by Kylie Chan
‘I’ve heard about that,’ Guang Ze said. ‘Very disturbing.’ He leaned on the table. ‘Any word on the return of the Dark Lord? His presence would be extremely reassuring.’
‘Daddy doesn’t know when. Nobody knows,’ Simone said. ‘He’s in pieces.’
‘We should search for him, bring him back together,’ Guang Ze said. ‘Why hasn’t Ma suggested this?’
‘Ma himself went out into the world looking for him and found nothing,’ I said. ‘He’s still too wild and elemental to be found.’
‘If Ma can’t do it, nobody can,’ Bi Tian Hua said. ‘Ma can go places none of us are able to. We just have to cultivate patience.’
‘When he is strong enough to be found, we may be able to join forces — all thirty-six of us — and bring him back,’ Bo Niang said.
‘That would incapacitate all of us for a considerable time,’ Guang Ze said.
Bo Niang shrugged. ‘It’s an option if things become desperate. He’s more powerful than all of us put together — if needed, we can be sacrificed to ensure his return.’
‘Just one of us could sacrifice themselves completely, as well,’ Bi Tian Hua said.
Bo Niang nodded agreement. ‘That would work, and the other thirty-five would remain at full strength.’
‘What do you mean completely?’ Simone said.
‘You’re talking about total absorption and destruction to bring him back?’ I said.
Bi Tian Hua nodded. ‘It is an option.’
‘No it isn’t!’ I said.
‘They’re done,’ the stone said. ‘Gold is on his way.’
Gold appeared at the end of the table. ‘Turn the freak show off, Dad, I need the space,’ he said.
The elementals disappeared, and a map of Shenzhen took their place floating above the table.
‘Everything comes together at this point,’ Gold said. The map zoomed in to a compound on the north side of the city, far from the Hong Kong border. ‘Shenzhen Ming Dian Electronics Company. They have three factory buildings and dorms as well. Every single person we processed has some sort of link with this company.’ He smiled, triumphant. ‘That’s where the Geek is.’
The Tiger appeared at the end of the table, tucking his shirt in. ‘What are we waiting for? Let’s go.’
The rest of the group rose and I stopped them. ‘Wait, wait, wait. What did the company specialise in?’
‘Just computers.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Video cards, motherboards, what?’
‘Ironically enough, storage,’ Gold said. ‘Hard disks, disk controllers, RAID controllers —’
‘Raid?’ Guang Ze said.
‘Not that sort of raid. It means Random Array of Independent Disks; it’s a way of storing —’
‘I see,’ Guang Ze said. ‘Computer stuff.’
‘Yes. How is this relevant, ma’am? If you don’t mind me saying so, we need to move.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s been one step ahead of us all the way, and he’s had three days to move his operation. Find all the other computer companies in Shenzhen that are producing the same stuff, because one of them will be where he’s moved to.’
‘He could still be in the same place,’ Gold said, protesting.
‘Simone and Tiger, work together and send some elementals to Ming Dian and see if there are any demons there,’ I said. ‘I bet you ten dollars it’s been cleared out.’
‘I need to be about fifty metres away to send in elementals,’ Simone said.
‘Then hurry up and teleport!’ I said. ‘Come back with an answer for us. Keep your head down and stay invisible, don’t let them know you’re there.’
‘Come on, Simone, let me show you how it’s done,’ the Tiger said, and he and Simone disappeared.
‘Let me hook up with Calcite and Zara,’ Gold said. He disappeared as well.
‘You’d better be right, Emma, otherwise you’ll never live this down,’ Bo Niang said with humour.
‘Either way, he’s there or he’s not,’ I said. ‘My bet is that he’s moved on, but he needs the same sort of equipment to keep making the elementals.’
The Tiger and Simone reappeared.
‘She’s right,’ Simone said. ‘All cleared out, nothing there.’
‘Ma was right,’ Guang Ze said.
‘Damn straight,’ Bi said.
‘About what?’ I said.
‘You,’ Bo Niang said.
