by Sam Abraham
When she came up for air she saw columns of smoke. Drones flew overhead, firelight shining off their metal bodies as they rained death down on the city. But Li’s despair was cut by surprise as something swooped out of the night. Blades bit into her shoulder and she yelled in pain as she was lifted out of the lake. Li looked up and saw a hybrid gripping her with its talons, red characters running up its sinewy, scaled legs and abdomen. She watched the Xinren scan the battle with wide owl eyes and flap its four wings powerfully, lifting them above the skyline.
Li knew that the creature would only gain altitude for so long before dropping her. She grabbed its ankles, prying the hybrid’s claws from her shoulders. The raptor shrieked and shook its legs, trying to fling Li loose. But she hung on, the towers wobbling under her vertiginously. Far below, she could see tiny dots on the roofs downtown. Shen had assembled the lancers. Drone fire cut them down but Li knew they would only need a few seconds.
She pulled herself up the raptor’s leg and onto its feathered back. The hybrid fell into a barrel roll and the world corkscrewed around and around, but Li closed her eyes and hung on, wrapping her legs around the raptor’s torso. She managed to grab the metal collar penetrating the hybrid’s brainstem, which enabled the creature to command the drones with its thoughts.
Li pulled, forcing the synthetic bird to come out of its dive. It shrieked, flapping in the direction she was yanking it, towards the eastern hills. Li looked down with horror as the men on the roofs aimed long metal poles at the sky. Some pointed at her, rapt in awe as they watched their prophet fly over the warzone. “Move it, stupid chicken,” Li hissed as she fought the hybrid, coaxing its haphazard flight path over burning gardens.
Suddenly, there was a string of loud popping as the lancers below released a field of pellets that shot up into the clouds. Some of the tiny balls plinked off drones but most passed them harmlessly, and then they were gone. For a moment the sky was filled only with drones and the hiss of their missiles pounding the streets.
In the next second, the sky became a sea of lightning.
Jagged electric spears, arcing with silver and purple, rippled up from the rooftops and filled the entire valley with light. The peal of thunder shattered half the windows in the city. When it was over, the drones fell from the sky.
A great roar went up from the Jade forces as they saw the lifeless machines crash to earth. In minutes, the entire drone flotilla lay on the broken concrete streets, their hulls blackened and fried. Many rubbed their eyes, convinced that they had witnessed another miracle.
Their cheer was cut short as the River Syndicate infantry stormed into the pseudocity. But the Jade held the high ground. From the rooftops they fired down on the invading militia, splintering their forces. Soon the battle had degenerated into hot spots. Artillery from the hills rocketed in, crashing into buildings like meteors. Several towers collapsed, crumbling under their weight and sending out plumes of debris. And the pseudocity became a maelstrom of wet screaming flesh as the two armies collided.
The man called Han found Xie in the streets just east of the industrial zone. The One-Eyed Captain and his men had taken a cluster of buildings near Yushan Lake, grinding forward one street at a time. Han ran up to Xie’s position, gripping a pistol and a machete in hands that had only known privilege before becoming Jade. Xie was pinned behind a grounded drone as River Syndicate snipers punched slugs into the barricade, sending hot shrapnel flying.
“Any word of Lady Li?” Xie asked Han as the bullets bit into their cover.
Han shook his head, worried. “Scouts saw her go down into the mountains.”
“She’s on her own, then,” Xie yelled over explosions. “Shen’s brigade is combing through downtown, south of the Lake, cutting into the main force of the River Syndicate. The rest of us are circling around, through the resident hives, to flank them and finish this.”
As Xie spoke, a missile sailed over them and slammed into a storefront, and several Jade warriors exploded into meat. Xie and Han fired blindly around the barricade as another volley of rockets came down behind them, crashing in flames. Just ahead, a snapping waterfall of electricity from Jade lancers danced down the street and held the River Syndicate infantry back.
“Come on!” Xie yelled, grabbing Han’s arm. “We’re meat out here!”
