I think this, and suddenly my boot slips out from under me and the world goes flat. Pain jars my bones, becomes a part of me. The ground beneath my palms shudders with the weight of the guard’s steps. There are no more wishes in my chest but hopes. I hope Jin Ling was right about those street kids. I hope I made it far enough.
A hand wraps around the heel of my boot, jerks me backward. My body slides easily through the puddle. I twist and see the guard almost on top of me. Before I really know what I’m doing, I take my free foot and slam it hard, hard, hard between his legs. He howls, releases me instantly. I scramble back just in time to see the shadows come.
The vagrants spring from every corner. Creatures of rags and knives and bone, swarming over the guard like maggots on meat. They’re small, but with eight to one, Longwai’s man doesn’t stand a chance. They take his gun, kick it away.
“Better run, girly!” one of the bigger boys shouts back at me.
He’s right. They’re going to let him go soon—Jin Ling told me the vagrants could buy me only so much time. Even with their knives and numbers, they’ll never harm a member of the Brotherhood. As soon as the guard realizes this, he’ll be after me again.
I need to run so far and fast he’ll lose me altogether.
I’m back on my feet and into the alley between the barber and the dog restaurant. Over bottles and bodies and so many other broken, unwanted things. Out and to the right. My lungs are fire and my legs feel like splintered chopsticks, but I keep going.
For Dai. For Dai. For Dai.
Straight as one of Nuo’s zither strings, all the way to the rusted cannons. I reach them with nothing but gasps left in my lungs. I know I should follow Jin Ling’s instructions—find a policeman, ask for help, stay with him—but all the energy that surged through me just moments before is gone. I lean hard against the rust, struggling for breath.
“Probably not the best night to be outside, kid. Get back inside while you can.”
I look up. My eyes struggle to focus. At first all I see is the glow of a cigarette. Then the man in the trench coat behind it. Something about him feels wrong: the way he talks, the clothes he’s wearing. He doesn’t belong in the Walled City.
And then I see the row of vans lined up on the streets behind him.
Reapers is my first thought, followed by a sick lurch in my throat. But no, Reapers don’t wear clothes like that. And they wouldn’t be lingering so obviously in the streets of City Beyond.
The man pulls the cigarette from his mouth and checks the gold watch on his wrist.
“Is your kid coming or not?” A second man steps out from one of the vans. He’s wearing a thick green vest, a navy hat with a silver badge pinned to the top. “We’re ready to move in.”
I look back at the caravan of black vans and suddenly I understand. These aren’t Reapers. This is the police raid Jin Ling told me about. These are the people who were supposed to get us out. Dai and me. Together.
“Dai’s in the brothel,” I say.
The man in the trench coat looks up—startled. “And who the hell are you?”
“Mei Yee.” My name brings no familiarity to his face, so I keep talking. “I was supposed to help Dai get the book for you.”
The man’s jaw edges out, his annoyance highlighted by the cigarette’s brash light. “Supposed to?”
“Something went wrong and Longwai caught him! He’s still in the brothel. You have to help him!”
His cigarette isn’t even half finished, but the man tosses it to the ground and flashes another look at his watch. “At this point, sweetie, the only person who can help Sun Dai Shing is himself.” He looks over at the man with the badge on his hat. “All right. The kid’s not coming. Let’s get moving!”
The van doors slide open and an army pours out. Men with body armor, searchlights, and guns longer than their arms. They jump out of their vehicles and start running. Past the old grandmother squatting on a blanket, hawking special bundles of New Year’s incense. Past the snow-haired man and his basket of bean cakes. Past the young girl hauling a cart full of clean laundry across the rutted path. The whole world goes still, watching the men and their guns vanish one by one through the Old South Gate.
The man’s words burn through me hotter than his cigarette: The only person who can help Sun Dai Shing is himself.
And because the man is wrong, I follow him back into the city of darkness.
DAI
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 cal
led 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.
One…
THE NEW YEAR
DAI
The shot sounds all wrong. It should be loud, clean. Like the one that went into my shoulder—cracking through the gun’s chambers like a lone lightning bolt. Tearing time and matter apart in slow motion.
Instead, it’s muted. Like a firecracker being crushed under someone’s boot. An echo without fire or flare.