‘Scares the living shit out of me,’ the Tiger said. He sat at the table. ‘No beer? What sort of hospitality is this, woman?’ He summoned a can of beer and popped it open. ‘Tell those stones to hurry up. I got three women on the boil and I want something to dig my claws into.’
Gold reappeared, Calcite and Zara with him.
‘How many?’ I said.
The map zoomed out over the table and five red dots appeared, three close to each other and two on the other side of town. ‘Five that specialise in storage,’ Gold said. Several green dots appeared, most of them in a cluster with two or three in separate locations. ‘Plus ten more that do it as well as other types of technology.’
I studied the map and pointed. ‘Tiger and Simone, see that one? That’s the specialty producer that’s furthest from Hong Kong, and it’s not clustered with the others.’ I turned to Simone. ‘This teleporting isn’t wearing you out, is it? We need you strong when we find it.’
‘Let’s go,’ Simone said, and she and the Tiger disappeared again, the Tiger’s beer left forgotten on the table.
Not here, Simone said. It’s closed up. Financial crisis, probably. The signs out the front say that it’s a joint venture with an American firm.
Passing on the location of the next furthest one away, Gold said.
On our way, Simone said.
‘So many firms folded up and blamed the GFC,’ Guang Ze said, ‘when in fact the owners just siphoned off all the funds and left. It’s disgusting.’
‘Corruption is a problem you just have to deal with,’ Bo Niang said.
‘How do you deal with it when you encounter it?’ Bi Tian Hua said, leaning forward with interest.
‘It depends on the situation,’ Bo Niang said. ‘If it’s a government official —’
Found it! the Tiger roared in my head. Holy fucking SHIT but this place is full of demons. Get your asses down here right now, there’s some serious fun brewing! Oh — I forgot. His beer disappeared off the table.
Simone reappeared. ‘Change to snake, Emma, I’ll carry you down. Everybody else can teleport.’
‘This is wearing you out too much,’ I said.
‘I’m fine,’ Simone said. ‘Change. If we don’t get down there right now the Tiger’ll go in solo and mess it all up.’
I changed to serpent, she touched my head, and we arrived in Shenzhen. The rest of the group appeared behind me; Bo Niang had changed to robes and armour, the same as Bi and Guang. Leo appeared in his wheelchair then changed to lion form and leapt out of it, tipping it over. Gold appeared as well, in battle form: his human shape made of stone.
The Tiger grinned when he saw us. ‘Good job.’
I changed back to human form and summoned the Murasame.
‘Waste of time,’ Simone said. ‘You kill anything with that, you’re converted. Better to come as snake.’
‘If I change again I’ll be weak; give me a chance to get my breath,’ I said.
‘Let’s go,’ the Tiger said, and walked up to the gates.
The complex was a set of rectangular concrete buildings in the modern Stalinist Chinese style: utilitarian and unrelentingly ugly. The only greenery was a few large pots containing nondescript plants heavily coated in dust and yellowed from the pollution. There was a single driveway entrance to the complex off the road, blocked by wire gates under a larger concrete gate structure in the wall. The gates were chained and padlocked, with an armed security guard on either side. The guards hadn’t seen us — one of the Shen must have made us invisible — but they appeared uneasy, glancing around.
‘Demon or human?’ I said.
‘Demon,’ the Tiger said. ‘Stand back.’
The guards crumpled to the ground and demon goo splattered everywhere.
‘Oh, good job letting them know we’re here,’ Bo Niang said.
‘They wouldn’t have had a chance to report back,’ the Tiger said. He raised one hand and the gates sprang open.
‘Camera,’ Gold said, and pointed at the CCTV camera above the gate. ‘Fixed. I’m in the network. I can see the other security cameras; not showing anything unusual. Not surprising, I suppose. If you have something nasty going on you don’t want anybody to see it.’
We went through the gates and they closed and locked behind us. A large sign just inside showed a map of the different buildings in the complex.
‘Four buildings,’ the Tiger said. ‘One dormitory. One administration. Two manufacturing.’ He turned to me. ‘Which one?’
‘Administration,’ I said.
He pointed at the four-storey building next to us. ‘That’s it.’
