“Wh-what the hell are you talking about?” Frankie stuttered.
“Hell.” Tze smirked. “Yes, indeed. My meaning, lad? It is no less than this. I know the colour of your blood, Francis Lam Cheung Yee. By the grace of the Dark Ones, I’ve tracked the threads of your bloodline across the weave of history.” He made a sweeping gesture. “Your family, your brother too. In both of you it runs thick.” The man came into the light and there on his chest one brand burned brighter than the others, a connection of circles, lines, arcs.
Hi snorted. “He still doesn’t comprehend. He’s no better than the other.”
Tze silenced her with a snap of his fingers. “There’s never been a time when we haven’t watched you, Francis. Even before your birth, the King’s Men observed, measured, tracked. And waited.”
“The files,” Frankie blurted. “I saw them.”
The other man nodded. “You and your kindred have something I could only dream of possessing, son. You are touched by Him. Your bloodline bares the mark. You are living avatars, the keepers of the Key to the Great Pattern, scattered across the world like seeds. Waiting to bloom.” He touched a hidden control on a wooden lectern. “Let me show you.”
A d-screen dropped from the ceiling behind Hi and flicked into sharp reds. Frankie recognised electron microscope images of blood platelets, of twisting ropes of DNA. The view crawled closer.
“Do you not see?” grinned Tze, pointing.
At a size visible only on the highest magnifications, Frankie saw shapes that seemed embossed on the very matter of his flesh and blood, imprinted there like a makers mark: the repeated icons of a star with eight points and the same shape that was burned into the chest of Mr Tze. His stomach twisted.
“Spilled blood marks the way,” intoned the other man, “and it must be of a vintage that the King prefers.” He snapped his fingers and Monkey King was there, strong, iron-hard arms snaking around Frankie s torso. “Don’t fear Him,” murmured Tze, “embrace Him. When your veins are opened and the Jade Dragon drinks of you, you will become a part of His Glory. You will seal the pact for us.” Tze’s eyes glittered with rapture and he pointed up at the ceiling. There were carvings of serpents and cruel angels up there, shadows writhing in the dim lamplight. “Alan perished too soon, he forced my hand. That error will not be repeated.”
“You, every damn one of you, are absolutely out of your fucking minds,” said Frankie.
Rope stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of Blue Snake, standing there in the middle of the atrium, her slender and dangerous hands moving in front of her chest like leaves in a gentle breeze. The bodyguard was watchful, patient.
“Where is Miss Quan?” He demanded, striding toward the guardian.
“She became unwell.” Blue Snake nodded blankly at the restroom. “She required privacy.”
“How long ago was this?”
She cocked her head. “Elapsed time: four minutes, thirty-six seconds.”
Rope sneered and went into the toilet. Blue Snake walked warily behind him. The guardians were useful tools in the correct circumstances, but they were flawed. Drained of their humanity by the Masking process, they sometimes became slow, confused by emotions and reactions that they had lost the means to process. Tze’s ridiculous attachment to them had been shown for the idiotic affectation it was in the club tonight, his personal bodyguard downed by a mystery assailant; and now this, the female one failing to understand the mindset of the girl Juno.
He slammed the stall door with his hand, kicking at the discarded coat with the tip of his boot. The smell of cooling puke tickled his nostrils; Blue Snake examined the remains, analysing them in a vague attempt to grasp the error she had made.
Rope prodded her in the chest. “Seal the building. Locate her. But be discreet.”
Blue Snake padded out into the hall and halted. “Tracking reports… target is ascending. Destination is Research and Development level.”
He swore and pushed the woman out of the way, dragging a smartcard from his pocket. Rope entered a lift and gave chase.
The chamber began to unfold. Where they stood in the centre of the room, the circular section of the stone floor remained static; but the rings of smaller flagstones around the edges of the hall folded back upon themselves and allowed twisting wooden pillars to emerge. Some of them were wet and they smelt coppery in the thick air. From the ceiling, extending from the carved bodies of snakes and worm-headed abominations, metal arms ending in the glass eyes of holojector lenses fell into place and emitted coherent light. Frankie saw the shapes of people forming in some of the glowing haloes beneath them, others showing black monoliths that reminded him of obsidian tombstones.
Hi completed cleaning the bowl and allowed Tze to cut himself into it. The CEO removed the same silver box from beneath the oak table and Frankie suppressed a shudder. Out came the knife of manifold blades, into Tze’s hand with casual, dangerous motions.
“You’re not going to die tonight,” Tze said in an offhand manner, whispering so that the other players in his sick little theatre did not hear. “Your bloodline is the most potent, the most vital. We have to be economical with it.” He smirked. “I am not a man for wastage.”
Frankie struggled in Monkey King’s grip. “This is nuts! You’re telling me, my whole family is some line of sacrificial lambs for some psycho cult?”
“Not just you. There are others.” Tze nodded at the holos. In one, Frankie saw a general in the uniform of the APRC carefully stabbing an elderly man; in another, a woman in a blue shipsuit was coring the eyes from a screaming child. He turned away, reeling. “It is just that your blood is the superior strain.” Tze took the knife and made shallow, stinging cuts on Frankie’s wrists, catching the ejecta in the bowl.
Hi made symbols in the air and bowed. Tze waited for her to have her face over the basin, and in a single sweep, he tore the blade across the bare white flesh of her throat. Dark arterial spray fanned into the air and the music executive perished with a wailing, streaming gurgle. There was something like rapture in her dying eyes.
Tze gave a pious nod to the other members of the Cabal. “The altar is anointed. As the pattern speaks, we will allow the stone and wood to drink their fill, preparing themselves. We Open The Way.”
“We Open The Way,” came a chorus of voices from hidden speakers.
“In the wastes of America, a fool tries and fails. So-called Elders with their petty, limited ideals bark like dogs believing they have the attention of men. They have nothing but the contempt of the Dark Ones. It is only we who will succeed. We, who light the path. We, who will thrive where Seth fails.” He showed a mouth full of white, razor teeth. “The Jade Dragon rises. It is ordained.”
Juno had never been here.
She had been here many times.
She had no idea what number to key into the security keypad.
The code was 7-9-5-7-3.
Juno remembered the glass and steel rooms with floors of hollow plate.
She was terrified at her first sight of the facility.
She was scared the security drones would see her.
She knew where to stand to avoid them.
The tarot card in her hand. It seemed to merge with her flesh, become insubstantial. The image of the High Priestess was a brand, a tattoo done in acid inks. She let it lead her in, muscle memory taking Juno deep into a place of quiet, patient machines and liquid glows.
Inside, the laboratory was lit in a watery yellow, a series of light bars set in the floor casting shadows around a collection of large spherical modules. The orbs were transparent, and in each of them was a naked human body, coiled and floating in a green ocean. Juno recoiled, almost falling over a low console. The sphere closest to her held a child, a girl, and as she watched, Juno could see the slow movement of her chest and the occasional twitch of fingers and toes. A flat mask covered the girl’s eyes, and a pair of thick, semi-organic cables extended into the liquid medium. One was attached to her navel, and the other disappeared into a fluffy matt of hair at the back of her head. Juno felt her stomach turn over again and put out a hand to steady herself, inadvertently touching the wall of the sphere.