Jade Dragon

by James Swallow

  There, they picked through the remains of the failed summoning, they read the cantrips and reviewed the splinters of tape that had not been obliterated in the thermal bloom. They came to understand the mistakes that had been made. Tze, in particular, had embraced the challenge with the fresh, untrammelled zeal of a convert. It was nothing less than the key to the mastery of the human soul that was being offered to them. It dwarfed the dreams of empire that Tze nursed. The Great Ones offered not just the earthly powers of prowess, of wealth and influence—those Tze had earned already—but more. The road marked out by the King of Rapture was the gateway to lordship over the most primal of human emotions; desire.

  Tze felt that now, a need so great it made his blood ache. It was sweet, a perfect salve for the ills that had coloured his existence. Oh, his had not been a life of tragic circumstances and terrible hardship, far from it. Tze had grown to manhood in the bosom of a moneyed mainland clan, fed and educated with the finest that could be bought. It was there he had come to understand the full might of intemperance, that the majesty of a man flowed not just from the breadth of his appetites, but also from the extremes to which he would be willing to take them. It was only on the edges of what lesser types called “morality”, beyond abstract, foolish concepts like “ethics” where a man could honestly know himself. And in that knowing would come mastery, not just of the self, but of others. All others.

  He had no words for it then, in the days when they called him Black Tze behind his back, and scattered like birds when he came to take prey. But it made him strong; and eventually Tze came into the orbit of people who could open the way to him. The Gates of Sensation unlocked to his touch, and the ennui that had threatened to engulf him was wiped away. So much had changed since then. Tze’s marriage to the Cabal was a second birth, a gift giving that he would soon repay with the lives of the world.

  He pressed his hands to the window. It was fitting that it would begin here, birthing from the skies above this city. When it was done, when Hong Kong was ablaze as New Gomorrah, he would be the one to ride the Jade Dragon’s back and take the first succulent taste of the world’s fresh terror.

  The light outside the lift vanished as the elevator dropped past the lobby atrium and through the basement sublevels. Tze caught a warped glimpse of his own face in the darkness beyond the glass and paused to wipe a thin line of drool from the corner of his mouth with a silk handkerchief.

  With a chime, the lift doors opened and the Masks moved with him into the underground car park. Tze took three steps from the elevator before he stopped abruptly. “Intruder…”

  It was only when he hid himself in the back of the delivery truck that Ko realised Feng wasn’t with him. He threw a worried glance up at the gap beneath the roller door and saw the swordsman as the vehicle pulled from the kerb. Feng turned his face away, like he was sad and angry all at once.

  For a moment Ko was upset, but then he mashed that feeling down with the hammer of his churning rage. One thought of Nikita beneath the webs of life-support sensors and he was high with fury The anger had shifted and changed since he left the hospital. At first impotent and directionless, the call from the salaryman had provided him with sudden, perfect clarity. Now Ko was aimed like a laser, he had a name to give form to his pain. This Mr Tze, this phantom creep with his cashwhore flunkies, he was where the blame lay. That the guy on the phone from the expressway might have been playing him, maybe lying to Ko to get him jumping through hoops, that was something that the go-ganger never gave a moment to consider. This was not a matter of careful reflection and thought. Ko was a loosed missile, homing in on a target. He could not see past the moment of his rage’s release, destruction looming large in his mind. The thief had never felt the urge to commit murder so strongly in his entire life. Every other consideration was secondary to that.

  Vengeance. This man is going to pay.

  In a back street lock-up in So Uk, he turned over crates of old engine parts and cartons of fake Peacefuls cigarettes, dragging an oily toolbox from a shadowed corner. Inside there were two Beretta automatics and fistfuls of hollowpoint bullets rolling loose. Generally, guns were a last-ditch tool for go-gangers, the street punk code short on firearms and long on bare-hand fighting or bladed weapons. It was a holdover from when the gun was seen as a badge, something you earned the right to carry only when you stepped up to join the Bamboo Union or the 14K as a Red Pole. The triads and the cops didn’t like the gangers having guns; those were toys for the big boys. Ko loaded all the clips he had and weighed the weapons in his grip. The gun oil smell reminded him of his father, but he forced away any thought of that before the man’s face could fully form in his mind’s eye. In the back of the truck, he took out the guns again and looked at them. They hadn’t been fired for months, lying there in the dark wrapped in greasy rags, and now it was too late to test them.

