Back on my apartment wall there are two marks left, but it doesn’t matter. I’m out of time. No days or hours remain. Not even minutes.
The numbers are different now. I add them up, doing quick calculations in my head as my fingers clutch the syringe.
Six people.
Three guns.
One syringe.
One shard of glass.
One book.
It’s an uneven, impossible equation. No matter how many times I run through it, I can’t come up with the perfect answer. The book and the girl don’t go together. After the equal sign, it’s only me or her. No us.
Longwai makes a living by lying through his teeth, but he was right about one thing: I’m the disposable one. I’m the sacrifice, the queen in a brutal game of chess.
Turns out there’s a law higher than survival. And I don’t know what it is, but I feel it surging, throbbing, burning away the rest of my doubts and fears.
No book. No me. Just Mei Yee.
The syringe of heroin has lost the chill of the refrigerator. It shakes, filling with dozens of tiny bubbles in my hand. If anyone is looking at me, it should be all they see. Shakes and bubbles. But my left hand is sliding ever so carefully into my pocket, where the glass piece saws through denim. Its razor edge bites into my palm, ready.
There are so many veins in Mei Yee’s arm—dredged to the surface by Fung’s too-tight knots. She doesn’t fight as the drug lord splays out her arm like an offering.
“Do it.” Longwai points to the blue web under her paper-thin skin.
I take a breath, unclenching the syringe in my right hand while gripping tight to the glass in my left. If I time it just right, I can get the shard deep into Longwai’s neck, grab his gun, and take care of Fung and Nam. A big if. And then there’s the matter of every other Brotherhood member with a holster crawling through this place.
Getting out of here alive is a long shot, but it’s the only shot I’ve got.
I pretend to watch the needle as I guide it close to Mei Yee’s flawless skin. But really my eyes are searching for other veins, the thick cording ones gathered in Longwai’s neck.
There’s a cry and suddenly—a girl. A girl where I didn’t even know a girl was. She rises from the corner, looking like a witch with her loosed black hair and gaunt face. Her eyes are both bulging and sunk in—fixed on one thing only. She lunges with a speed too fast and impossible for her bony limbs.
“I need it!”
The syringe is torn from my hand by this wild resurrection of a girl. I don’t even have to pretend to stop her. Her fist clenches tight around the needle, jams it into her arm. But there’s no vein to carry it through. Heroin and blood braid down her skin. The girl shakes, stares at it. She’s trying to lick it up when Nam rips the hollowed plastic syringe from her palm.
I slip the glass back into my pocket.
“Get Sing out of here!” Longwai yells at Nam. I’ve never seen him like this, so angry his face is flushed full of autumn colors.
“But where—”
“I don’t give a damn!” Longwai roars. “Put a bullet in her head for all I care! And fetch me another syringe while you’re at it.”
Nam grabs Sing by the hair and starts to drag. The girl’s face shifts into a violent, ugly thing—as if she’s possessed. From the way she moves, I could almost believe it: kicking, clawing, screaming, twisting. Nam’s grip on her hair slides free and she’s off. Out the door faster than a mouse.
Now. The time is now.
My hand wraps around the glass shard again, pulls up, and out to strike.
“What is all this?!”
A new roar causes my arm to freeze, midair. It isn’t Longwai—the expression on his face is set and silent. He stares behind me, at the shadows crowding the doorway, blocking all ways to freedom.
For once I’m thankful this glass is so small. It hides perfectly beneath my knuckles, betraying nothing. I hold it tight and look around.
Osamu. My Plan B. Jin Ling did her job.
The ambassador is in familiar garb. I’ve seen him wearing the same style of tuxedo since I was too young to really know who he was. What always stood out to me were his gold cuff links, how they twinkled under the torchlight in our rock garden as he sipped cocktails and flirted with every woman there. Including my mother.
He doesn’t recognize me—I doubt he even sees me at this point. Osamu’s anger is bullish. So focused he didn’t even remember to remove his shoes at the entranceway. His shiny leather oxfords stamp into the reeking room, shaking every floorboard.
“What’s going on, Longwai?”
“Brothel business,” the drug lord bristles, but the yell has left his voice. I notice his free hand is tucked to his side. The one his gun is hidden on. “None of it concerns you.”
I’m so close to Mei Yee I can hear her breath changing. It gets faster in a way that the threat of Longwai or a heroin needle couldn’t spur. It’s the closeness of him—the way a rabbit’s heart explodes under the stare of a hunter.
The ambassador’s eyes travel up her arm, taking in Longwai’s fingers still on her wrist, the bulging vein, and Fung’s knots. “Mei Yee is my concern. I thought I made it very clear to you that she wasn’t to be touched.”
“I’ve respected your wishes for as long as it’s been convenient. That time has long run out. Lest you forget, Osamu, I’m the one who owns this brothel and these girls. Mei Yee included.”
The men stare at each other, like two silverback gorillas facing off on a single piece of territory. Ready to tear each other apart. A dramatic nature-show moment in the flesh.
Mei Yee shakes beside me. I wish hard, hard, hard that I had my gun.
Osamu reaches out, wraps his hand around Mei Yee’s wrist. Their skin is so different—hers white as snow, his covered with age spots and wiry hairs.
“Name your price,” he says, and I think of all the many bruises I saw on Mei Yee’s skin that night at the window. How they match his touch exactly. I don’t mean to, but my grip grows tighter, pushes so my skin is torn apart by the glass.
“It’s not about the money anymore, Osamu.” Longwai’s voice is both hard and peeling, like callused skin. “She’s up to something. Keeping secrets. I want to know what it is.”
For a long moment all is stillness. There’s the quick avalanche of Mei Yee’s breaths. The old woman in her clingy silk, taking everything in like a spider on a web. And my hand tight on glass.
“Secrets?” Osamu is looking around, eyes wide and clearing, like a man who just woke up. Glimpse by glimpse he swallows the room: the filthy pile of rags, Longwai’s gun, Mei Yee, me.…
And then his eyes dart. Back and forth. Back and forth like one of those plastic table tennis balls, ricocheting between Mei Yee and me.
“I see how it is,” he says softly.
I feel the heat of my own blood swimming across my palm.
“It’s information you want?” Osamu’s voice is a lake. Placid and calm on the surface, plunging to unknown depths. “You’re not going to get it from Mei Yee.”
His eyes set like stone on my face. “This is the one you want. Sun Dai Shing. What is the heir of Sun Industries doing flirting with the likes of the Brotherhood? I’m sure he has more than enough secrets to keep you entertained for the rest of your miserably short career.”
Goddamn Osamu. Not a very good Plan B.
All the heat and threat that Longwai was pouring onto the ambassador shift, unload like dragon fire on my shoulders. The drug lord lets go of Mei Yee and draws his gun in a fluid, lethal, mongoose movement. The barrel stares at me—hard and unforgiving.
Game over.
He pulls the trigger.