EMPATHY: Part 8
Gina’s body rested on a pile of soft leaves. Golden sunlight played through the lush, green forest canopy above her. There was no wind, however, not a leaf moving out of place. Gina noticed the strange silence, completely barren of animal life. The air itself had a familiar dreamlike quality to it.
Gina eyed her surroundings for a minute, then sat up and said, “Again?”
This time there was no one there. No Gabriel, no one else, just her. Her feet made no sound when she came upright, looking around the fuzzy forest glade. The ground seemed solid enough to walk on, but the dirt and leaves never sunk or crumpled, just motionlessly supported her weight in stark opposition to the laws of physics. It was more like a photograph of a place, not a real location at all.
As she reached the edge of the glade, faint sounds piqued her interest. Water. Soft, rolling murmur of ocean waves. She made her way down the incline towards the sound, and when she reached the bottom, the forest fell away on both sides.
Gina was on a beach. Again, the sand refused to take footprints, but at least here was something moving. The ocean was blue, alive and beautiful.
A woman stood ankle-deep in the water. The surf lapped calmly at her feet, and she stood staring out across the sea, her arms at her sides and her hands balled into fists. Great red wounds were torn into her body, but there were no bones or organs inside. The only thing that came out was blood, slowly trickling down her legs to mingle with the waves.
The woman was stark naked, Gina realised, and so was she. She felt a sudden burning moment of self-consciousness, but then it was torn away as recognition hit Gina like a sledgehammer.
“I’ve always loved this place,” the woman said in a husky, knowing voice that Gina knew all too well.
Gina opened and closed her mouth a few times, stammered, “Onu?”
“Gina.” Onounu waved goodbye to the ocean, then turned to Gina with a warm smile and hugged her fiercely. The wounds on her body were gone, disappeared, without so much as a stain remaining. “I was hoping you’d call.”
“But you can’t be here,” Gina argued weakly, lost in the surreality. “You’re in Shanghai . . .”
Onounu shook her head. “No need to worry about that now. I’m here to help you, that’s all that matters.”
“What’s going on? What is this place?”
“Difficult to explain. It’s a recording I made, just in case. I wanted to make sure I could reach you if I . . . couldn’t talk to you in person.”
“Couldn’t what? What do you mean?” Disentangling herself from Onounu’s arms, Gina stepped back and looked at the woman in front of her, and a terrible sense of dread squeezed tight around her heart. “You . . . You . . .”
“I know. I’m dead. That’s the bad news.”
Tears fogged Gina’s eyes from the horrible sense of loss that nearly overwhelmed her. She sank back into Onounu’s embrace, clinging to the image of her friend for comfort. “Oh my God . . .”
Onounu stroked Gina’s hair and said, “Hush, girl. You’ll have plenty of time to grieve for me later. Listen to me, I can’t keep you here for long and we need to talk.” She took Gina’s hands and squeezed them gently. “Hang in there, just for a while, okay?”
Gina looked up at her, saw the pleading in Onounu’s otherworldly brown eyes, and knew that she couldn’t afford fall apart now. It took strength she didn’t know she had, but somehow she willed herself back together.
“Okay,” she said at last, forcing herself to pay attention. “I’m listening.”
Taking Gina’s hand, Onounu led her across the beach to a high, narrow wooden house, its bright blue paint flaking slowly in the wind. Gina’s eyes stung at the sight of it, but she kept walking. The doorway was open. Its shattered door lay outside on the gallery. Gina followed Onu inside, looked at her bare feet walking across the broken glass without discomfort. She spotted an old brick of a phone in the corner of the main hallway, and it seemed to be playing back a tape without sound.
“This is where we died,” Onu said tranquilly.
“How?”
“Bullets, mostly.” She smiled at her own gallows humour. “He was there.”
Gina knew instantly who she meant by ‘he’. The well of dark emotions inside her stirred, and she choked, “It’s my fault. I got you into this.” The words just made her want to cry. “I’m so sorry.”
A sharp squeeze of her shoulder brought Gina back to attention, and she found herself staring in confusion into Onounu’s businesslike expression. “Let’s face facts, Gina. You may not have known what you were bringing, but I had my suspicions. We were doomed the second I let you cross my doorstep. Don’t have any illusions about that. You’re my friend, you needed help, and I’d do it all again. Guilt profits no one. Right now, I need you to know what happened.”
Onounu closed her eyes, and suddenly her forehead split open to reveal a third eye, white and blind and wise beyond comprehension. Motion sickness overcame Gina, and she bent over retching, until a hand dragged her back upright and she found herself staring into Gabriel’s face.
She sat on her knees in front of him, holding her bruised ribs. Gabriel radiated sympathy as he squatted down to face her up close. His gentle fingers stroked the hair from her eyes and the blood from her lips.
“I’m sorry my men treated you so badly,” he said. “They were under the impression that you’d know where I can find someone. A girl by the name of Gina. She’s travelling with a man, brown hair, average height, average build. Goes by the alias ‘Simon’.”
“No,” said Onounu’s voice, struggling to speak through her swollen lips. Everything hurt.
Gabriel stared into her. She resisted it with every ounce of her strength, and his eyes widened in surprise as he found himself stopped unexpectedly for a moment. Then — gently, with respect — he pushed down her will to strip her bare. And found his answers. He couldn’t look away from her, utterly crestfallen. The disappointment in his eyes seemed to lash at her very core, hurting her far more than any beating could’ve done. He looked down, saying, “You really don’t know, do you?”
She shook her head. In that moment, her heart nearly burst with pity and love for this man, and she would have done anything for him. Anything. She knew she’d lost, and she didn’t care.
Sound of glass shattering. One of the men in Onounu’s vision went down in a spray of blood, machine gun bullets tearing through the air in a hurricane of death. Gabriel let out an unmanly sound of surprise and dove for cover, cursing under his breath, pulling Onounu with him. He seemed chagrined by the whole situation, that someone managed to get the drop on him.
“Shit,” he said. “Didn’t feel them coming. Time to get the hell out of here, gentlemen. Bring the women along, I don’t want anything happening to them.”
Another rip of gunfire. The bullets simply blew through the walls as if they weren’t there, and the upturned table in front of Onounu exploded in a shower of deadly splinters. Time seemed to slow down as they pierced into her, her body thrown backwards by the force of their impact. The next thing she knew, Gabriel knelt over her with pity in his eyes, half-obscured by a red smear of blood over her eyes.
A cold voice boomed from outside, “This is the Federal Police. Surrender now. We won’t ask again.”
“You never asked in the first fuckin’ place,” Gabriel growled under his breath while he waved his remaining men out the back door. To Onu, he sighed, “Things never go according to plan, do they?” With her last remaining strength, she managed to touch his knee, and he nodded. “I’ll give her your love.”
Gina became herself again as the vision went black, found herself back in the house alone with Onounu. The terrible emotions left her breathing hard and ready to break down crying.
“He broke me, just like that,” Onounu whispered. Shame and horror carved dark lines in her face. “Not with torture. Not with hate or malice. Gently.”
There was nothing Gina could say. Nothing she could do to make it better. So she stayed quiet and bit back her tears. At length Onounu collected herself and resumed her determined look. She continued, “I needed to warn you, so I made this before I died. You’re going to come up against him, Gina. I wasn’t strong enough. You’re going to have to be stronger.”
Sudden despair filled Gina at the thought. “You’re joking. How could I be? You were stronger than me, you always were.”
“I’ve been working on something to help you. After you showed me that artifact in your head, I thought you might need it. Come on outside, listen.”
They went out onto the beach together, and Gina felt the soft rustle of the waves wash over her. But that was all she could hear. She started to look around, wondering what Onu meant, and then she really heard the ocean for the first time.
A soft melody played in the rush of the water, each wave a different instrument. Together they played something Gina knew she’d heard before, like shreds of a song that she’d once listened to but couldn’t quite remember. It refused to take a solid form in her mind.
“Remember the tune,” Onu said. “It’ll help you.”
“What does it do?”
She giggled, “That’d be telling.” But when Gina threw her a look, her twinkling eyes gave in, and she amended, “You’ll know when you need it. Trust me. I don’t have time to explain.” She glanced over her shoulder at a point far down the beach, stared at it for a while. Then, “I’ve got to go now. Mashei’s waiting for me.”
“No!” Gina reacted violently. “Stay. I need you with me.”
“I wish I could, girl, but it’s not up to me.”
“Please,” Gina whined, her voice cracking, and clung tight to Onu’s hands. “I don’t want you to be gone.”
The smile on Onounu’s face was the most heartbreaking thing Gina had ever seen. She said, “We’ll be fine, Gina. Let me go.”
The long, slender hand fell from Gina’s grasp, and Onounu expelled a heavy sigh before she set off down the beach. Gina stayed behind.
“Onu?” Gina said softly after only a few steps.
Onounu turned. “Yes, Gina?”
“One last thing . . .” She hugged her elbows and studied Onounu’s face as she asked, “Why am I naked?”
“Oh. Um.” Onu flashed a mischievous and slightly guilty smile. “I always wanted to see. You know, just once before I kicked off.” She shrugged, blushing. “Sorry.”
Gina couldn’t resist a smile. That was Onounu, all right.
“See you around,” she said.
“I’d be worried if you do,” murmured Onounu. “Goodbye.”
