VOLUME 2: ROYAL REGICIDE

  Emperor Puyin’s fury still rang in Praefect Shing’s ears as he stepped through the shutter doors and into the darkness:

  That masked fool has my city in an uproar. I want the Ibilis’ head within the next 100-cycles!

  Jian, the Yang’s greatest leader, was dead. Since then, his second-in-command, the Ibilis, had been violently consolidating power. This was meant to be the Yang at their most vulnerable, yet to Shing it felt like the opposite. They had only grown bolder. They had slain Dr Chinh without leaving a trace, a lead engineer behind the Emperor’s Zhaisheng, the dynasty’s grand attempt to force a cultural rebirth through industry, infrastructure, and spectacle. His murder in the Western Reaches had been a message that no rebirth was coming to Kowloon. Now another researcher tied to him, Dr Jode, had vanished inside Kam Shan.

  It had been a full work-cycle since Lieutenant Keung convened the detachment to plan their next strike against the Yang. Now the board was in motion. Ushi and Shing were in Kam Shan’s capital, Fengcheng, following the trail left by Dr Chinh’s murder, while Keung, Cheng, and the two Tai Li operatives moved on a Yang base in Ho Man Ting.

  Shing could still remember seeing Keung in that empty lecture room, pacing with his hands clasped behind his back, struggling to mask how deeply the new intelligence had rattled him. Especially after hearing about the extinct fighting style the Yang were rumoured to be using.

  Chung Fu.

  The stairwell up to the Black Jacket headquarters was just as cramped as Shing remembered: the same guard posted outside, the same harsh red neon light spelling Gehinnom bleeding down the walls, the same solitary black railing on the left, still tacky with grime.

  But two things were different. Club music was playing from upstairs, and Praefect Yutai wasn’t beside him.

  Last time, the two of them had walked in together without a care in the world. But this time, things were different. Before sending Shing back into Tong’s den, Keung had given him strange orders.

  Tao and Yutai are benched. You’re with Ushi, Shing.

  And so behind him lumbered Praefect Ushi. The meathead of the detachment. Broad enough to choke this entire stairwell on his own.

  ‘I hope Keung and his team are doing alright,’ Ushi muttered behind him.

  ‘The Lieutenant’s got Tribune Cheng and two Tai Li babysitting him,’ Shing replied. ‘He’ll live.’

  ‘I suppose he’s also got those Tien Tao Rioters with him.’

  ‘You still think the Rioters are innocent?’

  ‘You might want to think twice before accusing more South Kowloonis of deceit.’

  ‘Alright, calm down, buddy,’ Shing said lightly. Ushi was still clearly upset over how Shing had accused the Tien Tao of betrayal during their last meeting. After their failure to arrest the Ibilis in Ho Man Ting Square, everyone in Keung’s team felt suspicious about them. Everyone but Ushi, the team’s lone Southerner, accepted the assumption without question. He would not yield to a stereotype his people had been burdened with for centuries.

  Tribalistic dangdexue, Shing thought with an eye roll. Never taking Yutai’s presence for granted again.

  He remembered, when they first stepped into the stairwell, how Ushi had tried to muscle past him and take the lead.

  Glad I didn’t let him do that, Shing thought, feeling Ushi breathe down the back of his neck as they both followed their Black Jacket escort to the top. This is my second time here, his first, he’d told himself. He can walk behind.

  The Black Jacket shoved the door open and music burst out to meet them. Neon lights washed over his slicked-back hair as he stepped through first, leather jacket stiff at the shoulders, cargo trousers dragging against the heel of his sneakers. Shing and Ushi went inside.

  Bass rolled through Club Gehinnom in dense, subsonic waves, an electro-synth pulse that travelled straight up through the floor and into Shing’s boots. The club was packed to suffocation. Bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder beneath jittering strips of neon and erratic LED grids, green lasers slicing through the fog that defracted into pink, cyan, and acid violet colours.

  Patrons danced wildly in the strobe. Chrome-lined arms caught the light at angles. Retinal implants glimmered through the dark. The legs of women flickered with embedded light strips that pulsed in time with the beat. Men had muscles that were lacquered, plated, and tattooed with glowing ink. A man’s jaw clicked open too wide as he laughed, hinges on the cheek flashing silver. Shing even spotted someone’s forehead dripping with blueish bioluminescent sweat.

