[Act Two, Scene One]
When she finally came to, it took a few disorientating moments for Alice to realise that she was conscious again, and that her impaired vision was actually due to the lack of adequate lighting in the room and not because she'd suddenly gone blind. Her head pounded in a particularly excruciating manner, and there was a half-numb, half-throbbing feeling in her arms – arms, as she all-too-painfully discovered when she made a cautious attempt to move them, that were bound and roughly tied behind her back.
Abruptly, the warm surface she was leaning on shifted. Alice gave a shriek of surprise, the sharp sound instantly muffled by the gag over her mouth.
There was an answering and equally incoherent grunt.
Alice jerked, muscles tensing, before coming to the sheepish realisation that the noise, and the corresponding warm surface she was leaning on, was in fact Arthur. The two of them were seated on the floor, tied back-to-back, their hands bound by the same length of rough rope pulled taut over their wrists.
There was a beat of silence. Then, Arthur attempted to speak again, punctuating his words with a nudge of his arms. It took a few more nudges, followed by grunts that grew increasingly more frustrated, before it dawned on her that he wanted them both to stand up.
When Alice had been eight years old, her father had taken her on a holiday to Macau – a way, perhaps, of assuaging his guilt for missing her birthday two years in a row. Her younger self had been awed by the pretty buildings, the spectacular firework displays, and the friendly street performers who were always happy to take a picture with an excited little girl with a gap-toothed grin. But most of all, Alice remembered the dancers and acrobats, who could twist and turn and move so effortlessly in near-impossible ways. They'd made it seem so easy.
Forced now, thirteen years later, to perform a much simpler feat, Alice realised that it was anything but easy – or effortless. Attempting to stand with her hands tied behind her back, bound to another person who was suffering in exactly the same way, only added to her swiftly growing collection of bruises and gave her a whole new appreciation for those Macau acrobats she'd admired as a child. Frustrated, exhausted and a second away from uncharacteristically breaking out a string of colourful (albeit muffled) Cantonese curses, Alice was ready to give up altogether before their trial-and-error efforts finally paid off and she miraculously found herself and Arthur back in an upright position, panting for breath.
Hesitantly, she bumped her fingers into his. 'What now?' she tried to communicate, hoping he had a better plan than she did to extricate them out of this mess. A strict Hong Kong education coupled with the etiquette training her mother had insisted on had pronounced her "accomplished" enough, but Alice suddenly found herself wishing that she'd taken lessons in something a little more useful. She was fairly certain that none of her classes had covered 'what to do in non-hypothetical hostage situations', and her white cotton dress, while appropriately ladylike, wasn't exactly the best storage place for conveniently placed knives. (If Alice, of course, had actually been in the habit of carrying knives in the first place.)
Apparently Arthur did (or something of a sharp and useful persuasion, Alice hoped) as he began to strain their tangled arms towards the left pocket of his pants. A few more awkward movements later saw a triumphant Arthur successfully extracting out a small Swiss army knife from its depths, but not before the back of Alice's hand had most thoroughly familiarised itself with some rather… inappropriate places. Mortified and supremely thankful for the darkness that hid her engine-red cheeks, Alice was quite certain that she'd never be able to look at the back of Arthur's pants the same way again.
It took a few fumbling attempts on Arthur's part, but eventually their bonds were sawed off, and the stubborn ends of the rough-hewn rope blessedly fell to the ground. Alice heaved a sigh of relief. Reaching up with stiff hands, she yanked the wretched gag from her mouth, her muscles screaming with every move.
"Are you hurt?" Arthur's disembodied voice cut smoothly through the darkness. Squinting, Alice could just make out the outline of his straight-backed figure, a few paces from where she stood.
"I'm fine." Her hands stung in a few places where Arthur's blade had nicked by accident, but things could have been much worse, given the circumstances. "How's your head?" she asked, recalling the sickening blow that he'd been dealt.
"I'll live."
Alice blinked, taken aback by the dismissive tone. "Are you… sure?" she tried again.
"Trust me," he replied dryly. "I've had far worse."
Alice frowned. What could the seemingly straight-laced, well-educated, upper-middle class Arthur have done to merit 'far worse'? "What, worse than this?" she couldn't help but ask.
"Never mind," Arthur said quickly, retreating back into more distant tones. He clearly wasn't willing to broach the subject. "I'm fine, honestly."
Alice said nothing, suddenly remembering that for all his charm, Arthur was still very much a stranger to her. An awkward silence descended upon the pair, before Alice decided to do something more constructive than standing around helplessly. Reaching out with hesitant, seeking fingers, she gingerly felt her way around the room in a halfhearted attempt to gain her bearings. Her trembling fingertips traced along the smooth, dusty edges of wooden barrels and chilly glass bottles, stacked side-by-side in orderly rows.
It appeared they were in a wine cellar of some sort.
"Alice," Arthur spoke up again. A few thumps and shuffles could be heard as he slowly picked his way around the room. "Is Cho Jun Xiang your father?"
His abrupt question brought memories of her father's accident rushing back up again. Alice fought an almost crippling rise of panic before the more rational part of her brain ruthlessly tamped it down.
'Worry about Ba Ba later', it told her sternly. 'Focus on getting yourself out now.'
But, oh God, he could be dead…
"Yes." she said, forcing the insidious voice away to answer Arthur's question. "He is."
Is. Present tense.
"He must be important."
"I suppose." Her voice trailed, wondering where this was going. "He's a state official, reasonably popular. There were rumours that the Election Committee wants him as the new Chief Executive, but I haven't being following it as closely as I probably should."
There was a pause as Arthur digested this information. Not for the first time, Alice wished she could tell what he was thinking. The generally impassive Arthur was even more difficult to read when she couldn't see his face.
"Listen," he finally said. "I heard the men talking on the way here, when they'd thought I was still unconscious. Their employer wants access to Cho Jun Xiang. They knew where you'd be. They were simply waiting for the signal that you'd been lured out."
Alice blinked. "Do you mean to say," she said slowly, "that the phone call was the lure?"
"It's likely."
Despite these worrying revelations, Alice hardly dared to allow herself to hope. "So there was no car accident?" she whispered.
Her father was okay. But that meant…
Her eyes widened. "Mr. Wong deceived me."
Alice didn't know what to think.
