36
Water has its sounds. The waves pushing fishing boats up and down; tides hiding in a shell; the slow dripping inside a cave, fire sprinklers splashing my wet clothes and carrying the blood and ashes away. Then, there’re the sounds of Wudang. Not the mountain, but the river next to where I was born. It flows, gentle and constant, saying few words every time it’s interrupted by a rock, a tree, a plant along the way. It never protests though. Only plucks, something between a little wave and a drop, then follows its path, leaving the next portion of itself to do it again until the rock finally ceases to resist.
As I launch myself into the silence of the Dao, the sound of the waters of Wudang goes with me. I shadow leap into the chaos, smashing a soldier on the chest and projecting him against the ones behind. Inside my head, the water plucks, calm and gentle. I kick the rifle by my side. BANG! Some people fall. I leap one more time. I am the stream.
In the outer plane of the Dao, I think I see the three masters from Chinatown observing, but I have no time for memories or flashes this time. I spin for momentum and dive back into the world of matter. I pluck the big guy in a gown behind the fire line, and he runs his course over the ones fallen before him. Not a pretty splash, but safe in the long run. Don’t want to cause too much damage to the patients under the demon’s mind control.
Dr. Lambrechts, you’re such a coward.
A punch lands on my face. Not a good one, gladly. I let my neck relax, my head follow the direction of the beating fist, and counter with an overhand he blocks as if he knew what I was about to do. But the stream always finds a way, so I flow a kick onto his ribs. Poor man launches away. Someone hits me in the back.
It hurts, burns. They can see my pattern now. Time to switch elements.50
A chant erupts inside my head, one about a goddess riding a Tigress. I hope Doctor Bitch is listening now.
Sing of my deeds
Tell of my combats
How I fought the treacherous demons
Forgive my failings
And bestow on me peace
To the demons, inferno. I’m fire now, crackling, ravaging, taking what is mine. The leaps now are faster, invasive. I get into their spaces, knock their teeth out, hit a second time for reassurance and then head for the next one: her. The Indian witch. She’s waiting, and for an instant it’s as if everyone has paused to watch us duel. Our yellow eyes burning, our panting loud, our bodies arched all the way to our arms and hands. Our stripes, the Tigresses.
We pounce together. Same ire. And clash in the air. My punch, hers. Equal, mirrored, approaching our faces. She misses by an inch. Mine lands.
She’s on the floor. The jaw out of place. Gone. That was fast. She will recover, someday. But the bitch’s mouth is going to hurt forever.
More chaos awaits.
One more leap, and I am kicking the next group. They are four, never expected me to flare among them. That’s why I went there. Keep them guessing, unpredictable like blaze. I burst, breathing energy from the ground. A flame taking the trees. They fall. But then there are more. They pin me down against the flooded ground, and I try to leap. Somehow, they hold me there. So I grab the gown of the closest one, the one who smells like camphor, and pull him close, as a shield. He eats the kicks and punches aimed at me. His blood spills on my face.
Flash! I’m in the Dao. Right now? The three sages from Chinatown stare at me. I did see them, then? The hum…not there. “Are you sure you don’t want a peach, little one?” Master Tián says. So calm and gentle, I take a bite this time. They all smile and nod, then come around my back like the cornermen in a big fight. “Envision your qi as light,” Master Som explains, then continues, “Pull from below your navel and let it burst out through your hands. I will help you from here.”
“Wait!” I say. “Are you the butterflies Shifu told me about?”
They don’t seem to understand. Just push me back into the hospital, underneath the blood-drooling man. He falls beside me, and three more jump over us. A football-like pile of men. The instructions. Light, from underneath my belly button growing higher toward my stomach and BAM!
The light bursts from my pores and carries my assailants away.
I am a qi bomb. Wow.
Although I feel…weak. Drained. Try to leap again. Can’t. The punches and kicks keep coming. Some I absorb, some I avoid. A flash comes again. “Now recollect your light with your breath,” Master Tian says, “but this time, make it thicker, so it can push it against your skin, from the inside.”
I come back just in time to see a metal rod approaching my ribs. The light. In, then out, from behind the skin. The pipe bounces off my ribs with little pain. A jolt of dopamine takes my bloodstream. This is impressive indeed. I feel confident, powerful. Right in time for a hit on the back of the head. It throws me spinning. Those zombies are fast. Have they learned my fire game already?
Switching again. Earth, now. Avalanche, earthquake. I power through them, throwing bodies against the floor and hitting them as hard as I can. Bones against flesh, then bone. Uppercuts, rising elbows, knees and throws. Uprooting, unbalancing, terrorizing. In my head, the sounds are what shake them. The impact is just a consequence.