Xie said a small prayer to the Lady in the Moon and sprinted back behind a singed office tower. Han followed, firing wildly behind him. They took cover where they could, joining twenty others hiding behind walls of concrete as rockets came down on drone wreckage, dead cars and broken buildings.
Xie saw red bloom down his pants but he felt no pain. Only when he turned did he see the mess of intestines that once had been a boy. Han saw the boy’s split body too, wet loops of his organs spilling out onto the ground, and doubled over to vomit. Xie grabbed Han by the collar and tore him away from the corpse.
They ran along the broken office park, through the smoke and debris. All Xie could hear was the blood in his ears. He waved his men forward and they followed him blindly, through flickering light and shadow. Near the edge of another broken building the smoke was thin enough to see silhouettes of soldiers.
They were carrying lances. The men were Jade.
As Xie and his men followed, he realized that it seemed like forever since artillery had come crashing down.
Now they were in a wide park flanked by towers. Trees were splintered, and gardens were ashen. Sudden gunfire flashed as a lonely battledrone peppered the air with bullets, but several Jade warriors evaded and leapt onto the robot, climbing up its joints and punching it with fists like sledgehammers until the drone toppled. Soon the drone was covered in warriors who ripped off its armor plating with their bare hands.
Around them, charred grass was filled with River Syndicate militia in gray uniforms, sitting in the dirt, hands on their heads. Xie saw Jade warriors covered in dust and blood, cheering and praying. He turned to watch Han walk some paces away, kneel to the ground and weep for the boy who had died.
In the middle of the park was a squat government complex with fluttering red flags. Shen was there, ordering warriors to take the flags down, and in their place raise strips of white and green cloth. Beside Shen, a girl in white stretched out her hands and let out a ululating cry. Han and a thousand others bowed down, prostrating themselves before their prophet.
Soon Xie was the only Jade warrior standing in the field, unable to take his eyes from his goddess. Then he remembered his humble station and lowered his head, giving thanks that the Lady in the Moon had prevailed.
Chapter 27 – Yi (頤)
Let Your Magic Tortoise Go
From under the holo, the Shanghai sky was the color of melting sapphires.
Eli and Zoe stood upon the rail of the Song Eater, a pleasure barge that floated lazily down the Huangpu as the river cut Shanghai in half. She was a gorgon of a boat, a five-story yacht with red globes that hovered off its ivory hull. Fifty people gathered on the stern deck, not counting the string quintet.
Eli’s suit fit him like a second silk skin, as he sipped champagne and watched the Bund slide by. Other barges passed them, smaller vessels owned by billionaires that could only be called dinghies compared to the Song Eater’s three decks and mantiscraft pad. Then again, Eli supposed, everything seemed small next to the skyscrapers on the Pudong waterfront. The Superscraper City district of Lujiazui upstaged itself, each tower taller than the last, Jin Mao and Shanghai Tower, the Ritz and the Wing, all draped with their shining glass gowns. It seemed to Eli that the customs house and old colonials on the opposite riverbank were allowed to remain just so that the towering spires of Pudong could overshadow them, and remind them that the era of foreign imperialism was over forever.
But then, Eli thought, even the superscrapers were upstaged by Zoe. She had slipped into a dress with animated chrysanthemums blooming as she talked up the director of the local ORS affiliate.
“Mr. Warner,” the man said as the string qui
ntet’s sonata faded softly, “Dr. Chou tells me that the device is fully operational. Can you confirm the data?”
Eli produced a bead, the product of nearly a month of analysis. “This proves that the device would be profitable at commercial scale. It’s been sent to our beautiful colleagues,” he said, the reference to ‘beautiful’ a play on words hinting at American buyers. It would have been dangerous to even think such a thing, if invisible ears listening were not already in on the action.
“We will know for sure when the device is received. But first,” the man said, pocketing the bead and straightening his lapels, “we need to complete the transaction on this side. Come.” And he led them inside, past the champagne highbrows.