Drowsiness overcame her as she watched Onounu’s tall, stately figure recede into the distance.
She woke up encased in a bubble of soft rubber and a throbbing headache. The first thing she saw was a line of text dancing in front of her eyes, saying, “User timeout exceeded. Connection closed.”
She lifted the VR crown off her head and put it back on its cradle. The ‘Please return equipment to cradle’ light on the door blinked off, and the button marked ‘Open door’ blinked on. The door made a soft hiss when she touched the button, then popped open.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said a soft, female voice over the intercom system, “we are now arriving at our destination, Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok. Please return to your seats so that we may begin landing procedures.”
Alarmed, Gina checked the time readout inside the cubicle, only to find that all fourteen hours of the flight had passed her by. Muttering curses under her breath, she picked up her belongings and scrambled out of the cubicle to get back to her seat.
Rat was waiting for her in the window seat by the time she got back. “Where have you been?” the girl asked. “Haven’t seen you since we split. I tried buzzing the cubicles but nobody squelched back.”
“Sorry, I was pretty out of it,” said Gina. “Spent the whole trip off my tits in that cubicle.”
“Yeah. VR’s like that.” She produced some painkillers from a jeans pocket and handed them to Gina, who swallowed them gratefully.
“Down we go,” Gina sighed, making herself comfortable in the soft, roomy chair. Money was a great thing, but in lieu of that, having a hacker on her side would do.
The airship swayed gently in the wind. It eased down towards the ground in a slow spiral, lowered its landing hooks, caught them on the moorings, and pulled itself the rest of the way in. Within minutes people were on their feet and collecting their luggage.
They passed uneventfully through the security gates. The guards there looked worried and annoyed, as if their equipment wasn’t performing quite right and they were just keeping up the pretence in the hopes of giving a good impression to anyone travelling first-class.
“Welcome to Hong Kong,” said a woman on the other side of the gate, repeating it mechanically over and over while handing out fliers. “Enjoy your stay. Welcome to Hong Kong. Enjoy your stay.”
Gina remembered wading through the clean and well-lit terminal, out the revolving doors, into the parking lot. Rat tried her phone again once they were outside, but couldn’t manage to get through to Jock. Cursing, she put it away again and flagged down a sky-blue taxi on her own initiative. Gina didn’t mind. She was happy to delegate responsibility for a little while.
“Mandarin hotel,” Rat said to the driver after they settled into the slightly sticky back seat. “Fast’s better than slow.”
Gina daydreamed the trip away, thinking of the past, the relative peacefulness of her life just a week ago. A wave of crushing sadness overcame her whenever her thoughts turned to Onu and Mashei. She swallowed a sniffle and wiped away the oncoming tears, but nothing could take away the burning guilt deep inside. And then there was Gabriel. Her confused feelings for him didn’t help any.
“Did you say something?” asked Rat, and Gina shook her head. “Okay. Just thought I heard you talk, is all. Yo, greaseface, is that the hotel?” she asked the cabby.
“Yep. That’ll be six hundred and twenty dollars. Cash or card, I don’t care, just make up your mind.”
Rat paid him. They’d barely climbed out of the taxi when her mobile beeped, and she answered it with a flippant, “Fashionably late, huh?” She beckoned for Gina to lean in closer.
Jock’s voice buzzed, “Yeah, been talking to the Emperor. He’ll join back up with you later. Are you at the hotel yet?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Ah, good. I’ve booked you a reservation under my handle, just give the desk clerk your aliases when you check in. Everything secure. Don’t abuse the service too much, though, we don’t want to be bad guests.”
“Are you sure it’s safe to stay here?” Gina asked uncertainly. “I mean, what if Gabriel traces us again?”
Jock snorted his disbelief with a generous helping of condescension. “Are you kidding? Haven’t you ever heard of the Mandarin? Their client registry is kept only on paper and gets locked into a tungsten-reinforced vault every night, where it’s guarded by a small army. The people who stay here are so rich that nobody can afford to bribe the staff. These hotels are the safest places to stay in the world. Not even the Feds have managed to get their hands on a Mandarin registry.” He smiled so hugely that Gina could sense his smugness over the phone. “Forget advertising, forget tourism, forget IT. Anonymity services are the industry of this century.”
“And you wanna know the best thing?” Rat chimed in, excitement in her voice, causing Jock to let out a chuckle. “Hackers stay for free. We’ve got an understanding with them, y’see.” Grinning, she started towards the door and said, “Catch you later, Jock. We got five stars waiting for us.” Then she hung up.
The building before them looked like the unholy union of a Greek temple and a sports car. Everything shone in that mass of polished granite and marble, but it was all done up in austere tones and marked by a touch of restrained elegance. It was aerodynamic. The architect had to be a genius, Gina reckoned, because despite everything it somehow managed to look attractive.
The same style could be seen across the lobby. Rich but not excessive carpeting, comfortable but not indulgent chairs, lush but not ostentatious plants, and an opulent but not cluttered bar-restaurant. Syrupy golden light splashed everywhere from globes that dangled on invisible wires from the ceiling.
They cut through the main lobby to the massive semi-circular hotel desk, a solid barrier of exquisitely carved and polished wood, behind which stood a gaunt moustachioed man watching them with wary eyes.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a painfully neutral voice. He was trying hard not to offend anyone just in case Rat and Gina were not the deadbeats they appeared to be.
Rat beamed him a huge, uncharacteristic smile. “Hello, we’re checking in on behalf of Mr. Jock Reynolds. I believe he made reservations for us. My name’s Rat, and this is Beauty.”
Wordlessly the clerk turned to check the name in his book, and absorbed the information without so much as a twitch. “Very good, sir. Please give Mr. Reynolds our compliments.” He scribbled some notes and pressed a few buttons embedded in his desk. “Room 207, down the hall on your right as you leave the elevator. The door is unlocked, you’ll find your keys waiting for you inside. Do you require help with your luggage?”
“We can manage, thank you very much,” Rat said, enjoying the exchange perhaps a bit too much. “Does it come with room service?”
“All our rooms come with room service, sir.”
“That’s great, that’s really great.” Rat turned away with a casual wave of her hand and said, “Thanks again!” as she started towards the elevators. Gina kept pace beside her.
Glancing over her shoulder, Gina muttered, “Could you try not to piss off all the hotel staff?”
“Relax, it’s not like they’re gonna kick us out.” She gave Gina a friendly punch on the shoulder. “Come on, it’s a free ride, baby! Live a little!”
“Okay, fine. I’ll live,” she said reluctantly, unconvinced.
Inching into their hotel room, Gina knew that there’d been some mistake. The Hilton paled in comparison. The floors were a soft shade of red, the ceilings white and towering, and the walls sloped out on both sides to give the customer an open feeling. A massive set of glass sliding doors led out onto the almost overgrown veranda, bathed in silver moonlight. Other rooms had their own terraced gardens sprawling out above and below, a great man-made slope of marble and concrete down to an open swimming pool at the very heart of the structure.
Viewed from this side, the Mandarin stopped being a hotel and became more like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
It was a relentless assault on her lower-class social status. Elegantly comfortable furnishings, all the electronics her heart could desire, a bed the size of a small country. Off to one side stretched the palatial bathroom, with a hot tub big enough to drown a whale.
Gina now had her very own tightly-uniformed 20-year-old valet. And a maid.
And despite all that, there wasn’t a single bug to be seen. The hospital handed out bug scanners, listed phone numbers of independent security retailers, and offered to relocate anyone to a room they might feel more comfortable in, just to prove that this hotel could be trusted.
“Fucking hell,” she said at length.
“Yeah,” Rat agreed. “Yeah.”
“You stayed here before?”
“No.”
“I’m not sure I want to go in. I might get lost,” Gina whispered.
“I’m not sure I’d mind,” said Rat. “Come on.”
By the time they’d finished exploring the room, the servants were gone and a tray of cold drinks had materialised on the table. Several perfect cubes of ice bobbed around in the multicoloured liquids. Gina had no doubt that, if the drinks went untouched for a while, they’d disappear as surreptitiously as they’d arrived.
Flopping down on the high-tech foam bed, she asked, “So what’s the deal with this place? Why do hackers stay for free?”
Rat talked in between mouthfuls of snacks. “It’s part of an agreement they made with the Hacker Nations. The Mandarin gives free rooms and a place to hide to us Citizens, and the Nations take care of the Mandarin’s security and makes all the Citizens swear not to try and hack one of the hotels. According to Country law, anyone who tried would get his Citizenship revoked, his accounts seized, and he’d get stricken from the hacker ranking. That’s pretty much full-on banishment from the Nations.”
“Christ. Has anyone ever managed it?”
“Heh, you don’t get it, do you?” Rat smiled. “That’s the official penalty. If someone ever actually managed to hack the Mandarin, d’you really think word would get out? That they’d ever let it go to trial? None of ’em would get another client in this lifetime.” Lowering her hood and taking off her sunglasses, Rat’s smile turned into a grin. “No. What they do is take ’em behind the chemical sheds and . . .” She folded her hand into a pistol shape and mock-fired it. “I hear there’s a few bodies.”
Gina decided she didn’t want to think about that right now. Gracefully changing the topic, she said, “So when are we going after Bomber?”
