First of all, thank you for the reviews.
Guhh, this chapter took a lot more time than I expected. When I had everything in my head it seemed quite easy to explain, but to actually write it down is a lot harder. I'm afraid the next chapter will also take me a lot of time. But the one after that will be finished really fast, because most of it has already been written.
Anyway…
Nine: Lex starts a habitBetween the age of fifteen and twenty-one, Lex had tried out every illegal substance, both chemical and herbal he'd managed to get his hands on—and he'd had an unusually broad selection to choose from. Notoriety brought him to places where he could get anything he wanted. Wealth bought him the actual stuff.
He'd started on weed at Excelsior. Smoking pot is cool when you're fourteen or fifteen years old. Later on, he'd experimented with cocaine. He'd liked cocaine. It was clean. He did heroine once, but disliked skin popping, because it reminded him of doctors. He'd done speed, LSD and xtc, amphetamines (which only instilled in him an irrepressible urge to watch cartoons on TV), mescaline, mushrooms and ketamine. He'd done it with friends, on his own, pure, combined with alcohol, coffee, tea and pancakes; he'd smoked it, drank it, snorted it, swallowed it and very rarely injected it.
Phoenix Fire was unlike anything else he'd ever taken. He could feel it spreading through his body with every pump of his heart, filling his veins with liquid fire. The heat in his body brought sweat to his skin, but simultaneously made the air seem cooler, and that made him shiver. Like when he'd used acid, reality distorted, giving everything a fuzzy, wavery quality, as if he were opening his eyes underwater. At the same time, the Fire heightened his senses, and even though his heart started to beat rapidly, he calmed down, because really, the situation was so clear it wasn't worth panicking over.
He gasped as the cold surface of a stethoscope was pressed against his chest, but strangely enough the next cut Fu Yang made in his chest didn't faze him at all. Perhaps because he could feel the cold of unwarmed steel, but not the pain of damaged flesh.
"It's already got you, hasn't it?" Fu Yang's voice no longer emitted from him as it had done before. He breathed it out in colors, a bit like fog on a wintry night. White, and blue, and vermilion red and scarlet-tinged-with-purple.
"I wouldn't know," Lex said, and was satisfied to hear his voice come out as calm and sure as it would have in his own office in Metropolis.
The other man chuckled. He intently studied the wounds on Lex's torso. "Oh yes," he said softly. "you're gone."
*
Lex frowned. "I beg to differ." His muscles were twitching. He rotated his hands, wishing he could get off the table and move around. The air was trembling around the spare glow bulbs hanging spread out from the ceiling. There were no insects, but nevertheless he could imagine them so clearly he could even hear their wings beat against the glass of the lights.
Only now he had the time and inclination to look around him and study his surroundings. A basement, of some sorts. The more dramatically inclined might call it a dungeon. It was quite large, but low; the ceiling was little more than a foot above Fu Yang's head. The walls were gray and smooth, concrete, perhaps. In one corner was a Dixie toilet.
He blinked.
Yes, it was definitely a Dixie toilet. How quaint. Why would anyone want to place a portable toilet into his basement?
For people like you, Lionel whispered in his head. For prisoners like you.
Something on his stomach tickled, and when he drew his gaze away from the pulsing shadows, he found Fu Yang cutting a deep, horizontal gash across his breast bone, deep enough to scrape over the bone itself. He felt the graze of the knife, but not the pain. The tickle of blood running down his belly, however, was unbearable.
"I really wish you wouldn't do that," he said pleasantly.
"All for the better cause," Fu Yang returned, just as friendly. He dabbed at the blood with a tissue, and Lex lost interest in his chest the moment the itching stopped.
He shivered. Something huge was breathing all around him, but the reason he shivered was cold alone.
*
Fu Yang was writing things down in his little booklet again. "What are you doing?"
"I am noting the time of injection, and the effects of the drug," Fu Yang answered readily.
