XING: Hmmm. Yes, yes-yes. I bet they wished they could live in China!
JUNO: Well, maybe, but REACTION SHOT: AUDIENCE
BACK TO ANGLE
XING: Big question for you, Juno-peach. Wotta bouta Wyldsky? Are you gonna-gonna-gonna be there?
JUNO: Well, Xing, I’m not sure I should say anything…
FX: AUDIENCE CALLING OUT
XING: Pwease-pwease-pwease? Pwetty pwease wid sugar on it?
JUNO: The answer is yes. I’ve agreed to headline the Wyldsky show, even though some people have advised against it…
FX: RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE
JUNO: I just want to sing to Hong Kong XING: Super-super-super cooool-a-rama! Yay! Wow! Zee! And now we’re gonna hear Juno perform her hit song ‘Capsule Lover’!
GO TO WIDE SHOT: CENTRE ON JUNO: ZOOM IN.
14. The East is Red
Ko sat in the corner of the empty courtyard, drawn as far as he could into the shadowed space beneath the arched beams of old wood and peeling red paint. It was raining lightly, and the gloomy clouds overhead matched the glowering, morose cast of the young man’s face. He watched the growing spread of a puddle, the patterns of ripples made by the raindrops, desperate to lose himself in the simplicity of it. The rush of the downpour was still not enough to blot out the recriminations echoing in his thoughts.
“I hate my life,” he said in a small and heartfelt voice. He wanted to be angry, or scared, to feel something, but Ko’s world felt hollow and cold. He was empty. He needed… a purpose.
Feng stood a short distance away, amid the rain, untouched by it. He rested one hand on the hilt of his lionhead sword, watching the teenager. “What are you going to do now?”
He didn’t look up. “I… I’m not sure. That cashwhore Tze knows Big Hung’s boys didn’t waste me like they were sposed to. I’m marked. I’ll be lucky to see out the week… And Nikki will rot away up in that hospital.”
“It pains me to tell you this, but-”
“Then don’t,” growled Ko. “Don’t say ‘I told you so’ or ‘you screwed up again, Ko’ or whatever you’re gonna say. I don’t want another damn lecture.” He sniffed. “All I ever get. Lectures.”
“Wallowing in sorrow wins no wars.” Feng walked over, holding out his hands to cup the rain, the drops passing through unhindered. “A man is only without power when he believes it.”
Ko shot him an acid glare. “Why don’t you just fuck off and die?” he said miserably.
Feng tapped his chest plate. “I cannot. I am already dead.”
“No, but you can fuck off. ”
The swordsman whipped out his blade and swung it at Ko’s neck. The thief reacted instantly, the prickly sense of the phantom sword making him flinch backwards. “You are such a weakling.” He sniffed archly. “I smell the stink of mother’s milk on your breath, mewling little baby.” Feng advanced, rubbing at the stubble on his face. “Do you know how many men I had killed by the time I was your age? How many battles I had fought in?”
“I’m sure you’re gonna bore me with the story,” Ko replied, his ire starting to rekindle.
Feng looked up at the grey sky. “Heaven, tell me what crime I committed that this wastrel must be my companion?”
Ko came to his feet. “Eat shit, you corpse! I never asked to be saddled with your prehistoric ass! Why don’t you go haunt a museum or something?”
“If only I could!” Feng snapped back, “But you’re my penance! My stinking, worthless luck to be tied to you.”
“Luck?” Ko said bitterly. “You don’t know bad luck! You’re dead, how much worse could it get? But I’m still breathing.” He stabbed at his chest. “Every damn thing I do blows up in my face! Every choice in my life is always the hard one. There’s never an easy day for Ko, is there?” He pointed angrily at the sky. “You got a hotline to those fuckers up there, you tell them to cut me some bloody slack!” Ko shouted into the clouds. “You hearing me, you bastards? Are you happy now you made everything go wrong? I got no money, I got no future! I got nothing!”
“You got the tickets.” Fixx said from the shadows.