“Don’t know yet. Soon. If the Feds have got him, we can’t wait too long. Feds don’t piss about.”
A sudden snort of amusement burst out of Gina’s nose. “Speaking like you’ve done this before.”
Looking sheepish for a moment, Rat said, “Well, I bust myself out of minimum-security once.” Even she seemed to think it was painfully inadequate. “No Feds, though . . .”
“We’ll just have to do the best we can. I’ve seen Feds, I know what they’re capable of.” Gina shuddered at the memory. “God, I’m tired.”
Rat looked around suddenly, snapped her fingers in annoyance. “Then I guess we’re gonna have to bunk together. This is the only room we got on the reservation.”
“Jock,” Gina growled.
“Yeah. Must’ve had a good laugh over putting a boy and a woman in the same room. Idiot.” She shrugged and started to take her clothes off, moving just a touch woodenly, as if the thought of baring flesh in front of someone was uncomfortable. “Oh well. You already know. No point being shy, huh?”
Then she stopped to think about something, and asked over her shoulder to Gina, “You don’t snore, do you?”
“Me?” yawned Gina. “Never! I’m a proper lady, you know. Me, snore, the very thought . . .”
She yawned again, mumbled some more unintelligible things, and drifted off — still in her clothes — with sounds like a revving chainsaw.
EMPATHY: Part 7
“That’s it,” said Jock, his voice buzzing from the speakers of Rat’s mobile phone. “Looks like you’re clear of them. No one armed in the area, I’d call it safe.”
Gina closed her eyes in relief and leaned her back against the wall, panting. The Spice still whirled in her head.
One pill. One pill had kicked her ass like nothing she’d ever felt before. It overwhelmed her. She couldn’t shut out the thoughts of the people around her, ocean waves hammering against her mind.
What’s happening to me? she cried out inside.
Sinking to the floor, she gave up. Couldn’t fight it anymore. The only thing she could do was let it come, feel it and try to make sense of it. The Emperor’s confusion, his curiosity, his boiling hot anger. It contrasted with the deeper emotions under his surface, loss and hate twisting cold in his heart along with an evil little spark of hope. Then came Rat’s pumping terror — a pure, almost childlike fear — and his relief. His horror, even despair at what he’d gotten himself into. But even Rat had a core of resolve, a fierce desire to prove himself that kept him thinking and kept him sane.
And from both of them, on top of everything else, she felt secrets within secrets within secrets. She knew she could never trust them. Like she could never trust anyone in her life. Like she could never trust Bomber.
“Are you alright?” the Emperor asked her matter-of-factly. It wasn’t a question about anything that might be bothering her, he simply inquired if she was physically fit enough to keep up or if she needed to be left behind.
She clamped her hands over her ears and shut her eyes tight. “Fuck off.”
“Hey, we should find someplace to hole up for tonight,” Rat interjected. “We should be safe if Jock can wipe the camera logs, right?” He looked around for confirmation of his brilliant idea, proud of having thought of it all by himself.
“Change of plans,” said Jock. “The Feds have taken over Simon’s case. He’s just been moved onto the justice fast track. If we want to spring him, we’d better do it now before he’s in a Fed interrogation cell.” Gina wondered at the slight tone of worry in his voice, as if Jock actually cared about the continued existence of another human being.
The Emperor frowned as he inserted his own earbug. “Jock. Why is it you never bring me good news?”
A stiff chuckle echoed across the radio. “Glad to see you’re still with us, sir.”
“We will have to get him out before he talks to the Feds. That much is certain. Have you arranged transport?”
“There’s an extra ticket to Hong Kong waiting at the airport,” Jock reported. “Passport, biometrics, holomask, everything.”
“Excellent. The only problem will be getting to the airport unnoticed. They obviously know I’m in the area, so they are sure to be watching it.” He pulled another handgun out of his boot and turned to Gina. “Here, you may need this,” he said, and tucked it into her hand. Its grip was warm against her palm, but the warmth was different from that of her old Mk5. It was as if she could sense its killing purpose.
“Wait,” she croaked. It was difficult to talk with the drugs running wild in her head, unable to let herself sink into trance, but she forced her lips to shape the words carefully and distinctly. “The people chasing you. You said they were Triads. You’re Triads.”
The wave of hatred and resentment that rippled from the Emperor’s mind hit Gina like a blow. It was a hate as vast as mountains, as deep as oceans, and as black as deep space. His face contorted as he said, “The men hunting us are the trusted men of my ‘friends’, the other Triad Lords. With my fortress and most of my men in ashes, they imagine they can take my territory and divide it up amongst themselves. Criminals with the minds of criminals.” Then his iron will asserted itself. “There will be a reckoning for their mistake. But later.”
“When you’re quite done,” Jock crabbed, “I’m ready to drop the Hangzhou power grid, everything but the airport. That should cover your way. How you get there is up to you.”
“Rat.” Gina looked up at him. “You pick locks, right?”
“One of my many talents,” he replied.
“Good.” She smiled, and the Emperor let out a chuckle as he caught on to her train of thought. “Can you hotwire a car?”
Their stolen BMW purred through the pitch-black streets of Hangzhou. Gina lay stretched out in the back, cradling her pounding head, while Rat sat to attention in the passenger seat and stared at the Emperor with adoring eyes. The town’s confusion gonged through her head like a church bell, painfully loud and impossible to soften. She could feel it coursing through the shadows and the candlelit rooms, down the rows of questing headlights and past the nameless hundreds lost in the dark.
Gina felt a strange kinship with those lost, wandering souls. For them, it was as if civilisation had come to an end. Power blackouts were the kind of thing you heard about in your grandparents’ bullshitting sessions, not something to be experienced first-hand.
Gina was pretty lost herself, adrift on a sea of possibilities, all bad. Door number one, insanity. Door number two, death. She wondered whether to add a third possibility: meeting Gabriel face-to-face.
Even now she sensed him, a distant presence, like someone reading over her shoulder. It comforted her in a way she couldn’t quite explain. Every time she reached for that feeling, it was there, always in the same place. Her own little north star.
A soft tingling touched her lips whenever she thought of their kiss. It curled them into an involuntary smile, and she hid a blush. The images of their meeting had faded from her mind like old photographs, but the emotions lingered, filling her with warmth. Still, it was too private a memory to properly treasure in a moving vehicle with two other people. She put it away in a secret place inside her head and chastised herself for letting her mood swing back and forth like this. Hope or despair, she ought to pick one and stay with it like everyone else did.
They finally emerged into the low-wattage yellow glow of the airport car park. Refugees from the town had crowded to the lights, and now sat on nearly every square metre of ground. The Emperor pounded the car horn again and again, but they wouldn’t move.
“Inconvenient,” he muttered. “We’ll have to abandon the vehicle. Get ready.”
Gina snatched up her purse and got out, trying to keep a firm grip on herself and her brain. She reeled under the combined thoughts and emotions of the thronging crowd. It was a struggle to keep control, but she felt stronger now, despite an insistent yearning to take another pill. To feel the way she felt in the shopping street. Like an angel. She wondered if that was how it felt to be Gabriel.
People surrounded them from all sides, asking questions in every possible language about conditions in town and relatives they might have come across. The Emperor barked at them to stand aside, but again they didn’t move. The Emperor got angrier and angrier. Gina watched in horror as his hand went into his coat, to some inside pocket, and she launched herself into the crowd to try and stop him. The wall of bodies refused to part. There were too many of them, and she was too late.
The Emperor pulled something small and silver out of his pocket, shouted while pointing at the car, and then hurled it out into the crowd. Gina’s heart tightened, expecting it to explode any second, but instead the Emperor seized her by the arm and dragged her towards the terminal. People rushed in from all sides to try and grab the thing for themselves.
“What was that?” she asked in confusion.
“My motel key,” he chuckled, cutting through the press like a knife. He wasn’t a particularly big man but he knew how to use shoulders and elbows to amazing effect.
The inside of the terminal building was even worse. People packed together shoulder to shoulder, huddling like disaster victims. The massive video cube in the middle of the hall showed every flight to be delayed or part of a three-hour landing queue. The Emperor scowled at the throng as a wolf might survey a flock of sheep.
Meanwhile, Jock’s voice hummed, “I’ve given your flight landing priority. It’s already on the pad and leaving in half an hour. Your passport and equipment is waiting at the main information desk, I suggest you get moving.”
“This brings back memories.” The Emperor stroked his moustache, then nodded. “We will find the desk. You must subvert security on our gate in the meantime, the new detectors can pick out a holomask in–“
“Where’s Rat?” Gina interrupted suddenly. People of all sizes and descriptions pressed in around them, but the usual slouching, badly-dressed teenager was absent.
The Emperor stopped in mid-sentence, closed his mouth with a click of teeth, and muttered a curse. “He was behind us when I looked. He should know better than to fall behind.” Then, “Jock, we have lost contact with Rat. Location?”
“The tracker says he’s still outside, but I’m not getting anything on radio. He may have turned it off.”
“We have to go back,” said Gina, but a hard, practical look from the Emperor gave her pause.
“Out of the question. There is too much at stake, we have to continue.”
“Too much at stake for you,” she shot back. “I don’t like him either, but we’re not leaving anyone behind.”