Eli and Zoe followed him below decks, where the man knocked on a door hung with silk tapestries. They were ushered into a wide room at the bow, with a pink-tinted window curling along the hull. From it, the river could be seen crawling with pleasure boats under a rose petal sky.
Eli snapped his attention to the three men and two women seated at a boardroom table. Behind them stood a ring of priceless porcelain, and ceremonial bearded guards in lavish crimson armor. But it was clear that the five figures at the center were the source of gravity.
One of those seated at the table was a slender girl wearing a rare, expensive weatherdress sewn from animate vapor that curled clouds over her lithe body. To her left was an old crone wearing emerald bangles and a silk cheongsam embroidered with jewels. The three men wore dark robes with embroidered holos of animals, white crane and bear and salamander. All five wore masks of painted porcelain, with contour cheekbones and pouting lips. While four of the masks had patterns of lacquered white, the last was totally black, revealing only the shine of cybernetics through the eyeslits.
“Pardon the intrusion,” their escort said. “Here are the guests you requested.” He left hastily, leaving Eli and Zoe to stand before the gang of masks.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Zoe said.
“The Yellow River Company always shows guests hospitality,” one of the men said, his mask morphing with his face. “Ah, but you are looking for something more.”
“Remind me of the account?” said another of the men, as the wire rims of his mask furrowed.
“ORS, Incorporated,” Zoe obliged.
“Yes,” said the mask with curling wire rims. “We have been providing you laundry services for many years. Quite a nice return. The balance has dwindled recently, though.”
“Do you plan on depositing more?” said the man in the black mask with shining eyes.
Zoe looked at Eli, who gave a slight nod, and said, “Two hundred and thirty billion Yuan.”
The masks looked at each other. “What are we buying?” the crone said.
“Is it wiser if we do not know,” the young woman interjected, “and only asked how to help?”
Eli cleared his throat and spoke in sibilant Shanghainese, the tones coming to him as they had in his childhood. “Please forgive my poor words,” he said. “In two weeks there will be a meeting, between the inventor of a device and our colleagues, who wish to buy it. If you would be so kind to hold the funds in escrow as a neutral party to show our good faith, then the buy can go forward as planned.”
The mask in the center seemed to consider the plan and smiled, clasping his fingers. “Arrangements will be made."
“Of course,” the old woman said, almost as an afterthought, “your inventor is a Dr. Yang, and your technology is in the Anhui Ghost Lands, is it not? Behind those freaks calling themselves the Jade. Our sources say Yang has not left Anqing, where there is no longer an airport, and where the Army has sent orders to fire on any aircraft leaving the province.” She waited in silence, fluttering her fan.
“You are very well informed,” Eli said, pushing down cold fear.
“It is good business to know one’s customers,” the mask in the center said. “We would not want to go to the trouble of cleaning billions without assurances that the meet will at least happen. If we know where Yang is, then the authorities do as well. How will your inventor get to Shanghai?”
Eli was about to speak, but Zoe held up her hand. “The fewer people who know, the better,” she said. “Just leave Yang to us. We vouch for his safe arrival in Shanghai by the end of next week.”
“Well then,” the mask in the center said. “There is no problem. The deal will move forward.”
“Thank you,” Eli said. “We’ll see to it that all the arrangements are made.” He led Zoe from the room, whispering in her ear as they walked back down the hall.
When the doors had closed, the man in the center pointed at the man in the black mask. “Keep those two on a short leash,” he said as the pink petal Bund floated by. “Find out what we are buying. And once we know, I trust you can make sure no one will miss them.”
Chapter 28 – Da Guo (大過)
White Rushes Underneath
Jia Anmei found the bandit Sun in the hills above the Holy Lake, with a row of Jade lancers.
“Charge!” Sun shouted. The warriors pulled their lances upward. Slowly, the tips began to hum, vibrating as they pulled ions off of high-energy molecules produced by longhsui. Then Sun shouted, “Release!” And as the lancers let go of triggers, the tips of their weapons crackled to life. Sparks arced and the charge shot out in a blinding bolt of jagged electricity that sailed more than a kilometer over the lake.
