
flow of this poison. The police look the other way. The corporates…”
She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Yuk Lung and the
others, they help proliferate the drug but their high-level government
connections put them above the law. All we can do here is pick up the
pieces.” Yeoh turned away. “I’ll give you some time with her. Talk to
her, it may help.”

Ko stood over Nikita, vibrating with pent-up anger. “You motherfuckers,”
he said to the air. “I’ll kill every last one of you for this!”

Feng rested against the window. “Ko. You can’t help her that way.”

He rounded on the swordsman. “Look at her! She’s a mess! One of those
cashwhore bastards made that happen to her, just for shits and grins!
Don’t try to calm me down, dead man! I’ll give them payback, a hundred
rimes over!”

“Look to the girl first,” said Feng. “You get yourself killed and who
will care for her?”

Ko’s angry retort died in his throat as the sound of a nightingale rang
through the air. His hand wandered to the pocket of his coat. The
cellphone. It was still there, forgotten after the events on the
expressway.

He flipped open the device, illuminating the miniscreen and the camera
pickup. “Who the hell is this?” he snarled.

“Remember me?” said Frankie, pressing himself deeper into the public
phone booth. “We had a little chat about cars a couple of nights back.”
He squinted at the screen, making out the shape of a well-lit room and
what looked like a pile of machines on a bed.

“You,” said the youth on the other end of the line, pouring burning hate
into that single word. “You got balls calling me.”

“Listen,” Frankie said. “If you weren’t just bragging about being
hooked up with the triad societies, I could have a deal for you. I need
a job done.”

“The fuck?” spat the other voice. “You piece of worm shit, you do this
to my blood and then you call me up trying to play me? I’ll fucking ice
you!”

Frankie blinked. This wasn’t going how he had expected it to. “Wait,
what are you talking about?”

The camera view wobbled and rushed in close to the bed, and with a start
Frankie understood what he was looking at—a haggard woman on a
life-support machine. “What was it, huh?” snarled the car thief. “Is this
your way of getting your own back on me for jacking that Vector? You
pump my sister full of that blue poison and leave her to die?”

A cold trickle of recognition shot through the executive. The woman’s
face was familiar to him. “I know her… I saw her at the party…”

“What d’you say?” snapped the thief. “Tell me, damn it! Where did you
see her?”

Frankie stuttered, wrong-footed. “Uh, with Mr Tze. At the Yuk Lung
tower… But she seemed fine then.”

“Tze? I know who he is,” came a growl.

“Wait, no—” The screen went dead, and Frankie was left there in silence.

Ko snapped the phone shut and pocketed it.

Feng gave him a narrow stare.

“Boy, don’t do anything foolish.”

“I’m going to get a weapon,” he said, his voice low and loaded with
menace. “And then I’m going to kill a man.”

Next on ZeeBeeCee Ultrasports Daily, we go Hue to Sao Paolo for the
World Series of Celebrity Cockfighting. But first, live coverage of the
day’s endorsed highway combat matches in the Denver Death Zone,
including the triumphant comeback bout for John Knoxville and the
surprise result on the Hasselhof Memorial Circuit—