“Sam, I told you to—”
The doors locked.
“It’s okay,” the older guy said.
It wasn’t until then that I saw the guy’s face and realized who he was. His picture was all over the TV and street posters around town. It was Gohan Sòng, the king gonzo himself, slumming it in Render’s Strip.
He’s making an appearance at the Second Impact rally, I realized. That’s what the procession was all about. He’d shown up to give some wing-nut speech or something, and spotted Dragan and me as he came in to land.
“Hello, Little Star,” he said to me.
I’d always thought it was makeup and photo retouching that made him look like some kind of weird, living mannequin but he kind of looked that way in person, too. He watched us, his eyes intense under a pair of carefully plucked eyebrows. One eye peered out from under a heavy, drooped lid that made one half of his face look asleep. His black hair looked like shiny, molded plastic.
I started to say something, but Dragan signaled for me to be quiet. Gohan looked at me, then down at my hands, which made him grin, then back over to Dragan. He stared at him, like he’d just seen the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.
“How are you feeling, Officer Shao?” Gohan asked. His lips curled a little more, and Dragan scowled.
“What do you want, Sòng?”
“I wanted to talk to you both face-to-face,” Gohan said. “In private.”
“Why?”
He looked at Dragan with an odd expression, and then tapped at a series of contacts on the tabletop without looking. A hidden panel popped open and cold air misted out, swirling as he reached inside and plucked out a piece of fruit… real fruit. I recognized it as an apple, like the ones from the gonzo shrines, but this one wasn’t made of wax.
He bit into the fruit’s flesh with a crunch and held it in his mouth while he snatched a bottle filled with some kind of orange liquid from the minifridge. He pushed the panel door closed in a puff of mist, then bit off a big piece of the apple while he popped the bottle top with his thumb. He glugged down half of the orange stuff with the apple still in his cheek, and then chewed so that a little bit of juice leaked from one corner of his mouth.
“Sòng, what the hell do you want?” Dragan asked, his voice hardening.
Gohan swallowed and his lips curled into a little smirk, like he knew something the rest of us didn’t. He stared at Dragan a long time, until it started to get weird.
“You seem different to me, somehow. More… enlightened, maybe?”
“Is that so?”
Gohan nodded. “I have an eye for these things. I wondered if maybe you hadn’t reconsidered your position regarding the church.”
I hadn’t told Dragan about Gohan’s little grab attempt he’d made outside my apartment. If I had, he might have decked Gohan right there. As it stood, a vein in his forehead stood out and he looked to the goons to see if they had any idea what Gohan was on about. If they did, they didn’t show it.
“Well, I haven’t,” Dragan said.
Gohan bit off another piece of apple and as he chewed, his smirk grew another couple of notches.
“Are you sure?” he asked around a mouthful of pulp.
“Yes, I’m sure. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Gohan’s face held its look of amusement, even as he sighed.
Whatever was happening, I didn’t like where it was heading. People were milling past the aircar, not able to see inside and unaware of what was going on. One girl even used the reflective surface to check her hair as she passed. As Gohan slurped his way through the rest of his apple, I tugged at Dragan’s shirt.
“Hey, you’re not supposed to be talking to him,” I said.
“You’re so precocious,” Gohan said, the plastic smile still on his face. “I could eat you up.”
“Watch it,” Dragan said, pointing his finger in Gohan’s face. “The Sòng name is only going to take you so far with me. I don’t care who your father is—”
“Well, you should,” Gohan said, his voice calm. “My father is the reason Governess LeiFang holds her office, and you answer to her.”
“I don’t answer to anyone. Let go of her.”
“Dragan,” I said. “It’s okay.”
“That’s very dramatic,” Gohan said, “but you do answer to someone, you really do. Hangfei is still under martial law, and everyone answers to the governess. Especially you.”
“Dragan, don’t,” I said.
“This stops now,” Dragan said.
Gohan leaned closer to Dragan and lowered his voice a little. “He is a lost soul, your Alexei…. I’ll tell you, I don’t know what it is that happened to him, or what he saw, but whatever it was has left him obsessed with the haan.”
“He hates the haan,” Dragan said, “and I don’t blame him.”
Gohan shook his head.
“No… I don’t think that’s true. That’s not what I see.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Maybe it’s you who doesn’t know him.”
Dragan’s hackles went up, and I put one hand on his arm to try to calm him a little.
“I don’t know what your obsession is with him, or any of us,” he said, “but find someone else to fixate on or I promise you you’ll wish you had.”
“It’s really not your choice to make,” Gohan said. “Alexei is with us, now.”
“No, he’s not. They can put me on a short leash, but believe me I will make your life difficult.”
“The days of Governor Hwong are over,” Gohan said, “and I promise you the governess is well aware of who was most instrumental in getting her where she is. I can do whatever I want. You watch.”
He turned his attention back to me. He put down the apple and took my right hand in his two cold ones, all sticky with juice. I gaped, not expecting it. Dragan’s hackles went up another notch, and he leaned forward in his seat. I tried to pull my hand away, but he held it fast.
“Take me up on my invitation,” he said. “Come by our headquarters in Xinzhongzi… both of you come. I promise to make it worth your while.”
He smiled, and then he leaned forward and planted a kiss on the knuckles of my right hand. He let the kiss linger, until I felt his tongue, still cold from the apple, slither between my index and middle finger where it began to probe.
Dragan moved before even I could, his hand clamping down on Gohan’s wrist. He twisted the arm, making Gohan break the kiss and squirm in his seat.
“Dragan, don’t—”
“You think you’re being clever,” Dragan said, leaning close. Gohan’s hand was turning purple, the veins bulging out as Dragan squeezed. “You’re not.”
Gohan was staring at him, his mouth a little open almost like he was in some kind of trance.
“Such passion,” he breathed.
Dragan let him go, shoving his hand away.
“You’re quite strong,” Gohan said, nursing his hurt wrist. His weird smile had returned.
“Dragan,” I whispered, “he’s got a screw loose, just ignore—”
“Keep pushing me,” Dragan said to him, violence edging into his voice.
I’m sorry, Sam.
The words popped up in Alexei’s 3i chat. They floated there in the little translucent window between me and Dragan. He didn’t say anything else, just that. Just “I’m sorry, Sam.” I turned in my seat, looking through the back window to try to spot him again but I couldn’t see through the crowd.
Sorry for what? I sent back. Sorry for blowing Dragan off? For what he’d said earlier… or something else? He didn’t answer. He just repeated his message again.
I’m sorry.
Could he see us, now? Did he know his little stunt may have caused our run-in with Gohan?