For some time there’s only dimness and the ragged tempo of Sing’s breath. I begin to wonder if that’s all there is. Just the in and out of her drug-riddled lungs, taunting me with her fate. The rhythm is almost hypnotic. After minutes and minutes of it, my eyes begin to close.
And then the door next to me opens—an explosion of wood and anger, jerking me awake. I struggle to my knees and then my feet, eyes full of the blurry series of legs filing in.
I stand and see their faces. The ones who’ve come to question and judge. Mama-san’s makeup, Fung’s tattoo, Nam’s gold tooth, Longwai’s violet scar. But there’s a fifth face, one I have to focus on to recognize.
I see him and wonder if maybe I’m dreaming. But no, I rub my eyes and he’s still there—in the flesh, without glass or metal between us. The golden skin. Hair peaked and jutting everywhere. Sharp face full of plans and cunning. Eyes that hum and shine like phoenix song.
Dai. What’s he doing? Did they catch him, too?
Those eyes find mine. His chin quivers—side to side—in the smallest of shakes. I snap my stare down to the floor, away from him.
“Mei Yee.” Longwai sounds disappointed, but thrills still manage to weave through my name. “Mei Yee. How could you do this to me? After everything I’ve done for you.”
I keep my head down, study the crevices in the floorboards. There are years of dust and suffering wedged between them. Places even Yin Yu’s broom couldn’t reach. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
“No?” Longwai steps close. I feel his eyes all over me, as scathing and peeling as they were the very first night he inspected me. He reaches out, his fingers cool and clammy against my wrist. “Then how did you get this slice on your finger?”
He holds my hand up for the room to see. It takes everything I have not to flinch back from his touch.
“We know about the hole in the window. Who was behind it?”
Down. Keep your eyes down. Don’t look at Dai. “No one, sir.”
“You’re lying,” Longwai says, as if it’s the most obvious fact in the world. “Yin Yu said you showed her a seashell. How did you get it?”
“Yin Yu is a liar. I’ve told you before. She’s jealous.”
“She’s smart enough not to keep secrets.” Longwai’s nostrils flare wide, like a horse that’s run three li at full gallop. “I’m giving you a choice, Mei Yee. Tell me the truth and I’ll let Ambassador Osamu take you away to Seng Ngoi. If you choose to keep lying…”
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.”