Chapter Sixteen

When the door opened, I almost started drooling.

Wonderland was an accurate name.

I stood inside a huge, brightly lit underground pit, strung with more glowing light strips and free-standing sculptures—palm trees, stars, flamingos, dice, martini glasses—all made out of twisted, pulsing neon.

Like the graveyard of Las Vegas.

And it was loud. People jammed the floor, wall to wall. A busy bar in the corner slung drinks while noisy tables threw dice and tossed cards and Mahjong tiles. Chips, cash, booze, lights—it all blended together and tingled up my spine. I’m sure my eyes looked just like a slot machine, spinning, full of excitement.

The speakeasy vibe—I dug it. Big time. Wonder if Caramel and Gideon would be interested in a little literal underground gaming.

I shook my head. As much as I wanted to jump right into the scene, there was a much more important reason for me to be there.

Also, subtlety wasn’t my strong suit.

And no one messes with my crew.

I stuck my fingers in my mouth and made a high-pitched whistle that cut through the ruckus.

The room shuddered to a halt, leaving only the sound of drinks splashing and cards falling.

“Thank you for your attention. I’m looking for Alice,” I said.

The crowd parted, flowing around the big, glossy wooden bar. Standing in the center, a tall woman dragged a black disc over her hair, and the strands changed colors, moving from a plain dark brown to a vibrant mermaid ombre of turquoise, blond, and violet. Magnetic color.

Nifty.

When her long hair was completely colored, she picked up a tube of lipstick and slowly spread bright pink across her mouth.

She puckered once. Perfect application.

Then she stood up straight.

Wearing a black bikini bottom with a long white t-shirt that stopped short of her crotch, high-heeled boots, and some truly fantastic chain-link nylons, she would have been at home in any of my many fine clubs.

Or my bedroom.

I’d pay a lot for those legs.

Chin up, hands on hips, she sipped a cocktail. “I’m Alice. Took you long enough,” she said. “Welcome to Wonderland.”

I took a quick survey of the room. Tense. Probably weapons everywhere, but likely no guns. Korea was even more locked down on the gun control front than L.A. Still, I couldn’t bank on it, and even though I was fast enough to dodge a bullet, it’s not a safe game to play. Just a millimeter off, and there’d be scars, like the one in my calf.

We stood there, sizing each other up. I was clearly at a disadvantage, but that’s how I’d lived half my life. I wouldn’t let that intimidate me. I stared at her like I owned the place, and she huffed, lifting her chin even higher.

“Well, aren’t you a little ball of candy-coated spunk.”

Right. My outfit. So unfortunate. But, as much stock as I put into clothing, real power comes from within. Chewed up or not, I was still Hyojin Song.

And I knew how to play the game.

“Appearances are deceiving,” I said.

She curled a finger at me. “Come closer.”

I cocked my head, considering. I flexed my hands a few times, testing my speed. Don't get closer than you can safely move out of a knife’s range. My speed seemed intact, and I was pumped to go nose to nose with this lion.

Ready to see who was king of the jungle.

I sauntered up to the bar, gliding right into the empty space left by her agitated customers and henchmen.

She smiled at me, her bright lips curling up in one corner, face pale, heavy cat-eye liner making her eyes look preternatural.

“You brought me here. What do you want, and where are my friends?”

She leaned against the bar, took another sip of a dark liquid—probably whisky. Unusual choice for this area.

“So hasty. You’re used to getting what you want, when you want it, aren’t you?”

“As it should be,” I said. I smiled, let it fill my eyes. She was taller than me, her clothes looked better, and I was on her turf, but that didn’t mean anything.

I wouldn’t roll over for anyone.

“In that case, can I get you a drink?” she said.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Gin martini. Dirty—make it filthy.” No use keeping up pretenses. She already knew I wasn’t a local.

She nodded her head at the bartender, and started shaking something up. A second later, he pushed it towards me.

I picked up the chilled glass and took a sniff. “You wouldn’t be cheap enough to drug my drink, would you?”

