Chapter 34 The Past Catches Up
THE PAST CATCHES UP
It is more than a year before you see “Mercy” again, under very different circumstances.
Across the past months, you’ve relentlessly pursued the demolition paperwork for Kowloon Walled City in your day job as Kit Ling.
You also do extensive research on “Mercy” Chan, in your spare time.
There is little enough to find: she came to the city as a war refugee, displayed a knack for talking to ghosts, and now works for a known triad leader.
By night, you hunt through Kowloon’s waterways, taking lives and racking up murders, sowing quiet discord.
Not that it truly justifies your actions, or makes you feel better, but you try to stick to the cruelest and worst of humanity: the human traffickers, the little drug lords, the abusers and known killers.
They are, to your mind, less innocent by far than the soldiers you slaughtered during the war.
The only difference is the context in which society views your actions.
Killing during wartime is heroism; killing during peacetime is murder.
Some of the bodies you keep, though it takes a while to work out how to store them. That’s new for you; storing bodies wasn’t something you had the luxury of doing, during the war. It requires space, and fu talismans of preservation, and proper access.
Kit Ling’s property in Kowloon proves extremely useful, in that regard.
It’s a simple matter to drown her tenant—a drug-addled young woman called Red Bird—and make certain adaptations to its rooms. Chiefly, connecting them to the waterways that run beneath Hong Kong and Kowloon alike, and fitting out a sealed-off underground pumping room as a place to hide spare skins.
You still have a need for some of those identities, even if trying to keep them all straight gets a little tricky at times. Luckily, you don’t need to sleep, and that helps. Some skins you only wear in the day; others only in the night, or at certain times of the week. It all balances out.
In short, though, it’s a lot of work. All of it building carefully, relentlessly, toward that perfect single moment.
And you’re not fully you, after everything you’ve endured; you still flinch at loud bangs, still huddle in barrels when not in a skin.
The world perpetually feels too big, too shocking, after such long years of war and confinement. Still, you manage.
As the date draws near and your plans reach completion, you at last offer up the demolition consultation to Cobra Lily, the self-declared triad queen of her little rotten empire. She takes the bait, as you expected.
Also as expected, she brings along her vaunted second-in-command, Mercy Chan.
An entourage of assistants and security guards flank behind and around you as you approach Cobra Lily. An altogether unimpressive woman of middle age, whose real name is Wong Jing Yi. You’ve seen her birth records, are privy to facts about her history.
Still, you keep your gaze fixed on Cobra Lily’s severe features, unwilling and unready to look at Mercy Chan just yet. Already, the triad queen is balking at your rebukes, your subtle humiliations.
“We are not thugs.” Mercy steps forward mid-conversation, defiant and saucy.
You can no longer ignore her. “The Snakeskins manage crime when your police force does not dare enter Kowloon. We run schools. We look after the elderly. We protect women. Even the girls who work in opium dens. Yes, there are drugs, but you have that, too, out here! As for the ghosts, we have long managed their infestation, without government support. The Walled City is our home, and you do not have the right to destroy it, when you have done nothing to help it!”
“Well-spoken.” You turn toward her, composure tightly gathered. “And who are…”
The words die away as your eyes lock with hers. A torrent of emotions freezes you to the spot and you’re aware of your mouth open, eyes widened despite your best efforts. How desperately you planned for this moment, intending to stare at her coolly—and yet you can’t help being thunderstruck.
Your face. Your own face, looking back at you with eyes that should be yours. Time has knocked your body around the edges, added a little weight to the middle, flicked gray streaks through the hair. But it is you.
The experience is far more intense than the first time, when you merely saw Mei Chi from a distance.
“This is Mercy Chan,” Cobra Lily says. “A trusted aide, and best of my exorcists. It is with her work that we successfully contain the ghost problem in Kowloon.”
“I see.” Your nostrils flare. “Who gave you that scar?”
Stupid to ask. Stupid, stupid, stupid. But you can’t help it; you want to hear what she has to say, even knowing that she can’t possibly remember her past anymore, because she was in your skin far, far too long.
“Huh? Nobody gave it to me.”
“Nonsense,” you retort. Her coy pedantry is grating. “That’s not a birthmark, it’s a scar. How did you get it?”
“Not that it is any of your business, Miss Tsang,” Mercy says, “but I have had this scar for as long as I can remember. A doctor told me it is probably from a lightning strike.”
It is my business, you want to scream. It is literally and entirely my business, you murderous thief!
“What is this rude questioning?” Cobra Lily says. “We are here to—”
“I know why you are here, and I want to be sure your exorcist is a reliable person,” you snap. To Mercy, you say, “What do you mean, as long as I can remember?”
Hasn’t she wondered, all these years? What kind of self-centered, unaware person doesn’t question the huge gap in their memory? The body she inhabits was fully grown when she took it, she must know her childhood is missing.
But your murderer merely says, “I don’t remember my life before 1942. I arrived in Kowloon in the middle of the war, without family or memories.” She adds, “That’s a little before your time, Miss Tsang, unless you are much older than you look.”
You need to get control of yourself, before this conversation spirals off. Remember the plan. Stick to it.
Aloud, you say reluctantly, “A little, yes. I was born in 1945.”