  Ko raised the weapons to shoulder height and sighted down the barrels. He had seen a picture of Tze, just once, on the cover of the HK Herald. He remembered it clearly because it was such a rarity, some photographer catching a split-second glimpse of the man. There had been a story that the guy who took the still vanished off the street the following day; so it went, the Herald had been sent more pictures, this time of the photographer, but not in the kind of state they could print in a national newspaper.

  Ko’s face was a mask of concentration. He drew his focus inward, waiting. Now he lived on a clock from second to second, his mind framed on that face and nothing else. The robot truck rumbled through the security gate of the Yuk Lung tower and rolled down the incline to the lower levels.

  “Tze!” Ko burst from the shadows of a concrete stanchion close to the CEO’s idling limo and opened fire, the pistols slamming out shots.

  Deer Child reacted instantly, dragging Tze behind him and stepping into the line of the fire. Many of Ko’s bullets went wide, smashing into the walls and skipping off the limo, but a handful of rounds struck the chest of the bodyguard and a single shot fractured the perfect sheen of Deer Child’s porcelain opera mask. The guardian stumbled backwards, bleeding heavily.

  One of the Berettas made a high-pitched noise and jammed. Ko let it drop and kept on firing, brass casings glinting as they ejected into the air.

  Blue Snake produced a series of throwing knives from concealed wrist holsters and threw them at Ko. The kid was quick enough to dodge one, but not enough to avoid the second. The lightweight stiletto hit Ko in the sternum and threw him to the ground with the force of a freight train. Ko lost the other gun and lay there, wheezing.

  Seconds had elapsed. Tze disentangled himself from Deer Child’s twitching form and found the duty security officer; neither he nor his men had got off a shot.

  “Sir, I—” he began, his face flushed. Blue Snake had another knife, and she slit the man’s throat with it. Tze walked on to where Ko had fallen. He paused to brush a speck of lint off his suit as Blue Snake hauled the youth off the ground.

  Tze examined him. “Ah, the folly of youth.” He leaned closer. “Do you know why no one ever tries to take me out, boy?” He smiled. “Because no one is that stupid. Except you, of course.”

  “Go,” Ko managed. “Fuck yourself.” He spat a mouthful of blood and spittle into Tze s face.

  The older man carefully wiped it away, and then licked his fingers, smiling. “That fat fool running the 14K… I think perhaps he can earn his way back into my good graces with this little urchin.”

  “Sir?” said Blue Snake.

  “Take this interloper to the docks and tell Hung I want an example made of him.”

  Frankie started as his car rolled to a halt. He saw someone being bundled into a vehicle, bodies under sheets, and blood on the tarmac. “What the hell?”

  Tze approached, smiling. “Don’t be concerned, Francis. Just a small security incident. A trespasser.”

  He saw a face, just in the instant before the car door slammed, heard a string of gutter swearing. Oh shit. I know that voice. The car t
hief.

  Tze patted him on the shoulder. “Take care of things here, will you? I have some business to attend to in the city.”

  Frankie watched them go, the stink of fresh cordite and violence in his nostrils.