“You’re a fool. I am getting out of here, with or without you. I am going to get Simon, and I am going to get my answers for all of this. If you prefer to play shepherd to children who cannot keep up, then go and don’t bother coming back. Now make your choice,” the Emperor growled.
The air between them buzzed with electricity as they tried to stare each other down. The Emperor’s will was an irresistible force, but it had never encountered the immovable object of Gina’s stubbornness. Finally she made her decision.
She turned her back on him and walked through the sliding doors, searching for an annoying brat who would almost certainly not appreciate the effort.
Men. You’re all the same, she thought venomously. The tiny flicker of Gabriel in her head radiated a sense of amused reproach, but she ignored it.
Only when she took in the massive, milling crowd in front of her did she realise the enormity of her task. Her heart sank into her boots as she saw the hundreds, thousands, idling in the car park and in the street. Some were even duelling with the airport’s emergency fire engines for control of the runways, but the firemen’s high-pressure water cannons gave them the upper hand. Finding Rat in this mess would be like . . . like finding a needle in a three-tier terraced hay farm.
“It’s impossible.” She heaved a deep sigh, defeated and deflated. But then she felt the hard double bottom of her purse, the nubs of hidden pills pressing into her side, and she knew how it could be done.
“Shit,” she added for good measure. She hadn’t even come down from her first pill yet. On the other hand, if Rat was in trouble, she couldn’t afford any delays. Even swallowing the dose now, it took a little while for her third eye to open.
The pill was dry and nasty going down her throat. She looked around for a quiet corner to let it take effect, but every crevice was already occupied. For lack of a better option, she just sat with her back to the wall and prepared herself.
The trance came over her slowly. It was as if a gossamer veil had been pulled over her head, tearing away when she struggled to her feet. She emerged on the other side of it with her mind thrumming like crystal. Thoughts and emotions reverberated off each other. They were auras rippling out from thousands of unique sources, creating eddies, currents, whirlpools and dead zones in the larger ocean. Gina could see it from the corners of her eyes, where the air shimmered and rippled in unnatural patterns, radiating out from the people around her.
It nearly overwhelmed her in her still-fragile trance, but then three years of experience made itself heard, and she brought order where there was chaos. The patterns were there, they could be predicted if you knew how. And Gina did. She adjusted to the ebb and flow of the trance, taught herself how to skim along the surface without going in too deep, until it was almost natural. Even so, she remained on guard, afraid of what happened last time. She couldn’t afford to let it spin out of control again.
She was a shadow flitting through the mass of bodies. Unfelt, unseen. She reached out and skimmed her fingers across the minds of hundreds, only the lightest of touches, trying to find one she recognised. Her mind worked tirelessly to sort the mass of input into individual sensations and filter out the one she wanted.
For a moment she felt something familiar — but no, only a gaijin suit-and-tie she’d touched on a job two years ago. She discarded it and kept looking. New clusters of emotion drifted in and out of her range, and suddenly she tasted fear. A small knot of it hidden away in a distant corner of the airport. She homed in on it, found it buzzing alone in the middle of some dark thoughts and lusts that made her skin crawl.
A small electricity substation rose out of the darkness as she neared the spot. It was apparently part of the town’s main power grid; the lights outside were blacked out, and the uneven rim of light peering through from behind the door suggested some makeshift arrangement inside. Before she could make out anything else, a dark silhouette stepped forward and challenged her in Conglom.
“Go away! You have no business here!” it shouted at her. She reached out to touch him, felt the guilty, furtive protectiveness of a gang flunky guarding some illicit proceeding.
She smiled and pressed in close with a few soothing words, pretending to be drunk whilst at the same time showing off her chest. He didn’t know what to think of her until all his muscles suddenly stopped working, paralysed by thousands of volts of tasered electricity. He didn’t even have time to call out, just dropped, twitching quietly. Gina kissed her loyal Mk5 — taking care not to burn her lips — and moved to peek through the heavy steel door.
Several well-dressed people stood in a small semicircle. Gina counted one Caucasian and two Japanese, all in typical black business suits — and a smiling blonde woman with Russian features. She wore an understated blue suit with a bow tie. Gina couldn’t make out what they were saying until she laid her ear against the door, fighting to hear and see at the same time.
“–surely an inconvenience,” the woman said in Conglom, “but we are professionals. Once we spotted a target matching your needs, we decided to turn a difficult situation into an opportunity. The number of people actually made it easier to cover our tracks. We do hope it wasn’t too short notice.” She added an ingratiating smile at the end.
“Not at all, Ridley-san,” reassured one of the Japanese. “We are most pleased and impressed at your resourcefulness. But are you certain this is the merchandise we asked for? It looks . . . “
“Have no fear, sir.” The woman smiled again. At the snap of her fingers, a large, tattooed thug stepped into view manhandling something small and ferocious-looking. The package hurled an impressive variety of muffled curses at the assorted businesspeople. Gina couldn’t see what was going on behind the row of bodies but she recognised the voice well enough despite the commotion, stifling a gasp. She’d definitely found Rat.
At a second gesture from the woman, there was a sound of ripping cotton, and Rat squealed in horror in the thug’s grip. The people hummed and nodded with approval, moving just enough for Gina to catch a glimpse of exposed, teenage breasts.
“I told you it was a girl,” chuckled the Caucasian man, tapping the side of his head. Gina felt a stab of horror and panic of her own, then stepped back in alarm as she felt the subtle touches of Spice in the man’s mind. He’d been preoccupied trying to read the other men in the room, but now he sensed Gina, and turned towards the door with a worried expression.
“Someone’s watching us,” he said.
The woman’s expression turned to stone. She snapped her fingers again, and Gina started to back away from the door just in time. It flew open, revealing a swarthy, strongly-built man in designer casuals. His dark skin had gone almost completely pink from the sheer number of knife scars forming a twisted network across his face.
She reached out to him and knew his thoughts. Surprise. He blinked, unsure whether or not to try and grab her. She had a momentary chance to act, but the Mk5 was still recharging in her hand. She felt the temptation to run away and forget about everything. She seriously considered it. What else could she do?
Then she heard the soft sound of Rat sobbing through some kind of gag, and her body acted without consulting her. The Emperor’s gun jumped out of her purse to train on the scarred man, her white-knuckled fingers gripping the cold steel as tight as they could.
“That’s far enough,” Gina said, panting. Chemicals and hormones raged through her system, conflicting and confusing, until all she wanted to do was throw up. Her hands shook from the effort of maintaining control.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.
“None of your damned business,” she said automatically. “Now step back and bring my friend over.” When the man didn’t move, she dropped her forced calm and snarled, “Step back!”
He did, hands raised carefully in the air. Gina inched into the doorway, felt the cold metal machinery all around them. The Japanese pair backed away from the gun as far as they could. The Caucasian stood aside and looked at her with the detached cynicism of the hired telepath. The tattooed thug still held Rat in a tight grip, but he too backed away. Only the woman stood her ground.
“I’d be careful if I were you,” the telepath pointed out to the woman, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall in apathy. He wasn’t about to put his life in danger, and he knew that Gina knew it. “She’s high up on third eye, not exactly in a stable frame of mind.”
“This is a joke,” the woman snorted at Gina. “Look at you, you’re so wired you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Put it down before we’re forced to hurt you.”
Gina held on to the fierce protective instinct burning at her core. She forced steadiness into her voice as she said, “I’ve got fifteen bullets. There’s six of you. Come and try me.”
That caused the telepath a good, hearty laugh. One of the Japanese cleared his throat and stepped forward. “Perhaps the deal–“
“The deal goes as planned,” the woman grated. She made some kind of hand signal behind her back, and the tattooed thug acted with chem-boosted speed. He threw Rat into a corner like a rag doll and charged.
The waves of bloodlust pouring from his mind told his story as well as anything. Gina felt the all-consuming fire of berserker drugs driving him, filling him with addictive rage. His mind was so far gone that he felt little else, unable to do more than eat, sleep, fuck and obey simple commands. There was no fear, no leftover spark of humanity.
Gina pulled the trigger. Red blossomed from the thug’s shirt, yet it barely slowed him down. She squeezed again, and again, and again, could see the dark little holes it tore in his flesh, but he refused to fall. He was almost on top of her when she fired one last time. His head exploded backwards in a shower of gore. His body took two more steps before it slumped to the ground, twitching in a pool of its own blood.
The scarred man gaped at the red and grey stains spattered across his expensive jacket. The Japanese cowered in a corner, and the telepath was hunched up against the wall, vomiting quietly. Rat lay limp on the floor in his– her ripped clothes, unconscious.
Gina dropped her arm, and the gun slipped out of her slack fingers. It clattered loudly to the floor. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she didn’t even feel them.
The woman spotted an opportunity and dove for the gun, but a powerful backhand slap stopped her. The scarred man stood over her with a face like a tombstone. Without another word, he ushered the Japanese out the door, threw the telepath out with a bit more force, then picked up Rat in two huge arms and placed her into Gina’s arms, covered by his ruined jacket.
“That man was my brother,” he rumbled at Gina. “Used to be, a long time ago. She,” he glanced at the woman in the same way he might regard an insect, “killed him. You just pulled the trigger.” Then he shoved her backwards out of the doorway. “Go. I’m going to do some things you don’t want to watch.”
The door slammed in her face.