  ‘Who are these people?’ Shing shouted over the noise as they angled their shoulders through the crowds.

  ‘Richest folk of Kam Shan,’ the escort barked back. ‘Industrial heirs, financiers. You might even spot a Western celebrity or two!’

  Shing scanned the crowd, eyes narrowing as he tried to place faces. It was useless. The darkness hid features. Laser light fractured across skin and chrome alike, breaking people into shifting shapes of colour and motion.

  Only the elite of Kowloon could afford implants like these. Latticed optics glowing beneath eyelids. Metal along joints. Data ports pulsing faintly at the neck. But Kingmakers never touched such modifications. Their bodies had to remain healthy and intact for as long as possible. The technology was recent, its uses mostly for vanity, and heavily restricted under Dongist law. Too controversial for gangsters representing the dynasty.

  Watching these dancers twist beneath neon light, Shing found himself wondering what the Tower would look like with full body-modded Kingmakers.

  He watched everyone dance without space, hips brushing, elbows colliding, sweaty faces half-lost in strobe and smoke. Someone crashed into his shoulder and flowed past without apology, already lost back into the mass. Clearly, no one registered the gold-striped trench coats they were colliding with. Shing could not remember the last time he had set foot in a club frequented by people this elite. Probably over five annui-cycles ago.

  Then, a beautiful woman laughed directly into his ear, fingers catching briefly at his collar, and for half a breath, Shing considered stopping to join and dance.

  But Ushi would be a fucking bitch about it, he reminded himself. That much I know. I wonder what sort of DJ they’ve got playing here, though…

  Shing’s gaze lifted past the crowd to the raised stage, where the DJ thrashed his arms behind his console, with two pillars of flashing visuals scrolling vertically on either side of him. A dark mask covered his face entirely, with neon lines slowly animating two crossed Xs for eyes and a stitched line for a mouth. Behind his head, twin halos of light rotated in opposing directions, casting over him an artificial crown.

  Shing’s eyes widened in recognition. ‘No way.’

  It was MinFa-412.

  An A-list name. Worth millions. Produced tracks for the greatest talents of this generation, but he kept his face hidden. You could be sure to hear his iconic tag at the start of almost every hit rap track.

  ‘How’d you get ahold of MinFa?!’ Shing asked ahead.

  The escort glanced back at them as he led the way, his expression impossible to read beneath the pulsing club lights. ‘The Aunt’s got a contract with him,’ he shouted over the bass. ‘He plays private sets all over Kam Shan.’ He jerked his chin toward the crowd and raised his voice further. ‘Lately, the Aunt prefers more noise going on in Gehinnom. Like a… Buffer against the outside world.’

  ‘She getting scared of the Yang?’ Shing called back.

  The guard simply kept moving.

  They edged forward, past a narrow bar slick with liquids and empty glasses. High stools lined its length, most of them occupied. Some held patrons slumped forward, eyes glazed and exhausted. Others were claimed by men lounging back with women perched on their laps, hands clutching their exposed thighs as they laughed into each others ears.

  The DJ booth rose ahead on a shallow, barely elevated stage, its console alive with rippling waveforms and pulsing light. The DJ did not look up as they passed behind him.

  Shing’s jaw tightened. Damn. I’ve always wanted to ask him how much it’d cost to tear that mask off mid-set. The image almost made him smile. Because I’d have paid it. Another time.

  The Black Jacket led them past two towering speakers stacked one atop the other. For a moment the music swallowed them completely, the bass hammering through their skull. Then the guard reached the rear of the stage, dragged aside a heavy curtain, and pulled open a solid door. Shing and Ushi stepped through. The door shut behind them with a dull, final thud.

  Sound dropped away at once. They were in a narrow, dimly lit corridor, walking down it in a single file, their footsteps suddenly too loud in the quiet.

  At the far end, the escort unlocked a door and pushed it open. They stepped through together into Tong Feng’s den. Shing felt it at once. Nothing looked the same as when he was last here with Yutai.

  What had once felt like the beating heart of the Aunt’s domain was now quiet and still. There were still Black Jackets in the expansive central, red-carpeted room, but their casual gatherings were gone. Instead of lounging and gambling on sofas and tables, which were stripped away entirely, they were posted at doorways and patrolled the lengths of the upper verandahs. The central space looked bare and unfurnished, nothing like the dense, fearsome headquarters Shing remembered.