"Instantaneous," Lex muttered, and again the other man laughed.
"Not quite," he said.
"What the hell are you talking about."
The other man made another notation. "It seems like you're coming out of it again." He picked up a mug and took a sip. Lex smelled the coffee from where he was lying and frowned. He had no recollection of Fu Yang having that mug before. Disquiet nagged at him, but he was still too calm to pay it any mind.
"Already?" he asked, fishing for as many details as he could. "it's not much of a rush, then, is it? How long till it started to work? About a minute? And now it's…what? A quarter of an hour later? Not much of a trip, if you ask me."
Fu Yang smiled. "Distorted sense of time," he said aloud, and wrote it down. He looked up from his booklet. "I injected you at precisely ten fifteen. It is now…" he checked his watch, "One twenty-two."
"What?"
"Which means that you react to it only slightly faster than my usual subjects. Wonderful! That means I can give you a bigger dose next time." He took another sip of coffee, picked up his stethoscope and listened to Lex's heart again. Lex could have told him the speed of its beating without any measuring device: it was on the precise beat of Mein Hartz Brennt. "Acceptable," Fu Yang muttered. "Fast, but steady." He removed the bell from Lex's chest, clacking his tongue when it stuck in a half-congealed smudge of blood.
"I've been out for over three hours?" Lex said incredulously. "That's insane. I don't believe you. There's no way I'd not notice that much time passing."
"Believe what you want." He finished his coffee, stretched. "You will make an admirable test subject."
"You will get nothing from me."
"I already have what I wanted to get from you today," the scientist answered glibly. "Now, do you need to use a toilet?"
"Excuse me?"
"If you do, I'll untie you, and you can do whatever you need in there," he gestured at the Dixie. "I'm going to leave you for quite a few hours. Your body needs to recuperate, and, to be honest, so do I." He smiled. "It's been a tiring night."
"Yes," said Lex, resolved to dig his thumbs into Fu Yang's eyes the moment he was free. He still felt no pain whatsoever, but no one, NO ONE could expect him to just accept this Mengele clone filleting him like a baked sole.
"Very well," the man said. He undid the strap on Lex's right wrist, took a quick step back and picked up a tranquilizer pistol. "You can untie the other straps yourself."
Damn it.
There might be another chance.
Lex pulled at the fastening on his left wrist, finding it absurdly difficult to undo it. When he sat up to free his legs the whole world cantered, and he almost dropped off the table.
"Careful!" Fu Yang cautioned with a chuckle that had the color and smell of overripe bananas. "I'm not going to come within ten feet of you, so if you fall, you'll have to pick yourself up. There you go. A bit unstable still, ah? That should pass in a few hours. You'll sleep it off. Now," he continued when Lex had regained his footing, "as you can see, there's a lock on the outside of the toilet. If you do something I perceive in any way threatening, I will shoot you and lock you up in there. So I suggest you do what you have to do and do it as quickly as possible, because, like I said, I'm tired and I want to go to bed. And it will take a full day before I'll be able to return here, so…" He trailed off.
Seething, Lex entered the Dixie, did what he had to do but what he hadn't planned doing at all (his bodily functions having nothing to do with popping out Fu Yang's eyes, although admittedly a lot with pissing into his empty eye sockets), and came out again, still swaying, blinking at the throbbing lights. It felt wonderful to be able to move again. His muscles were thrumming like the strings of an electric guitar, making him twitch and shiver even as they threw him off balance.
"Very good," his warden praised mockingly. "I knew you'd be too smart to try anything. Now, please lie down again."
"No," said Lex. During his training to handle kidnappers, he had been advised to test the resolve of the abductor.
Fu Yang shrugged. "Fine," he said, and shot him.
*
When Lex woke up again, the basement was dark but for one small light near the door at the top of a short stairway, and his chest was screaming bloody murder. Most of the cuts had already healed, but the deep ones, like the one Fu Yang had made across his sternum, and the characters that made up his name on his belly, were sending pulses of agony through his entire body every time his heart thudded in his chest.