Nobody troubled her as she carried Rat back to the terminal, the girl’s slender body wrapped in the scarred man’s jacket. Gina couldn’t say how much time had passed between leaving the Emperor and stumbling into the airport washroom. Nothing from the outside registered, not until she shut the door behind her and dipped her hands in cold water to get the blood off.
She reached up to scrub her face but paused at the feel of fresh tears trickling down her fingers. The sheer enormity of taking someone’s life weighed in on her. Slaver or not, she’d made him die. She never wanted that. Never wanted any of it, not the Street, not Bomber, not Spice and certainly not the ‘privilege’ of getting to go into people’s sick, twisted minds.
The only reason she’d resigned herself to the Street was because she wanted to die and was too chicken-hearted to do the job herself. Always thought the pills would do it for her. Now she’d felt someone really die. Felt that thug, that man, while the light of his mind switched off. Nothing left but darkness and cold. It made Gina want to live more than ever.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Rat’s voice from the corner, half accusatory and half simply confused.
“Nothing,” Gina lied. Her brain and body were only just starting to calm down, slowly coming back to normal, or even a more regular kind of upset. The abject horror of the man’s death lingered at the back of her head. For a moment she remembered his face as dark-haired and Russian, with a thick moustache and a silver revolver in his hand, but she knew that was wrong. She quickly shook her head and banished the image from her mind.
Rat looked around with unfocused eyes, then scoffed, “Don’t look like nothing.” After a moment he– she added, “Fuck, my head. What happened?”
Gina turned around to look at her, a small shape in a bloodstained white jacket, propped up against a wall of yellowed tiles. Confused, Rat glanced down at her torn top, and Gina saw her face change as the memories returned to her. The girl gasped in horror and pulled the jacket tight around her to hide any sign of skin, fixing Gina with a hostile stare for daring to have seen.
Gina sighed, “You’ve got nothing I haven’t seen before. I have a pair myself if you hadn’t noticed.” She leaned back against the sink, still unsteady on her feet.
Finally, Rat forced calm into her voice and said, “Don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.” Gina reached into her purse for a cigarette, found one, but paused before putting it in her mouth. Her mood had changed, and she threw the thing away in disgust. To Rat she asked, “Why?”
“None of your business.”
“Fuck if it isn’t,” she snapped. “I think you owe me an explanation after what happened.”
Anger flashed in Rat’s eyes as she picked herself up from the floor. She was shaking on her feet, but her muscles were fuelled by a hundred churning emotions, echoing back to Gina through the Spice in her bloodstream. Rat hissed, “I don’t owe you shit. I’m a cowboy, a hacker, yeah? I could’ve got myself out of there just as easy. That’s what cowboys do, we get ourselves out of trouble, we don’t need anybody else.”
“Just as easy.” Gina smiled without warmth. “Are you really that stupid? You’re, what, fifteen years old? Do you know what could’ve happened to you, what nearly did happen to you?”
“I’m seventeen,” Rat said. “And you can quit lecturing me now. I know what I’m doing.” She turned her back and started to work the torn rags off her body. Bruises and scabs marked her skin from the treatment she’d received.
Gina barked a humourless laugh. “Really? ‘Cause it seems to me like you haven’t got the slightest idea–“
“You try being a girl in that crowd!” The scream came out of nowhere, carrying all the soul and fury of a wounded lioness. Rat wheeled around and locked on Gina with tears in her eyes. “Look at you! You should know what it’s like, what boys are like. Being looked down on, never trusted with anything except lying back and spreading your legs for ’em.” Rat clenched her teeth together and choked her emotions down. “You try being a girl with people like Jock and his cowboys. You’re either a piece of meat to be slobbered over or not good enough to be one of them, not ever, even if you’re better than they are. I had to pretend. I’ve always had to pretend.”
She turned away again and leaned her head against the wall, sobbing quietly to herself.
A wave of sympathy poured into Gina as the words hit home. Somewhere in that pit of anger and frustration, Gina had started to understand Rat. The bluster, the pretence and posturing, they were her shield against the terrors of the outside world. As long as she believed in her hacker-dom, clung to the sense of power that came with it, nothing could hurt her. But girls couldn’t be hackers, and hackers couldn’t be girls.
Every trace of anger and hostility left her as Gina stepped forward and put her arms around the crying girl. Rat struggled for half a moment, then accepted the unconditional comfort of her embrace.
A damaged speaker crackled Chinese from the corner. It repeated the same message in six different languages, each of which tugged at Gina’s mind as she tried to concentrate on comforting Rat.
“Asia Pacific Air Flight 4121 for Hong Kong has finished refuelling. Final boarding will begin at Gate 7. We apologise for the delay, and Hangzhou officials assure us that power will be restored in a few hours. Please view the flights board for updated departure times. Thank you.”
Without thinking, Gina took her ticket out of her pocket and glanced absently at the flight number. Then her eyes widened.
“The power outage,” she said, stunned. Rat didn’t seem to hear her, so Gina gently shook the girl by the shoulders. “That’s our flight! Listen, we can still make it!”
“To Hong Kong?” Rat sniffled dumbly, and Gina nodded.
“Bomber still needs us. Come on.” Taking Rat’s hand, Gina quickly buttoned up the stained white jacket around the girl’s shoulders, then pulled her along at a run towards the gates.
“It fits,” Gina said with a critical eye. To be completely honest, the top she’d snatched from the duty-free shop was more than a bit baggy on Rat’s thin, wiry frame, but apparently that was the way Rat liked it. The toilet cabins on the airship offered them just enough privacy to sort themselves out, as well as a good-sized waste bin in which to stuff the bloodstained jacket. That had raised a few eyebrows on their way through the airship, but they’d been in too much of a hurry getting to the gate to stop for a change of clothes.
“Thanks.” Rat glanced in the mirror and decided herself to be adequately covered. She swept the room for bugs one more time, just in case, but found nothing. It was against the law to bug public toilets, but that didn’t stop some companies or individuals from doing it anyway. She rubbed the dust off her hands and continued, “Where’s my bag?”
Gina shrugged. “Last I saw, the Emperor had all our stuff. We’ll deal with that after we land.”
“Okay,” said Rat, crossing her arms. “No point doing anything before then, if he’s wearing a holomask. No way to recognise him.”
“So we just lay low until we get to Hong Kong?”
“That’s what I’m gonna do. I’ve had enough . . .” She started to shake, then clenched her fists and forced it down. “Enough excitement for one day,” she ground out between her teeth.
Gently resting a hand on Rat’s shoulder, Gina said, “Take it easy, okay? You’ve been through a lot.” It sounded lame to her own ears, but it was the only thing Gina could think to say. Rat nodded silently and took a deep breath.
“I think I’m gonna go plunder the dining compartment,” she said with a weak smile and a glint of mischief in her eye. “You okay being on your own for a bit?”
“Yeah. I’m going to make a phone call, check up on some friends.”
“Not on a public phone you’re not,” Rat countered firmly. “Use a VR rig, they’ve got virtual phone utilities built in. No in-betweens, much harder to trace.”
“Right. Thanks, cowboy.” Gina smiled, and so did Rat before she threw up her hood and put on a fresh pair of sunglasses.
They went their separate ways at the junction outside. The airship’s deck swayed gently under Gina’s feet, and she quietly thanked the airline for their complimentary seasickness pills. Grey clouds drifted past the ship’s great windows, and the distant lights of other airships were visible in the night sky. The windows themselves were massive round sheets of lexan set into the plastic and steel of the hull, decorated with riveted bands of bronze to make them look like portholes. Of course it didn’t matter that no seagoing ship had ever had portholes that large, or comfortable shag carpeting on the floors. It was the atmosphere that counted.
She casually made her way through narrow but tastefully decorated corridors, drifting in the general direction of the public VR cubicles — one of the many perks of riding a first-class airship. The air tasted rich and fresh and every corner of the ship contained at least one variety of potted plant. The ceiling stretched high, curving steeply to one side to accommodate the massive helium balloon above it.
Gina pulled the cubicle door shut behind her, and it slid into its socket with the vague sucking noise of an air seal. Between her and the outside world was a layer of vacuum covered with soundproof padding. Nothing she said could be captured as recognisable speech from the outside.
The interior of the VR cubicle was made of soft, velvety rubber that moulded itself to the contours of her body. A complimentary bug scanner rested in its socket by the door along with another, smaller bug scanner for scanning the scanner. Very thoughtful. Anyone conducting business in such a cubicle could be moderately confident that no one was eavesdropping.
She lifted the crown from its cradle and gently put it on, then straightened some of the electrodes which had bent double against her head. The terminal slowly came alive and projected a helpful welcoming hologram of a cartoon girl in a pink dress. When it opened its mouth there sounded a voice so sugary that Gina just wanted to strangle it.
“Welcome to the Yumito Virtual Fun Experience,” the hologram said chipperly. Sunshine, stars and rainbows played through its hair while it hovered in Gina’s face. “Is this your first time using a virtual reality entertainment station?”
“No,” growled Gina.
“Would you like to go through the basic controls with me?”
“No,” she repeated more forcefully.
“Do you not wish to receive the tutorial before proceeding?” it said, almost hurt that anyone would try to avoid the prepared advertisement monologue.
“No . . .”
“Are you sure you want to proceed without the tutorial?” it hammered on in the same saccharine voice.
