James Swallow - Jade Dragon

The weird state of grace in the group, the idiotic dynamic of it, the whole thing seemed progressively dumber the longer Ko thought about it. Second didn’t deserve to be the top gun. He had a good car, sure, but he wasn’t that hot on the road; he was like the annoying kid who owned the ball when you wanted a kickaround. You had to let him play and throw his weight about, just because he could take it home if he wanted to. Everyone just turned a blind eye to it, they just let it go because it was easier to eat his shit and ignore it than it was to deal with the alternative. And now, Ko had crossed that line and extradited himself from the only friends he had.

“Friends? That’s a joke.”

He saw it now, plain as daylight. It was inevitable that one day the button would have been pushed, that Ko would lose it and turn the kung fu he’d learnt under Sifu Lee’s tutelage on the supercilious asshole. Second hadn’t even put up a good fight. If the police hadn’t come along, there was no telling how it might have ended.

He glanced up and there was Feng, rail-thin and glum, standing in the opposite corner of the cell. “Those people are worthless,” said the swordsman. “Be glad you’ve left them behind. You were wasting your life with them.”

Ko wanted to be; but instead Feng’s words annoyed him. “I don’t want another bloody lecture from beyond the grave.”

“You know it isn’t a lie. Those fools were all wastrels.”

“And you’re not?” Ko snapped, the anger of the evening returning to him. “The proud, noble ancestor, warrior of the ancient days?” He mimicked Feng’s voice. “Things were better in my time. We had honour and courage. Did you shit! You’re just as bad as me, greedy and self-indulgent!”

Feng’s face clouded. “Don’t take it out on me because you’re a failure, boy!”

“Why? What are you gonna do, haunt me some more?” Ko shook his head. “You ain’t gonna do that, who would you get to buy you smokes?”

In spite of himself, the swordsman licked his lips.

Ko’s head drooped, his anger fading. “Ah, screw it. This is it.” He prodded the ragged mattress with a finger. “Enough is enough. I’m getting out of here. I’m sick of living like this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This place, Hong Kong. I’m done. I’m going to escape from this city even if it kills me.” He leaned forward. “I’m going to get money and go, take Nikita and leave it behind.”

“How will you do that, exactly? You’ve got, what? A dozen yuan to your name?”

Ko gave Feng a hard look. “I’ll find a way.”

The warrior’s head snapped up to face the heavy steel door. “Company.”

The observation slot in the metal hatch irised open to reveal a bored-looking trooper in APRC fatigues behind an inch of armoured glass. “On your feet, citizen.”

Frankie rolled over as gently as he could manage, keeping his eyes closed. He wanted to make sure that it hadn’t been some kind of strange fever-dream, a weird melange of fantasy created by too much jetlag and too little sleep; but no, as impossible as it seemed, there she was at his side. Her chest, unblemished like newly fallen snow, rose and fell above the edge of the silk sheets, and gentle breaths escaped the pursed flower of her lips. Juno Qwan lay naked beside him, as stunning in repose as she was on the billboards around the city.

“Wah.” Frankie whispered, and a grin emerged on his face as the evening rewound in his mind’s eye. They had fallen into the apartment entwined around one another, a peculiar hunger for human contact compelling them. Her kisses were electric on his lips and her skin, her perfect flawless skin, rose up under his touch. She discarded clothes worth more than a year of his former salary in ragged heaps as they crossed the lounge. With steady hands, she steered him toward the bedroom. They fell into each other, and with the lights of the city cast through the windows of the chamber, Frankie and Juno had made love, orbiting the room until they set down on the bed and began again.

He saw it in snapshots: the strobe of a passing advertisement blimp painting red and blue across her breasts as her back arched. Her hands on him, guiding him in. Juno’s hair, free and wild, crossing his chest. The taste of her. The sparkling chemical impact as they met orgasm together, synchronised and stormy. Everything else but her seemed faint and pale in comparison, faded images held against a vivid holograph.

Frankie felt the lazy beginnings of an erection as the fresh memories surfaced; but there was more to it than the sex. He felt strange, a peculiar sense of ease here with her, a realisation that there had been a missing piece to his life and now here she was, completing him. He shook his head and looked away, smirking. Where did that come from? he wondered, I’m mooning like some love struck idiot!

Dawn was coming up over the skyline of Hong Kong Island, turning the mirrored towers honey gold. The light moved across the walls of Alan’s former apartment, illuminating his tasteful Mondrian prints. Carefully, Frankie slid himself out of the bed without disturbing Juno’s sleep and padded across the room, grabbing a dressing gown. He gave her another look before he went into the bathroom, watching her at rest there. Man, she is gorgeous!

But what was going to happen next? Was it possible that a guy like him could actually have some kind of a realistic relationship with a woman like her, a pop star whose face was on the bedroom walls of a million teenagers? Hadn’t he seen something last month on Tiplady’s screamsheet, about Juno dating Brook Beckham? Maybe this would be a one-night thing for her, an amusement park ride, there and then gone. Something for him to tell his grandkids about-yeah, Juno and me, we had a thing-but nothing real. When he thought of it like that, it made Frankie’s chest ache. He didn’t want it to end that way, wham bam thank you salaryman. He thought of the look in her eyes when they kissed, the melancholy, the loneliness. It made him want to hold and protect her. She wanted more than that, he was sure of it. He saw the mirror of his own isolation in her, the same disconnection, the same darkness.

Darkness. Frankie looked into his reflection over the bathroom sink and frowned. Now he found his thoughts drifting back, past the thrills of last night and into disturbing recollections of the party at the YLHI tower. The sense-memory of blood came back to him with such force, for a moment he gripped at his hand, convinced the knife cuts had opened up again. Half-seen things began to unfold at the corners of his vision, and Frankie snapped his fingers to halt them, shaking the thoughts away. Forget that. I’m here now. With her. Not my business.

He went to work washing his face, then halted when he couldn’t locate any soap. There was a cabinet within arm’s reach and he peered inside. Rooting through dozens of bottles of expensive aftershave and skin balms, his fingers closed around a plastic disc. He brought it to eye level and peered at the object.

Inside the coin-sized case was a memory spike, and on the flag of its tail was a single word printed in tiny characters.

Brother.

The police trooper walked Ko through the detention section and up the broad stairs to the main level of the precinct house. The place was alive with the morning shift, young men in green uniforms and slow-eyed older guys who had the paunchy, ex-boxer look of career detectives. The actinic glow of dozens of monitor screens gave the place a chilly look at odds with the sweat-warm temperature. It was a single open room fenced off into threadbare cubicles with proper offices boxed off around the outer walls. Watery sunshine leached from skylights across the ceiling. The station was a mess of retrofitted Twenty-first century technology and clumsy beat cop hardware from the Eighties, fat plastic telephones side-by-side with datascreens.