  The grand, double staircase still dominated the centre, but it no longer felt grand to Shing. Black Jackets lined its curve, hands never off their weapons, eyes constantly tracking the newcomers. Doors that had once stood open were now mostly shut. Instead of dama smoke, all that Shing could smell was burning oil, stale water, and damp metal.

  For a moment, it almost felt like the place had shrunk. Then Shing corrected himself. Everyone’s eyes were wary, no one distracted with anything but guarding the Aunt. This was control, imposed in the face of the growing Yang threat in the Western Reaches.

  She’s definitely getting scared.

  As they began to walk through the base, Ushi decided to speak.

  ‘Guard. Jacket. Whatever you’re called,’ he said. ‘Where did the Aunt keep the rest of Dr Chinh’s research team after his murder?’

  ‘The remaining six are here, in another wing of the headquarters,’ the Black Jacket replied. ‘Since we never figured out how Chinh was taken, the Aunt wanted them within reach.’

  Shing snorted. ‘Worked out brilliantly. Seeing how the Yang still managed to take Dr Jode.’

  ‘The Aunt believes a Black Jacket may have helped them,’ their escort quickly replied.

  ‘If Dr Jode really is suffering from severe No Man’s Paranoia,’ Ushi said, ‘she might have also escaped on her own.’

  Shing glanced sideways at him as he kept pace. ‘No she didn’t. Didn’t you read the pre-mission notes? Level five Paranoia, man. She won’t be able to walk a straight line without tripping.’

  ‘I read them,’ Ushi replied. ‘No Man’s Paranoia doesn’t mean you’re helpless. For an academic genius like Jode, it wouldn’t dull her thinking. It would twist it. You’d still be dealing with a sharp mind, just aimed the wrong way.’

  ‘That’s not how Tong tells it.’

  ‘The Aunt isn’t a clinician.’

  Shing stopped walking for half a beat, forcing Ushi to check his stride. ‘And you are? Buddy, she’s convinced phantoms from Chuan Wan Dam are chasing her,’ he said as he resumed walking. ‘The same shit little kids are scared of. If you call that good reasoning, then maybe we’ve gotta check your head for the paranoia as well.’

  The hum of the vents filled the gap between them as they passed around and below the grand staircase.

  ‘Which Kingmaker escorted them through No Man’s?’ Ushi asked.

  Shing glanced at him. ‘So you didn’t read the notes.’

  ‘I just forgot the name.’

  ‘Oh really? Because it was in the notes.’

  ‘Stop fucking around. Either tell me or don’t.’

  Shing exhaled through his nose. ‘Chill out. It was a Legate by the name of Ganchou Miji.’

  Ushi’s shoulders tightened. ‘That’s General Qin Shi’s lapdog. Why’d he send a Legate into No Man’s Land? The Tower usually assigns a tribune, especially for something as routine as checking Chuan Wan Dam. Reading the Ditu isn’t exactly difficult.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Shing lowered his voice as they passed a junction where two Jackets stood watch. ‘Can’t be a coincidence that the moment they reached the dam, water pressure stopped being the main concern. Structural failure was. As in, the whole fucking thing collapsing. A big enough issue that would’ve warranted a Legate coming along.’

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The escort glanced back, then kept walking. They moved past a low arch where the ceiling dipped, pipes sweating condensation that dripped onto the dark tiled floor.

  Shing continued as he lowered his voice a tone. ‘According to Tong’s report, Dr Chinh and his team figured out the big problem within the first five hours. Pressure had increased upstream, from the other side of the dam. The dam walls were bulging forward, already struggling under the added weight. Failsafe mechanisms were destroyed by massive rodents. That’s why the water pressure had fallen for us in Kowloon—’

  ‘If the dam breaks, the tunnels would lead the waters straight to Kowloon.’

  ‘Can you let me finish without interrupting?’

  Silence. They passed a pair of Black Jackets posted at a corner, boots planted wide, eyes following them until they were out of sight.

  ‘Yes, it would flood the entire underground,’ Shing continued. ‘But you’re forgetting the crucial question here. How did Qin Shi know not to send some random tribune, but his personal legate instead? Did he know something Tong didn’t? It feels too convenient.’

  ‘Do we know when the dam may break? I think that’s the crucial question here, not whatever Qin Shi’s up to.’ They turned a corner, lights flickering briefly as they passed beneath rusted panels.