  The distinctive colourations of Chinese Opera masks have a series of layered significances that go beyond the mere portrayal of a given character. A blue face (such as that seen on Xia Houdun) is indicative of someone possessing the traits of dedication, ferocity and shrewdness; a green face (like Zheng Wun) means the character is reckless, likely prone to sudden violence and a surly nature; figures like Guan Yu (a noted Chinese warrior) bear a red mask, which highlights the soldierly traits of fidelity, valour, heroism and decency; yellow (such as Tu Xingsun) indicates a level-headed person but also someone with the qualities of ferocity and determination; black masks like that of Judge Bao Gong indicate selflessness as well as a coarse, aggressive manner; white (traditionally a colour associated with death in the Far East) marks the villain of the piece, highlighting the sly and the wily, the underhand and treacherous (such as the fiendish Qin Hui); finally, the special colourations of gold and silver are employed only on characters who come from beyond the human realm, such as gods and ghosts. The function of the mask in these plays is not only to provide cultural cues to the audience but also to establish a palette of known archetypes, in stories that form a key part of the myths of the Chinese people. On some level, the masks create an aura of power for the performer wearing them, a way in which they can subsume themselves into the role and tap into the pure strengths of the character.

  Excerpt from Painted Faces, Swords and Gods: The Mythology of Chinese Opera by Georgina Golightly

  10. Warriors Two

  The executive operations suite was decorated in the style of a stately English library, heavy with polished teak and mahogany, rich with deep oxblood leather chairs and brass lamps. Ornate desks lined the walls between subtle privacy dividers. Only the screens seemed out of place, and even those had been disguised in wood mounts similar to portrait frames. The keyboards were hidden in the leather blotters on the surface of the desks, illuminating from below when Frankie took his seat. The other men in the room were subvocalising into hidden microphones, but Frankie disabled the voice circuit and got to work typing.

  Under his cuff he had a piece of tissue on which he had scribbled a dozen strings of numbers. Code keys copied from the data spike that Alan had left concealed for him, these were permissions that allowed entry into parts of the Yuk Lung mainframe that would normally be far outside of his sphere of influence. Frankie had not dared to bring the precious needle with him, or even to upload the smallest part of its contents to another computer. He was afraid to contaminate himself with the material, at least until he had a clearer idea of what his brother had been doing with it. It seemed quaintly low-tech of him to actually jot the codes down on a scrap of paper instead of entering them on his PDA.

  The files. What he had glimpsed in there made him shiver. Alan appeared to have been making two distinct collections of information. The largest of the two was broad in scope, a collation of details on YLHI’s corporate battle plans, notes on what investments they would be buying and selling in the next year. It held highly secret reports on the performance of the conglomerate’s subdivisions, the sort of data that a rival like Eidolon or NeoGen could easily use against them. The second, smaller file was more eclectic. It consisted mostly of laboratory reports fromYuk Lung’s genetics labs on the mainland, some peculiar transcripts from ancient tablets, metallurgical scans of meteor fragments, even audio samples that sometimes seemed like music, other times like voices. Frankie had almost given up with paging through it until he saw his own name amid an indecipherable block of medical-speak. Alan’s name was there too, along with a couple of other people from their graduating class. The others, he had heard, were dead now. Something about an accident in the wilds, a company team-building exercise that went badly wrong.

  What were you doing, brother? Frankie asked the question over and over. The planning files, that was the kind of stuff that a man would assemble if he were thinking about jumping ship. With that information in his hands, Alan could have struck a deal with any of the Big Six Multinats, got them to exfiltrate him from YLHI and set him up somewhere with a new identity and a billionaire lifestyle. But why would he? Yuk Lung had been very good to Alan Lam, so why would he ever turn on them? Frankie was sure that the answer to that question was in the second set of files, if only he could comprehend it.

  He entered the codes, licking dry lips. On the screen, pools of information filled, presenting themselves for his examination. If the data on the spike had been the first trickle, then this was the flood. Frankie cast a look around, fearful that he would be seen for what he was doing; but none of the other men paid any attention to him, all of them engaged in their own private infospheres.

  Frankie pushed on, beginning a search protocol using himself as the subject. Layers of files fanned open, some of them the ones on the data spike; but there were others. He started to read.

  Ko’s face met asphalt and he rolled into it, grit scraping the skin of his cheeks. He tried to right himself, but with his hands strapped together behind his back it was nearly impossible. A random boot met his thigh with a shocking impact and he let out a grunt of pain. Strong hands took hold of his arms and dragged him off the ground. As much as he tried, his attention was fixed on the three inches of stainless steel protruding from his breastbone. Each breath he took was a lungful of razors.

