James Swallow - Jade Dragon

A squad of Special Duties Unit constables were gathered in front of a stuttering holotank as he passed them by. The men were all featureless beneath full spectrum gas masks and the blank bands of optical rigs. They wore matte black clamshell armour festooned with snap-clips for ammunition packs, grenades, heartbeat sensors and leaflet dispensers. On their backs were the sponsorship logos from their corporate partners, a pattern of symbols like those on the jumpsuits of arena drivers but rendered in discreet grey-on-black. They carried guns that blinked and whirred in standby modes. The heads of the SDU men bobbed and moved as they talked among themselves, but Ko heard nothing; their helmets were sound-sealed and they communicated on encrypted radio frequencies.

By contrast the trooper who nudged Ko along the way was at the opposite end of the spectrum. He had the puppy-fat and slightly moronic look of a mainland country hick, filling out the dull khaki uniform of the Army of the People’s Republic of China, Incorporated. There was a holster at his waist and in there, Ko knew, was a palmprint encoded CNI 10mm revolver. He’d seen the damage those pistols wrought on human flesh more times than he liked. The copper stopped him outside an office and rapped smartly on the door. A voice inside called out and the trooper jerked a thumb. Ko sighed and entered.

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.”