She laughed. “If I had wanted to drug you, I could have kidnapped you a day ago, while you were already passed out in my hotel room.”

Her hotel room? I peered at her, trying to see beyond the makeup and the hair and the risqué clothes. She watched me puzzling it through, waiting for it to click.

Didn’t take me long.

The front desk clerk. It was her.

Damn. I knew we’d been clocked, but how was I supposed to know that the clerk was some queen of the Mokpo underworld?

“You never introduced yourself,” she said.

“You took down my information. You scanned me. You ran my profile.” I took my first sip of the martini. It was good.

“Oh, but we know that profile was a total fake. As soon as you opened your mouth, I knew,” she said.

I huffed, and switched to English. “Not into my accent, eh?”

“You’re mistaken. I find it delightful. It’s your lies that I don’t find pleasing,” she responded in English—it was pretty good too. No doubt she’d spent time abroad, or at some very expensive schools.

I switched back to Korean for a second. “I don’t know why my identity is any of your business. We were just passing through.”

Probably without thinking about it, she answered in Korean again. “This is my territory. My business. I don’t appreciate rivals sneaking into my territory without permission. Very rude.”

“You’re from the islands. Jeju,” I said. On the coast of the province was a network of islands, Jeju being one of the most popular for vacation spots. Nice enough for a weekend trip, but people from the islands had a reputation for being wilder, more straightforward than mainlanders. And they had a very specific way of talking.

I wasn’t the only one with an accent.

“They call me Alice the mermaid. I come from a long line of divers.”

“You’re a little far inland,” I said.

She held up her hands. “Still swimming in the deep.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. In English again, I said, “Nice. I like your style.”

The martini was great. Her legs were great. The lair was great. Too easy to get lulled into her spell. Five minutes down the rabbit hole, and I was ready to stay for the ride.

“Where are we?” I said. “Is this the Undergrid?”

She shook her head. “No. This is just my own private tunnel.”

I pointed to the ceiling. “What’s up there?”

“A hagwon,” she said.

I laughed. A cram school, a place for pressured Korean youth to spend their after school hours tirelessly studying for exams. Cruel irony that such debauchery was happening right beneath their feet.

And it was exactly the sort of thing I’d been trying to start in high school when I’d gotten arrested for running a gambling ring. I just hadn’t had the whole tunnel thing worked out yet. Lesson learned. Sort of.

“I like your style,” I said. “That being said, I’m not here to threaten your territory. I’d love to stay and sample your games, but I cannot. I just need my friends back, and we’ll be on our way.”

She clucked her tongue. “First, I need to know who you are. Sorry, my dear. You can’t just walk into Wonderland and walk right back out. There are prices to be paid.” She leaned over the bar to grab a lime wedge, her shirt and bikini bottom rising up, showing me more bits of her flesh. Her long aqua hair trailed along the bottom of her ass.

“I can’t tell you that. What else do you want,” I said.

She squeezed the lime into her glass. I may have been mistaken—perhaps it was rum. Made sense for a mermaid pirate, but I wasn’t in the mood for swashbuckling.

“This is non-negotiable. It’s a simple request,” she said.

I’d been distracted by all the glorious temptations in Wonderland, but arguing with her brought other things back into my consciousness. Like the fact that my ankles were hurting again, and moving my arms still pinched my collarbones. And none of that could show in my expression. I needed the perfect poker face.

I took another slug of my drink. “Before I tell you anything else, I need two things. I need to see my friends. I need to know that they’re alive and unharmed. And, I need for you to tell me why you didn’t kill me when I was in the hotel room.”

“You should be thankful that I didn’t, but I had my reasons. For one, carrying unconscious women through the hotel doesn’t look very good. We try to keep a low profile. Plus, you’re obviously sick, and killing the weak part feels like foul play to me. I prefer fair fights. Judging from the shape you were in, you might have taken care of yourself anyway, if you know what I mean.”

