“Can… Can I sit? I’m not…” Her words trailed off. This was all new to her.
He found a place on one of the pews and gestured around. “It’s a slow day. We have plenty of room.”
She sat on the bench behind him, perched on the edge in case she felt the sudden urge to escape. “Thanks.”
“First time?” he asked, and got a nod in reply. “Well, we never close.” The priest patted the wood. “We’re always here.” He offered her his hand. “I’m Father Woo.”
There was the sound of fluttering and she looked up. Birds moved in the rafters, caught by shafts of light through the stained glass windows.
“Doves,” explained the priest with a wan smile. “They roost up there, despite my best attempts to entice them to leave. We have an understanding now. They behave themselves and I don’t chase them with brooms.”
Juno found herself warming to the old man. He was the last thing she expected to find in a city as ruthless and as rapid as this one. “Is it always this quiet?”
Woo sighed. “We’ve never been the busiest of branch offices, if you take my meaning. These days… many people are finding other idols to give their love to.”
She swallowed hard at his choice of words. “It’s peaceful.”
He nodded and steepled his fingers. “How can we help you, child?”
“Why do you think I need help?”
Another smile. “I’ve been doing this job a long time, my dear. I’ve developed an eye for my visitors.”
“I have dreams,” she began haltingly, “bad dreams, about death and destruction. I see terrible things.”
“Dreams can’t hurt you,” said the priest, “a nightmare is just your mind ridding itself of waste.”
“This is different,”she insisted. “These visions… I think I see the future, sometimes the past. But there are memories of things that seem out of place, like they belong to someone else.” Juno took his hand, her eyes glistening. “Father, I think something terrible is going to happen to me, to all of us. I’ve seen it.”
The priest said nothing for a moment, surprised by her words. “We can’t grasp the future, child. That’s not for us to know. All we can do is look to what is right, to try and do the proper thing when the choice is laid out in front of us.” He squeezed Juno’s hand. “Life is about choice. That’s the gift God gives us. It’s how we use that choice that makes the world a better place.”
“Or a darker one,” she added.
“Yes,” he said sadly. “But if you do what is right, and trust in God, your soul will be saved.”
A gasp escaped Juno. She felt hollow inside. “But, Father… What if I don’t have one?”
The priest blinked. “Juno, everyone has a soul-”
She bolted up from the pew, clattering against the old wood. “You know who I am?”
“Of course I do. I’m not blind, child, I have a television. Your face is on billboards everywhere.” He frowned. “That doesn’t mean we can’t talk-”
“I have to go.” Juno scrambled away down the aisle. Above her, the birds left their roosts, disturbed by the sudden commotion.
The old man was still calling her name when she crashed on to the street and wheeled into the roar of the living city.
It was evening when Ko awoke. The watery day had given way to a drowsy sunset, pregnant with humidity. “Typhoon weather,” his sister always called it, glaring out of the window of the apartment and fanning herself furiously, as if that would lessen the chances of a tropical storm.
He frowned as he thought of Nikita and rooted through his clothes. The Sifu had got one of the younger pupils to wash his gear and hang it up in the corner of the meditation cell where they’d put him. The poultice of herbal remedies and treated bandages across his chest was moist and tight, but the pain from the wound was far less than it had been before. Quietly, so as not to draw any attention, he searched until he found the corporate cellphone. Despite the damage he’d done to it, the thing was still working, and-he hoped-the sat-locator circuits inside were still dead to the world. As he flipped it open, he heard a rough chug of laughter from out in the courtyard, and Ko leaned close to the window to take a peek. On the stone steps, his erstwhile rescuer was chatting amiably with his teacher, the two men grinning like they were old friends.
Ko watched Fixx. The way the guy had moved out there at the docks, and the hardware he was packing… He had to be a sanctioned operative, no question about it. But ops were rarer than virgins in this part of the world. The mere fact that Fixx was here in Hong Kong and that for some reason he’d chosen Ko to save from certain death was unnerving.
On the drive to Mongkok, he’d questioned the man. At first Ko thought Fixx was someone that the corp guy had recruited to get him away from the triads, but the op showed genuine confusion when Ko mentioned it. He insisted that somebody called “Papa Leg-bar” had sent him, and Ko had no clue who the hell that was.
But Fixx seemed to know things. Not like names or exact details, but he gave Ko a cool-eyed stare and told the youth that he knew he was looking for revenge, that he was in search of reparation for his blood. And however you sliced it, Fixx had saved his life out there. Ko wasn’t sure if that should make him pleased, or more wary.
He dialled Gau’s number; just before they stashed the Korvette, Ko had forwarded a file he found in the phone’s memory. Mister Wageslave had transmitted a copy of a police record about a hit-and-run in Mongkok during their phone conversation.
Gau answered on the second ring. “This is gonna cost you,” he said without preamble. “If Second knew I was talking to you-”
“Fuck him,” growled Ko. “You owe me, Gau. Remember Shek-O?” There had been a gang rumble on the beach at Shek-O a year earlier, when a Sabre Girl left Gau concussed. Ko had stopped him drowning in the surf and got him home alive. “What you got?”
There was a sigh. “I looked at the pix. I asked around. Spoke to my cousin.”
Ko nodded. Gau’s relative broke heads for the Wo Shing Wo, who ran most of the action in the Mongkok area.
“This guy who was clipped? It wasn’t a mistake like the cops say it is. Cousin says, it was ordered. Bought and paid for. The lie was so the corps didn’t lose face.”
“Who paid for it?”
Gau hesitated. “Listen, Ko. Once I tell you this, once I hang up, we’re done. Your name is poison, man. Second wants to cut you up, and anyone you hang with.”
“Gimme the name!” snapped Ko. “That’s all I want!”
“Cousin says she was some fat little bitch, big shot music corp or something. The boss called her Miss High.”
Feng watched from the shadows, glowering at him. teh jade DRAGON gonna rule HK enda the world
Graffiti seen in Lok Fu Metro Station.
12. To Live and Die in Tsim Sha Tsui
The Korvette grumbled along Nathan Road in the stop-start evening traffic, a black shark drifting between the slab-sided hulks of double-decker buses. The street was lit with gaudy neon and blinking holos, dancing over their heads. Ko caught a glimpse of a flickering dragon in brilliant green, but it was gone before he could focus on it.
In the driving seat, Fixx glanced at the dashboard navscreen. “Couple more blocks.” He looked up at the youth. “Still time to change your mind.”
Ko’s eyes flicked to a passing street corner. Feng stood out there, arms folded, shaking his head. “Just drop me off outside,” he insisted, turning back. “I’ll handle it.”
Fixx made an amused noise. “I don’t think I’ll be doin’ that.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Didn’t seem that way at the docks,” said the op. “Or perhaps I was just readin’ the situation wrongly.”
Ko’s lip twisted. “Look, this isn’t one of those things where you save a guy’s life and then it belongs to you. That’s the Apache who do that, not the Chinese.”
“The old guy, the Sifu. He asked me to keep an eye on you for him. Says you’re reckless, impulsive-like. Could get you into trouble.”
Ko looked away and smoothed down the jacket he was wearing. The clothes were nondescript and traditional in cut, and they reminded him of a school uniform; but that was all they had to spare in the dojo, and there was no way he’d get into The Han in his go-ganger colours. “There’s only one ticket on the door, and it’s in my name.”