Jade Dragon (27 page)

Orderlies pushed a mumbling old woman past in a wheelchair. She appeared
to have chewed off her own thumbs. “They’re all like Nikita?” said Ko.
“All dosed with zee-three-en?”

“Some,” said Yeoh. “Maybe one in six. The others show the same symptoms
but there’s no root cause we can find.” She sighed. “I contacted the
State Medical Commission in Beijing, the United Nations Centre for
Disease Control, in case… They’re looking into it.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Ko snapped.

She met his gaze, tired and frustrated. “Realistically? It doesn’t mean
shit. ”

“It’s in the water,” said Fixx quietly.

“Zee-three-en is a street narcotic. You think it’s in the drinking
supply?” Yeoh shot him an incredulous look. “We can’t be sure that—”

“Be sure,” he replied, tapping Ko on the arm. “Where’s Nikita?”

The doctor did nothing to stop them as the youth led the black man away
down the corridor.

The roll of yuan she had given Ko for the rent had gone to pay for
Nikita’s private room. Now, with the hospital filling by the moment, the
expense seemed even more worthwhile. Ko closed the door behind him,
shutting out the sounds of weeping. Beside him, Fixx took in a long,
careful breath. He seemed uncomfortable in the armoured coat, a new and
slightly worrying aspect of the otherwise unflappable operative.

“Don’t like hospitals,” he said, by way of explanation. “Too much hurt
hereabouts.”

“Yeah,” agreed Ko. Even as a boy, he’d been unnerved by visits to the
block clinic for checkups and N-SARS vaccinations. It was as if all the
agony and the sickness of the patients who went through the building got
left behind, like an invisible stain on the walls.

Fixx sniffed the air. “Brings out the jackals. They can smell it when
you’re weak, close to death comin’.” He crossed to Nikita and tenderly
stroked her face. “She’s pretty.”

“Yeah,” Ko repeated, the word catching in his throat.

Fixx pulled back the mask and used a damp cloth to moisten the sleeping
girl’s lips. They were cracked and dry where she was still speaking in
quiet church whispers. He listened closely to her for a few moments,
nodding. “She’s seen it. She knows how it’s gonna play out.”

Ko came closer, blinking back tears. “I don’t get it. Why would that
bastard Tze tell her?”

“Didn’t tell her,” Fixx dug in one of his pockets, “Showed her.” He drew
out an ornate little pillbox decorated in green and gold enamel. Ko
recoiled at the sight of the blue capsules inside. “We gotta know what
she does, slick. We gotta see it.”

Ko stabbed an angry finger at him. “You give that shit to her and I
swear I’ll break your fucking neck—”

Fixx shook his head. “Not for her.” He held it out to the younger man.
“You an’ me.”

Colour drained from Ko’s face. “What?”

“That’s how this stuff works. Like a link-up for your mind, see. Just a
quick little flick of it, little belt of the world beyond. Pop it and
done.” He rolled the capsules on to his palm. “Few seconds of instant
telepathy, in convenient tablet form.” Fixx traced a finger over
Nikita’s forehead. “We drop these, we can go take a look-see in there. ”

“You’re outta your mind!”

“No,” said Fixx, “your sister is. ’Less you’re thinkin’ you got a better
solution, ’less you wanna sit here and wait for the world to end, only
way to help her is to do this.” He placed a caplet in Ko’s hand. “C’mon.
Curtain’s up. Your cue.”

There on Ko’s palm, the indigo sphere shone like a glittering jewel.

Ropé was waiting at the helipad, the blurring rotors of the spidercopter
thrumming as Mr Tze strode from the castle interior. He had changed into
the garb of an ancient warlord.

“Heywood,” he said pleasantly. “How is our darling diva? I understood
there was an incident in the lab?”

Ropé wore a contrite expression. “Sir, yes. I have expedited the
problem.” He jerked a thumb at the rotorcraft. “I secured the talent in
the cabin. She’s been pacified.”

Tze’s eyebrow arched. “Not too strongly, I hope? We are on the cusp,
Heywood. We can’t afford any more mistakes.”

His face changed to a thin smile. “No sir, we cannot. I was forced to
invoke a command imprint. I believe she was attempting to determine her
own origins.”

“Ah. How interesting. Perhaps, if there were time, we could learn
something from this for use in later models.” He glanced away. “But no.
When the pattern is made whole tonight, Juno’s function will be at an
end.”

