James Swallow: Jade Dragon

Ko blew out a breath. “You saved my life up there. ”

“Perhaps I did.” The soldier jumped off the car. “Or maybe you did it. Maybe that festering turd Second Lei was right all along, that I don’t exist. Perhaps, I’m all in your head.”

“No,” said the youth. He didn’t like where the conversation was going.

Feng smiled. He looked better than usual. No stubble, clear-eyed, standing up straight, armour polished. Ko imagined this was how he would have looked on some feudal parade ground, noble and proud. “Or maybe not. It’s a strange world, Ko. I have as many questions about it as you do.”

“The bones in the statue… That was you.”

“Indeed.” Feng pointed toward the peak. “Buried up there now with all those other luckless fools. Not quite the funeral I wanted, but I’ve learned not to be choosy. After all this time, an end is an end.”

Ko’s chest felt tight. “You’re leaving.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m free,” he said. “Free to go.” Suddenly, Ko couldn’t find any words. Feng nodded down the road a way. “Look there!”

Ko saw Frankie at the door of a car belonging to the Durdenists. In a moment, the man had bypassed the lock and slid inside. With deft movements, he disabled the alarm, and as the irate owners came running, Frankie gunned the engine and roared away in a snarl of smoke. The shaven-headed men spat and swore, and the car vanished over the hill, sounding its horn three times.

When Ko looked back at the Korvette there was only Nikita, sleeping fitfully in the back seat.

He took the road over Tai Mo Shan at twice the posted speed limit, turning into corners and switchbacks until Hong Kong vanished beneath the tree line. The Korvette blazed through warning signs shouting to slow down. Ko ignored them all, a wolfish grin forming on his lips as the needle on the dashboard moved inexorably toward the redline. Skirting the fake folk villages and tourista snares, he aimed the black bullet of the car at the Shenzhen border crossing, allowing the vehicle’s on-board navigator system to construct a route deeper into China. “Guangzhou,” he told the drive-brain. “Plot us a speed course to the airport there. I don’t want to stop for anything.” He saw strobes in the rear-view as two APRC jeeps struggled to catch up with him.

“Ko?” said a sleepy voice. “Where are we going?” Nikita shifted on the edge of wakefulness.

“Just a little country drive, Niki,” he told her, “Everything’s fine.”

She pointed out through the windscreen. “Look, Ko,” she said dreamily. “I can see blue. ”

Above, through the clouds, he saw it too; a pale cobalt sky, drawing them towards it. “Yeah. That’s where we’re going.”

Ko pressed the accelerator to the floor and left the jeeps choking on exhaust fumes.

Colonel Tsang walked gingerly through the cavernous interior of the wrecked building; the engineers assured him the stone stub that was all that remained of the Yuk Lung tower was in no danger of collapsing. Still, he was wary. The ruined skyscraper reminded him of an ancient burial mound, heavy with dust and the scent of death. There were pieces of torn cloth everywhere, and his boots crunched on shards of plastic. He nudged something with his toe; it appeared to be part of a porcelain mask. Tsang glanced at the sergeant and his men, each bearing a rifle and a sensor wand. “Anything?”

The sergeant frowned at the scanning device in his hand. “Sir, I’m not sure.”

The man came apart in a ripping shower of gore, cut in two. Tsang cried out in shock as a tattered shape like a heap of rags flashed through the other greenjackets, cutting them down. The colonel was rigid with shock, his hand an inch from his holstered pistol.

The thing slowed and approached him. It was human, after a fashion, a broken agglomeration of smashed skeleton and torn flesh. Tsang’s stomach twisted as he realised that the attacker was using a blade made from the bones of its right arm. The thing replaced the makeshift sword and flexed it experimentally. With care, it knelt and tore off the sergeant’s face, chewing on it.

Finally, Tsang’s instincts caught up with him and he grabbed at his pistol, but there were a mouthful of teeth in his neck before the gun ever cleared leather.

For a while there was only the sound of eating and tearing. Then through damaged and torn lips, the killer spoke aloud. “The Path of Joseph,” said Heywood Rope, “is thorny.”

About the Author

James Swallow’s novels include the Warhammer 40,000 novels Faith and Fire, Deus Encarmine and Deus Sanguinius; among his other works are the Sundowners series of “steampunk” Westerns, the Judge Dredd novels Eclipse and Whiteout, Rogue Trooper: Blood Relative and the novelization of The Butterfly Effect. His non-fiction features Dark Eye: The Films of David Fincher and books on genre television and animation; his other credits include writing for Star Trek Voyager, Doctor Who, scripts for videogames and audio dramas. He lives in London, and is currently working on his next book.