VI.
The room had two display screens, a cheap green sofa, concrete floor, a fake plant, and a shelf full of beer. I put Hyori down on the sofa.
“Been a while,” I said. I took the gun and fired an activator into her neck that would free the muscles in her mouth.
“W-who are you?”
I looked her straight in the face and from the confusion that stared back, I realized how different I must have appeared to her.
“I’m looking for Shinjee.”
“Shinjee? Why?” She looked at me again. “Nick?”
“Where is she?”
“I heard you were killed trying to escape from the convoy.”
“If I fire this one more time, your body will be paralyzed permanently. There is no way to reverse it, short of death. I’ll ask only one more time. Where’s Shinjee?”
“She’s doing factory work.”
“Where is it?”
Hyori gave me a Beijing address.
“What kind of security do they have there?” I asked.
“They don’t need any.”
“Why not?”
“No one would leave. They’re serving the Great Leader.”
I tried to look for the Linda in her, but couldn’t see it no matter how hard I tried. I turned around and was about to exit when she shouted, “Wait, you can’t just leave me here. Wait! What do you want with Shinjee?! She’s a failure! Leave her alone! Hey! Nick! C’mon!”
I shut the door and rushed out the front. The toxin would wear off after a day. But I didn’t bother telling her that.
“Done so fast?” the attendant asked.
“I’ll be back.”
VII.
The factory packed oxygen containers, recycling air and filtering out the toxins so that it was breathable. People could insert the cans into their gas masks. It was a popular item throughout the cities of the world as fresh air was more valuable than food in many places.
The filtering generators in this case were disgusting monstrosities that looked incapable of cleaning anything. Most likely, it was unpurified oxygen packed and sold to people at a slightly lower price by hawkers outside markets. People were breathing the same air they would have without a mask, only paying a premium for the pretty wrapping.
Just as Hyori had said, there was no security. On the outside, it looked like a normal business building with a fence around its periphery and signs written in both Mandarin and Korean. I spotted a conveyor belt that did most of the pumping and sealing of the oxygen. Eight vents spat out smog and the whole place was dusty, smelling of burning vinegar. None of the workers had on any protective gear, though they had to step out every fifteen minutes or so to clear their charred lungs. As bad as it was outside, it was worse inside.
I recognized one of those that stepped out as Shinjee. I had never thought her especially pretty, but I could recognize that she could be attractive to others. Something had happened to her since I’d last seen her. It was as though her skull had been reshaped and she’d taken a beating or two. She was skinny before, but now she was a twig, so frail, it looked like she’d snap upon contact. Her nose had been broken and patched back up, but not with any skill. She wore the white outfit of all the other factory workers and had a short purple wig on that had soot at its edges. There was no camaraderie among the workers, just forced civility.
There were a few ways to approach this. I had assumed I’d have to furtively paralyze her and take her away. But seeing the lethargic manner in which she moved, an instinct told me the direct approach would be most effective. She did not look like a woman afraid of death.
I waited for her shift to end. She scanned the bar on her card key to stamp out, bowed to some of her co-workers, then walked out with a limp. She chewed on a piece of bread as swarms of bicyclers passed her by. Exhaustion weighed down her legs and children outpaced her short walk home. She lived in a tiny apartment that appeared abandoned from outside because it was so old and decrepit. Graffiti painted the walls and the floors were dirty. She had to climb up six floors as there was no elevator and she shared a room with five others. They had a communal bathroom for the floor that stank of a year’s worth of human feces where she washed her hands.
“I was expecting a lot of things, but not this,” I said to her.
“D-do I know you, sir?” she asked.
“What did they do to you?”
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“It’s me — Nick.”
“Nick?”
“Larry’s friend.”
She examined my face. “You-you were killed trying to escape.”
“So I’ve heard,” I answered.
“H-how did you get away?”
“Does it matter? That night before you shipped me off. Who was that dead on the sofa?”
“W-what?”
“Whose body was on the sofa?” I asked again.
“It was Larry. Why?”
“Do I look stupid to you? Larry’s alive. I just saw him.”
“That’s not Larry,” she protested.
“Then who is it?”
“I don’t know. But it’s not Larry.”
“I talked to him. It’s Larry.”
“Can’t you tell the difference between a fake Larry and the real one?” she demanded.
“Why would there be a fake Larry?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you be sure he’s dead?” I asked.
“There were holes in his neck.”
“That might not have been him.”
Shinjee shook her head. “Larry is dead.” And then I saw her well up with tears.
“Spare me,” I said. “You didn’t give a damn about him.”
An indignant scowl brimmed at her eyes. “I loved him.”
“Based on, what, the few days you knew him?”
“Love doesn’t have a timeline.”
“Life does. And he’s alive.”
“Someone’s replaced him,” she said.
“What happened to the body?”
“We weren’t expecting to find him dead so we left him there.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?”
“I had nothing to do with it,” she said. “Why would I kill him? My job was to recruit him.”
“For what?”
“To make films for the Great Leader.”
“So you are a spy?”
“An ambassador, punished for my failure.” She went back to washing her hands. “Why are you here?” she asked.
“I owed you a visit.”
“For what?”
“You sent me to Hell.”
“I gave you a way out and now you’re back.”
“I had to claw my way out,” I said.
“I didn’t want this for you or anyone else. What choice did I have?”
My mind was on other questions, like why would someone pretend to be Larry? The tattoo on his stomach was the same. Then again, that could have been faked. Think, Nick. Put your brain to use. Your eyes deceived you once. Was it that first time when you saw Larry’s corpse, or the second, when you saw him breathing in front of you at the convention?
“I tried calling him when I first heard he was alive,” she told me as she dried her hands. “He never picked up. He only appears in big public events and he’s always attended by a big entourage. I tried going once, just to see him. He didn’t recognize me. He was with four other women.”
Her voice was earnest as were her expressions. She was still in love with him.
“It’s so sad that the person Larry considered his closest friend can’t even tell the difference between the real him and an impostor,” she said. “You know how much he worried for you?”
“If he’s dead and you loved him, who killed him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why aren’t you out there trying to find his killer?”