“Yes!” Gina shouted, thumping the machine with the heel of her hand.
“Thank you for using the Yumito Virtual Fun Experience! We are connecting you now. Please enjoy and be happy!” The hologram smiled, clapped its hands and faded away in a shower of coloured sparks.
Unlike her experience on Jock’s rig, this time the virtual world slowly eased into her perception, like a photograph superimposed on her eyes becoming more opaque until the real world faded out completely. She took a moment to refresh her recollection of the controls. As long as she was in VR, she might as well have a little fun.
A full-length mirror with a set of avatar controls followed her around the entrance, asking her if she wanted to change her default avatar. If she wanted, it told her in cartoony red letters, the cubicle could even reconstruct her own body as an avatar. Gina glanced down at the familiar Victorian frock, sighed, and sent the mirror away. A frumpy default avatar might not be fashionable, but it avoided drawing attention.
“Virtual phone,” she said, and an exaggerated red telephone popped into existence in front of her, complete with antique-style rotary dial and wired horn. She picked up the horn and dialled the number from memory.
At the beach house of Onounu and Mashei, a phone rang. It went off again and again, but nobody answered except the wind. A line of police tape covered the shattered door. Broken glass blanketed the warm, colourful carpets, and two bodies lay together in a pool of blood. Outside, Shanghai police leaned against their cars and smoked cigarettes to ease the wait for the special investigation team.
Finally the phone made an incongruous beep like that of an old answering machine. Back aboard the airship, Gina stiffened momentarily, then went limp in her cubicle.
EMPATHY: Part 6
Gina blew smoke into the night outside the shop, waiting for a dark van of some type. The description was vague, Jock had just said it would be dark, with red flame decals down the side. She wasn’t quite sure why she was doing anything Jock told her to do, but at the moment she didn’t have any better ideas. The cigarette calmed her nerves as well. Still, she felt a little bit cagey about being back outside, out in the open. Exposed. Sometimes she swore she could still hear the machine guns firing far away, the helicopters and the sounds of the dying.
A sudden rustle from the bushes nearly gave her a heart attack. An asthmatic squirrel hopped out and dragged itself across the road, with Gina swearing after it. Then the dark van she’d been waiting for came gunning around the corner, and Gina had to jump back as it screeched to a halt in front of the abandoned shop.
“Who the fuck do you–” Gina began, her nervousness and vulnerability making her angry, but gave up in mid-sentence. The team of thin, weedy, questionably-dressed men emerging from the van ignored her completely, too busy with their own problems. They huffed and puffed under the weight of several large, unlabelled black boxes that could’ve contained absolutely anything.
“Don’t mind us,” said the last one out the van, a tall, gaunt man wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night. There was an ill-advised scraggle of hair on his chin, something which he must’ve thought looked ‘hip’. He continued, “Just installing some hardware, nothing to worry about. We’re friends of Jock’s.”
She glanced up at him for a beat. “Jock has friends?”
The man laughed heartily, then took off his sunglasses to look her in the eye. His eyes were like green slits, and Gina could see dozens of tiny surgical scars all around them. “Hard to believe, yeah. You must be the girl. Sorry, he didn’t mention you by name.”
Slight hesitation before she said, “Gina.”
“Pleased to meet you. Sorry we can’t stay, but y’know. Bullets make us uncomfortable.”
“Can’t say I blame you.” She flicked away the leftover half of her cigarette. It didn’t interest her anymore. “What is all this stuff?”
“VR rig, good one. Jock says you’re going to be pulling something hot.”
“Really?” Gina said pleasantly. “That includes me, does it?”
The guy immediately cottoned on to her change of tone and cracked a nervous grin. “You’d have to ask him. I’m just here to help set things up, right? No need to shoot the messenger.” Then, remembering something, he dug around inside his trouser pocket. “Jock said to give you this.”
He pressed something into Gina’s hand, then ducked back into the van as the rest of his gang came hustling out of the shop. They moved a lot faster without the big black boxes. Gina could barely believe the speed with which they all piled back into the car, which they’d left running. The door hadn’t even shut before the van took off like a bullet, to get out of the war zone as fast as possible.
Gina stared after it for a long time, but eventually she snapped out of her bewilderment and looked down at the small scrap of plastic in her hand, scanned the rows of Chinese and Conglom characters scrolling across the top. It was an airline ticket. The destination blinked at her invitingly from the top right corner, spelled out in block print just above the small video clip advertising the local culture, food and friendliness. Hong Kong.
“You going to stand there all day?” asked an unfamiliar voice. Gina looked blankly at the short, weedy adolescent in front of her. She couldn’t even see his face under the thick hooded sweatshirt, just two black lenses glaring sullenly at her, waiting for an answer.
“Depends,” Gina crossed her arms, “are you going to stop staring at my tits anytime soon?”
“Might do, might do,” the teenager drawled with a badly-faked American accent. “I’m here to help, yeah? Name’s Rat. Just call me the cavalry.”
Gina nodded. “Oh, good,” she said with a roll of her eyes, turned around and went back inside.
She found Jock in a newly-cleaned corner of the shop, staring unfocused at the ceiling. His eyes were glassy and repulsive like the eyes of a dead thing, his body strapped into a padded metal frame, and wearing a VR crown with its black plastic tentacles and electrodes stuck to his head. In the background the old TV still droned on, some reporter blathering about execution-style murders in Hong Kong, something about gang lords and gang wars and gang tattoos. Gina didn’t really spare it any thought.
“Alex?” Jock asked to the empty space above him.
The teenager stepped forward and announced, “Here.”
Gina caught him by the shoulder as he passed her. “I thought you said your name was Rat.”
“Easy! No need for hands-on,” he said indignantly, shrugging out of her grip. “Alex is my name, Rat’s my handle, yeah? Cowboy’s gotta have a handle. Chrome Rat, that’s me.”
“And you’re a friend of our Jock here?”
“Acquaintance,” said Jock, his voice absent like his eyes. “A thief and a wannabe cyber-cowboy.”
Rat scowled. “Wannabe my ass, you black-fuck piece of shit. You just can’t stand me getting into places you can’t.”
Jock’s eyes focused for a second and his lips cracked a smile. “Hey, there’s no Breaking and Entering on my criminal record. How about yours?” To Gina, he added, “Rat picks locks, mechanical or electronic. Not too bad at it. Not good, either, but not bad.”
Rat glared at him in silence.
A soft tick sounded from the VR rig, accompanied by the high-pitched grind of a cooling fan speeding up. Its barely audible whirr turned into a howl of moving air. Jock had to be pushing the machine hard.
“So what’s to do now?” asked Gina.
Licking his dry lips, Jock answered, “We’re going to need a few more things. See, the Emperor has a lot of bank accounts. Most of them have already been plundered by the other Triads, but there’s a few that the Emperor thinks only he knows about. Which is true, apart from me.”
“You talk about him like he’s still alive,” Gina said, almost touched.
“But he is.” Jock mouthed a shutdown command. The VR rig obeyed just a heartbeat after it disabled every telephone line in a hundred metre radius, all meant to throw off any active traces. That done, Jock lifted the VR crown off his head and placed it back in its cradle.
He said meanwhile, “The Emperor’s private accounts — his very private accounts — have been accessed three times since your friend torched the fortress. From the location of the withdrawals, it looks like he’s making his way down the coast through Zhejiang district. Probably headed for one of the cities to try and catch a boat or airship.”
“And?”
“And you two are going to go pick him up. You switch over in Hangzhou on your way to Hong Kong, he’ll be around there.” He kicked a large black bag towards her, smiling his unbelievably smug smile. “You’ll need this. Now hurry up, girls, you don’t want to miss your flight.”
“Knew they couldn’t a’ killed him,” Rat blabbed excitedly at her all the way through the airport’s crowded arrivals bay. “The Emperor. Man, that’s cool. This is gonna be cool.”
“Will you shut up?!”
Three hours on a plane with Rat and Gina was already sick of him. Between his endless chatter and the gaggle of overweight women in front of them with screaming children in tow, she didn’t feel like some super-spy or undercover operative or whatever the hell they called it. She just felt alone, vulnerable, in a place where she didn’t know the exits. And her only backup if anything went wrong was . . . Rat.
Why me? she asked herself with a quick glance heavenwards. The flickering neon tube on the ceiling didn’t have an answer for her. Nor did the mysterious brown stains on the walls, or the pile of rags at the bottom of the staircase which smelled like a week-dead corpse that no one had bothered to clean up and probably was exactly that. She caught a glimpse of a black-stained hand, clutching an empty strip of Spice.
“Hey, you alright?” Rat asked in a tone halfway between apathy and curiosity. Like he wanted to know if something was wrong, but didn’t particularly care if there was.
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Get a move on, we’ve got a cab waiting.”
Even without seeing his eyes, she could feel Rat’s teenage scowl on her. He manhandled his bag onto his shoulders, muttering, “Alright, Jesus.” Then one of the wheels fell off his bag, the moment he took his first step up the stairs. Of course he stopped immediately in order to drop his bag and swear at it in a loud, high-pitched voice, until Gina stepped in and smacked him upside the head.
He squealed indignantly, “What’d you do that for?”
