No lives will be spared but for the Elect. No lives but the Cabal. And they will know The Coming.
And the Beast will task his agents to a mission to gather together their cohorts.
The city of the sleepers will dream in their name, [static] war between the agents of blood will conclude. The new void will rise to smother the old.
Intercepted transmission #5932-02, recorded by Maritime Offensive Force submersible Ameratsu, broadcast location unknown.
8. Young and Dangerous
Ko had the small of his back pressed into the corner of the holding cell, legs pulled up on the foam cot, knees to his chest, his head flat against the cold wall. With mechanical boredom he was ripping pea-sized balls of material from the mattress and flicking them across the short distance to the stainless steel toilet bolted on the far wall. The dots of foam landed in the murky, stinking bowl one after another. The plastic-coated sides of the cell were made of some kind of wipe-clean germicidal supersynthetic that was way past the need for replacement. Decades of enterprising criminals had whiled away their confinements scoring their names into the plastic or leaving obscenities that railed at their petty injustices. Mostly, the graffiti was of the kind that suggested certain law officers engage in anatomical impossibilities, or attempt sexual congress with their mothers.
The depressing familiarity of the narrow room weighed down on the young man, and he masked a heartfelt sigh with a move of his hand, letting his fingers wander across his face and through the dark spikes of his hair. Ko carefully probed the places on his ribs and legs where the coppers had struck him. There would be a colourful horde of bruises there to greet him when he undressed.
He considered Second Lei for a moment. How badly had he punished that half-witted fool for his arrogance? Something had opened a floodgate to every jibe and ridicule Ko had ever turned a blind eye to. He’d always thought he was big enough, cool enough to rise above that sort of thing; Ko imagined that the slights and snipes just rolled off him, vanished into the air. But that wasn’t how it went at all. On some level, deep in his marrow, he remembered every one-and when the moment came, they returned in a hurricane of fury. Even now, here in this small place, hurting and cramped, a faint smile came to Ko’s lips as he thought of how much he had enjoyed beating seven shades of shit out of that fat prick. The smile faded as he imagined what Poon and the Cheungs and the others would say about it, though. Ko had broken a Rule. Quite how or where the Rules got codified or created was beyond him. Somehow, the group would unconsciously come to accept that a certain thing was just the way it was, that certain words or deeds would not come to pass within the sphere of their tribe. Mouthy, overconfident Second was a living avatar of that mindset. He was the self-styled big dog of the Pak Sha Road Posse, a braggart whose only real superiority over the rest of the gang was that he had slightly more money than the rest of them. Truth be known, if Second was so damn cool, then why the hell was he hanging out on street corners, fucking kogals and hustling Z3N? Second’s ambition ranged to getting recruited into the 14K triad and that was about it. Ko didn’t dwell on the fact that his own life goals were even less defined.
The weird state of grace in the group, the idiotic dynamic of it, the whole thing seemed progressively dumber the longer Ko thought about it. Second didn’t deserve to be the top gun. He had a good car, sure, but he wasn’t that hot on the road; he was like the annoying kid who owned the ball when you wanted a kickaround. You had to let him play and throw his weight about, just because he could take it home if he wanted to. Everyone just turned a blind eye to it, they just let it go because it was easier to eat his shit and ignore it than it was to deal with the alternative. And now, Ko had crossed that line and extradited himself from the only friends he had.
“Friends? That’s a joke.”
He saw it now, plain as daylight. It was inevitable that one day the button would have been pushed, that Ko would lose it and turn the kung fu he’d learnt under Sifu Lee’s tutelage on the supercilious asshole. Second hadn’t even put up a good fight. If the police hadn’t come along, there was no telling how it might have ended.
He glanced up and there was Feng, rail-thin and glum, standing in the opposite corner of the cell. “Those people are worthless,” said the swordsman. “Be glad you’ve left them behind. You were wasting your life with them.”
Ko wanted to be; but instead Feng’s words annoyed him. “I don’t want another bloody lecture from beyond the grave.”
“You know it isn’t a lie. Those fools were all wastrels.”
“And you’re not?” Ko snapped, the anger of the evening returning to him. “The proud, noble ancestor, warrior of the ancient days?” He mimicked Feng’s voice. “Things were better in my time. We had honour and courage. Did you shit! You’re just as bad as me, greedy and self-indulgent!”
Feng’s face clouded. “Don’t take it out on me because you’re a failure, boy!”
“Why? What are you gonna do, haunt me some more?” Ko shook his head. “You ain’t gonna do that, who would you get to buy you smokes?”
In spite of himself, the swordsman licked his lips.
Ko’s head drooped, his anger fading. “Ah, screw it. This is it.” He prodded the ragged mattress with a finger. “Enough is enough. I’m getting out of here. I’m sick of living like this.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This place, Hong Kong. I’m done. I’m going to escape from this city even if it kills me.” He leaned forward. “I’m going to get money and go, take Nikita and leave it behind.”
“How will you do that, exactly? You’ve got, what? A dozen yuan to your name?”
Ko gave Feng a hard look. “I’ll find a way.”
The warrior’s head snapped up to face the heavy steel door. “Company.”
The observation slot in the metal hatch irised open to reveal a bored-looking trooper in APRC fatigues behind an inch of armoured glass. “On your feet, citizen.”
Frankie rolled over as gently as he could manage, keeping his eyes closed. He wanted to make sure that it hadn’t been some kind of strange fever-dream, a weird melange of fantasy created by too much jetlag and too little sleep; but no, as impossible as it seemed, there she was at his side. Her chest, unblemished like newly fallen snow, rose and fell above the edge of the silk sheets, and gentle breaths escaped the pursed flower of her lips. Juno Qwan lay naked beside him, as stunning in repose as she was on the billboards around the city.
“Wah.” Frankie whispered, and a grin emerged on his face as the evening rewound in his mind’s eye. They had fallen into the apartment entwined around one another, a peculiar hunger for human contact compelling them. Her kisses were electric on his lips and her skin, her perfect flawless skin, rose up under his touch. She discarded clothes worth more than a year of his former salary in ragged heaps as they crossed the lounge. With steady hands, she steered him toward the bedroom. They fell into each other, and with the lights of the city cast through the windows of the chamber, Frankie and Juno had made love, orbiting the room until they set down on the bed and began again.
He saw it in snapshots: the strobe of a passing advertisement blimp painting red and blue across her breasts as her back arched. Her hands on him, guiding him in. Juno’s hair, free and wild, crossing his chest. The taste of her. The sparkling chemical impact as they met orgasm together, synchronised and stormy. Everything else but her seemed faint and pale in comparison, faded images held against a vivid holograph.
Frankie felt the lazy beginnings of an erection as the fresh memories surfaced; but there was more to it than the sex. He felt strange, a peculiar sense of ease here with her, a realisation that there had been a missing piece to his life and now here she was, completing him. He shook his head and looked away, smirking. Where did that come from? he wondered, I’m mooning like some love struck idiot!