I changed to serpent. ‘Time to move. Zara and Calcite, stay here and guard the exits. Let us know if he tries to get out.’
‘Ma’am,’ they said, and shrank to tiny stones.
We charged into the reception area of the administration block entrance. Two demons in the form of pretty young women jumped up when they saw us, and Simone destroyed them with blasts of chi. We raced past the reception desk and crashed through the doors on the other side — which led into a large room with manufacturing assembly lines stretching away from us all the way to the other end of the building. We stopped to check whether the workers seated in the cheap student chairs at the assembly line were demons, and they all turned to look at us at the same time — all women with exactly the same face.
Simone gasped. ‘That is freaky.’
The women jumped up and came for us, arms outstretched. They weren’t armed and they weren’t high level, but their sheer force of numbers would slow us down.
Bo Niang summoned her slender jade sword, raised it horizontally above her head, held her other hand out in front of her and concentrated. The sword made a single pinging sound and all the demons froze.
‘How long will that last?’ the Tiger said.
‘Forever,’ Bo Niang said. ‘They are frozen in time. They can only be freed if I release them or if they are destroyed.’ She turned to see us. ‘Come back and destroy them later, it is the kindest thing.’
‘Deal,’ the Tiger said.
We ran to the other end of the building, through the rows of frozen identical demons. The stairwell was on the right, padlocked to stop the staff from escaping or passing free merchandise to outsiders. The Tiger broke the lock and we went up to the next floor. It was filled with cubicles, each one staffed by another identical demon. The cubicles had wide corridors between them, and a pole in the centre of each group of four cubicles that contained the electricals.
‘I can’t freeze these; it’s line of sight,’ Bo Niang said.
‘My turn,’ Guang Ze said.
He floated a metre off the floor and summoned his wind wheel beneath him. It spun, producing a blast of titanic air that blew the cubicle walls, desks, computers, everything into the walls. The demons hit the walls as well and splattered into demon essence. When all the demons were destroyed, Guang released the wheel and returned to the floor.
‘You should have kept it out, just in case,’ the Tiger said.
Four elementals crashed through the double doors at the other end of the building and stomped towards us: one water, one metal, one wood and one stone. They were all about the same size and roughly human-shaped, their heads brushing the high ceiling.
Bi Tian Hua raised both arms, his face went fierce and a bolt of lightning seared up through the pillars that had held the power conduits, across the ceiling and straight down through the tops of the elementals’ heads.
The wood elemental exploded in flames. The metal one changed into what appeared to be mercury and disintegrated outwards, coating everything around it with silvery goo. The water one swayed back slightly, but when the lightning ceased it moved towards us again. The stone one was completely unaffected.
‘Water is me,’ Simone said.
She stepped forward, raised one hand, dropped her head slightly and concentrated on the water elemental, her hazel eyes blazing. It stopped, seeming to stare at her with its featureless face, then took another hesitant step towards her.
‘Oh no, you don’t, you are mine,’ she said through her teeth. She clenched her fist and jerked it downwards. The elemental disintegrated into water and splashed over the floor.
‘Good job, little one,’ the Tiger said. ‘Where’d you learn that?’
‘CH, of course,’ she said. ‘One more that doesn’t seem to be bothered by any of us, and I’m weak to earth.’
‘On the contrary, ma’am, I don’t believe you’re weak to anything,’ Guang Ze said. ‘To arms, I think.’
The three generals summoned their swords and prepared to rush the stone elemental.
‘Let me,’ Gold said, and grew so that his stone form became as big as the stone elemental. He changed his arms to hammers, which grew impossibly long, swung out to the sides and crashed into the demon, crushing it. It fell to pieces.
‘Keep moving!’ the Tiger shouted. ‘We still have two more floors and it knows we’re here!’
‘We should teleport straight to the top floor,’ Leo said as we raced up the stairs.
‘Haven’t you tried already?’ the Tiger said.
Leo was silent a moment, then said, ‘I see.’
‘If enough of us work together we can stop others from teleporting in the vicinity,’ Guang Ze said. ‘But we can’t hold it forever.’
