“Know what?” His voice rose in panic.
Chan’s pleasant face turned sad and compassionate. “Nikita was admitted to Saint Theresa’s. They said it was a drug overdose. She’s critical. ”
Alice had yet to provide a replacement d-screen for the one Frankie had lost in the car, so he had bought a basic tourist PDA from the In-Shop Micromall in the apartment block. His throat went dry when he input the spike and a security program began a regimen of questions; it asked about people he went to school with, about where he’d hidden his copies of Playboy as a teenager, the name of the first girl he ever slept with. Things that only Alan would have known the answers to. He locked the door to the toilet and sat on the edge of the bowl, hunched over the book-sized screen, growing anxious with every passing moment.
Finally, the programme was satisfied and it opened to him. There were gigs of data on the memory needle, and he flicked experimentally through them. Most of the files had warnings promising censure and contract termination if they were viewed outside a Yuk Lung Heavy Industries database. Frankie understood that his brother had plundered proscribed levels of the company’s deep storage, illegally copying a king’s ransom in sensitive data. Even from a cursory examination, he could see that there was enough here to earn billions of yuan on the open market. If the spike fell into the hands of a rival like Eidolon or GenTech, YLHI would be destroyed.
Frankie swallowed hard. Alan, an industrial spy? It hardly seemed real. He was set for life in his upper tier posting at Yuk Lung… There was nothing any other corporation would have been able to give him that was better. There had to be another reason why he had been collating data…
A sudden, chilling thought struck him. The label on the spike. Brother. Alan must have left it for Frankie to find, a message of some sort. Had he known he was going to die? And what if…
The palmtop shook in his hands. He could hardly bring himself to think it.
What if Alan’s death wasn’t an accident?
The knock on the toilet door made him jump with fright, and the little PDA slipped out of his hands and across the tiled floor. “Wait!” he piped, “Just, uh, just a second!” Frankie flushed the toilet and gathered up the PDA, stuffing it into the pocket of the gown. He wiped sweaty hands on the towelling and forced a smile as he opened the door. “Juno, hey-”
“Mr Lam, good morning,” Monkey King filled the doorway before him, steady as a statue. “My apologies for disturbing you. ”
Frankie utterly failed to keep the shock from his face. “What…?”
“Miss Qwan has an appointment at the Ocean Terminal Mallplex. I’m here to escort her.”
“Yes. Of course. ”
Juno emerged from the bathroom wearing a man’s tracksuit ensemble. She gave him a deep kiss and smiled. “I’m borrowing this, hope you don’t mind.”
“No. That’s fine. It’s, uh, was my brother’s.”
She traced a finger over his cheek. “I have to go.” Her face softened. “See me again, Frankie? Say you will?”
He nodded, unable to find the words. Juno kissed him again, and followed the masked man out. On the threshold, she tossed him a jaunty wave and was gone.
Frankie stood there for a long time, his mind in turmoil. The palmtop in his pocket felt like lead, heavy with terrible possibility. Alice had told him that Alan’s death had been a mistaken assault, but now a tide of suspicion was rising.
I have to know for sure.
His hands tapped at the air. But where could he turn for help? Hong Kong was an alien place to him now, and he had no doubt that Tze’s people would never give him leave to investigate on his own. He needed someone on the outside. Someone who knew the street.
Someone who had connections.
Ko felt the colour drain from him in a sick rush. In the hospital bed, Nikita was barely visible beneath a network of plastic tubes and sensor wires. Machines painted in the same leaf-green as the walls were clustered around the girl’s sallow face, chiming in time to her heartbeat. His sister’s chest rose and fell in ragged jerks, her breath disordered through the oxygen mask clasped over her nose and lips. Beneath closed lids, her eyes fluttered and moved.
He staggered forward, some part of him wondering if Dr Yeoh had brought him into the wrong room by mistake. This pale thing in front of him hardly seemed real enough to be Nikita, dear Niki with her explosive temper and her flashing I-dare-you eyes. The woman on the bed was a faded copy of his sister, washed out and thin as tissue paper. This was some weak facsimile.
“She was admitted in the early hours of the morning,” the doctor said, her voice calm and measured. “A police unit found her in Kowloon Park. She was very lucky. A few more hours and she would have died.”
“Lucky.” Ko repeated in a dead voice. He reached out and ran a hand over her cheek. Her skin was clammy and cold. Nikita s mouth was moving, and he bent close to hear. She was whispering.
“Your sister’s medical records are patchy, Mr Chen, but it’s clear she has a history of drug use. I’m afraid this is very serious.”
Ko moved the oxygen mask and placed his ear to her lips. He felt tears welling up as he made out the peculiar litany.
“Mountain and the blood, screeching cats. Where are the masks talking? Can’t see the lines on his chest, ropes and cutting knives.” The words came in gasps. “No zen. Invisible hands. Know zen. Demons, pieces that smell like dark.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Ko turned, his fists balling.
The woman’s brow furrowed. “She’s suffered an overdose of a hallucinogenic. Her mind is struggling to make sense of it, but the drug effect tampers with conscious recall and perception, it creates a synesthetic overload.” She sighed. “It’s like the book of your sister’s life has been jumbled up. She’s lost in it.”
“The worms gathering, the mirror sea,” whispered Nikita, “Mirror see. See mirror. Mirror. Bubble in a stream. Jade. The Jade Dragon.”
“Can’t you help her?” he demanded. “Can’t you… fix her?” Ko blinked furiously, impotent and frustrated.
Dr Yeoh’s kind face set in a frown. “Nikita has suffered severe neurological damage. There is a possible remedy, but it’s beyond my skills. I can give you a referral but you must understand, the cost is very high. Have you ever heard of the Zarathustra Clinic?”
Ko gave a bitter laugh. “Do I look like millionaire? I don’t have the kind of yuan they charge!” He gave the doctor a hard look. “Who did this to her? I want to know!”
The woman was silent for a long moment. “This isn’t the first case I have seen like this. Your sister’s reaction is to a street narcotic, zee-three-en. Do you know it?”
“Zen.” He screwed his eyes shut, remembering the tingle of the spilt drug on his fingers.
“Other users haven’t been so fortunate. But it’s difficult to stem the flow of this poison. The police look the other way. The corporates…” She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Yuk Lung and the others, they help proliferate the drug but their high-level government connections put them above the law. All we can do here is pick up the pieces.” Yeoh turned away. “I’ll give you some time with her. Talk to her, it may help.”
Ko stood over Nikita, vibrating with pent-up anger. “You motherfuckers,” he said to the air. “I’ll kill every last one of you for this!”
Feng rested against the window. “Ko. You can’t help her that way.”
He rounded on the swordsman. “Look at her! She’s a mess! One of those cashwhore bastards made that happen to her, just for shits and grins! Don’t try to calm me down, dead man! I’ll give them payback, a hundred rimes over!”
“Look to the girl first,” said Feng. “You get yourself killed and who will care for her?”
Ko’s angry retort died in his throat as the sound of a nightingale rang through the air. His hand wandered to the pocket of his coat. The cellphone. It was still there, forgotten after the events on the expressway.
He flipped open the device, illuminating the miniscreen and the camera pickup. “Who the hell is this?” he snarled.