Nothing lived that was not twisted in this nation of corruption. Contorted, lifeless trees poked up here and there with warped branches clawing at the bloated, ruined sky, and the span of the bay was barren and cracked. Across the hollows, a suffocated trickle moved sluggishly, dirty with corpses and stinking oil. Raptor-forms sewn together from the bodies of children, avian horrors with razor-sharp wings flitted overhead, vomiting flame where they spied prey. Malformed creatures prowled in shadows, eyes alight with preternatural fire.
But the worst spectacle was the people; multitudes of them blundering through the marshy red flows in emotionless lock-step, empty and cadaverous where all flicker of being was drawn off them. This was the Nine Hells made manifest.
Is it not magnificent? whispered Tze into his mind. The honesty of it? The world’s impiety no longer hidden but thrown to the winds, the opened flowers of blood and flesh shown to the sky… Oh, He blesses us. The King of Rapture, Danikos et Demino, hallowed is the Lord of Bliss…
He forced the words to the front of his mind, fighting down the mad joy the other man poured into his thoughts. “You want this? How could you possibly want this? ”
It is truth, Francis, Tze’s mindspeech was a gasp of ecstasy. Humans are creatures driven by lust. Beneath the mask of civility we want only bloodshed and fucking. Everything else is a falsehood imposed by the limited and weak, by those who believe in abstracts. Moral and immoral. Hate and love. Order… and chaos.
“I won’t help you!”
Fury boiled into him. Stupid child! How dare you turn your face away from me! I offer you the ultimate splendour and you spit it back?
“Get out of my head!”
So be it. The voice snaked and rasped through his skull. Willing or unwilling, your part is cast. You will be what you were bred to be, lad. What your bloodline was made to be. Harsh laughter boomed about him. Lam… to the slaughter…
“This is very irregular, Mr Chen. I’m sorry, but I have other concerns at the moment. We’re swamped.” Dr Yeoh’s face was drawn and pale, the dull hollows beneath her eyes a sure sign that she hadn’t slept in days.
Ko had seen the disorder in the hospital as he followed Fixx into the building. The sanctioned operative turned up his collar and hunched forward, as if he were walking into a rainstorm, bracing himself. Ko picked his way through the waiting room; there were dozens of people there, some of them staring into space baring wounds that were raw and self-inflicted, others babbling and weeping. There were more in the corridors on gurneys parked along the walls, and Ko had to duck to one side to avoid a big guy wearing a construction worker’s overalls who blundered heedlessly past him, clawing at his arms and mewling. There had been a moment when Ko thought he saw Poon, wrapped in a stained paper smock and shouting at shadows; but then a curtain was pulled and he heard the smack-hiss of a spray-hypo.
He blinked at the woman. “Doc, please. I’m not asking you to do anything. I just need to see her. ”
Yeoh looked at Fixx with a wary sniff. “Visiting hours are over.”
Fixx spoke without turning away from the sight of the sick and the maddened. “How long has it been this bad?”
The doctor sighed, sagging against the wall. “Day or so, I think. I’m losing track. We used to get one a week. Then it was every other day, now it’s hourly.”
Orderlies pushed a mumbling old woman past in a wheelchair. She appeared to have chewed off her own thumbs. “They’re all like Nikita?” said Ko. “All dosed with zee-three-en?”
“Some,” said Yeoh. “Maybe one in six. The others show the same symptoms but there’s no root cause we can find.” She sighed. “I contacted the State Medical Commission in Beijing, the United Nations Centre for Disease Control, in case… They’re looking into it.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Ko snapped.
She met his gaze, tired and frustrated. “Realistically? It doesn’t mean shit. ”
“It’s in the water,” said Fixx quietly.
“Zee-three-en is a street narcotic. You think it’s in the drinking supply?” Yeoh shot him an incredulous look. “We can’t be sure that-”
“Be sure,” he replied, tapping Ko on the arm. “Where’s Nikita?”
The doctor did nothing to stop them as the youth led the black man away down the corridor.
The roll of yuan she had given Ko for the rent had gone to pay for Nikita’s private room. Now, with the hospital filling by the moment, the expense seemed even more worthwhile. Ko closed the door behind him, shutting out the sounds of weeping. Beside him, Fixx took in a long, careful breath. He seemed uncomfortable in the armoured coat, a new and slightly worrying aspect of the otherwise unflappable operative.
“Don’t like hospitals,” he said, by way of explanation. “Too much hurt hereabouts.”
“Yeah,” agreed Ko. Even as a boy, he’d been unnerved by visits to the block clinic for checkups and N-SARS vaccinations. It was as if all the agony and the sickness of the patients who went through the building got left behind, like an invisible stain on the walls.
Fixx sniffed the air. “Brings out the jackals. They can smell it when you’re weak, close to death comin’.” He crossed to Nikita and tenderly stroked her face. “She’s pretty.”
“Yeah,” Ko repeated, the word catching in his throat.
Fixx pulled back the mask and used a damp cloth to moisten the sleeping girl’s lips. They were cracked and dry where she was still speaking in quiet church whispers. He listened closely to her for a few moments, nodding. “She’s seen it. She knows how it’s gonna play out.”
Ko came closer, blinking back tears. “I don’t get it. Why would that bastard Tze tell her?”
“Didn’t tell her,” Fixx dug in one of his pockets, “Showed her.” He drew out an ornate little pillbox decorated in green and gold enamel. Ko recoiled at the sight of the blue capsules inside. “We gotta know what she does, slick. We gotta see it.”
Ko stabbed an angry finger at him. “You give that shit to her and I swear I’ll break your fucking neck-”
Fixx shook his head. “Not for her.” He held it out to the younger man. “You an’ me.”
Colour drained from Ko’s face. “What?”
“That’s how this stuff works. Like a link-up for your mind, see. Just a quick little flick of it, little belt of the world beyond. Pop it and done.” He rolled the capsules on to his palm. “Few seconds of instant telepathy, in convenient tablet form.” Fixx traced a finger over Nikita’s forehead. “We drop these, we can go take a look-see in there. ”
“You’re outta your mind!”
“No,” said Fixx, “your sister is. ’Less you’re thinkin’ you got a better solution, ’less you wanna sit here and wait for the world to end, only way to help her is to do this.” He placed a caplet in Ko’s hand. “C’mon. Curtain’s up. Your cue.”
There on Ko’s palm, the indigo sphere shone like a glittering jewel.
Rope was waiting at the helipad, the blurring rotors of the spidercopter thrumming as Mr Tze strode from the castle interior. He had changed into the garb of an ancient warlord.
“Heywood,” he said pleasantly. “How is our darling diva? I understood there was an incident in the lab?”
Rope wore a contrite expression. “Sir, yes. I have expedited the problem.” He jerked a thumb at the rotorcraft. “I secured the talent in the cabin. She’s been pacified.”
Tze’s eyebrow arched. “Not too strongly, I hope? We are on the cusp, Heywood. We can’t afford any more mistakes.”
His face changed to a thin smile. “No sir, we cannot. I was forced to invoke a command imprint. I believe she was attempting to determine her own origins.”