And there’s no punch. No new pain taking root under my skin. Just my shoulder and its steady, reliable throb. The one that lets me know the blood in my veins is moving. Still inside me.
My eyes open. I’m still standing. My shoulder is still meat-mushed and throbbing. The cinches of my hoodie are still tight around my throat. Longwai is still standing in front of me, but his pistol has lost its resolve. The O is no longer marking my forehead. It’s shifted, just like the drug lord’s attention. He’s looking over his shoulder, at the open yawn of the door. More shots pop through the dark, and screams tumble up the stairs.
The raid has started.
“What is this?” Longwai’s question drifts through the open door, becomes lost in the growing tempest of noise.
The knife. I don’t wait. I lunge with everything left in my body and grab the ornate, curved blade by its hilt. It’s an old ceremonial piece, more for show than for actual cut and slice.
“What the hell is th—” Longwai is just turning back when I make contact. I throw myself into him, good side first, trying my hardest to bring him down. The drug lord is more solid than I expect, like his lounge slippers are actually cemented to the floor. He stays standing, but the gun hits the floor, spinning like a game-show wheel.
I land back on my feet, facing him. Trying to ignore how my right arm is noodle-limp at my side. How Longwai’s gold-capped teeth are glint and snarl, ready to sink into my throat. How the blade in my left hand feels like nothing much.
Especially when I’m not left-handed.
Longwai is a fighter. He moves fast, throws a nasty version of an uppercut. Knuckles already covered in my blood come again for my face. But—this time—there are no ropes. I whip to the side, let him give the air a good thrashing. At the same time, I bring up the knife.
There’s a schick and his black funeral shirt splits. A long cut runs down his right forearm—straight as a plumb line, neat as a surgeon’s work. The red leaves him at the same time as his scream.
An arm for an arm. Now we’re even.
But there are so many things this god of knives and needles has to pay for, so I keep fighting.
I throw myself at him again. He falls—cursing and howling and splintering in pain.
I land on top of him. My shoulder jars on impact; supernovas of pain light my vision. Star trails swim in my eyes, eating away Longwai’s ugly face. I push through them, slide my blade up to the soft, soft skin at the well of his throat. It tangles with his gold-link chain, pulls a whimper out of him.
“It’s over, Longwai.” The growl that leaves my mouth sounds too animal to be mine, but I don’t know who else would be saying these words. “You’re over.”
I’m over, too. They’re here already, pounding up the stairs, filling Longwai’s quarters with their floodlights and screams. They flood the room like locusts—scouring every corner with bright lights and rifles. Inspecting Longwai, the blood-edged knife at his throat, centering on me.
“Police! Drop the knife! Put your hands where we can see them!” someone says as the lights gather on top of me. Even the backs of my eyelids flare orange when I shut them.
I toss the knife to the floor, out of Longwai’s reach. My good hand lifts high over my head. I brace myself. One of the cops grabs my arms and twists them behind me. The clicks and cranks of the handcuffs fill my ears. They close tight around my wrists—cold, metallic destiny.
MEI YEE
The police are emerging from the brothel in ones and pairs. A mere trickle compared with the force that poured in minutes ago, like a broken dam of guns and searchlights. Almost all of them are leading people. Most, like Fung and the Brotherhood and the lounge clients, are in handcuffs. Others, like Yin Yu and Mama-san, are free. Some don’t come out at all.
I don’t see Dai or my sister anywhere. With every strange face that marches through the door, my heart drops another level, like air being slowly leaked out of a balloon.
Please. Don’t let them be dead—I’m not even fully finished with this thought when Dai’s face appears. He’s being pushed out of the brothel, his arms twisted in knots behind his back. His face is twisted, too—pain, pain, pain. I see the cuffs and the policeman prodding him on; panic rises.
I run to the officer. “You’re making a mistake!”
“Stand back,” the policeman says with a stern face, and gives Dai an extra push forward. Hurt and wince flare on my window-boy’s face, make me look closer at his shoulder. The sweatshirt there is tatters, torn and stiff with old blood. Underneath are bandages, white and rust. The same colors as my nautilus.
