James Swallow - Jade Dragon

“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 CLICK…