My cheeks flushed, I knew it, and I wasn’t happy about it. We were still talking in English, and I hoped that few or none of her henchmen spoke it. Having people know I was sick put me at a distinct disadvantage. “How kind of you,” I managed to get out between clenched teeth.

“And, I was curious. I might have let you go anyway, but then I caught your friend snooping around my town, putting his nose places it didn’t belong. I couldn’t let that go. When I brought him in, he wouldn’t talk. I thought you might be a little more forthcoming,” she said.

Gavin. So she had caught him. “How did you do it?”

She smirked, crossed her long legs, white thighs rubbing together. They looked soft. “Your little guy got hungry. Came over for a bite to eat,” she said.

Fury sang through my body. Drugging Gavin just for being in the wrong place, while he was tired and probably starving. My instinct to question the drinks was accurate, but that didn’t make it better.

“Is he. Unharmed,” I said.

“He’ll be fine,” she said.

“I said. Is he unharmed?”

She cleared her throat, finished off her drink with a big swig. “Look, I still don’t know who you are, but I get the feeling you wouldn’t let strangers traipse all over your turf, wherever that is,” she said. “You do have turf, don't you? Where is it?”

“You can know all about me once I see my friends, I know they’re all alive, and you guarantee our safety. I want nothing more than to find my people and get the hell out of Mokpo,” I said, but I think we both knew that was a lie. I could taste my own deception.

But it was only because I wanted to stay in Wonderland, snoop through all the side rooms, see what kind of games, what kind of odds she was running, what kind of cash was flowing through this place.

And how much of that could be mine.

“You’re hungry.” She licked her lips. “And I like that. Very well. Follow me, and you can see your friends. But keep this in mind. I know you came here alone, and I know that you’re injured. Wonderland is indeed wonderful, but it’s also mine. No one leaves until I say so.”

I should have been mad. I should have been furious, but I appreciated a strong business owner. I also appreciated sexy business owners, and I’ll be damned if her perfect ass wasn’t hanging right out of her tiny black bottoms. The long white t-shirt covered her chest, and I couldn’t help but wonder what she was leaving to the imagination.

I put up my hands. “You’ve got nothing to fear—like you said, it’s just me. You know I'm unarmed, I didn’t trip any scanners, and my only crew members are supposedly back there in your lair. If you have any decency, you’ll just let us go peacefully.”

She looked at me, like I had to be hiding something, but she couldn’t think of what that might be. I’d passed through all the scanners here and back at the hotel. “You can count on me to play a fair game, always,” she said.

“Is that what you call drugging a weary traveler’s food?”

She winked. “Follow me,” she said, and stalked forward on her spiked heels.

I could rock a nice heel myself, but those were some truly impressive shoes. Meanwhile, I was wearing clunky Mary Janes. Not sure why I had to use Caramel’s hideous shoe collection too—what, was someone going to identify me using my impeccable taste in shoes? Or from the particular shape of my pinky toes?

Disturbing as it was, that wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, but like Caramel’s desire to change my hair color, I couldn’t be certain whether the shoes actually had a purpose, or if it was just a part of Caramel’s gleeful desire to dress me up like another living doll.

I thought I had a certain pizzazz to my usual stride, but in the ungraceful shoes, and with my shredded anklebones, it was all I could do to walk across the uneven flooring without falling on my face. So much for my usual power walk. I’m petite as it is, and behind Alice’s long, stylish legs, I looked like a newborn foal stumbling awkwardly along behind her.

Not ideal.

We left the gambling area and entered the entertainment zone. Women. Plenty of them, dancing on platforms and swirling around seated patrons. Nice selection. I like a good variety. Something for everyone. Alice made some good hiring choices. Savvy woman.

At the back of the room, I spotted plush chairs pushed into the corner, strippers gyrating around whoever was sitting in them. VIP area. Off to the side, I spotted Alice’s thugs, standing still, their backs to the wall, guarding the action. She protected her investments.

I was admiring her selection of women when I finally caught a glimpse of the VIPs in the chairs.

Not VIPs at all.

Gavin and Royce.