  ‘Dr Chinh concluded that Kowloon could be inundated with water within our lifetimes. Total dam failure, any moment,’ Shing said. ‘But the rest of his team reached very different conclusions.’

  ‘The brief mentioned his entire team despised him,’ Ushi said.

  ‘Not at first,’ Shing replied. ‘All ten went in as budding colleagues. By the end, though, they were tearing each other apart. Jode led the opposition against his wild results. She believed the dam’s collapse was centuries away. Four hundred annui-cycles, maybe more. The others sided with her optimism and chastised Chinh.’

  ‘No one agreed with their lead researcher?’ Ushi asked. ‘Aren’t these Kam Shan’s best scientists?’

  Shing gave a dry exhale. ‘We don’t have the full picture. Something happened between them. By the last few cycles in No Man’s Land, the paranoia had started seeping in. You read what happened to Jode on their final cycle, right?’

  ‘I never quite understood that part,’ Ushi said. ‘It sounds too random. She just dropped everything and ran straight out of the camp?’

  ‘If you ask me, it was just a manic episode,’ Shing replied. ‘The Legate found her later and carried her back unconscious. By the time she came round, she was already in stage five paranoia.’

  A distant clank rang out somewhere in the base, followed by the hiss of steam.

  ‘Didn’t he warn them not to ever leave their camp’s illumination?’ Ushi said as he looked back for the source of the sound.

  ‘Obviously he would’ve,’ Shing said. ‘My guess is that she already had accelerated paranoia that the others were oblivious to. After Jode’s breakdown, the expedition was terminated.’

  They walked up some stairs that led them to one of the verandah’s overlooking the empty lobby they walked through earlier. Power conduits ran exposed along the wall as they passed numerous Jackets and closed doors.

  ‘The Yang managed to get to Chinh only six cycles after they returned to Kowloon,’ Ushi said grimly. ‘I don’t know how they managed to dump his corpse in the middle of a Zhaisheng construction site without being seen.’

  ‘I was there, you don’t have to remind me.’

  They reached another guarded doorway, the Jackets there shifting aside just enough to let them through.

  ‘Even for the Yang, these moves feel too bold.’

  ‘Nah, this shits on-brand for them,’ Shing said.

  Ushi shrugged. ‘If the Yang took Chinh, questioned him, and he still ended up dead… Then he probably never gave them what they wanted.’ He glanced down the corridor as he continued. ‘They want something the researchers know. Which explains why they’re moving on to the rest of the expedition team. Jode must be the Yangs’ second attempt with whatever they wanted with Chinh.’ His voice dropped. ‘And if she meets the same end as him, there are six more researchers to try again with. As long as they have that inside Black Jacket helping them.’

  Shing glanced at him, jaw tensed as he listened.

  ‘What’s Yutai’s take on all this?’ Ushi asked.

  ‘He considered Chinh going to the Yang willingly, since no one else believed him about the dam collapsing at any moment.’

  ‘I see his point,’ Ushi said. ‘They’d believe him straight away. Chinh claiming the dam could destroy Kowloon in the near term fits Yang ideology perfectly. Nothing would drive the exodus they want faster than convincing people a flood is coming. But then… Why kill him? Dr Chinh would be an indispensable ally to their cause.’

  ‘What if Chinh wanted to fix the dam?’ Shing said. ‘He was an engineer. That’s how he thought. He might have even known how to do it. The surface, Dong’s lost prophecy, all of that shit would’ve meant nothing to him. If the Yang tried to use him for their own agenda, he could’ve pushed back.’

  ‘I guess we’ll have to keep digging to find out.’

  ‘Or start practising our swimming before the next few annui-cycles are up,’ Shing replied.

  They stopped before a sealed door, two Black Jackets posted on either side of it. Their escort gave them a short nod, then turned and headed back the way they had come. One of the guards stepped forward and pressed a control on the wall.

  Shing and Ushi waited in silence, standing shoulder to shoulder before the door, hands clasped behind their backs.

  The door slid open with a soft hiss. Shing and Ushi stepped inside, and it sealed behind them.

  The room was dim, lit only by strips of light tracing the edges of wall displays and the desk at its centre. The floor was polished blackwood, glossy enough to catch their reflections as they moved forward. The air was cool and dry, carrying the faint trace of the Aunt’s sweet perfume that Shing remembered from his first visit.

