The room is all dark. The kind of absolute black where you hold your hand to your face and still can’t see jack shit. I’ve got no sense of time. If it’s day or night. How many more hours of this I have to endure before Tsang’s men come busting through to haul my ass off to jail.
The girls should be long gone by now. I wonder if Jin Ling used the gun I gave her. I really, really hope she shot Osamu—that son of a bitch.
It’s thoughts like these that hold the pain at bay, keep my mind from snapping. I always used to wonder—in the long nights after the night that changed everything—what it felt like taking a bullet to the chest. I tried to imagine Hiro’s pain: the hole inside him, letting nothing in, everything out. The fire and ice and numb all pressing down, calling out his final, splitting breath.
Soul and body cut apart. Forever.
I don’t have to imagine it anymore. Turns out it’s a hell of a lot worse than I thought. I didn’t feel it at first. Just a heavy push into my right shoulder, my knees crumpling in shock. Then pins and needles and sear. So many pain synapses firing in my brain that I didn’t really care that Longwai was looming over me. Waving death in my face.
But he didn’t shoot. He didn’t let me bleed out, either. (Who knew Fung was such a talented nurse? A gauze-wielding wonder.) Not so much a mercy as the fact that he wants answers before he stuffs me in a trash bag.
I’m lucky Longwai decided to start off light—just a few punches to the agonized mess that was my shoulder. He left me in here tied to a chair to “think about my options.”
Options. With an s. Like I’ve got more than one.
As long as I stay silent, I stay alive. There’s no way in hell I’m talking, not with just a day left. I want to see this bastard burn as much as Osamu. Hopefully, Tsang and his team will get here before Longwai gets more serious. Wants to carve out an eye or an ear with that infamous, eager knifework of his.
This thought makes me test my bonds again, but the ropes are still too tight, fat pythons coiled around my wrists.
But when you’re flustered, like Longwai was, you miss things. Like the piece of glass tucked deep inside my palm. The one I clung to like life, through the gunshot. Through hit after hit after knuckle-ridged hit. I never let it show, kept my fists clenched even when Longwai landed the first punch, listened to me scream.
My hand unfurls slowly and the glass inches downward to my fingers. I work its edge back and forth, up and down. Longwai’s been gone for a while, probably off to have a smoke or get some shut-eye. Every dark minute that goes by I expect to hear his footsteps again. I listen for them under the door as I saw at my bindings.
There’s so much fire and pain in my shoulder that I don’t even feel the ropes come off. My hands are just free, collapsing to my sides. I wilt to the floor, find the glass, place it back into my sweating palm.
When Longwai comes back, I’ve got to be ready.
I’m still on my knees when the footsteps start, padding closer and closer. I push up with my good arm, bolt to the wall by the door. My hand is tighter than ever on the bottle shard, ready for the lunge and stab.
The lock clicks and the door swings open.