Ko reacted with shock and spun around on the wet stones. His face flushed crimson. “I, uh…” The stratojet vouchers were still in his pocket.
The sanctioned operative stepped into the light and gave the empty courtyard a curious look. Ko waited for him to ask who he been talking to, but Fixx did not. As ever, Feng had made himself scarce.
“What good would it do?” Ko said, after a moment. “I could take her away, but she’d still be sick. And the corps would still come after me.” He shuffled out of the wet. “That’s how they work. It’d never end.”
Fixx nodded. “That’s right. Still. A lesser soul, he might take one o’ them rides, cash in the other and use it to get off the grid.”
Ko’s face betrayed the revulsion he felt at that idea. “I’m not leaving my sister in some nuthouse.”
“No, you ain’t. You may not have any luck to speak of, but you got what they call strength of character, slick. You got that in spades.”
The youth sagged. “I just wanna get out.”
Fixx’s eyes narrowed. “That ain’t gonna happen. Not until the story has its end. Not ’til the storm’s blown over.”
“What storm?”
The op nodded in the direction of the dojo, where the elderly teacher was addressing a group of kids. “Old man Bruce, he knows it. Things out there on the street, black skies over the peak. He talks about dragons.”
Ko looked away. “He says a lot of things.”
“Don’t act like you don’t see it too. Your gangcult buddies turning into pill-poppers an’ sheep? The blue everywhere you look?”
“Yeah… Sometimes. Like they want people to do it, even though that zee-three-en crap is illegal.”
Fixx nodded. “That poor songbird at The Han, she’s just a mouthpiece for ’em. She’s a shill, hawkin’ it, makin’ the kids want it. A puppet.” He tapped his bald pate. “Minds and hearts, slick. Hearts and minds. That poison gets in your head, holds the door open, lets other things in.”
Ko gave him a sideways look. “That can’t happen.”
“Reckon?” replied the Op. “Your sister, when she got the bad medicine, she talked, right? ’Bout mirrors an’ dragons? Snakes an’ angels?”
Ko’s blood ran cold. “How… How could you know that?”
Fixx ran a finger over his dark glasses. “I seen it, but just a sliver, mind. Not as much as she has.”
Ko slumped against the wall. It seemed too much to take in. “You’re telling me, Nikita got sick because… She tripped on zen with these corp bastards?”
“That’s the meat of it, though there’s more to it than that. You ever hear of Icarus?”
“Yeah. G-Mek racer, 400-series. Not as fast as the Namco Solvalu, though.”
Fixx smirked. “Mean the guy wit’ the wings, flew too near to the sun. I reckon that’s your sis, right there. Got herself too close. Took a taste of it, got burned by Tze.”
Ko’s eyes unfocussed for a moment. “I gotta see how she is. If they tagged me, she could be in trouble.”
Fixx reached for the Korvette’s remote. “Yeah. I’m thinkin’ we might wanna hear what she’s got to say.”
Feng stood across the courtyard by the stone guardian dogs, and he threw Ko a nod of agreement.
The landscape of Tze’s mind was crimson from horizon to horizon. Hills and valleys carved out of bloody wet meat, incarnadine blades of glassy grass tinkling like wind chimes in the slaughterhouse breeze. Frankie was submerged in the vision, pressed into the liquid, foetid gore. He saw streets in a city with buildings made from bone and cartilage, highways of flayed leather choked with twisted debris and vast armies of human dead. High, gelid towers climbing into a poisonous grey sky that spat screeching yellow gobbets of burning rain.
Things moved up there, appearing in eye-searing glimpses through gaps in the monstrous storm clouds; or perhaps it was just one Thing, a creation of such unfathomable size it could envelop the earth. Floating on lace wings made from sinew, a vast and primal form, engorged with wickedness and lust. Even so far away, Frankie could feel the waves of murderous animal need emanating from it, the aching want to push beyond blood and sex and pain and desire, to tear away any petty human constructs like morality and virtue and smother itself in dark pits of depravity.