  The walls were lined with carefully curated artefacts. Shing noticed that all of it was West Kowlooni in origin. Small stone statues. Compact projectors casting looping dioramas of old groundscrapers. Shelves of vintage Dongist paraphernalia sealed behind glass. Between them hung ornate daggers, some long enough to pass for short swords.

  On the right was a glass panel, behind which a deep blue aquarium glowed softly, colourful fish drifting lazily through the water.

  At the centre of the room, behind a broad, orderly desk, sat Aunt Tong Feng. Her chair was reclined, turned away from the door.

  Above her, set into the ceiling behind a domed pane of glass, a vast display glowed dimly.

  She looked to be staring at a navy-blue thermal map, with clusters of heat signatures drifting back and forth across the screen, splotches of red and orange reflecting across the dark floorboards below.

  What’s she watching?

  The Aunt’s chair swiveled to face them.

  ‘My,’ she said as her voice echoed lightly in the room. ‘Who do we have here?’

  Her gaze settled on Shing first, then slid to the unfamiliar figure beside him. She leaned forward, and a soft white glow from the desk lit her face from below. In the low light, Shing caught the familiar details. High cheekbones. Dark, steady eyes. Hair slicked back into a tight bun, catching the reflected colours of the heat-map above like polished obsidian.

  ‘Shing,’ she said. ‘And where is Yutai?’

  ‘At the Tower,’ Shing replied, bowing slightly.

  ‘That’s a shame.’ Her lips curved. ‘He was easy on the eyes. Carried himself like he knew it, too. Most good Kingmakers do.’ Her attention shifted back to Ushi, lingering. ‘But who’s this you’ve brought with you? My. You’re a large one. Southern, I’d guess.’

  Age still hadn’t touched her. Perhaps a fine line at the corners of her eyes. A single crease between her brows. Everything else was sharp. Composed. Unmistakably the formidable Tong that Shing remembered. Over a hundred years old and still wearing the body of a woman in her thirties. Shing’s gaze slid down to her bust, where her cheongsam was cut close to her frame, dark fabric threaded with just enough gold to catch the light at certain angles.

  ‘I’m Praefect Ushi,’ he said, bowing. ‘We’re here to investigate Dr Jode’s disappearance.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘You’re both just in time.’

  She lifted two fingers and curled them towards herself. ‘Come closer.’

  Shing and Ushi exchanged a brief glance and stepped up close to the desk.

  ‘No, not there,’ Tong added. ‘Come round back. Sit beside me on the desk. I want you to watch something.’

  Ushi hesitated, looking to Shing as if waiting for instruction. Shing only shrugged and moved first, circling the left side of the desk without ceremony. Ushi followed more carefully on the right.

  They took their places on either side of her. Shing perched himself on the edge of the desk as told, leaning back on his hands, relaxed. To the Aunt’s right, Ushi only leaned against the desk’s edge, arms crossed and shoulders stiff, looking up at the screen with Shing.

  Tong swivelled her chair back and reclined it, crossing her legs as she settled in. Aligned with her, all three of them looked up at the glowing screen above.

  In the quiet, Shing studied the heat-map closely, trying to work out what she was focusing on. The way they moved felt oddly familiar. The clustering, the spacing, the flow. Shing read motion the way others read faces. As one of the Tower’s best marksmen, if a pattern felt familiar, it was because his eyes had seen it before.

  ‘I watch everything that happens in my house,’ Tong said. ‘I hear about every deal made in Kam Shan. Very little escapes my eyes and ears.’

  Shing’s attention fixed on one heat signature near the front of the map. It stood apart from the rest, almost stationary. The other hundred or so signatures were oriented towards it, their movement subtly shaped around that single point.

  Wait. I know what we’re looking at, Shing realised.

  ‘But when something is taken from under my nose,’ Tong continued, ‘it isn’t the theft that troubles me.’ Her voice remained even. ‘It is the knowledge that there was a moment I did not see. A variable I failed to account for. An opportunity I convinced myself my enemies would not take. I made that mistake once with Dr Chinh. And even after locking down his colleagues, even after doing everything I could to protect them from the Yang, I still lost Dr Jode.’

  Shing’s eyes flicked to her hand as she slid a control along the armrest. Music started playing. A familiar electronic bass. So we really are looking at the club.

  The track bled into another trending hit, and for a moment the music was swallowed by whooping and cheers from the crowd.