Something in me boiled over. Royce looked okay, but Gavin’s face was bruised, blood pooled at the corner of his lip, and although conscious, he was out of it. Stunned, or maybe drugged, his eyes were half open and dreamy. Not the Gavin I as used to.

I wouldn’t stand for that. All of the pain in my body faded away over the roaring blood in my ears, the ring of electricity twinkling up my legs and into my arms.

Faster than anyone could track, I dashed forward, snagging a huge blade from one of the enforcers. No one moved, not realizing what was happening.

Quickly, I cut Royce and Gavin free, then went for the shortest thug, wrapping my arm around his thick neck. I dragged him behind Royce and Gavin, putting the knife to his throat as I hugged the wall for cover.

Royce shot up first and hoisted Gavin to his feet, joining me against the back wall.

The enforcer struggled in my grasp, but I hugged him tight and dug the blade into his neck until he gasped. A trickle of blood went down his neck and hit my finger.

Gross. I can throw down if I have to, but I’m so not into blood.

Everyone else sprang into action, catching up with what was happening, but way too late.

Weapons were drawn, and her enforcers grunted in anger, super pissed that I got the jump on them.

“Don’t move, or your buddy gets it,” I said. See, I could go full gangster if I had to.

“Stop,” Alice said. “Everyone just calm down.”

She shoved two goons aside and sauntered into the center of the mob, dead in front of me. In the brighter room, I noticed she had contacts or some kind of implants—her eyes shimmered an unnatural blue, softly shifting shades in the light, matching her hair.

She looked totally relaxed, unworried, like this sort of thing happened all the time, and there was no doubt who would win. Okay, so I was locked into a tunnel, in a strange town, surrounded by a clump of armed gangsters. I can see why she thought she had the advantage.

Well, she was wrong. I’m not a violent person, but no one fucks with my people. Mess with Gavin or my dog, and you were asking for it.

“That’s a little hasty, don’t you think?” she purred, like we were alone in a bedroom instead being on the precipice of a wild bar fight. Good technique. She almost had me distracted. She was hot, and she knew it. I bet she’d gotten the drop on more than one person that way before, but I wouldn't fall for it.

“I don’t like getting my hands dirty, but you’re the one abusing my guys. We’ve done nothing to deserve this,” I said.

“You’re a Circuit Breaker,” she said.

I shook my head. “No. Well, kind of. Not really. It’s complicated.”

“You’ve got some kind of heavy duty augments. You’re fast— never seen anything like that,” she said.

Damn, I really didn’t like other people knowing about my special little skills, but that was unavoidable. “Long story,” I said.

“I’d love to hear it. Entertain me while we work through this impasse.”

The guy in my arms wriggled and I hissed in his ear. “Don’t move. I’ll slice your throat just to send a message.”

I looked over at Royce, and he was a little dazed too. Had to be drugged, but he was so big he was probably overcoming the dose faster than they bargained for. Gavin had a much lighter frame, drugs would stay around longer.

“Are you guys okay?” I said.

Royce stared at me like I was an alien. Guess he didn’t think I had it in me. News flash, I grew up on the streets. I can throw down. I just preferred not to.

“Royce? Talk to me here,” I said. “What’s going on with Gavin?”

Royce was still holding onto Gavin, keeping him upright, but they were both swaying a little, like they were drunk.

“I’m alright. Drugged me with something. Good stuff, really. Gavin. Not sure. Hands tied up—couldn’t examine him. Think he’s okay, just bruised,” he said.

I stared right at Alice. “He better be okay. Or I have absolutely no problem with eye for an eye.”

Alice held up her hands. “Hey, we didn’t mean to hurt your buddy, but when he woke up he beat the hell out of a few of my guys, even while he was still half-drugged. One of them is still in the hospital. Bad stab wound. So if you’re talking eye for an eye, you’re starting out in the red.”

I couldn’t help smiling. Of course Gavin wouldn’t go down without a fight. “That sounds like self defense to me. You can’t capture a trained assassin and expect them to not react.”

