Jade Dragon (26 page)

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.

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 said 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.”

“Luck?” Ko said bitterly. “You don’t know bad luck! You’re dead, how
much worse could it get? But I’m still breathing.” He stabbed at his
chest. “Every damn thing I do blows up in my face! Every choice in my
life is always the hard one. There’s never an easy day for Ko, is
there?” He pointed angrily at the sky. “You got a hotline to those
fuckers up there, you tell them to cut me some bloody slack!” Ko shouted
into the clouds. “You hearing me, you bastards? Are you happy now you
made everything go wrong? I got no money, I got no future! I got
nothing!”

“You got the tickets.” Fixx said from the shadows.

Ko reacted with shock and spun around on the wet stones. His face
flushed crimson. “I, uh…” The stratojet vouchers were still in his
pocket.

The sanctioned operative stepped into the light and gave the empty
courtyard a curious look. Ko waited for him to ask who he been talking
to, but Fixx did not. As ever, Feng had made himself scarce.

“What good would it do?” Ko said, after a moment. “I could take her
away, but she’d still be sick. And the corps would still come after me.”
He shuffled out of the wet. “That’s how they work. It’d never end.”

Fixx nodded. “That’s right. Still. A lesser soul, he might take one o’
them rides, cash in the other and use it to get off the grid.”

Ko’s face betrayed the revulsion he felt at that idea. “I’m not leaving
my sister in some nuthouse.”

“No, you ain’t. You may not have any luck to speak of, but you got what
they call strength of character, slick. You got that in spades.”

The youth sagged. “I just wanna get out.”

Fixx’s eyes narrowed. “That ain’t gonna happen. Not until the story has
its end. Not ’til the storm’s blown over.”

“What storm?”

The op nodded in the direction of the dojo, where the elderly teacher
was addressing a group of kids. “Old man Bruce, he knows it. Things out
there on the street, black skies over the peak. He talks about dragons.”

Ko looked away. “He says a lot of things.”

“Don’t act like you don’t see it too. Your gangcult buddies turning into
pill-poppers an’ sheep? The blue everywhere you look?”

“Yeah… Sometimes. Like they want people to do it, even though that
zee-three-en crap is illegal.”

Fixx nodded. “That poor songbird at The Han, she’s just a mouthpiece for
’em. She’s a shill, hawkin’ it, makin’ the kids want it. A puppet.” He
tapped his bald pate. “Minds and hearts, slick. Hearts and minds. That
poison gets in your head, holds the door open, lets other things in.”

Ko gave him a sideways look. “That can’t happen.”

“Reckon?” replied the Op. “Your sister, when she got the bad medicine,
she talked, right? ’Bout mirrors an’ dragons? Snakes an’ angels?”

Ko’s blood ran cold. “How… How could you know that?”

Fixx ran a finger over his dark glasses. “I seen it, but just a sliver,
mind. Not as much as she has.”

Ko slumped against the wall. It seemed too much to take in. “You’re
telling me, Nikita got sick because… She tripped on zen with these
corp bastards?”

“That’s the meat of it, though there’s more to it than that. You ever
hear of Icarus?”

“Yeah. G-Mek racer, 400-series. Not as fast as the Namco Solvalu,
though.”

Fixx smirked. “Mean the guy wit’ the wings, flew too near to the sun. I
reckon that’s your sis, right there. Got herself too close. Took a taste
of it, got burned by Tze.”

Ko’s eyes unfocussed for a moment. “I gotta see how she is. If they
tagged me, she could be in trouble.”

Fixx reached for the Korvette’s remote. “Yeah. I’m thinkin’ we might
wanna hear what she’s got to say.”

Feng stood across the courtyard by the stone guardian dogs, and he threw
Ko a nod of agreement.

