Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

It was standard protocol. Someone else would soon arrive to get rid of the corpse and no one would ask questions because CODEX ran Straits Welfare. For orphans it was a haven, but for Chronomorph-operatives like her it was simply a farm.

Whoever dreamed up this policy had to be a genius or a tinkering fool. Ning Yan indulged in the macabre thoughts thinking they would ossify any softness that remained inside her.

Damn that bastard to hell. Damn him to the deepest hell.

She roamed the night like a wraith, her strides full of malaise, her eyes unseeing. The residents on this island probably numbered no more than fifty thousand and the streets were deathly silent. But the silence was comforting. In the stillness of night, and in a voice tremulous and raspy, she started singing:

Someone had taught her this song when she was on a galleon off to somewhere in a distant past; when Chinese like herself spoke Latin and the Spanish flag flew and silver was traded in copious amounts. Men did things to her in the ship’s hold, and when they had finished someone cuddled her and sang her this song.

She remembered the voice. It was a motherly voice.

From putrid drains came the squeaks of unseen rats. Ning Yan turned a corner and entered a narrow alley. Her frayed nerves bade her to sit on a small flight of steps that led to the backdoor of a shophouse. From her purse she slid out a small bundle and peeled away the folds of a silk kerchief to reveal a pocket percussion revolver. She bent it open to make sure the caps were in place, snapped it back and held it to her chin. Her mind was set, and the misery made it easy for her to squeeze the trigger.

Instead of a blast her vision vanished in a whiteout and her limbs locked painfully in place. She gagged and foamed. She fell to her side and juddered. Her muscles locked up so excruciatingly that her senses stalled. In that single, agonising moment she prayed for death.

A face filled her sights, a hard and greasy one. The braids of a pigtail ran across his crown. An apelike upper lip hung over a pair of large incisors. Genuine concern seemed to be pouring out of the face. She felt him shaking her by the shoulders, the touch of a callused hand across her forehead. Her eyes rolled and her vision blurred. Then she felt the same hand groping her and she was helpless against it.

The man vanished in a shuffling of feet and a series of sickly thuds that could only be made by the impact of fists against flesh. Her heart jolted at a sting at the side of her neck. The spasms eased, and the cramps in her muscles gradually dissolved. But on the ground she remained, heaving, her cheek pressing into the grit.

A hand touched her shoulder. She slapped it aside and wearily pulled herself to a sitting position and wrapped her arms around each other as if to warm herself. With the back of her hand she swiped spittle from her lips.

“Look what they’ve done to you…” she heard a voice say.

It was the voice of a man—a big man, well-built, dressed in white slacks, a blue Chinese shirt and a straw boater hat. He reached out a hand to touch a bruise by the side of her face and it was brusquely slapped away.

“Don’t touch me,” said Ning Yan. She staggered over to a ditch, retrieved her bundle containing Vivian’s lacquered music box and clutched it preciously to her chest as she walked away.

“Must’ve been hard.” The man started after her. “I’m sent to get you back in service, take care of your needs.”

“You’re a dastardly pimp working for the Seers.”

“I saved you.” The man hastened his strides and held out his hand. “Name’s Khun. I presume you will be called Vivian from now on?”

Ning Yan did not answer and did not stop walking either.

“I’ll let you in on a secret.” He twisted his hands together. “I’m one of you, so I know how this feels. I’m coming on seventy. Tell me, dolly, how old are you?”

She pushed past him. “Too old.”

“Where are you going?”

“To kill myself.”

“Doesn’t work with the Preservation Protocol, dolly. And if they learned of it they’ll put you through Torment,” said Khun.

She walked on.

“Grieve, but not too long.” Khun raised his voice, revealing a twinge of annoyance. “After all, they’re just farmed orphans.”

In a whirring flash Khun found himself on the ground, the left side of his face numbed as if it had been ripped away by the jarring blow. He leapt to his feet, and in a fit of rage attempted to grab Ning Yan but caught only air. In that same instance his nose met a wall. He rose to his feet, swung clumsily around to deliver a punch and instead had his face dashed against the edge of a drain. He hobbled to his feet, blood streaming from his nose. Again he struck, and again he was whipped back onto the ground. Only this time he did not rise.

Farther away Ning Yan walked on, weeping once more, mourning her lost daughter, and passing beyond the shaft of lamplight.

AT EXACTLY TWO-thirty in the morning Marco’s GTR rumbles into the driveway of the Inter-Continental. There, Casey perches on a stone bollard and stands up when she sees the arriving coupe. In a startling act of courtesy Marco leans across the seat and opens the door and watches her enter. “Neutralised the jamming bug in him?” he asks.

“Naturally.” She does not look at him, but takes out a touchpad and taps on it.

“How? Kisses?”

“From the water I gave him at the clinic.” She glances at him. “In the past we used to do micro-cuts on the lips. Now the new stuff works through saliva.”

She raises the pad to him. On its small, mirrored screen Marco sees the rush of an image enlarging, its details crystallising—the viaduct, the roadway, the white infrared specks of two living individuals, one of them of a darkening shade. A flickering triangle appears over the brighter speck, and sets a grin on Marco’s face. “That’s very good.”

“After you’ve disposed of Alpine-One I figured you’d need another Tracker.” Casey pinches her lips; the smile slight, tentative, bordering between formality and irony.

It pleases Marco. “Coming on fast, Gaius-Four,” says he. “What’s your alias?”

“Casey,” says the young lady.

“Well, we should get to know each other first, Casey.”

“Where’re you taking me?”

“Your choice, love.”

They drive onto Mackenzie Road and turn up into Mount Emily Park. By a small slipway Marco conceals his GTR in the dark of a banyan tree. He applies the brake, leaves the engine running and proceeds to inspect his new prize. But Casey does not reciprocate just yet. She goes on tapping on her pad and humming a tune to herself.

It annoys him more than he thinks it would. “I’ve never seen you.”

“I worked undercover as the doctor’s assistant.”

“Ah, that explains it,” he says. “You are very good.”

“The doctor was a good man.”

“A sacrifice for the Cause.” Marco fingers her arm. “Quick, painless and full of grace.”

Casey says nothing to that. For another minute she goes on tapping and wears out Marco’s patience. He tries peering over at it but sees nothing through the privacy film. At last curiosity gets the better of him. “What are you doing?”