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Part 12
Page 2
When Shujuan opened her eyes
again, she was alone.
A dream. Some sort of dream.
Where...
She winced as she sat up.
Massaged her neck. Felt stiff all over, like she was using the muscles
for the first time in her life. Everything ached. It took forever for her
vision to focus. Eyes untrained to darkness, in adjusting to the shadows.
Shujuan looked up. There was
light still on the fourth floor, a distant point. Star among a black field,
the end of a tunnel. Totally out of reach.
She remembered pain. Awful
pain, so much that it blinded out everything, had sent the whole world
white. She knew she'd fallen, she knew she'd hit, must have felt the impact,
but there wasn't so much as a scratch over her skin. The calluses were
even gone from her hands.
The wound in her shoulder
wasn't there.
What happened?
Was she dead? A ghost? Projecting
the memory of a shape? If she looked down, would she see her corpse?
But there was nothing. Just
her, with her heart still beating in her chest.
Still alive.
Still here.
Still at the bottom of nothing,
with no way to get anywhere. Trapped and helpless as she was before.
Everything was lost. She was
lost.
She wished she'd really died.
Then she could go and be with her mother again. Be there with Guonan. Find
Ming Yue and give her the apology she deserved. Maybe even see Kou... Would
she see Kou? Did it work like that?
He wasn't here now. No one
was here now. She didn't have anyone. She'd even lost her...
"Yes. Yes, I know, sir."
A busy voice, harried. Echoing
as though through tunnels, far away.
It wasn't until she saw the
cell light glow that Shujuan noticed the frame of one wall of the shaft,
where the gate would be, just a gap of a doorway. With the light drawing
closer, and the space between echoes shrinking.
"Here? No, we're perfectly
secure, sir. You should give your son credit for that, at least; he manages
a strong fortress." Feet shuffling through dust and discarded metal scrap.
"Well, yes, as it happened, we did see to a few trouble-clients tonight.
Nothing out of control. It'll wash up easily. Youkai. Hm? Oh, yes, the
kid too. Yes. Yes, I know Junior wasn't too professional, sir, but at least
he's resolved that now and he can move o-- No, sir, please, be reasonable.
Please, sir--"
It was the accountant. The
one from the second floor. Cell phone to his ear with blue LCD glow throwing
unnatural shadows across his face. He held it wedged between ear and shoulder,
playing with something in his hands.
"To my understanding," the
accountant knitted, "it was the fall-out of a failed affair, sir, that's
all. It was a whore anyway. No harm done. The integrity of your daughter-in-law's
family is maintained."
"I'm still saying I want
him out!" the man on the other end was roaring. Shujuan could hear
it now that the other speaker was in view.
"Since he's taken over in
Beijing he's completely mismanaged our operations there! I've worked too
hard to have that brat undo it all by chasing around his girls and toys!"
"As you say, sir," he was
answered dutifully. The accountant was slipping out of sight now, further
down the passage. "But if I could advise you to not leap to sudden action..."
He was holding her gun in
his hands. Her gun. Passing it through his fingers like an idle
trinket as he walked.
The sight of it, held so careless
like that-- It sent the burn up through Shujuan's throat before she could
stop it, and in a second she was on her feet. Following, not even bothering
to keep silent or match his steps. Down through corridors, winding brickwork,
mildewed and abandoned. The voice on the phone drowned out all other noise.
"I want him dead!"
Shen Ying Senior bellowed. "I don't care what you have to do! Dead!
Get rid of him!"
Down a side passage, an empty
room, the scatter of broken furniture. "Please, sir, don't be so rash.
Look, this will turn out the better for us, I assure you." Ducking under
a pipeline, into a tunnel. "Take tonight. A little bit of a skirmish, and
your son has landed you an antique that can fetch millions in the right
markets. And--"
"Don't you dare change
the subject on me, Zhao! Get rid of my son, or I'll get you both shot!"
It felt like the wind up to
a larger speech, but Shujuan didn't give Shen the grace to finish. She'd
found a length of pipe the size and heft of a baseball bat. And swung it
at the accountant's head.
She might have left it at
that, stepping away from the scene wiping his ugly finger prints off the
barrel, but the shouts were still carrying from the phone that she hadn't
struck quite hard enough to really crush. She gave in. She picked it up.
"You want your son dead?"
she asked.
"What? Who the fuck--"
"Your son. You really want
him killed?"
"Who is this?" Shen
Senior demanded.
"I'm a bicycle courier."
Purpose was a great,
beautiful thing.
So was finding it.
Let it merge with you so that
you were it and it was you, and you knew exactly what the path was in front
of you, and you understood better than you ever had before that all you
really had to do was get there.
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