Pure luck got me through that lounge. I’m pretty sure I owe my life to the serving girl with slippery fingers, but I don’t have any time to worry about that. The minute Yin Yu allotted me is vanishing fast.
I’m barely breathing as I reach the door at the top of the stairs. It’s locked, just like Longwai left it. Yin Yu’s keys shake in my good hand. There are so many of them, hanging from the brass ring like gilded skeletons. My nerve-strung fingers fumble, grip the third one from the right. I can almost hear the seconds counting down as I fit the key into the lock. Yin Yu should be screaming any moment now.
But the key is the right one, and the door swings open. The first thing I go for is a gun—one of the antiquated pistols on Longwai’s display wall. It’s light. Too light. A quick check proves my initial suspicions were right. He doesn’t keep any of these weapons loaded.
I turn to the desk and then I see the clock.
Its numbers are digital, red pixels that scream like demons’ eyes through the dim: 11:58 PM.
Almost midnight. Out of time.
Tick, tock, tick, tock. My hands twitch to the beat of vanishing seconds as I go to the desk, study the top drawer. There’s a small lock—easy to break if you’ve got the right tools and strength. I grab the closest knife from Longwai’s collection. Wedge and pry. The drawer pushes out, uneven and crooked from the force. Like a stray with a limp.
There are papers, pens, individual cigarettes, a tin of mints, and gold-colored paper clips. My hands tear and shuffle through all these things until I reach the bottom of the drawer. My fingers keep scrabbling, frantic, at nothing.
The ledger isn’t here.
“There you are.”
I turn to a familiar sight: Longwai stands in the doorway, his pistol out and aiming straight between my eyes. The knife sits on the desk. Inches from my fingers. Useless.
“I thought you’d be long gone.…” The drug lord’s voice trails off when he catches sight of the open drawer, the flurry of papers and pens and trivialities. The wide, book-shaped void in the middle of it all.
“Where is it?” he snarls, and pushes farther into the room. Those bloodshot eyes bulge wide as he seizes my hoodie by the drawstrings, yanks them tighter than a noose. “The ledger. What did you do with it?”
There’s nothing left to hide, nothing left to risk, so I tell him the truth. “Nothing. It wasn’t there when I opened the drawer.”
“Impossible!” His pistol presses against my forehead, branding an O into my skin. “You have five seconds to tell me where it is.”
So this is how it’s going to end. A whimper and a bang all in one.
Better—I guess—than getting made into fish chum, piece by bloody piece. But only just.
Five…
For some reason, I thought I’d be seeing flashes right now. Scenes from my childhood maybe. Running around the Grand Aquarium with Hiro: my going gape-eyed at the electric eels; his reciting the scientific Latin names for every species he saw. Or making model airplanes with my grandfather.
Four…
There are flashes, but they aren’t pieces of my past. Instead, I’m on a beach and my arm is wrapped around Mei Yee’s shoulder, and we’re staring far off across the waters. And Jin Ling is beside us, tossing shells into the waves. Not my past but my future. The one that’s dying with every number that leaves Longwai’s lips.
Three…
I might deserve to die for everything I’ve done. I even wished it in those black rooftop moments, when my legs dangled over the streets and my brother’s final voice called me good and I knew I wasn’t.
But now… now I’m not so sure Hiro was wrong. Now I want to live.
How’s that for irony?
Two…
I shut my eyes.