He gestures to where Dai stands, a bit apart from everyone else in the room. He’s not looking at me, not meeting my eyes. I look into his hand and see why.
This syringe looks exactly the same as the one they stuck inside Sing’s arm. Pumped full of liquid ruin and loss. The sight of it curled into Dai’s fingers makes my heart clench.
Is it betrayal? Was he playing me this entire time? Plying me for information only to discard me in the end?
Every one of these questions feels like an arrow cracking through my breastbone. An entire quiver of sharpness splitting me open, right through the middle. I try, try, try to meet his eyes and find answers, but he doesn’t look at me.
Longwai mistakes the wreckage on my face for fear. “I’ve allowed you some quality time with your old friend to make the gravity of your choice a bit more real for you. So, Mei Yee, it’s the truth or that syringe. Which will it be?”
I could tell. All it would take is one finger, aimed straight as an arrow back at Dai’s chest. One word, one point, and the needle’s end would slide away. Guns turned on Dai.
Then what? If Longwai kept his word, I would be whisked away to City Beyond. Caged in the ambassador’s penthouse for a lifetime of bruises and pieces of the sea. It’s not freedom, but it’s better than ending up as a living skeleton on Longwai’s floor.
I look at the syringe, now almost completely visible under Dai’s strained knuckles. The skin over his bones is a thin, sharp white.
It’s a gamble. All of this. I have no idea, no guarantee that Longwai’s promise will hold. And Dai… I focus on his fingers. How they shake.
It all boils down to a single question.
Do I trust him?
I look down the line. At Fung’s offset jaw and hunched shoulders. At Nam’s four peeling cheek scabs and gleaming eyeteeth. At Mama-san’s body wrapped tightly in her slinky silk. At Sing’s hair rippling over the floor like grease-drenched ribbons; her eyes are open, some shine returned as she looks at the syringe in Dai’s hand. At Longwai’s too-big belly stretched tight against the buttons of his shirt. Back at Dai.
He’s looking at me this time. It’s just a split second of our eyes locked together. And I know.
No matter what it takes.
“I’m telling you the truth.” There’s no shake in my words as I look back at Longwai. “There was no one behind the window. There was no shell. My window broke and I cut my finger stuffing the silk in it to keep the cold out. Yin Yu saw it and made up wild stories so she could profit.”
This clearly isn’t the response Longwai is expecting. His lips slide into an almost-frown. His eyes dart from Dai to me and then narrow. “And this is the truth?”
“Yes,” I tell him.
The drug lord’s head swivels back in Dai’s direction. With one hand, he grabs my arm again, the other he uses to wave my window-boy over.
Dai is so close I can feel the heat of him. So different from the clammy cool of Longwai’s touch, or the slick sweat of the ambassador’s chest. This heat is like a cooking fire on a winter night — the close, simmering comfort of home.
I close my eyes, bask in it as Longwai stretches my arm out straight. Somewhere I hear the snap of a band. Then I feel it, squeezing tight against my upper arm, choking all blood back down into my wrist, palm, and fingers.
My eyes open to see Fung tying a complicated knot into the band. Longwai is staring at me. Expecting me to beg: all quail and quiver at his feet. Instead I stare back, meeting the hollow hardness of his eyes.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he says.
“No.” I feel every heartbeat slamming against the tightness of Fung’s tourniquet. “It doesn’t.”
The spine in my voice makes him snarl, and I know it doesn’t matter if he thinks I’m telling the truth or not. Mama-san’s right. Courage and hope can’t exist in a place like this. Longwai grinds them to powder under his heels.
It wasn’t Yin Yu who did this to me, not really. It was this man.
He looks at Dai and points to the blue veins bulging beneath my skin. “Do it.”
DAI
Back on my apartment wall there are two marks left, but it doesn’t matter. I’m out of time. No days or hours remain. Not even minutes.
The numbers are different now. I add them up, doing quick calculations in my head as my fingers clutch the syringe.
Six people.
Three guns.
One syringe.
One shard of glass.
One book.
It’s an uneven, impossible equation. No matter how many times I run through it, I can’t come up with the perfect answer. The book and the girl don’t go together. After the equal sign, it’s only me or her. No us.
Longwai makes a living by lying through his teeth, but he was right about one thing: I’m the disposable one. I’m the sacrifice, the queen in a brutal game of chess.
Turns out there’s a law higher than survival. And I don’t know what it is, but I feel it surging, throbbing, burning away the rest of my doubts and fears.
No book. No me. Just Mei Yee.
The syringe of heroin has lost the chill of the refrigerator. It shakes, filling with dozens of tiny bubbles in my hand. If anyone is looking at me, it should be all they see. Shakes and bubbles. But my left hand is sliding ever so carefully into my pocket, where the glass piece saws through denim. Its razor edge bites into my palm, ready.
There are so many veins in Mei Yee’s arm — dredged to the surface by Fung’s too-tight knots. She doesn’t fight as the drug lord splays out her arm like an offering.
“Do it.” Longwai points to the blue web under her paper-thin skin.
I take a breath, unclenching the syringe in my right hand while gripping tight to the glass in my left. If I time it just right, I can get the shard deep into Longwai’s neck, grab his gun, and take care of Fung and Nam. A big if. And then there’s the matter of every other Brotherhood member with a holster crawling through this place.
Getting out of here alive is a long shot, but it’s the only shot I’ve got.
I pretend to watch the needle as I guide it close to Mei Yee’s flawless skin. But really my eyes are searching for other veins, the thick cording ones gathered in Longwai’s neck.
There’s a cry and suddenly — a girl. A girl where I didn’t even know a girl was. She rises from the corner, looking like a witch with her loosed black hair and gaunt face. Her eyes are both bulging and sunk in — fixed on one thing only. She lunges with a speed too fast and impossible for her bony limbs.
“I need it!”
The syringe is torn from my hand by this wild resurrection of a girl. I don’t even have to pretend to stop her. Her fist clenches tight around the needle, jams it into her arm. But there’s no vein to carry it through. Heroin and blood braid down her skin. The girl shakes, stares at it. She’s trying to lick it up when Nam rips the hollowed plastic syringe from her palm.
I slip the glass back into my pocket.
“Get Sing out of here!” Longwai yells at Nam. I’ve never seen him like this, so angry his face is flushed full of autumn colors.
“But where—"
“I don’t give a damn!” Longwai roars. “Put a bullet in her head for all I care! And fetch me another syringe while you’re at it.
Nam grabs Sing by the hair and starts to drag. The girl’s face shifts into a violent, ugly thing — as if she’s possessed. From the way she moves, I could almost believe it: kicking, clawing, screaming, twisting. Nam’s grip on her hair slides free and she’s off. Out the door faster than a mouse.