  ‘I built Gehinnom to be loud,’ she said. ‘Noise hides intention, and alcohol loosens tongues. Men become careless very quickly. When they think they’re unseen, they grow comfortable enough to show you who they really are.’ Her eyes remained on the screen. ‘I made sure Gehinnom brought out the worst in them. And I made sure everyone feels safe doing it.’

  Shing glanced at her from the corner of his eye. Pfft. Haven’t met the right man yet, he thought.

  ‘Your guard mentioned Gehinnom’s been getting quite popular lately,’ Ushi said. ‘Is there a reason?’

  Then she moved. Sitting upright, she lifted a slim laser pointer from the armrest and aimed it at one of the orange heat signatures on the display.

  ‘Watch that one,’ she said.

  The person seemingly stepped away from the centre of the dance floor and approached the bar. Shing tracked the figure ordering a drink. He watched the hand take the glass. He never saw it rise to the mouth.

  ‘That’s the fourth time tonight Sir Tuanmin has left the floor to buy a drink,’ Tong said evenly. ‘And he still hasn’t taken a single sip. He’s done the same thing at every Gehinnom event since Jode’s disappearance. People don’t behave that way in a club.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Ushi asked.

  ‘Someone in my house helped Dr Jode escape,’ Tong said. ‘That same Black Jacket still operates here. If they are working with the Yang, then they need a way to communicate with them.’ She tapped the armrest lightly. ‘All digital traffic in and out of my den has been locked down. I’ve left them only one option: physical contact.’

  She let the heat-map drift as she spoke, Shing seeing its details reflect off the Aunt’s large eyes.

  ‘That is why I’ve kept Gehinnom so busy lately,’ Tong said. ‘Every party draws outsiders close enough to my den. A Yang contact will keep coming back until the handoff is made.’

  ‘Handoff?’ Shing said.

  She glanced sideways at Shing, who quickly looked back up at the screen.

  ‘The Black Jacket who helped Jode escape is still holding her somewhere. I am certain of that. The Yang have not collected her yet.’ Her tone did not change. ‘So I invited Kam Shan’s nobility to Gehinnom. That narrows the field since I know every Western elite. The Yang will be someone who belongs here without question.’

  So that’s why she’s been throwing so many parties, Shing realised. She’s turned Gehinnom into her personal honey-pot operation.

  ‘I’ve been crossing off suspects since the first party,’ Tong continued. ‘Three remain. Sir Tuanmin is one of them. If I catch the Yang contact, I’ll know which of my Black Jackets betrayed me and helped Jode escape.’

  ‘Who are the other two?’ Shing asked.

  Tong did not answer straight away. Her gaze drifted back to the screen as she raised her laser pointer and selected another red-orange blip.

  ‘The second is a man named Mr Yulio,’ she said at last. ‘Western old money. Comes alone. Always arrives early, before the floor fills and is among the last to leave.’ A faint pause. ‘He positions himself where he can see the main entrance, then waits. He barely moves unless a Black Jacket passes through his line of sight. Then, he moves out of their way. Odd.’

  The Aunt pointed at a third person on the screen with her laser pointer.

  ‘The third is a woman. Younger. Newer wealth. She drinks, dances, laughs. She plays the part well.’ Tong’s mouth tightened just a fraction. ‘Only thing she doesn’t realise isn’t normal is that every time, she goes to check if the exit doors are open. At least five or six times. She doesn’t leave, just walks up to the door, confirms that it’s still unlocked, and returns to the floor.’

  She glanced at Shing, who briefly glanced back. ‘I know you two know that I’m right about this.’ She then looked at Ushi to her right. ‘What do you two think? Who is the Yang contact?’

  Shing studied all three heat signatures in turn.

  The first man remained at the bar, almost motionless, his drink still in hand.

  The second man stayed near the centre of the floor. He moved often, but never aimlessly. Each shift placed him just out of the path of passing Black Jackets.

  And just as Tong mentioned, the third woman moved towards the main doors to check if it was still unlocked, took a shot from the bar, and kept dancing.

  He kept his eyes on the screen, thinking about what the Aunt said about the second man’s movements. Alone, comes in early, leaves late. Doesn’t like being seen by the Black Jackets…

  A new heat signature walked through the backdoor pushed into the dense mass of bodies towards the front doors. Shing suspected it was the Black Jacket who escorted them to the Aunt, returning to his post outside.