“No! You don’t understand! He was in there helping. To rescue me.” I move in front of them, blocking Dai’s forced path with my body. “You can’t arrest him.”
The blank wall of the officer’s face gives way to uncertainty. His eyes rove over Dai, and for just a second I believe I’ve convinced him.
“Ah. You found him.” The man from the Old South Gate steps next to me. His hands are shoved far into the pockets of his trench coat. The half-finished cigarette between his lips makes his words mumbly. “I was beginning to think you were a no-show altogether.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” Dai looks from me to the smoking man. His words take on the same sharpness he used when we first met. “I was too busy being tied up and tortured.”
The man sucks on his cigarette. It flares extra bright, like a lone dusk star. “It’s not my fault you got yourself caught. Did you find it?”
Dai shakes his head.
The man with the cigarette stands still for a moment. He exhales: air made of ash and sigh and disappointment. When all the smoke has cleared, he nods at the officer. “If you see Chan, let him know the ledger is still missing. Tell him to keep an eye out for it. Take this kid out with the rest. There’s a warrant for him.”
“Wait! No!” I shout. “You can’t do this.”
Trench coat man pulls the smoking roll from his lips. The movement sends sparks swirling through the air. Some land, harmless but bright, on my arm. “He’s a murderer, sweetie. We offered him his chance at redemption and he failed. Best say your good-byes.”
“You want the ledger?” I look at the man—smoke fills his lips like a foggy morning, hazing the air between us. “It’s in Longwai’s office! In the top drawer of his desk.”
Dai shakes his head. “It’s not there, Mei Yee. The drawer was empty.”
“But—but it can’t be.…” I keep talking so I won’t have to feel the sinkhole growing in my stomach. “It was there. I saw it! I saw it!”
I’m staring at Dai now, pleading for him to believe me.
His eyes are even deeper than they were before. Somber and yawning and full. There’s a smile on his face as he looks at me. “I’m glad you found her,” he says, and nods somewhere past me. I look back to see Jin Ling behind me, limping and shuffling through the cold. The blood she tried so hard to hide is now an undeniable dark on her dress.
“Get him out of here!” the man next to me barks, and waves a hand into the endless night of these streets. They yawn on either side of us, like the great mountain caves in our province. The ones the spirits lived in, waiting for sacrifices that stopped coming years ago.
“No!” I reach out, try to grab him, but the officer shoves Dai forward, rougher this time, off into the crowd of people.
It’s not the darkness of the street that devours hi
m. It’s the crowd of black suits and handcuffs that finally hides him from my eyes. Instead, I see Longwai—hands bound tight behind him, being dragged by police through the trash and dirt. His one arm is bent the way Sing’s was so long ago, smearing blood and broken.
Part of me feels that I should be happy—seeing him like this. After everything he’s done. To me. To Sing. To all the other shivering, sapped girls gathered under the lone sapphire streetlamp. But I can only look at such brokenness and feel it inside me, echoing long and far, deeper than the darkness between stars.
DAI
The handcuffs are too tight. I can’t feel my fingers anymore, but my shoulder is a different story. It’s like the end of an unknotted rope: fibers twisting, pulling, fraying, coming apart. It doesn’t really help that the cop behind me is shoving and jostling like a half-rate taxi ride. I know better than to complain, though. I had my chance. I had more than my chance.
I can only imagine what my father will say, if he ever comes to see me. I can just picture him, sitting with his flawless business suit and mostly gray hair. He’ll stare through the inches of Plexiglas. All those years of masking his emotions at business meetings and cocktail parties won’t be enough to hide the disappointment on his face. He’ll lean close to his microphone and say, “You should have run.”
I’m beginning to think that myself until I see Mei Yee. Her face is flushed, like she’s been running. Even though she’s dressed in my clothes, hair pulled back, everything about her seems brighter. More alive.
She doesn’t even blink when Tsang calls me a murderer. She’s still looking at me with her nautilus stare. Dusting the sand off my soul and seeing the best parts. The ones that Hiro saw. The ones he tried to tell me about.
And then I see Jin Ling behind her, hobbling desperately to be with her sister. Together again after so many years.
I see them, almost side by side (the way Hiro and I used to walk when we scoured the seashore), and there’s no room for doubt.