“So now you’re assassins? I thought you were just mild-mannered travelers,” she said.

Poor choice of words on my part. “Not exactly what I meant.” I pointed at Gavin. “He’s my security guy. Doesn’t mess around.”

“So I learned,” she said. “Well then, we’re at a bit of an impasse here. Now I definitely can’t just let you go, but I’d hate to lose my friend Dong-su over there.”

“Trust me. Don’t make us fight our way out of here. I’m faster than anyone in this room. I’ll slit three throats before you can blink.”

Not to mention what Gavin would do. He was woozy, but coming around. Once he woke up, whatever he did before would look like child’s play. We were getting out of here one way or another.

Alice shifted, biting a long red nail. “Look. I’m asking you a very simple thing. I’m sorry for drugging your buddies, but you came sailing into my turf unannounced. Judging from how you roll, you should know better than to come in here without checking out the scene first,” she said.

That was accurate. “Fair enough. We were on a tight schedule, you could say. Not a lot of time to investigate the local culture. We literally are just trying to pass through. That’s it.”

“Your tags are fake, but your two friends here are rolling natural. The one that likes knives, he works for Song Entertainment Industries. Is that who sent you? You here to spy on our operation? Maybe stage a little takeover?” she said. “Because I’ll tell you this—Wonderland is not for sale. SEI might be a big name, but we’re not interested, no matter how much cash they throw at us. Tell me. Is that who sent you? Are you SEI’s goons?”

Ah crap, we hadn’t banked on being anywhere public long enough to get pegged through Gavin. Doing surgery on him too would have been too risky. Good thing she’d stuck to using English this whole time—there was a chance that most of the crowd didn’t understand what we were saying.

Then ego got the better of me. I laughed, and it went on a little bit longer than I intended. I don’t think Dong-su appreciated it—the knife moved and more blood dripped onto my hand. Oops. Also, eww. Better knock that off.

“I am SEI. I’m Hyojin Song. That’s my operation.”

Her eyes got huge, and a sick tingle of satisfaction went through my chest. That’s right. Even over here, halfway across the world, my empire was famous. I’d built something truly extraordinary, and these people way out in the middle of nowhere thought I was a threat.

Most excellent.

I mean, in the moment, it was inconvenient, but I couldn’t squelch that thrill of recognition.

“Finally, an answer to my question— now I understand why you didn’t want anyone to know your identity. As I understand it, there’s a warrant out for your arrest,” she said. “You must have swapped marrow tags. That had to hurt.”

I swallowed. “How did you know that?”

“Oh, it’s common knowledge around here, in these circles. We all know about your big casino kingdom. We know you’d come back here and start throwing up new joints if you had your way. That warrant complicates things. And yet, here you are. This vast, untapped land of gamers was just too much to resist, wasn’t it?”

She wasn’t wrong, exactly, but no amount of money would have made me willingly let Royce pry open my chest. Although now that I was here, it would have been a real temptation. I just had bigger problems to deal with.

Like potential sudden death.

“Clear us a path, and we’ll be on our way, out of Mokpo by daybreak,” I said.

She smirked. “Now that you’re here, you should stay awhile. Talk some shop.”

I couldn’t get a read on her. Was she serious? I was still holding her guy at knife point. And it was getting majorly awkward.

I nodded at Dong-su. “Give me your word that you’ll let us go, and I’ll spare your guy,” I said in Korean. I wanted them all to hear this.

Alice fluffed her colorful hair and bit a nail playfully, like she was thinking. “Sure. You confessed your real identity. That’s what I needed to know. Let him go, and you can have safe passage back to the surface.”

Ha. The specific wording wasn’t lost on me, but it was reasonable. She would only promise things moment by moment. Getting to the surface was as good of a promise as I could have expected.

“Your word?” I said. I needed to hear it, and her staff needed to hear it.

“My word,” she said.

I nodded and whispered to Dong-su, “Go join your buddies. If you try anything, I’ll make sure this blade makes it all the way through your windpipe.”