“Then why does it matter? Am I offensive to look at?”
“No. But your face, and that scar, are extremely familiar to me. I could have sworn…” One more time. Give her one more chance to consider. “Are you sure, completely sure, we have not met before?”
“Never that I remember,” Mercy says. “In another life, maybe.”
“In … another life.” A raw pain squeezes your heart.
She truly, really doesn’t remember you in any capacity. Though you knew that intellectually, having it laid out so categorically still burns.
Oddly, the feeling works like an antidote against the raging chaos inside your head. Smile, rally yourself, and straighten up.
“My mistake. You are quite right, I am too young to remember the war years.” Turn your gray-suited form back toward Cobra Lily.
“Please accept my apologies for my confusion, Ms. Wong. As I was saying … your whole entourage cannot come into the building. Perhaps I can suggest a compromise? You are welcome to come to my office, where we can speak in private.”
Eventually, Cobra Lily and Mercy Chan both leave, looking suitably anxious. As they should be, if they knew even half of what you hope to do.
You start the ball rolling.
It’s going to be a busy day, and night.
Under cover of darkness, you infiltrate Cobra Lily’s flat.
That involves breaking in, but this is easy to do.
You have infiltrated Japanese ships, and this is far easier.
One of her enforcers is in the opium den, a not uncommon occurrence.
It’s easy enough to drown him on the premises, in one of the bathing rooms, and take his skin.
Afterward, you walk into triad headquarters, go up to visit Cobra Lily, and give her the same treatment. She puts up a fight, with that sword of hers, but not for long. Her sword does nothing other than prize you out of the man’s skin, and you cheerfully drown her in her own toilet.
Things are easy after that. Put out a few feelers, ask a few questions. Discover that Mercy has gone to visit an old friend or contact. You send some enforcers to frighten her, keep her off-balance. If they capture her, then fine. If not, it doesn’t matter, not yet.
As it happens, they don’t come back, but you don’t really care. All paths lead back to you, whether that’s through the opium den or to the triad directly. Set spies on them, keep tabs.
Those spies alert you when Mercy and her strange friend finally decide to head for the opium den, and you—at last—make your move.
Mercy is captured, of course. You’re prepared in every sense. Her friend escapes, but you don’t care about that. The person who matters is here.
You go to confront your killer.
She is defiant, this one. So bold for someone who is so wrong. Her bemused suffering is pleasing to witness, and when she realizes her time has come, it’s hard not to laugh at the expression of fear on her face.
The woman who used to be Chen Mei Chi lunges away, trying frantically to crawl toward the door. You don’t let her get far.
Catch her.
Hold her.
Drag her to the water barrel, and keep her head beneath the surface. Water burns up her nose, then down into her lungs, like a cold wet fire, and then there is nothing left of her but empty skin.
For a long moment, you contemplate the body left behind. Once, you dreamed of reclaiming your skin, but that prospect holds little allure for you now. Not when you can choose to be an endless succession of young, fresh-faced bodies instead.
No. She wanted your body so damn much, she can have it, for all you care.
Disdainfully, you slam your old body fully into the barrel, still part-filled with water, and tamp down the lid. That brings you satisfaction. A gourd would be safer, but this is a far more poetic justice. Besides, you don’t want her to stay in there forever, not really.
Let her see what it feels like, to be trapped in confined environments. Let her escape in a few months’ or years’ time, and see what destruction you’ve wrought. Let her know and remember, and be too fucking late to do anything about it.
“She dead, then?” the vanguard says, glancing over his shoulder.
You smile. “For now.” Point at the barrel. “Help me carry that, please. We’re going to the basement.”
When her ghost is locked away, you climb to the roof of Cobra Lily’s headquarters building and lie atop the concrete, staring at the tempestuous sky.
It’s very strange, but you’re so calm, and so flat. You thought you’d feel … something? Anything, really. Seeing Mercy had an effect on you. Why hasn’t vengeance done the same?
A tiny voice whispers that maybe what you sought from Mercy was never vengeance in the first place. You push it away, flushed with sudden anger, and sit up. Of course you wanted vengeance. Of course you wanted her suffering. That was the point of it all.
Wasn’t it?
Yet the anguish in your soul has not dissipated. Not a drop of it. You feel the same now as you did a year ago, or thirty years ago, or even at the moment of death: betrayed, adrift, furious, unfulfilled. It doesn’t make sense; this is everything you’ve worked for.
Why can’t you feel something? Aren’t ghosts supposed to disperse, or calm down, once their objectives have been achieved?
Ah, but maybe that’s the problem. You haven’t done everything you set out to do, yet. There is the city to wreak chaos and havoc on, after all.
Get to your feet, and contemplate the situation.
At present, Kit Ling’s body has been found, and reported.
That’s good. A police raid will likely take place, very soon.
With Cobra Lily’s skin, you have prepared a trap for that raid; the gates of Kowloon will be barred shut once enough of them are inside, and your triad enforcers will tear into them.
Once that conflict is well underway, it will be time for you to get to the civic buildings and start freeing ghosts.
Focus on that next step, you decide, and then see how you feel.
Perhaps if you can expend enough rage and hurt on others, that pain which haunts you will finally ease.