“I can’t — I can’t see Dai like this,” I whisper.
My sister swallows. “It’s not him.”
JIN LING
Not Dai. I stare at the bagged body. What the gangster just dragged through the streets — it’s more skeleton than girl. Greasy hair. Wasted face. A single scarlet dot between her eyes. “Sing,” Mei Yee gasps beside me. “The second shot. It must have been Sing…”
I drop the plastic back over the dead girl’s face. Look up at my sister. “What happened? The last time you saw Dai. Where was he?”
“We — we were in Sing’s room. The ambassador accused Dai of keeping secrets, and Longwai shot him. He fell on the floor and there was blood everywhere. Longwai stepped over him and aimed the gun at his head. The ambassador dragged me away, and I heard another shot and I thought…” Mei Yee folds a hand over her mouth. Stares at the trash bag. “The first shot. Where was Dai hit?”
“I–I don’t know,” she manages. “Somewhere near his chest. It all happened so fast…”
I stare at the crinkled black, too. But I’m not thinking about what’s inside it. I’m thinking about my next move. Weeks ago I would’ve run — taken my sister out of the Walled City and never looked back. Part of me — the survivor who’s kept me alive all these years — still wants that. Follow rule number one. Run, run, run. I’ve fought so hard, risked so much to get Mei Yee back. And now she’s here. My work, the reason I came to this place, is finished.
But I remember the promise I made to Dai, even though he never asked me to make it. I promised to help him get his book. His freedom. As long as he’s alive, that promise still stands.
Dai saved my life. My sister’s. Now it’s time for us to save him.
“Dai’s probably still alive. He’s got to be or else that gangster would’ve dragged two bags out.” I look back at Mei Yee. She’s standing still, swallowed whole in Hiro’s jacket. Her cheeks are wet. “And if he is, we have to get him out.”
I expect her to argue; instead she looks up from the bag to me. Her voice is so strong, so sure. There’s a fire in her words — in her—that was never there before. “I know. How?”
How. That’s the question. My mind is working. Spinning faster than a weaving loom. Taking all the individual threads and piecing them together. Braiding them into a terrible, delicate tapestry.
The ledger.
One more day until New Year’s. Mei Yee’s scarlet dress. Midnight.
Eight boys and their knives. Dai’s revolver.
So many pieces. Parts that could snag. Go wrong. The whole thing could unravel at any point. I try not to think of this.
Instead, I look straight at Mei Yee and tell her, “I have a plan.”
1 day
DAI
The room is all dark. The kind of absolute black where you hold your hand to your face and still can’t see jack shit. I’ve got no sense of time. If it’s day or night. How many more hours of this I have to endure before Tsang’s men come busting through to haul my ass off to jail.
The girls should be long gone by now. I wonder if Jin Ling used the gun I gave her. I really, really hope she shot Osamu — that son of a bitch.
It’s thoughts like these that hold the pain at bay, keep my mind from snapping. I always used to wonder — in the long nights after the night that changed everything — what it felt like taking a bullet to the chest. I tried to imagine Hiro’s pain: the hole inside him, letting nothing in, everything out. The fire and ice and numb all pressing down, calling out his final, splitting breath.
Soul and body cut apart. Forever.
I don’t have to imagine it anymore. Turns out it’s a hell of a lot worse than I thought. I didn’t feel it at first. Just a heavy push into my right shoulder, my knees crumpling in shock. Then pins and needles and sear. So many pain synapses firing in my brain that I didn’t really care that Longwai was looming over me. Waving death in my face.
But he didn’t shoot. He didn’t let me bleed out, either. (Who knew Fung was such a talented nurse? A gauze-wielding wonder.) Not so much a mercy as the fact that he wants answers before he stuffs me in a trash bag.
I’m lucky Longwai decided to start off light — just a few punches to the agonized mess that was my shoulder. He left me in here tied to a chair to “think about my options.”
Options. With an s. Like I’ve got more than one.
As long as I stay silent, I stay alive. There’s no way in hell I’m talking, not with just a day left. I want to see this bastard burn as much as Osamu. Hopefully, Tsang and his team will get here before Longwai gets more serious. Wants to carve out an eye or an ear with that infamous, eager knifework of his.
This thought makes me test my bonds again, but the ropes are still too tight, fat pythons coiled around my wrists.
But when you’re flustered, like Longwai was, you miss things. Like the piece of glass tucked deep inside my palm. The one I clung to like life, through the gunshot. Through hit after hit after knuckle-ridged hit. I never let it show, kept my fists clenched even when Longwai landed the first punch, listened to me scream.
My hand unfurls slowly and the glass inches downward to my fingers. I work its edge back and forth, up and down. Longwai’s been gone for a while, probably off to have a smoke or get some shut-eye. Every dark minute that goes by I expect to hear his footsteps again. I listen for them under the door as I saw at my bindings.
There’s so much fire and pain in my shoulder that I don’t even feel the ropes come off. My hands are just free, collapsing to my sides. I wilt to the floor, find the glass, place it back into my sweating palm.
When Longwai comes back, I’ve got to be ready.
I’m still on my knees when the footsteps start, padding closer and closer. I push up with my good arm, bolt to the wall by the door. My hand is tighter than ever on the bottle shard, ready for the lunge and stab.
The lock clicks and the door swings open.
JIN LING
The stink of the sewer clouds my nostrils. Warm and jungle wet. I stand across from Ka Ming and Ho Wai. Keep a careful eye on their hands. Watch for knives. There’s a faint glitter between Ho Wai’s knuckles, but when I look closer, I realize it’s only a golden cufflink.
“So do we have a deal?” I ask through the plume of sewer smoke.
“Sounds awful risky.” Ka Ming shoots a glance at his partner.
Risky. Just one word to describe this cobbled semblance of a plan. I swallow back the tightness in my throat and tell them, “All good payoff has risk.”
“Yeah, but risk and Brotherhood are two different things,” Ho Wai points out. “How much did you say we’d get?”
“Ten thousand.” I say the highest number that comes to mind. Hope Dai’s father is willing to pay it. “If everything works out.”
The two boys stare at each other again. Talk with their eyes.
“Ten thousand,” Ka Ming agrees. “No killing.”
I glimpse Ho Wai’s knife wedged into his belt. The edge is rimmed with pink; I look back to the cufflink in his hands. Raise my eyebrows.
“Not when Brotherhood’s involved,” Ka Ming goes on. “You understand.”
I do understand. But I’m tangling with them anyway. With my crippled side and six bullets. With the speed of my sister’s untested legs.