Anmei took her hands from her eyes, and marveled at how Dr. Yang had adapted the longshui to give the Jade the power of lightning. No wonder the legend had spread.
The Holy Lake was more frenzied than Anmei remembered. Migrants had come by the thousands, spilling over the mountains with nothing but dirty rags, homeless and hungry. They were taken in, their possessions claimed by guards who patrolled the hills. And after they were baptized in the lake, their shoulders were tattooed and they were granted three boons: a set of clothes bleached in white, a parcel of acidic water, and a wafer to receive the Holy Communion. And they ate of the body of Chang’e and felt saved, and thousands became tens of thousands throughout the Purified Territories.
“Very impressive,” Anmei said as her vision recovered from the lightning strike. “Surely your enemies cannot win against such power.”
Sun grunted. “Did you climb up all this way for smalltalk?”
Anmei smiled. “Would you like to know where Yang’s wife and son are?” she asked gently.
The bandit looked at her strangely. “Yang told me they fled the flood and he had not seen them since. Patrols are searching for them.”
“That’s interesting,” she said, “I hear that they are in Suzhou, hiding in an ancient house near Taihu Archipelago.”
“That’s impossible,” Sun said brusquely. “Why would someone tell you such things?”
Anmei smiled again, controlling her expression carefully. “What happens to you, to all this—“ She looked out at the dead skyscrapers poking from the surface of the lake, “—if Yang leaves?”
The bandit gave her a dirty look, and told the men to keep drilling. He pulled one man to the side and whispered to him something that Anmei could not hear. She only saw that he looked surprised and scared and raised his hand in salute to Sun a little too slowly.
As they drove down the hill to the longshui factory, Anmei caught Sun watching trucks driving along the shore of the lake, as if he realized suddenly that he did not know where the trucks were headed.
At the factory they took the freight elevator to the observation room. Engineers in lab coats were taking readings of the longshui core, the sphere’s green glow reflecting on their faces. Around them, holos projected images of the conductor factory, its vats and assembly line. Sun shoved past them, grumbling as he entered Yang’s office, replete with tapestries and porcelain.
“Not now,” the professor said, pointing to his ear. “I’m on a call.”
“Is that right?” Sun said, walking over to Yang and punching him in the face.
; Yang stumbled out of his chair, hitting his head on the armoire behind him. Rubbing his scalp gingerly and picking up his glasses, the professor looked at the bandit with a mix of anger and fear. “Have you gone mad?” Yang said.
“You don’t make decisions here anymore,” Sun hissed, and leaned over Yang. “Only Li Aizhu, Lady in the Moon, commands me.”
Yang looked at Anmei. “Did you put him up to this? What did you tell him?”
“The truth,” Anmei said. “Your family is not missing. You lied to everyone. Why?”
Sun looked at her blankly. Then he flew into a rage, grabbed a tea cup from a teak table and hurled it at the wall. It shattered, sending tiny shards flying. “Don’t answer her,” the bandit growled. “You don’t talk to anyone unless I say so first.” Men with pulsers stormed into the professor’s office. “I’m sick of taking orders from you, Yang. Wolves do not bow before rats.”
Two men picked up Dr. Yang and forced his hands behind his back. Sun turned to Anmei. “Spit it out,” he said.
“What are you going to do with him?” Anmei said, trying to sound curious and detached. Inside her cold façade, she wondered if she had made a mistake.
Sun shrugged and picked at his fingernails. “Execute him. Painfully.”
Anmei cursed inside, and pulled her only other card. “Before he hands over the money?”
Sun perked up. He looked at Yang, who was shaking his head. Then the bandit walked towards Anmei, forcing her back until her she was against the office wall. “Talk,” he said.
“My humblest apologies,” Anmei said. “I thought you were all in on it.”