The other injuries he had forgotten all about, like his elbow and his ribs, had joined the chorus; the combination of stings, burns and aches made him gasp.
But worst was his heartbeat.
It HURT.
He had never felt like this before, not even after he'd looked up from seven lines of red-stained coke to find himself bleeding from both nostrils. It was as if his ribcage had been replaced by a thin case of glass, and his heart was a hammer intent on shattering it to bits.
When he'd been angry, or frightened, he'd had his heart beating in his throat, or his pulse pounding in his ears, but this was something entirely different again. Thud, thud, thud, it went, and his blood flowed inside his body like a tidal wave.
Fucking hell! What is this? What's happening to me? His breath panted out with every beat, almost as if it were pushed out of his lungs by the force of his heartbeat. He hardly had time to gasp it back in, let alone scream like he'd intended to do. Yes, screaming would be a good idea. Make people notice him.
He had no air to scream. All he could do was whine with pain and growing panic, and finally pass out with relief and exhaustion when his heart finally stopped assaulting his insides and resumed its normal rhythm.
*
When Chloe woke up it was dark.
No. Maybe it was dark, but she couldn't be sure, because her eyes were still closed. When she tried to lift her eyelids, it was like trying to fold steel; they wouldn't budge.
Open! She cried silently, panicking immediately. Open, god damn it, open! Show me where I am! Open!
Her mind was clear enough, but her body refused to react to her frantic commands, and that scared her shitless. For some reason she didn't think she was in any immediate danger, but what if she was lying on top of James Wong's mutilated body? When her eyes finally popped open, the first thing she did was verify that she was, indeed, lying on a foam rubber mat and not on a pile of corpses.
No, it was a foam rubber mattress.
She heaved a sigh of relief. After that first exhalation, she breathed in deeply several time, feeling her body return to her own command a little more with each helping of oxygen.
It took Lex a few minutes to regain his motor functions, too, she remembered. And Lex heals like a worm. For the moment, she didn't even bother trying to change her position. She studied her surroundings, only blinking her eyes if they lost focus.
She was, as far as she could tell, alone in a square room of about twelve by twelve. The walls were bare, and made of dark stone. No windows. No draft either, at least not where she was lying. The floor was cold, but again, no draft. The room was lit by a spotlight directed at the ceiling, high in a niche just below the ceiling.
Where am I? She wondered. And where is Mister Hua? Did they kill him? I hope to god no.
To her own surprise, she was not terrified. She had been, when those gray men burst in with their guns and their razorblades, but for some reason she was convinced it had not been them who had sliced poor Wong to bits. Why bother with weapons if you have stunning bullets? She'd been hit and out before she could even grasp her mace from her purse.
My purse!
She tentatively lifted one of her hands and, finding it operated more or less according to her will, slowly sat up, leaning her back against the wall. She huddled in her coat, thankful she'd taken the time to pick it up before joining Hua in the car.
Her bag was lying next to her. Huh! She picked it up, opened it. Her fingers, still numb, fumbled with the fastening, but after a few tries she got it open and rummaged inside. Her mace was gone. So was the hotel room key. She felt another flash of relief, this time at the fact that she had put the keys to her house and car in the suitcase to diminish the weight of her purse. They would have taken those keys out as well, she was sure.
What was also in her bag, was her phone.
The hell? She turned it on…and found out why they had left her the cell. She had no reception, not even the tiniest bit. No reach? Oh come on, there must be a provider somewhere. Pushing herself up, she walked around the room on tottering legs, holding on to the wall for support with one hand while raising the cell phone high with her other, hoping to find that one spot of reception.
Nothing. Not even a peep.
She went back to her mat and typed Lex a message that she was ok anyway, but when she tried to send it her phone informed her that it was unable to deliver.
