Dawn was coming up over the skyline of Hong Kong Island, turning the mirrored towers honey gold. The light moved across the walls of Alan’s former apartment, illuminating his tasteful Mondrian prints. Carefully, Frankie slid himself out of the bed without disturbing Juno’s sleep and padded across the room, grabbing a dressing gown. He gave her another look before he went into the bathroom, watching her at rest there. Man, she is gorgeous!
But what was going to happen next? Was it possible that a guy like him could actually have some kind of a realistic relationship with a woman like her, a pop star whose face was on the bedroom walls of a million teenagers? Hadn’t he seen something last month on Tiplady’s screamsheet, about Juno dating Brook Beckham? Maybe this would be a one-night thing for her, an amusement park ride, there and then gone. Something for him to tell his grandkids about-yeah, Juno and me, we had a thing-but nothing real. When he thought of it like that, it made Frankie’s chest ache. He didn’t want it to end that way, wham bam thank you salaryman. He thought of the look in her eyes when they kissed, the melancholy, the loneliness. It made him want to hold and protect her. She wanted more than that, he was sure of it. He saw the mirror of his own isolation in her, the same disconnection, the same darkness.
Darkness. Frankie looked into his reflection over the bathroom sink and frowned. Now he found his thoughts drifting back, past the thrills of last night and into disturbing recollections of the party at the YLHI tower. The sense-memory of blood came back to him with such force, for a moment he gripped at his hand, convinced the knife cuts had opened up again. Half-seen things began to unfold at the corners of his vision, and Frankie snapped his fingers to halt them, shaking the thoughts away. Forget that. I’m here now. With her. Not my business.
He went to work washing his face, then halted when he couldn’t locate any soap. There was a cabinet within arm’s reach and he peered inside. Rooting through dozens of bottles of expensive aftershave and skin balms, his fingers closed around a plastic disc. He brought it to eye level and peered at the object.
Inside the coin-sized case was a memory spike, and on the flag of its tail was a single word printed in tiny characters.
Brother.
The police trooper walked Ko through the detention section and up the broad stairs to the main level of the precinct house. The place was alive with the morning shift, young men in green uniforms and slow-eyed older guys who had the paunchy, ex-boxer look of career detectives. The actinic glow of dozens of monitor screens gave the place a chilly look at odds with the sweat-warm temperature. It was a single open room fenced off into threadbare cubicles with proper offices boxed off around the outer walls. Watery sunshine leached from skylights across the ceiling. The station was a mess of retrofitted Twenty-first century technology and clumsy beat cop hardware from the Eighties, fat plastic telephones side-by-side with datascreens.
A squad of Special Duties Unit constables were gathered in front of a stuttering holotank as he passed them by. The men were all featureless beneath full spectrum gas masks and the blank bands of optical rigs. They wore matte black clamshell armour festooned with snap-clips for ammunition packs, grenades, heartbeat sensors and leaflet dispensers. On their backs were the sponsorship logos from their corporate partners, a pattern of symbols like those on the jumpsuits of arena drivers but rendered in discreet grey-on-black. They carried guns that blinked and whirred in standby modes. The heads of the SDU men bobbed and moved as they talked among themselves, but Ko heard nothing; their helmets were sound-sealed and they communicated on encrypted radio frequencies.
By contrast the trooper who nudged Ko along the way was at the opposite end of the spectrum. He had the puppy-fat and slightly moronic look of a mainland country hick, filling out the dull khaki uniform of the Army of the People’s Republic of China, Incorporated. There was a holster at his waist and in there, Ko knew, was a palmprint encoded CNI 10mm revolver. He’d seen the damage those pistols wrought on human flesh more times than he liked. The copper stopped him outside an office and rapped smartly on the door. A voice inside called out and the trooper jerked a thumb. Ko sighed and entered.
The man behind the desk wore the same uniform as the bored trooper, but his epaulets showed the silver badges of a chief inspector. The officer waved Ko into an empty seat across from his desk as he finished something on his screen. The teenager didn’t need to study the face of the inspector. He knew it well. The jowls where he was getting old beyond his years, the false tightening of skin from treatments at the NooYoo Clinic. The man had the sort of schoolboy face that seemed better suited to a funnyman on the vid than an aging cop.
Ko held a contrite look on his face as at last the inspector looked up at him. “Hey, uncle. How are you?”
The policeman frowned. “Don’t call me ‘uncle’, Ko. You’re not a child anymore, even if you do act like one, picking fights in the street.”
“Sorry, sir,” he said with a nod. “Inspector Chan, sir.”
“Better,” replied Chan and shook his head. “Ko, what are you doing? I thought you were smart enough not to get caught? I know what you’re up to out there, boy, don’t think that I don’t. But I can’t turn a blind eye if you’re right here in my damn precinct!”
“Sorry,” Ko repeated. “Things… got out of hand.”
Chan made a noise of agreement and Ko saw a blink of images on his monitor: streetcam shots from the road showing the fight, stills from Second Lei’s juvenile arrest records. “That’s one way to describe it.” The older man blinked slowly and gave the youth a level stare. “You were eight years old the first time you saw the inside of a police station, do you remember?”
Ko sighed. Here we go again…
“Your dad brought you in to show you what he did for a living. I locked you in a cell just to give you a scare and you punched me in the gut for it.” He looked away. “Next time I did that, it was nine years later and you’d run a police cruiser off the road in Wanchai. And here we are again. How many times is this, now?”
“You tell me, uncle. Uh, inspector. ”
A scowl passed over the police officer’s face and he threw up his hands abruptly. “Ah, fuck it!”
Ko blinked. He’d never heard his father’s old partner swear in all his life.
Chan shook a finger at him. “I’m tired of giving you the same bloody lecture every time we cross paths, you delinquent! I don’t want to hear it again!”
“That makes two of us,” said Ko.
The older man moved faster than his years and dealt Ko a savage slap about the head. “Don’t get cocky, boy! The only reason you haven’t been sent down a dozen times over is because I owe your father my life! I promised him I’d look out for his kids… I can’t do anything about that wild sister of yours, but you…” He leaned closer. “What kind of man are you growing up to be, Ko? You’re a disappointment!”
“More than you know,” said the teenager quietly.
“I know you got good in you. I see the flowers you leave on the old man’s grave.” Chan sat back down, fuming. “Your father forgive me, but this is the last time. I’m not covering for you any more. From now on, you’re just another go-ganger punk to me, understand?” He rapped on the desk. “You need to get your head straight. You should be looking after your sister, not wasting time on the roads.”
Ko felt something shift in his chest; he thought about what he’d said in the cell and there was a sudden surety inside him. “You’re right, uncle. I’m getting out.”
Chan’s face darkened. “And Nikita? You’re not just going to leave her in the hospital?”
Ko’s blood ran cold. “Hospital? What are you talking about?”
The policeman’s face shifted. “Oh, hell. Don’t tell me you don’t know…”