Ropé said nothing, watching the sparkle of joy in Tze’s eyes.

“Miss Hi has given of herself to whet the blade. The role of absolution
now falls to you, Heywood. The young one, Lam, has been prepared.” Tze
placed a hand on Ropé’s shoulder. “I rely on you to commit the deed when
the moment comes.”

“For the King,” Ropé gave the rote reply.

Tze smiled again and boarded the flyer. Ropé watched it vanish toward
the high ridge of Victoria Peak, where spotlights danced on the low
clouds. In the pocket of his coat, the metal cover of
The Path of
Joseph
tore at his skin. “Such an arrogant man,” he said to the air. To
think Tze imagined he might cage a Dark One and become the master of the
Desire-God. In Joseph’s name, it would be Ropé’s pleasure to show him
the error he had made in trusting a secret agent of Elder Seth.

Ko sat on the chair, blinking. “I’m not feeling anything. This is
looped.”

Fixx ignored him. “Give it time.”

The pill had disintegrated the moment he swallowed it, and now Ko was
having second thoughts, his pulse racing and his hands getting sweaty.
He sniffed the air and caught a whiff of something strong and redolent.
“You smell that?”

“Like a steakhouse.” Fixx frowned.

Ko was on his feet, making for the door. “Where’s all the…? People
are—” His bare feet
(bare?)
slapped on warm liquid and he glanced
down. The grey tiled floor in the corridor shimmered, darkened. It
became a purple-red pool, moving to fill the space before him. Tendrils
of the blood-stuff inched up the walls.

“Oh. Shit. It’s happening.”

Fixx was following him. “Go with it. Don’t fight it.”

Ko panicked. “No. Damn it man, this was a jagged idea, I want out.”

“Weakling,” sneered another voice. Ko saw Feng, crouched at the pool’s
edge, looking at his dark reflection. “Your first instinct is always to
run.”

Fixx rubbed his chin. “Who’s your friend?” Ko swallowed. “It’s, uh, a
long story. ”

They followed the meat smell out of the decaying hospital, past huge
boles of greenish fungus that were consuming the crumbling concrete.
Outside, Hong Kong had transformed into a fleshy, mutant parody of the
city. Pieces of perception detached and reformed; they blindsided Fixx
and hammered into his thoughts, alien invaders spitting memory-seed.

He saw landscapes of wet flesh, the stench of boiled skins and torched
meat. And so many screams; they pushed and pulled, rising and falling
from sexual cries of pleasure to noises that chilled the blood in his
veins.

Fixx did not question the new arrival, this man the thief called Feng.
The aura about the swordsman was strange and complex, the shades similar
to Ko’s. Somewhere down the bloodline these two shared ancestry; the op
wondered if either of them knew it. He toyed with the bones in his
pocket. They felt spongy and indistinct.

“There she is,” said Feng, pointing with his sword. Along the leathery
highway, Nikita was sitting on a couch made from dead dogs. Faint whisps
of face and body sat about her, giggling and laughing. She was dressed
in a tattered Dior delta, streaked with mud and fluids. Fixx heard Ko
gasp when she turned her face to them. Half of her skull was bared,
flesh seared away. Blood ran from the torn eye socket, dripping into the
wineglass in Nikita’s hand. Now and then, she would laugh as if in
response to some unheard joke and sip at the contents of the glass.

Feng angrily used the blade to dissipate the wraiths, and Ko stepped
closer, taking the burnt twigs of bones that were Nikita’s ruined right
hand. “Sis?” he asked. “It’s me.”

“Little brother.” She gave a languid nod. “You should run. He’s coming.”

“Who’s comin’?” asked Fixx.

The flesh-world around them began to tremble. “The King,” she said.

And more than anything, Ko wanted to look away, but inside his mind,
there was no place to seek shelter. A frigid hurricane of blue ice
ripped into them, and above—

Tze loomed, a towering god wreathed in noxious smoke and shimmering
darts of painful colour…

Ko felt his ire surge at the sight of the man’s grinning face. For a
moment, he felt the weight of a weapon in his hand, and saw Feng’s sword
in his grip. But then—

Tendrils of liquid night emerged. They stabbed out and penetrated,
rushing through flesh and savaging his mind…

Fixx held on to him, but it was no good. They slipped on a new surface
of sheer ice and fell—

Into visions of…

Black skies filled with blinded stars.