The stairs didn’t go up to the top floor so we entered the third floor instead. It was occupied by six polished-metal, high-technology machines, each about three metres cubed, their top half glassed in on three sides and holding a robot arm.
‘They look a bit like futuristic claw machines,’ Simone said. ‘All they need is a bunch of plushy Pokemon inside.’
‘Silicon wafer inscribers?’ Gold said. He went closer and studied one. ‘Aluminium platter etchers? No.’ He walked around it and peered at the control panel and screen. ‘I have no idea.’
‘I do,’ I said without moving. ‘Fake-elemental generators.’
Gold inhaled sharply. ‘Oh my.’
Simone squeaked and ran to one machine and grabbed the handle of the glass door, trying to pull it open. It wouldn’t budge and she pulled harder. Eventually the whole thing gave way and the glass shattered, falling in pieces around her. She reached inside the machine to pull out a blob of green liquid the size of a basketball and swirling with ribbons of creamy opaqueness.
She fell to her knees, ignoring the glass. ‘This is one of mine, and it’s dead,’ she said, desolate. ‘It killed one of my elementals.’
‘So that’s how it made them,’ I said. ‘It must have captured real ones and converted them into the fake ones.’
The Tiger stopped and concentrated. ‘Holy fuck, I never counted mine.’ He clenched his fists to his sides, then strode to one of the machines and punched it, making a huge dent in its metalwork. ‘This bastard is going to die!’
‘Why didn’t the elementals tell you?’ I said.
‘They can’t count!’ the Tiger and Simone said together.
‘Numbers mean nothing to them,’ the Tiger said, flexing the hand that had punched the machine. ‘They were unaware that their own numbers were disappearing. They have very little sense of self or individuality, and absolutely no idea how numbers work.’ He raised his head. ‘It’s up there waiting for us, and I really hope that it’s shitted its pants in terror.’ He grinned with malice. ‘Because this is not going to be quick.’
Simone strode to stand next to him. ‘Tell the others.’
‘I already have. The Phoenix says to do some serious damage on her behalf.
’
‘And the Dragon?’
The Tiger made a hissing sound of distaste. ‘He doesn’t give a fuck, the heartless bastard.’
‘The Jade Emperor will be just as pissed and he doesn’t have the freedom to rush down here and do what we can do,’ Simone said. She glanced up at the Tiger. ‘So, right now, it’s you and me, Bai Hu. Let’s show this demon exactly what happens to assholes who mess with our treasures.’
The Tiger dropped his head and concentrated, his tawny eyes wide, and raised his hands slightly. The machines melted around him, turning into steaming heaps of slag mixed with melted glass. ‘That’s what happens to them.’ He shook himself out. ‘Let’s go up.’
They both headed towards the other end of the room where a pair of lifts were set into the wall. We followed them. The Tiger put his hand over the button, then shook his head and went to the doors and wrenched them open. He stuck his head into the shaft and looked down and up.
‘Can’t move them,’ he said. ‘Power’s gone and the automatic braking system’s engaged.’
‘We can fly up,’ Simone said. ‘Easy.’
‘What about the Lion and the serpent?’ the Tiger said.
‘I can fly,’ Leo said.
Simone glanced at me. ‘I’ll carry you, Emma.’
‘She’s too big, don’t be stupid,’ the Tiger said, his head still in the lift shaft.
‘I can climb up the wires,’ I said.
The Tiger glanced back at me. ‘Seriously?’
I grew until I was about four metres long, stuck my head into the shaft and wrapped myself around the set of cables. ‘Seriously.’
I didn’t wait for them to reply; I slithered easily up the cables to the top and waited at the door. The Tiger floated up, raised one hand and blew the doors out. I stuck my head out and slithered onto the floor, everybody else following.
This floor was mostly offices and conference rooms around the edge of the building, with some cubicles in the centre. It was deserted.
The Tiger strode into the middle of the central space. ‘Come on out, my friend. If you turn, we will take you in.’
The demon appeared in the doorway of one of the offices. He looked about twenty-five and was overweight with a short ponytail. ‘If I turn, my sister will hunt me down and kill me.’