A familiar door–Mrs. Lee’s room. Need a plan, fast. Get hit in the face instead. Blood drips from my nose, out and in. I taste the iron in me. Good idea. Switch my energy to metal, pierce through the crowd. I am the tip of a spear. A finger jab to the eye, a fist exploding on the stomach, a push to the ground. They keep closing in, and it’s hard to catch my breath. I kick the last one into the room, thrusting him onto the bed.
Then BANG! A shot. From behind them. And another one. Ahead of me, a doctor falls. Blood pours from his back. The soldier points the rifle in my direction. “Enough,” he says. In my hand, a stethoscope. No idea where it came from. Before he finishes cocking the gun, I whip him in the face. The wall next to me cracks. I must get out. Heart races, breath hisses. I snap my knuckles at them. I’m wood now.
They thrust, and I absorb and push. They punch, I rotate and hit. A chop, a palm strike, a spear hand. They kick, I redirect and whip. This time, they come together. Two nurses, one with a metal bar. The other comes at my waist. I stretch my legs back to keep standing, protect my head from the strike. Crash! I hear my arm break, but the rod is mine. I hit one on the head, the other on the neck. Sorry, buddy. Before he hits the floor, I seized his pen. With one active arm, lighter is better.
Between the stairs and I, only two soldiers left. Hivers, is that how they call themselves? “She’s injured, attack!” says the metallic voice beneath our collective minds. Dr. Lambrechts, I presume. Or the general. Cowards!
The soldiers charge, and I let my working arm bounce on theirs to hit harder on the other side. Whatever they throw at me, they get hit back in the opposite direction. Clat, clat, clat. I can almost hear my wooden dummy. That’s what they are. Dummies. I bend around their punches, attack their trunks. Clat, clat, clat! The pen, I dig into a guy’s neck—his eyes turn black again, and I recognize his fear. His incomprehension, shock. His “why did you do this to me” face. He presses his wound. A bubbled sound gargles from his neck, and the man falls.
One more is coming.
No, dozens of them. I can hear their voices in my brain. So can the soldier ahead. I slide toward his knees. He leaps over me, tries to roll on the floor but, midway, I jerk his shirt down into a perfect face-plant. Out.
Another shot bursts. BANG! Before I can stand, a pull. I’m back in the space beyond life. The tall Chinese man with a long white ponytail jumps in and stands in my place. The shot aimed at me hits Master Tián instead. He concentrates. Flexes every muscle in his old body and holds still. Standing. Another shot, and one more. He absorbs them too. On the fourth, he falls.51
The face of his friends: horror. I jump back in to protect him, but his body is gone. Behind me, the other two fade into the dimension no one can see. Did he take those bullets…for me? I can spot the bastard now, the shooter. I leap behind him, snap his neck, throw him down the void between the stairs. It takes some time for his body to hit the ground. But I wait. For each bang on the rails, until the dry thump on the concrete below.
Run, Yinyin. Away from the doors.
On the staircase, they can’t surround me easily, can’t jump over me. I’d see them coming. I wait. Nobody dares. Good. I need to recharge.
Flash. My own memory now. In a cave, Shifu and I brush arms in the touch game monks call Push Hands. “Let the skin be your eyes,” he says. I’m standing there, next to him and my younger self. They both nod at my presence. Then he blindfolds the little girl. In the darkness, I could dodge and move around every attack, as long as one part of his body was touching mine. It gets intense. He comes after the younger me with a smile I couldn’t see back then. I keep his arms brushing mine, so I don’t lose my second sight. He throws one last elbow, which I parry and strike his throat. He chuckles. “Very good, little Tigress.”
Back on the stairs, I totter up, then down, breaking all the safety lights I can find. Darkness is my terrain. Let them come.
Just in time, the first ones arrive. I throw them down the void. One, two, three four…Then the fireproof doors bang one more time, and the staircase is taken by the deepest silence.
If I know my own plan, they probably know it too.
50. Ancient Chinese cosmology considers the universe (and fighting) as a combination of five elements and their relationships. Wood creates fire. Fire creates earth. Earth creates metal. Metal creates water. Water creates wood. Or…Wood destroys earth. Earth destroys water. Water destroys fire. Fire destroys metal. Metal destroys wood. (For more, check out the work of Christopher Casey a.k.a. Shifu Kai Sai)
51. I heard stories from a few Tai Chi practitioners that using too much qi shortens your life. Unless you can recover through meditation and qigong exercises. I asked them if, in theory, someone used all their qi at once, would that cause their death? They all said yes.