I’m so, so close. If Mei Yee is right.
Mei Yee. On my way up the stairs, I’d thought maybe she would be here. But the shadows of this room are empty things. She’s somewhere downstairs, behind one of the many doors.
Longwai walks to the middle of the room, where a glass-topped table stretches out. Perfect lines of white powder streak across it: albino tiger stripes.
Every inch of me is alert — fighting fear and the very real sense that I’m prey. Prey in the deepest corners of the beast’s lair. I put on the face I always wore when I was younger and my father decided to chastise me. Aloof, cocked brow. Like nothing in the world could stop me.
“Trouble?”
“Nothing that concerns you. Yet.” Longwai stands over the table, and I realize that the glass is really a mirror, shining his own towering height back at him. “I’m more curious about why you missed our last appointment. And the one before that.”
“My runner got stabbed. I haven’t been able to find a replacement. It’s not easy to find vagrants willing to work with you.”
“There’s a reason for that.” Longwai’s hands rise up to his belt line, lifting the jacket up with it. His pistol gleams against the aquarium’s tropical light. “You failed to honor our agreement. I’m not the forgiving type.”
“So I’ve heard.” I feel every ounce of blood in my head as my heart drills it through, beat by beat. But I keep my mask up. Stay cool. Don’t look at the wall of sharp, sharp knives. “But you kill me, and it’s a guarantee that no vagrant will ever run for you again. No matter how good the money is. Survival is the highest law.”
“You’re a dangerous boy. Clever.” Longwai’s hand pulls away from the weapon, goes up to cradle his hairless chin. “And here I was thinking you were the disposable one.”
It’s all I can do not to look over at the desk. So close. I’m so, so close. Just feet away from the book. All it would take was a distraction and a swift movement. Bullet or blade to the head.
But those guns on the wall probably aren’t even loaded. Not like the gun in Longwai’s holster. And even if I did get the book and get downstairs, I don’t know where Mei Yee is. I wouldn’t have time to look for her.
It’s not the right moment. But what terrifies me is the very real possibility that the right moment will never come. That this is it.
“I like you, Dai,” the drug lord says, “which is why you have all your appendages intact and a brain without a bullet lodged in it. You’re smart. You work the system. Get things done. I need men like you.”
Air grows stale in my lungs. I look down at the tabletop mirror. Where the lines of cocaine double, become more than they actually are.
“I need men like you,” he repeats, “but I also need to know I can trust you. I need to know you have my best interests at heart.”
“Is this an invitation?” I’m not faking the breathlessness in my voice. Out of all the things I was expecting when I was dragged through this door, an invitation to join the Brotherhood was not among them. Tsang would be peeing his pants right now.
“It depends on how you want to look at it. Try to see things from my perspective. Do you honestly think I can let you walk away from this operation? After how much you’ve seen? Anyone else would be in a body bag now. But you have guts and brains. I’d hate to let such assets go to waste.”
“So… I join the Brotherhood or get carved up and shot?”
“Let’s call it an opportunity.”
“Well, I am an opportunist.” I try to grin. I try not to think of Hiro and Pat Ying and Jin Ling and Mei Yee and all the other countless lives this man has destroyed. I try not to feel the endless pieces of shrapnel always shredding, always burning in my chest.
“Of course, there are the formalities before you become an official member. Background checks and oaths and such. And there’s the little matter of your loyalty. All my men must pass a certain test.”
“Anything,” I say.
“Anything?” His hand falls away from his chin, burrows into the pockets of his suit.
I nod and think of hundreds of things he could make me do. Hundreds of things I would hate.
“One of my girls has been giving me trouble.”
No. No. No. Anything. Anything but that. I feel like a surgeon has sliced me in half, hollowed me out, my guts spilling over his blue gloves like stringy pumpkin seeds. My head spins and I try very, very hard to keep my smile on my face.
Longwai starts pacing circles around me. “I think she’s been communicating with someone on the outside. We found a hole in her window just this morning, and one of the other girls claims she saw a seashell on the other side.”
“What do you plan on doing with her?” I’m glad I gave most of my meals to Chma, because my stomach is churning like the waters at the stern of a ferry. A chaos of waves, cut to pieces by an engine’s sharp blades.
“You don’t keep a rotten apple in the bin. Though I’m beginning to think they’re all rotten. It happens every few years. Some girl decides to run and all the others get riled up. I’ll probably have to replace the whole lot.” He shakes his head, like he’s getting rid of the side thought. “But if she was talking to someone through that window… I need to know what she said. Who she was talking to.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“You—" Longwai pauses and walks over to the corner where a miniature refrigerator hums away its benign existence. “You are going to help me get the truth.”
The refrigerator door opens with the clink of bottles and a crack of too-bright light. Longwai grabs something I can’t really see. It’s small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, hidden as he nudges the door shut.
“I’ve already given her some time to preview her fate if she decides to keep quiet. You and I — we’re going to go downstairs and ask her some questions.”
“But what — what do I ask?”
“The questions are my job. If she doesn’t answer, I want you to use this.” His palm opens, like an oyster giving up its pearl. Only it’s not a precious gem in Longwai’s soft hand. It’s a syringe, slim as a pencil, filled with liquid the color of beef broth. The drug lord is careful to keep the needle far from my skin as he hands it to me.
The syringe is cool poison on my palm. I try to keep my hand from shaking.
Heroin.
He wants me to inject her.
“Don’t worry. It should be a simple-enough job.” He’s smiling as he says this. “After all, like you said, survival is the highest law.”
JIN LING
The cab I flag down isn’t nearly as nice as the Suns’ car. But I sit in its seat and feel as if I’m going in circles. Around and around. Backward, forward, back again. The city spins by, the same as before, except now it’s night. When the cab starts climbing Tai Ping Hill, all of City Beyond is glowing. Neon fire blazing against black night. Dark sea. I try to look for Cassiopeia, but it’s lost. Swallowed in electric fog.
The driver looks over his shoulder. “What was the number again?”
“Sixty-two,” I answer, and try to pretend that my world isn’t falling apart. That Mei Yee and Dai aren’t trapped in Longwai’s brothel. Surrounded by henchmen and guns. That I’m not there to fight for them.
It’s just like every other run, I tell myself, even though I know it isn’t. Do it well and they’ll be safe.