He trembled in my arms, and I took that as agreement. “Good. Go,” I said.

I shook his blood off my fingertips and breathed an accidental sigh of relief as he scurried from my arms. He hid behind the rest of Alice’s security squad, trying to resume a tough pose and failing. Couldn’t blame him. I really would have killed him, and he probably sensed that. It’s an unnerving feeling, to be in the clutches of someone you knew would end your life.

And I knew Alice was in that same category. Beautiful? Yes. Deadly? Definitely. She’d take us out if she had to. Personally. That turned me on more than I liked to admit.

Royce shifted next to me, and with his free hand, he slapped a hand between my shoulder blades. “You okay?” he said. His speech was still slow, a little slurred.

I almost wished he hadn’t asked that. The adrenaline was still there, but underneath it, I knew things hurt—needed to ignore my body for as long as possible.

“Just dandy,” I said.

Gavin stirred, and I tried not to look at his face. The bruises on his cheekbones made me regret my promise about not killing anyone.

With the henchman out of my arms, I refocused on the crowd, scanning quickly, taking in everything, grateful the mesh was still functioning. They already knew about my augments, so I could let my eyes and head move freely, at whatever speed I wanted. The strippers had all gathered in a back corner, a fleshy huddle that was concerned, but not frightened. Probably saw this kind of thing often, knew to stay out of the way and let Alice handle things.

The rest of Alice’s enforcers stood tensely. I saw it in the tiny twitches of their fingers, the little trembles of their feet: they were scared. Scared of me. There were certain advantages to giving myself over to the mesh.

Knowing they were all watching me, afraid, gave me another boost—not quite as good as winning a big hand of poker, but there was something exhilarating about letting my wild side out to play. A weird part of me hoped Alice would violate her agreement, give me another reason to cut loose, juice out a little more adrenaline.

Alice stood tall, confident, but something was wrong. I might have missed it, if I hadn’t let myself go into total speed mode, but with a few clicks around her body, scanning her movements, it was there, clear as day.

She was sick too.

A little tick at the corner of her eye, a twitch in her fingers, blue tinge in her face.

Something was rotten in Wonderland.

“Incredible,” Alice said. “Whatever your augments are, I want them.”

“No. No you do not want them. I promise you this,” I said.

I wished Royce wasn’t still trying to muscle through all those drugs. He should have been watching this. Something was definitely wrong with her.

“I don’t know, they seem pretty extraordinary. Your eyes are moving so fast, I almost can’t see them,” she said.

“Alice. I don’t mean to be rude, but are you okay?” We were still talking in English. Maybe that would help her save face.

She hesitated, and I couldn’t tell if she was debating whether to tell me something, or just realizing something was wrong herself. I may have caught it before she did.

“Did you scan me? What do you know?” she said, suddenly paranoid.

I’d hit some kind of nerve. I could understand that. I had secrets I didn’t want spilled across the underworld too.

I shook my head. “I had no idea who you were until you kidnapped my friends. I still don’t know anything about you. I’m just using my two eyes. You’re not getting enough oxygen, are you?”

She took a deep breath. Very deep, like she was trying not to pant or gasp.

“Look. I’m not trying to pull anything. I have bigger concerns right now. And, I can respect you as another female territory boss. It’s not an easy job,” I said. “I have certain augments, and I can see that you’re having a hard time. My friend is a doctor. He’s still stoned as hell, thanks to you, but he’s excellent. He could help you.”

I elbowed Royce.

“What?” he said.

“Did you hear anything that I just said?”

He glared at me. “Yeah. I heard it. In Korean. How many times do I have to say that I don’t speak Korean?”

Oh. I was losing track of my languages. It was distracting when someone could switch between the two as easily as I could. Gavin and I did that sometimes, but it didn’t usually happen with strangers.

“Sorry. Look at Alice. Something’s wrong,” I said.

“Don't you have enough problems without trying to fix your enemy’s?” he said.

I resisted the urge to poke his ribs. He might drop Gavin. “She’s not our enemy. We just invaded her territory on accident, that’s all. Look at her.”