“Because we’re trying to lay low, you little–” She bit her tongue in mid-sentence, and the taste of blood filled her mouth. It was hard to keep throttling down her temper with someone so infuriating. Finally she managed to gain control of her anger, then grabbed Rat by his collar and pulled him around to face her. She moved in closer to him, so close that their lips almost touched, so close that she knew she had his full and undivided attention.
“We are trying to avoid standing out,” she explained calmly, quietly, and with the utmost patience. “You are being loud, obnoxious, and making us the centre of attention for at least three armed guards and a whole bunch of security cameras. Do you understand?” He nodded silently. “Alright, now understand this. I’ve been pushed just about as far as I can be pushed today. I’m tired, I’m angry, and I’m more than a little crazy, and you do not want to be on the other end of that.” She licked her lips slowly for the dramatic pause. Then, “Pick up your bag and carry it outside. Now. Before I’m forced to claw your face off.”
Rat swallowed and nodded without protest. He almost ran the rest of the way. Gina allowed herself a thin smile of satisfaction. Threatening teenage boys was a skill you never quite grew out of, like riding a bike, you did it once and it all came back to you.
A pink morning fog hung over Hangzhou, speckled with the brightly-coloured blotches of airships both near and far. You could never tell how distant they were, whether the one you spotted was small and close-by or big and very far away. Behind her, just visible over her shoulder, an airship twice the size of the terminal building drifted majestically into its mooring brackets. Hydraulic clamps thumped. The airship lowered a covered drawbridge towards the transparent plastic bubble of the disembarking area, and the terminal similarly extended a docking tube to connect to the other side of the bubble.
Gina had always loved airships. They used to play to her imagination, reading about them as a girl, part of an abandoned and nearly-forgotten time until they were revived by new technology that made them far cheaper to operate than aeroplanes. Still, the mysticism wore off a bit when you saw them every day with giant video screens on the side advertising the latest brand of washing powder.
The vehicle outside turned out to be a bicycle rickshaw with a wiry young boy at the helm. The rickshaw seemed to consist of chicken wire and baling twine, held together by some mysterious force in defiance of all the laws of physics. Gina shook her head as she saw it, but couldn’t be bothered arguing anymore. She chucked her bag into a luggage rack which looked it had once, in better days, been a shopping trolley.
“You know how long I wait here?” the boy snapped in sharp Chinese-accented patter. “Hours! I could be in town making money, not here waiting for you! You pay me for waiting!”
Pretty well-acted, Gina decided, but not well enough. She looked him up and down, then said, “Drop the accent. You speak English, you’ve been here no longer than ten minutes, you’re already being overpaid, and we’re not tourists. Dong ma?”
“Ta ma de biao zi,” he muttered. Gina ignored him; she’d been called far worse out on the Street. Rat had to run to catch up as the boy started pedalling. Gina pulled Rat up by his shirt, then eased herself into the dubious wire seat and let the City wash over her.
You couldn’t really tell the districts from their architecture anymore. The City looked the same all over, an endless parade of blank office blocks, apartment towers dotted with halogen light, hundreds of identical shops belonging to the same megacorp chains. The only thing to break the monotony was an occasional traditional pagoda or shrine that the property developers hadn’t managed to buy up yet.
The slow passage of neon-lit buildings and the hypnotic lurching of the rickshaw lulled Gina into a doze. Images fluttered across her half-closed eyelids. White sand, dancing fires, stars twinkling overhead. For a moment she thought she heard the chop of helicopter blades, but it faded away too quickly to be anything real.
Fires turned into candles as she slipped deeper into sleep. Sand crunched under her bare feet and tickled between her toes. The stars were little fireflies buzzing in the night, giving her tingles wherever they touched her skin.
There was a white table, plates of china and pure crystal glasses, a decanter of wine so red that it shone with inner light. The waves rustled in their gentle rhythm. She saw him then, sitting calm as a rock at the far side of the table, and she was not afraid.
“Gabriel,” she whispered.
He smiled and stood up, leaned over the table, caught her in his eyes. Eyes the colour of burning coal. “Beauty,” he said, making the word a warm invitation. “I’m glad you came.”
The wooden chair gave a satisfying creak as she slipped into it. The atmosphere was perfect to every detail. Her eyes drank in the wonder of it all. “How did we get here?”
“Oh, I’ve been wanting to talk to you ever since we met. You’re a hard person to get a hold on.” The crystal stopper popped out of the decanter of its own accord, as if to announce the time to drink had arrived. Gabriel poured for both of them. A testing sip brought tears to Gina’s eyes and she nearly retched it back up. It was too much, like liquid heaven on her tongue.
By the second sip her senses had adjusted, and the taste became merely orgasmic.
“I haven’t meant to avoid you,” she blurted before realising what the words meant. “Well . . . Um, it’s just that you’re trying to kill us.”
“No. Never you.” His sad smile cut straight to Gina’s heart. She just wanted to hold him and kiss him until it went away. “I told them to bring you to me alive. Their methods can be a bit rough, I’m sorry if they startled you.”
“You startled me. In that club when we met, you . . .” The words caught in her throat as she remembered. A tiny tingle of fear hovered at the back of her mind before the magic of the scene dispelled it.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. You surprised me, that’s all, trying to get into my head without permission. I didn’t know who you were.” Gabriel reached out to take her hand, his fingers like velvet where they touched her skin. “Please, forgive me.”
She responded immediately without even thinking about it. “All forgotten,” she said, and blushed deep red. She could barely keep from shaking as he stroked her palm. The wine glowed in her stomach, sending up more butterflies of excitement.
“Thank you. You don’t know how happy that makes me,” he said with a gentle smile. “It’s strange. I never met anyone quite like you. You’re tough to have survived what I did to you, I admire that.”
A question flared briefly in her mind, but even an instant later she could barely remember it. “How did you do it?” she asked in a struggling voice, trying hard to hold the words in her mind, but as soon as it came out she knew it was the wrong thing to say.
Gabriel’s mouth curled into a faint smile. “I wish I could tell you. Maybe someday, in person.” Then, in the same smooth voice, “I’m sorry if this question seems strange, but . . . Who are you?”
She told him. Everything, her whole life, it all seemed to flow from her lips without a pause. It seemed like she talked for hours, and Gabriel sat enraptured by her voice the whole time, a soft smile on his lips.
When it was all done she blushed and laughed, taken by a sudden wave of shyness. It took her a minute more to work up the courage to ask, “And who are you?”
The image of Gabriel pulsed, suddenly becoming more real in Gina’s mind. More solid, more there than Gina herself. Her flicker of fear returned like a distant scream, but Gabriel’s aura of power overrode it. Every sense and thought told her he wouldn’t hurt her. Not now.
The space between them, even the table, seemed to shrink without ever actually changing size. In that instant he was close to her, so close that she could feel his warmth radiate across her skin. Somehow she was on her feet, and when she looked up into his eyes he glowed like a little piece of God.
He leaned in to kiss her, and her heart stopped.
The world was black. The sky was red. People made of ash walked and talked and laughed as if they were alive. They turned to look at Gina, smiled and welcomed her.
She gasped for life. It rushed into her all at once, an explosion of light onto her retinas.
“Fuck,” said Rat, his disembodied head hovering over her. Still covered by a hood and sunglasses. “Fuck me, she’s breathin’!”
She sucked in breath after breath, lungfuls of polluted and smoky and wonderful air, and soared back into the world of the living.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, still floating on a cloud of endorphins. Gabriel’s kiss lingered on her lips and staved off the rush of adrenaline crashing into her system. “What happened?”
Rat collapsed backwards and threw back his hood. It revealed a mess of short black curls over a thin, androgynous face. “You were dead, girl. I saw it. Two minutes, no breathing, nothing. You died.”
A strange smile came to her lips without thinking. “That, or I got brought back to life.”
“What? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Gina giggled to herself and gestured dismissively. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.” Sitting up, she steadied her spinning head and looked around. “Where are we?”
The place looked like a dark, abandoned City alley and certainly smelled like one. The stink of stale piss and other human waste assaulted her nostrils. Buildings crowded in on both sides, creaky old things of brick and wood, most of them either abandoned or claimed by squatters. No doubt there was a corpse or two lying further up the alley, adding to the local aroma. Gangs loved these sorts of places.
“Scratch that last,” she said next. “I know where we are. What are we doing here?”
“Waiting for–” a mobile phone started jingling in his pocket, “–Jock to call.” He sighed and dug out the tiny cylinder, no bigger than Gina’s pinky finger, and slid out the mouthpiece. “Rat,” he said into the phone. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll set it up.”
He rummaged around in his pockets and brought out a small mobile computer, slotting the phone into it. After some more rummaging, he threw Gina a tiny piece of flesh-coloured plastic. “Put that in your ear. It’s a radio, like in the movies. Picks up everything you say and everything you hear. Touch to turn it on, touch again to turn it off. Got it?”
The piece wasn’t hard like she expected, but soft and pliable. It slithered into her ear and wriggled around, discovering the curves of her ear. Once it had established the area in its databanks, it hardened and settled in with the most disgusting sensation Gina had ever experienced, like greasy ants crawling into her ear canal. She barely managed to restrain herself from clawing it out and hurling it away from her.
“Let’s get to business,” Jock’s voice buzzed in her ear. “I’ll guide you to his general location, watch your back, tell you what to say. Remember, there could be Yakuza out there, or other baddies with Gina’s picture. Watch everything.”
