James Swallow - Jade Dragon

The kid swallowed hard. Fixx knew he was remembering the visions, the carrion city and the horrors of the emerald serpent-demon.

He prodded Ko in the chest. “You and your boy Feng. You gotta do it. No-one else can.”

“I steal cars, for Buddha’s sake. I’m just a… a thief, and not a very good one at that,” he said, dejected.

They were alone in the stairwell, their voices echoing. Fixx looked around. “Ask the ghost what he thinks. ”

Ko fell silent for a moment, looking into the middle distance. After a moment, he nodded. “What do I have to do?”

“Get up to the Peak, find that black-hearted sonuvabitch… and end him. Else, there’ll be no place to run to.”

“Nowhere to hide,” added Ko, his voice low. “What’re you gonna do? What about that Lam guy?”

Fixx smiled. “Don’t you worry none, I’ll give ’em some-thin’ to think about.”

The metallic gridwork of the stairs clanged as Ko took them three at a time, vaulting over the banister to leap off to the next floor. He glimpsed Feng on every landing, nervously watching for any sign of the Tze’s sinister henchmen. The running made it easier for Ko to keep his concentration in the moment, worrying about where he was going to be in the next second instead of letting the conflicted emotions inside him take over.

He was leaving Nikita alone; Fixx was standing his ground to let Ko escape; there was something awful hatching on the Peak; the man who ruined his sister was in league with monsters. Any one of these things would cripple him with fear and doubt if he let them. z/p›

Ko dropped past the ground floor and went down one more, into the basement sublevel. He was moving so fast he lost his balance and bounced off the door, practically tumbling through it into the open grey cavern of the vehicle park. He slipped on a patch of old motor oil and fell against a concrete stanchion. There were cars dotted about in some of the parking spaces. All of them were the same kind of unremarkable compacts, Kondobishi Yasumes or Toyomazda Sunrays. Nothing with any poke, as traditional go-ganger slang called it.

He took a breath, scanning the underground car park for Feng. On the other side of the garage, he spied the swordsman gesturing at a rank of white vans. Ambulances. Over there, the paramedics waited on alert status for calls that would send them racing out into the night; but for some reason nobody was around down here, and Ko could hear the far-off sound of a phone ringing and ringing. The meat wagons were bulkier than the compacts, but they made up with overcharged engines what they didn’t have in grace. Ko jogged across the asphalt and got halfway there when Feng shouted out a wordless warning.

He turned and saw a woman in a white mask sprinting out of the stairwell toward him. She was so fast. Ko vaguely remembered the sight of a similar mask on the face of a driver, crossing the Tsing Ma Bridge; then she was on him, a hammer blow punch spinning him around. He turned into the impact, feeling his teeth rattle and slid away down the flank of a parked vehicle. She came at him with a kick that stove in an ambulance’s fender, popping the headlight out like a glass eye.

Belatedly, Ko wished he’d asked Fixx if he could borrow his crossbow. In his pocket, his fingers traced the shape of something and on reflex he threw it at the guardian, moving and taking cover by the van’s open doors.

The woman caught the missile out of the air and examined it quizzically. “Tarot card,” she said, without a hint of exertion in her voice. “Knight of Wands.”

Ko came at her at full tilt, dragging a heavy fire extinguisher from a snap-clip on the wall. The red cylinder swung into the masked woman’s head and Ko heard something break. She staggered and fell over. He followed up by letting the thing off into her face, great gouts of white chemical foam smothering the guardian. She batted at the acidic stuff like an animal with tar on its fur.

“Mine,” he grated, recovering the card. Ko tossed the extinguisher and vaulted into the ambulance’s cab. He didn’t even need to hotwire it; the motor was already in standby mode. The thief stamped the accelerator pedal into the floor and the hydrogen engine snarled. Automatically, a two-tone siren started wailing and the blue lamps dotted over the vehicle strobed wildly.

In the wing mirror, Ko saw the woman in the white mask getting to her feet as he launched the ambulance out on to the street. She had her head cocked, like she was talking to someone.

Ko turned on to Princess Margaret Road and headed south, watching the accelerometer needle drift up the dial. He hoped that would be the last he’d see of the Masks, but somehow, he doubted it.

From the spidercopter’s window, Tze saw the spread of Wyldsky and he was pleased with it. The sprawling mass of the concert crowd moved like wheat in a breeze, rocking as they threw themselves into the music. The noise from the towering speaker stacks was so loud that the ’copter’s approach was hardly noticed. The flyer crossed behind the stage and turned to land in the statue park behind it.

Tze felt a definite spring in his step as he came down the gangway. His hands threaded together. Outwardly, he was maintaining an air of calm, but inwardly he felt almost giddy with anticipation. Tonight, the things he saw only as vivid dreams would be made flesh. Ahead, the band on stage were coming to the climax of their final number. He knew little about the group, cared even less. All that mattered was that the lead singer, the oily man who had been there that night at the tower, that he had greed and desires that the Cabal could easily turn to its advantage. Tze had seen the anti-corporate banners in the crowds, heard the flaming rhetoric in the songs. It was ample window-dressing for the main event. For Juno Qwan.

He turned, playfully tracing the face of a terracotta soldier and found her behind him, walking like she was approaching the gallows. “That won’t do,” he told the singer.

Juno’s face was tear-stained, her eyes frightened. “Am I going… to die?”

“You’re going to sing,” said the executive, tapping the hilt of an ornate ceremonial sword on his belt. “And it will be perfect.”

“Why are you dressed like that?”

Tze laughed. “I have a penchant for the theatrical, dear girl.”

She’d been watching him all through the flight from the castle. “I know you. I’ve seen your face. In my head. Sometimes.”

“They call that meta-engram imprinting.” He nodded. “An echo, if you like, from the donor.” Tze leered a little. “There’s some of me in you.”

“Are you my father?”

“In a way. Along with a thousand others.” He sighed. “It’s all terribly complicated.”

Juno looked at the stage. She seemed like a child now, lost and afraid. “I don’t want Heywood to hurt me any more. Please don’t let him. He… There are things in his eyes.”

Tze frowned. The simple honesty of the girl’s statement rang a warning note within him; but he dismissed it. This was no time for distractions. “He has business elsewhere, child. Monkey King will escort you.” The Mask loomed.

Juno hesitated. “I… I can’t remember the words.”

Tze nodded to the guardian. “Help her.”

Monkey King produced the leather case with the injector device and Juno’s eyes flashed with panic. “No, no! Just give me a moment…”

The Mask ignored her and shot a dose of Z3N into her jugular. She staggered and he picked her up, carrying her forward.

Tze let out a laugh and raised his hands to the sky. “Let’s rock!” he told the black clouds.

They caught up with him as the ambulance was crossing the Hung Horn interchange. Up ahead, past the toll booths and the spread of evening traffic, the black mouth of the Cross Harbour Tunnel yawned. Ko saw a blink of silver bonnet in the rear-view and knew it was the Vector.