Emerald serpent forms, congealing, forming a monstrous snake-god; a
mouth of snaggle teeth, eyes blue pools of destructive sensual energy.

Jade Dragon…

Juno screaming, lit across a stage of razorblades and glass, a
puppeteer’s strings tied to her limbs, ranging away over her head.

Tze above, hands on the strings, directing and laughing.

In the water…

Grinning mindless salarymen in bars choking on mouthfuls of blue
capsules.

Masks floating, black-clad hands pouring thick drums of azure syrup into
wheeling falls of clean water.

Children across the city sharing one nightmare.

I’m the quiet mind inside, pretty voice…

Through sheaves of flashing pixels, inside flexing waveforms.

Lies and compulsions sewn into every singing word, every rhythm and
bright sparkling vision.

Legions sleeping awake at their d-screens, absorbing.

All thinking the same way…

The blue, in everything, in each breath of air, each bite and sip.

All eyes on Juno.

At the tower, Ropé bearing the wageslave’s throat before a multi-bladed
knife.

A rip in the sky…

Opening.

The Jade Dragon tearing through.

Slashing.

Ending the world…

Ripping.

And no one to stop it…

“Out!” Ko screamed. “Get me out!”

He felt Feng’s fingers around his wrist and then…

Ko hit the ground and felt asphalt beneath his fingers. He barely got to
his feet before he vomited explosively, bringing up thin, watery bile.

Fixx was nearby, sitting on his haunches. It took a moment for Ko to
realise that they were on the roof of the hospital building. “How did we
get up here?”

“Sleepwalkin’,” offered the op, casting the bones and reading them.
“Damn. That was heavy.” He looked up. “Your buddy, Feng. Got us free of
it.”

Ko looked at his feet and shivered. “Is Nikita all right?”

“No change. Same for all those poor fools.”

The thief found his attention drawn up to the distant shadow of the
peak. “All that was true… That mad bastard is gonna summon a demon,
rape the world…” Ko grabbed at Fixx. “We can’t let that happen!”

But the op’s attention was elsewhere, staring down at the hospital
parking lot. “First things first,” he said, pointing. “We got company.”

A silver Mercedes Vector drew to a halt, and from inside came three
distinctive figures. A man and two women in identical suits, faces
hidden behind gaily-painted opera masks.

The Road to the Shining City must be marked out

For the Dark Ones and their Servitors

Just as landing lights mark out an airfield runway

The spilled blood would guide the Dark Ones to the Earthly Plane

To the Last City

Message embedded in Happy Carp beer commercial, origin unknown.

Blue Snake came into the hospital first, with her sister White Snake and
Qin Hui following close behind. Blue and White had not been born as
siblings, but in their service to the Cabal they had been made so, in
manners far beyond the level of crude genetics. Their masks were
negative images of each other. Where her visage was dominated by azure
colours, honeyed filigree and pale trim, her sister’s facade was white
with blue and gold detail. Their masks were the faces of two mythic
characters, serpent-spirits who guarded a mountain in legend. By
contrast, Qin Hui’s face was dominated by death-white, with facets of
black and pink; his name was taken from a perfidious politician of the
Song Dynasty, whose hands bore the blood of the renowned hero Yue Fei—if
the stories of the playwrights were to be believed.

They advanced through people who wailed and rocked. Blue Snake felt a
pang of envy for them that was quickly excised; these wretches did not
yet understand the gift they had been given.

A nurse approached, her expression frayed. She had the hardened aspect
of someone who had seen much trauma but still kept a kernel of humanity
within, refusing to become cold to it. She wore the kevlar uniform
typical of an Accident and Emergency staffer. “What do you want here?”

White Snake showed the nurse a datascreen. “Have you seen these two men?
The black man’s name is unknown to us, but the youth is Chen Wah Ko.”

The nurse shrugged. Blue Snake saw the lie instantly, the slight
dilation in her eyes and the change in her blood capillary flow. The
mask fed the data to her, direcdy into her thoughts; it went to her
sister and to Qin Hui as well.

White Snake took the nurse by the arm and spun her about, dislocating
her wrist in the process. With her other hand, the Mask produced a
sprayhypo loaded with Z3N doses. White Snake fired twenty ccs of the
blue into the woman’s neck and let her drop, stuttering, to the floor.