A wave of fresh excitement pumped in Gina’s bloodstream. She stood up, straightened her skirt, checked the Mk5 in her pocket, and brushed her fingers over her blouse to feel the warm piece of steel against her chest. “Roger,” she said, just like in the movies.
“Got it,” Rat grunted.
“I’ve got access to all the local cameras, so I can tell you if anyone suspicious is armed, but I can’t run face checks on the whole crowd quick enough sift anyone out. That means the tricky bit is up to you two. You’ll have to locate him, identify him, and make peaceful contact.”
Gina frowned, her excitement screeching to a sudden halt. “What do you mean, ‘peaceful contact’?”
Over the radio, Jock chuckled and said nothing.
They split up and went out into the street with a purpose. Gina vanished into the throng, like a river of people flowing down a long winding valley of neon and concrete storefronts. The horizon glowed grey with the encroaching dawn, but even at an hour like this the people’s lust for shopping didn’t seem a bit diminished.
She reached into her purse and tore a section off the plastic strip of pills. Just one, she thought, glancing around her. Not two, not here. Too many people. She nodded to herself, popped a dose of Spice out of the plastic, swallowed it dry.
Acid churned in her empty stomach as the pill hit her. It would take a while for her third eye to open. She stared blankly into shop windows, felt pickpockets search her for a wallet that wasn’t there. Some of them settled for a quick grope in lieu of payoff. After all, she was a woman — a gaijin woman, no less — so what else was she good for?
The touchy types were quickly introduced to the way of the steel-toed boot. Still, they put Gina into a black mood that just got darker as the minutes wore on. The chatter of the crowd hammered in on her like waves beating against the shore. Thoughts and feelings streaming through the cobbled streets with battering-ram force. It was the Spice working on her, and she wondered if taking a pill had been such a good idea.
A peal of thunder rumbled in the distance. The rain came down all at once, a torrential downpour, and Gina didn’t have the luxury of sitting in a warm shop until it went away. She had to march into a dangerous, unpredictable, pretty fucked-up situation in order to bust someone out of prison. What a life.
She just wanted to kill someone.
“Let’s go then, you bastards,” she snarled at the shop window and turned away. Strands of wet red hair dangled down her shoulders. If anyone had looked at her just then they would have flinched back from the mad look in her eyes. She gave in completely to the trance, bit her lip in concentration, and reached out to the crowd with her mind.
“This is Rat,” mumbled a voice in her ear, “ain’t found anything yet. There’s a building, though, corner next to the strip club, looks abandoned. I wanna check it out.”
“Go,” said Jock. “Careful, though. Infrared cams say there’s definitely people in there. Gina, give Rat some backup.” A beat ticked away. “Gina? Gina! She’s not responding. Something wrong with the radio?”
Gina stretched out her arms. The rain, the sky, the earth, she could feel them all. She touched all living things, felt their warm blood coursing, felt the drum of their heartbeats. She looked out, and it was as if she could see Gabriel in the distance, smiling. She smiled back.
She submerged herself in the voice of the world and the whispers of thoughts all around her. She glided through rivers of people, through porches and doorways, her nerves thrumming to the rhythm of the world. Her feet never seemed to touch the ground as they carried her nearer to the object of her search.
Suddenly, her trance shattered like crystal as a cold gun pressed against her temple. A jolt of ice shot down her spine at the click of the hammer being cocked.
“No sound,” a voice hissed in her ear in tones of sharpened steel. Gina couldn’t see him but she felt his thoughts rattling in her head. They were iron plans and steel secrets, full of rage and full of blood.
Gina swallowed the lump of terror in her throat and husked, “Don’t kill me. Please.”
Rough hands turned her around and flung her against the wall. Corrugated steel boomed where she landed. Pain flashed up and down her back. She saw blue eyes blazing in the half-light of reflected neon, a hand like a carpenter’s vice gripping her throat, the gun pressed up against her chin. His face slowly swam into focus as he came closer.
“Gina!” her earpiece buzzed. Jock, frantic and angry. “I heard you! Where the fuck are you?!”
“I know you,” he said. “The girl. Come to finish the job, have you? Simon’s pulled a good trick on me, but I’m not dead yet. Where is he?”
“Listen–” she started, shivering like a reed in his grasp, but the cold metal of the gun hit her hard across the cheek. The world spun for a moment. A savage jerk of her neck brought her back to her senses, to the feeling of warm blood rolling down her jaw, to the taste of it on her tongue like copper and iron.
The Emperor treated her to a cold smile as her eyes focused again. “Where is he?”
“I know that voice.” Jock sounded ashen. “Fuck. Fuck me. Don’t say a thing.”
The grip around her throat tightened to make her gasp. Her breath wheezed out of her, unable to get back into her lungs. “Where is he?” the Emperor repeated with the same quiet edge.
Gina squeaked, “He’s . . . He’s not here!” She coughed violently, but couldn’t breathe in again. “Hhh . . . Hhh . . .”
Just when she thought her lungs would burst, the door on the other side of the room slammed open. Rat’s thin, high voice called out from the shadowy doorframe, “Emperor! Let her go!”
Gunshots thundered through the darkness. Gina heard Rat squeal as he jumped away into cover, her eyes aching from the muzzle flash, barely able to see the Emperor in front of her as he scanned the room for his target. Without thinking she dipped her hand into her purse, pulled out her trusty old Mk5, and squeezed.
The Emperor flew away from her. His body landed convulsing on the floor, but within moments he stretched out again with terrible endurance, grasping for his gun. Gina, still fighting for breath, hurled herself on top of him and shoved the Mk5 in his face. It hummed menacingly while it recharged.
“The next one will kill you,” she rasped, “so no more games. We’re here with Jock.”
“You lie,” the Emperor mumbled, but his voice was unsure. He continued more forcefully, “Jock is dead. They are all dead. Do not mock me, woman.” He clenched his fingers to work the electric-shock numbness from them.
The bug in her ear hummed, “Quick, tell him–” it switched to Mandarin in mid-sentence, “–‘dawn over Chang Jiang’.”
The Emperor’s eyes widened as she repeated the phrase. “All right?” she asked the strong, harrowed face underneath her. Recovered as he was, she had no doubts that he could throw her off at any second. Her muscles were weak and starved of oxygen and her brain was on fire with Spice. But she had the Mk5.
He nodded. “Alright. You are with Jock. But I don’t understand.” From the corner of her eye, Gina could see Rat cautiously creeping back into the room, ready to bolt again if anyone even pointed a gun in his general direction.
“Neither do I,” she said and moved to roll off of him. Jock said something in her ear, but she couldn’t make it out as the Emperor threw her off the moment she shifted her weight. The gun materialised in his hand in the same way Bomber’s had done in the alley. Surprised and off-balance, it happened too fast for her to react. Three shots rang out like the wrath of God.
A dark shape toppled to the floor out of the doorway, accompanied by the clunk of metal as something dropped from its hands. The Emperor rushed to the body’s side and ripped open the dark overcoat. He spat a savage curse when he saw the gang colours.
“Fuck,” breathed Rat. “Holy fuck. Who’s he, Yakuza?”
“No,” the Emperor said hatefully. “Triads.”
The earpiece burbled, “Gina, are you listening? I told you, I’ve got about five armed people converging on that building! You need to get the hell out of there!”
The Emperor sneered as she told him the news, then stood up and jacked the slide of his pistol. “Follow me.”
He slipped out the doorway into a deep stairwell, and Gina followed him on trembling legs, pulling Rat along behind her. They rattled down the rickety steps as fast as they could. The sound of other people’s footfalls hammered off the walls, and somewhere at the bottom of the stairwell, the noise of a boot meeting an ancient rotting door boomed up the shaft. Wood cracked. Shouts in Chinese echoed everywhere.
The Emperor turned onto the first floor landing and muttered, “A parting gift,” as he pulled a grenade out from under his longcoat. He sent it tumbling down the gap between the stairs to land hard on the ground below. Meanwhile the door at the bottom let out a final creaking moan as it gave way. Several men piled into the stairwell, shouting and stomping, and a moment later vanished in a ball of fire. Huge clouds of black smoke billowed up the stairway like an avalanche in reverse.
With a single powerful heave, the Emperor threw open the fire door and leapt into the empty space where the fire escape should have been, undeterred by the drop to ground level. He landed lightly on his feet, all the while aiming his gun down the street in case anyone decided to pop their head round the corner. Behind him, ancient fire alarms roused from their slumber and started to blare out their electronic warnings.
“This feels familiar,” Gina muttered as she climbed down. Her heavy soles made a loud clump as she hit the pavement. The shock travelled all the way up her legs and into her Spice-muddled mind, sent it spinning so hard she had to catch herself against the wall, retching all over the brickwork.
Meanwhile Rat waffled in the doorway, frightened to take the three-metre jump, but the sound of more Triad men thundering into the building persuaded him to take his chances with gravity. He squealed as he plummeted to the ground, but soon found himself on the ground unharmed.
“Move,” the Emperor hissed, “they won’t be far behind. If we’re fast we can melt before they see us.”
Gina agreed immediately and followed close on his heels. Rat didn’t get a vote. In Gina’s opinion, it was a capital plan.
After all, it put as much distance as possible between herself and the chaos of smoke, fire and armed men behind her.