Now it didn’t take superhuman powers to notice that something wasn’t right. Alice was hunched over, forearms on her thighs, breathing too fast.

Crap. This wasn’t good for us either. With Alice dead, her thugs might not be so faithful about following her orders to let us go.

In Korean, I said to them, “Your leader needs help. My friend is a doctor. Let us help her, or you’ll watch her die. Your choice. Everyone step back to the walls, or we’ll let her suffocate.”

“Do. What. She. Says,” Alice said, getting paler every second.

Once Alice said it, they all moved instantly, rushing back to the opposite wall so that the far end of the room was filled with thugs and strippers. Not a bad mix, if you asked me.

“Royce. Put Gavin down and go help Alice,” I said.

“Are you serious?” he said.

“I’ll watch him. Go help her.”

He was still trying to get a grip on things, but he brought Gavin back to the chairs and set him down gently. I wanted to run over there and wrap my arms around him, tell him how happy I was he was alive, but this wasn’t the place. We had the upper hand, but this was still a nightmare scenario waiting to happen.

Royce shambled over to Alice who had sunk even lower, her head between her knees, struggling to stay upright. I knew that feeling all too well. I watched him trying to pull it together, overcome the influence of those sedatives. Even if he didn’t really care about helping her, his doctor instincts were kicking in, like he couldn’t help but come to her rescue.

“Do you have any known medical conditions? Do you have a heart problem? Are you pregnant? Do you have any implants?” he said.

“Yes,” Alice said.

“You might want to ask those questions one at a time,” I said. I’m so helpful.

“You’re hypoxic,” he said to her. “Lay down.”

Alice just stood there, breathing shallowly.

Royce rolled his eyes and picked her up, wobbling a little bit before he put her on the ground.

“I don’t know why I’m constantly dealing with stubborn women with bad implants,” he said.

“Stubborn people. No need to be sexist,” I said. “You think she has a bad implant?”

He seemed to be waking up more as his own adrenaline surged, responding to a familiar situation.

“That’s what she said, I think. This would be the right crowd for that sort of thing. If nothing else, she has corneal augments, but that wouldn’t be causing this,” he said. “Alice. I don’t have any equipment with me. If you have any bad implants, I need you to tell me what they are.”

Her face was inching closer to the shade of her hair. Good color for hair, bad for skin.

“Heart. Bad heart,” she said.

“Fuck,” he said and turned to me. “I’ve been rejoicing that you don’t have any heart problems. Guess it’s my lucky day.”

Lucky for me too. As far as I knew, my heart was mesh-free and A-OK.

Alice was totally out of it now, and I thought she might respond better in Korean, so I asked, “Do you have a bad implant? We need to know. It will change how we help you. Tell me what it is. I swear, I’ll keep it secret. I have a similar problem. Just tell me so we can help you.”

Her eyes closed, lips getting more pale. “Yes. Heart implant,” she said in Korean.

“It’s a bad implant, isn’t it?” he said. “I don’t need to speak Korean to understand that intonation. Her symptoms fit too.”

“Can you help her?”

Royce felt around in his back pocket and pulled tiny two syringes. “Either they were super confident in the sedative they gave me, or they’re just stupid, but they didn’t confiscate these babies. I’ve been keeping them on hand for you. There’s more back at the hotel, but we might not get back there in time if you have an episode too. Do you want me to use them on her?”

I nodded. “Do it.”

“I always thought you were a master tactician. Now I’m not sure,” he said.

“I’m a human being,” I said. “Give her the drugs.”

Royce looked between me, Alice, and her staff. They were looking at us, hungry for some blood. “Better hope we get out of here before you have another mesh episode. These syringes are the only thing that might save you,” he said.

Yikes. Scary, but Alice seemed like a worthwhile investment to roll the dice on. “Give it to her before it’s too late,” I said.

He pulled the cap off the first syringe, tapping out the air bubbles with a few flicks. “Okay,” he said. “It’s literally your funeral.”