The landscape of Tze’s mind was crimson from horizon to horizon. Hills
and valleys carved out of bloody wet meat, incarnadine blades of glassy
grass tinkling like wind chimes in the slaughterhouse breeze. Frankie
was submerged in the vision, pressed into the liquid, foetid gore. He
saw streets in a city with buildings made from bone and cartilage,
highways of flayed leather choked with twisted debris and vast armies of
human dead. High, gelid towers climbing into a poisonous grey sky that
spat screeching yellow gobbets of burning rain.

Things moved up there, appearing in eye-searing glimpses through gaps in
the monstrous storm clouds; or perhaps it was just one Thing, a creation
of such unfathomable size it could envelop the earth. Floating on lace
wings made from sinew, a vast and primal form, engorged with wickedness
and lust. Even so far away, Frankie could feel the waves of murderous
animal need emanating from it, the aching want to push beyond blood and
sex and pain and desire, to tear away any petty human constructs like
morality and virtue and smother itself in dark pits of depravity.

Nothing lived that was not twisted in this nation of corruption.
Contorted, lifeless trees poked up here and there with warped branches
clawing at the bloated, ruined sky, and the span of the bay was barren
and cracked. Across the hollows, a suffocated trickle moved sluggishly,
dirty with corpses and stinking oil. Raptor-forms sewn together from the
bodies of children, avian horrors with razor-sharp wings flitted
overhead, vomiting flame where they spied prey. Malformed creatures
prowled in shadows, eyes alight with preternatural fire.

But the worst spectacle was the people; multitudes of them blundering
through the marshy red flows in emotionless lock-step, empty and
cadaverous where all flicker of being was drawn off them. This was the
Nine Hells made manifest.

Is
it not magnificent?
whispered Tze into his mind.
The honesty of
it? The world’s impiety no longer hidden but thrown to the winds, the
opened flowers of blood and flesh shown to the sky… Oh, He blesses us.
The King of Rapture, Danikos et Demino, hallowed is the Lord of Bliss…

He forced the words to the front of his mind, fighting down the mad joy
the other man poured into his thoughts. “You want this? How could you
possibly want
this?
”

It is truth, Francis,
Tze’s mindspeech was a gasp of ecstasy.
Humans
are creatures driven by lust. Beneath the mask of civility we want only
bloodshed and fucking. Everything else is a falsehood imposed by the
limited and weak, by those who believe in abstracts. Moral and immoral.
Hate and love. Order… and chaos.

“I won’t help you!”

Fury boiled into him.
Stupid child! How dare you turn your face away
from me! I offer you the ultimate splendour and you spit it back?

“Get out of my head!”

So be it.
The voice snaked and rasped through his skull.
Willing or
unwilling, your part is cast. You will be what you were bred to be,
lad. What your bloodline was made to be.
Harsh laughter boomed about
him.
Lam… to the slaughter…

“This is very irregular, Mr Chen. I’m sorry, but I have other concerns
at the moment. We’re swamped.” Dr Yeoh’s face was drawn and pale, the
dull hollows beneath her eyes a sure sign that she hadn’t slept in days.

Ko had seen the disorder in the hospital as he followed Fixx into the
building. The sanctioned operative turned up his collar and hunched
forward, as if he were walking into a rainstorm, bracing himself. Ko
picked his way through the waiting room; there were dozens of people
there, some of them staring into space baring wounds that were raw and
self-inflicted, others babbling and weeping. There were more in the
corridors on gurneys parked along the walls, and Ko had to duck to one
side to avoid a big guy wearing a construction worker’s overalls who
blundered heedlessly past him, clawing at his arms and mewling. There
had been a moment when Ko thought he saw Poon, wrapped in a stained
paper smock and shouting at shadows; but then a curtain was pulled and
he heard the smack-hiss of a spray-hypo.

He blinked at the woman. “Doc, please. I’m not asking you to do
anything. I just need to see her. ”

Yeoh looked at Fixx with a wary sniff. “Visiting hours are over.”

Fixx spoke without turning away from the sight of the sick and the
maddened. “How long has it been this bad?”

The doctor sighed, sagging against the wall. “Day or so, I think. I’m
losing track. We used to get one a week. Then it was every other day,
now it’s hourly.”