  Let’s see how you make our suspect react, he thought.

  Just as the Aunt had mentioned, as the Black Jacket cut into the man’s line of sight, he pivoted away and slipped behind a group of dancers. But there was something strange. The man didn’t slip away as quickly as he could. There was a moment where he let himself be seen by the Black Jacket guard, walking directly in front, before disappearing behind dancers.

  If he’s trying to keep out of the guard’s sight, he’s doing a pretty bad job, Shing thought. He’s letting himself be seen by the guard before he disappears.

  A second Black Jacket, posted near the DJ stand, started moving across the floor from the opposite side. Shing leaned in slightly, eyes narrowing.

  As the Black Jacket strode across the floor, he let himself pass through the guard’s field of view for a heartbeat, then slipped out of sight.

  The pattern clicked.

  This man, whoever he was, wasn’t trying to avoid being seen. He was making sure he was seen, just briefly enough to be noticed. For confirmation from someone?

  ‘The second man,’ Shing said, calm and certain. ‘It’s him.’

  Tong turned the audio down and glanced at Shing, then back at the screen, raising her laser pointer to one of the heat signatures. ‘Him?’

  ‘He’s not here to dance,’ Shing said. ‘He’s waiting for a Black Jacket to recognise something. I don’t know what the signal is. A gesture. A look. A dance step. But he’s making it seem like he’s dodging patrols when he’s doing the opposite. He’s stepping into their sightline for a moment, then disappearing.’

  The Aunt nodded once. ‘Good.’

  She turned back to her desk, lifted her communicator, and brushed a control on the armrest before pressing the device to her ear.

  ‘Shou,’ she said. ‘I’m marking him on your optics. Centre floor. Go. Now.’

  She swivelled back and reclined, eyes on the screen.

  Shou? Right. The Iridium-fisted terror, Shou Feng.

  Shing’s focus snapped upward.

  Everything felt still in the room, but the screen was as energetic as ever. Bodies danced, unaware of what was coming.

  Then, from the back door behind the DJ stage, a new heat signature entered.

  It burned hotter than anything else on the map. Wider. Brighter. Denser. So intense it looked like several bodies occupying the same human.

  It advanced slowly onto the floor. Heat signatures parted as it moved, clearing a path without touching it.

  It stopped beside the man Shing had identified.

  The man turned.

  Shing’s eyes widened as he saw a thick arm shoot out into view. A hand clamped over the nobleman’s face. In the next moment the large heat signature dragged the smaller one towards the back, bodies nearby taking three steps back from his path.

  Both heat signatures vanished from the edge of the screen.

  The Aunt switched off the screen. The room fell into shadow, lit only by the soft blue glow of the aquarium along the wall.

  Tong stood. ‘Soon I’ll know which one of mine helped Jode escape.’ Her gaze lingered on the dark screen for a beat. Then she looked back at them. ‘In the meantime, you two need to eat. Come. With me.’

  She stepped out from behind the desk and moved towards the door. Before she reached it, Shing’s holocommunicator on his left wrist buzzed hard against his skin.

  Tong paused. Ushi did too.

  Shing glanced at the mini hologram projecting Yue characters. ‘It’s Tribune Cheng,’ he said.

  Ushi frowned. ‘Aren’t they meant to be in the middle of an assignment in Man Ting?’

  Shing shrugged and answered. ‘Sir?’

  Exhausted breathing filled the line.

  ‘Shing,’ Cheng said. ‘Are you busy?’

  ‘We’re in Fengcheng, at the den. What’s the matter?’

  A short pause. ‘Is Ushi with you?’

  Shing’s eyes flicked to him. ‘He is.’

  ‘I need both of you back at the Tower. Now. Yutai’s been taken.’

  Shing went still. Beside him, Ushi’s posture hardened.

  ‘Taken?’ Shing repeated.

  ‘The Rioters arrested him,’ Cheng said. ‘He and Tao went into their fort without telling anyone. Our Rioter contacts attacked us too. We’ve terminated the mission. Drop everything. We need to get Yutai back.’

  ‘Understood,’ Shing said. ‘We’re on our way.’

  Ushi stared at him, stunned, jaw slack, brows drawn tight.

  Shing didn’t bother hiding his look of contempt at him.

  Your fucking people.

  Anger simmering, Shing walked towards the door.