  All at once his hands were free as they flapped uselessly at his sides. Ko wobbled unsteadily, taking in what he could through eyes gummed with dried blood. Blue Snake’s associates had not been careful with the youth as they stuffed him into the back of the town car.

  He smelt saline, diesel oil, the faint stinks of old rot and rust. He could make out boxy shapes all around in bright primary colours, the building blocks of some giant toddler. Distantly, the rumble of robo-trucks reached his ears.

  A familiar voice crossed him. “Ah, Ko. What did you do this time?”

  “Rikio? That you?” he asked thickly. Blood was working its way back into Ko’s hands and he wriggled them, fighting off pins and needles. By painful inches, his vision began to unfog.

  Rikio shook his head, the same Ushanti SMG still glued to his side. “I warned you about this. I told you, you don’t get with someone, you’re against everyone. Out in the cold.”

  Ko shivered involuntarily. “Didn’t spect you to understand. About honour, see? Man drugged my sister!”

  “You’re an idiot. What, did you reckon you could just tippy-toe up to a zaibatsu warlord and pop him like some yokel right off the ferry? That’s your problem. You don’t think.”

  “Got close,” he said lamely.

  “Yeah. You go right on believing that.” The Red Pole looked away to where the woman in the suit and the blue opera mask was holding an intense conversation with Big Hung. The old man had a rock solid expression of displeasure. One of Hung’s men approached and pointed at Ko.

  “Boss is sick of looking at this maggot,” snapped the guy. “Put him in a can for the time being.” Rikio began to march Ko away, but the other man halted him. “Just a sec.” He reached down to Ko’s chest and jerked the knife out. “She wants her blade back.”

  Ko fell in a heap, pain flashing through him and blood spreading under his fingers.

  “What we gonna do with him?” he heard Rikio say.

  The reply was disinterested. “Probably just some waste disposal, nothing serious.”

  At first it seemed like bloodwork, more medical stuff, the kind of paperwork that any corporation would keep on an employee. But there was just so much of it. Frankie found the reports from his quarterly health checks at the LA office, all of them stretching back to his very first posting there—but there were layers of other files, dates that didn’t tally up to visits to the clinic or the dentist. He saw reports that spoke of “bio-surveillan
ce” and found fluoroscopes of hair samples, soiled chopsticks, stool samples and Band-Aids. In the most recent he came across a polymorphic scan of a used toothbrush that had gone in the trash a couple of weeks back. Some anonymous lab somewhere had dismantled it and done intensive DNA sweeps of the cell material he’d left behind. There were workups on women that he’d dated, spectrum analysis of their physiology and intensive scrutiny of their sexual histories.

  Unnerved, he read on. Frankie expected the file to end with his very first medical at the corporate academy, but it was the tip of the iceberg. The data went back and back and back, through his teens and his childhood, every broken bone and skinned knee, every schoolboy illness and sick day; and still it did not stop. There were bloodline charts, great multileveled things spread like inverted trees, root systems of birth, death and marriage unfolding down through the generations. He stopped, trying to steady the shaking in his hands. Yuk Lung had not only tracked every living moment of Frankie’s life, but that of Alan and the whole of the Lam family ancestry. He flicked down the scroll bar, hopping decades in an instant, rolling back hundreds of years. Still the pages unfurled, through the dynasties of ancient China and into the haze of pre-history. He halted the file with a gesture and swallowed hard, the acid taste of bile burning in his throat.

  His own company, his own corporate faction had been shadowing him to a level far beyond the bounds of normality, like some omnipresent stalker peering back into the past. He felt naked and sickened.

  After a moment Frankie’s eyes focussed on a pop-up window at the side of the screen. It was more of the same, layer upon layer of G-T-A-C coding, but the form of it was different. A blinking tag linked this separate page with Frankie’s, some vague connection that he couldn’t read from the reams of medical jargon. He recognised the name at the top, though. There was no way he couldn’t have.