Damn it! Angrily, she threw the Nokia back into her bag and got up again. Her legs were steadier now, if still a little shaky, and she had less trouble keeping her balance. The room had a door, a narrow opening covered by a thick slab of rough wood. On her side, it did not have a handle, only an iron ring. She pulled at it, not really expecting the door to move. She was not disappointed: it didn't even rattle. Pushing did not accomplish anything, either. Neither did kicking, or slapping her palms on the door.
"HEY!" she screamed, hammering her fist on the wood, regardless of any splinters. "HEY! Let me out of here! Is anyone there? Let me out!"
Her voice bounced back to her from the solid wood, but the booming sound of fist-on-wood echoed through the space behind the door. A hallway, she gathered, or maybe a very large, empty room. She gave the door another kick.
"Mister Hua!?" she screamed. "Crystal? Are you there?" And after a moment's consideration, with more hope and even more fear: "Lex?"
Where was Lex? Was he here, too? There was no reason for him to be here; after all, he should be safe and sound at the hotel…No. He said he'd come to get us. Did he run into those gray men as well? Is he ok? Lex wasn't the kind of person to put up his hands and accept defeat. He was more like Wong, she supposed, someone who fought when he should surrender, someone who smiled, disdainfully, in the face of hesitation to kill…
"LEX!" She slammed her hand down. "Lex, are you here? Are you ok?"
She jumped back when the door suddenly boomed back at her; someone had hit it from the other side. "Bi shang zuǐ bā!" a voice snarled, muffled by the wood between them. For a moment, she was frozen, then her anger spiked and she kicked the door so hard it actually quivered.
"Let me OUT! Tell me what you want with me and let me OUT!"
More angry yapping from the other side. She drowned it out by pounding on the wood, producing a sound not unlike a student band's base drum at the Talon. When the door burst open and a squat, gray-clothed man with a furious red face appeared in the doorway, ready to shout her into submission, Chloe shrieked so menacingly he blanched and threw the door closed again.
After that, there was silence, first stupefied, then resigned.
A few times, she thought she heard an answering knock further down the hallway, but she couldn't be sure. She tried the door a few more times, but it was and remained locked, and nothing she did could get it open. It didn't even have a key hole. Probably latched from the outside.
A dungeon.
Chloe fell back onto her mat, suddenly exhausted. She still wasn't frightened, at least not for herself, but was Crystal alright? And Lex? Would he appear in the early morning hours to set her free with that small superior smirk twisting his mouth, or was he locked up elsewhere in this dungeon?
What did they want with her, anyway? "I can't even understand them." Huh, that was a laugh. How long had she been gone anyway? She'd gazed at her watch several times, not even registering the time, but now she looked and saw that it was ten to one. Her phone, which showed the date, informed her that she'd been out for about four hours, not sixteen, or longer. Night, then.
Her shouting had made her thirsty. She didn't have any water, and she didn't know how to ask for it. The cell wasn't freezing, but neither was it warm, and she felt very much alone. Huddled in her coat, clutching her bag in her arms, Chloe sat in the half-dark, trying of a way to get out, until, after another two hours of fretting, she fell into an uneasy slumber.
*
"Good evening."
Lex groaned at the sound of Fu Yang's voice, then louder at the blinding light that pierced his eyelids. He twisted on the gurney, completely stiff after sleeping on his back in the same position, and stifled another moan as the movement pulled on the cut on his chest. His ribs were a bit better, his heart was quiet and regular as it should be, but his stomach felt tender, as if he'd drank too much the previous night.
"How are you feeling?" Fu Yang sounded genuinely interested.
Of course he was. "Peachy," he croaked, and managed a passable glare. Unfortunately, it slid off the bastard's jovial face like water from a Ferrari window.
"Good! Then we can get started straight away." He took out a small, rectangular box from his pocket, opened it, showed Lex a prepared syringe. "I did some adjusting earlier today," he said conversationally. "Let's see…Your color is good, nice and pink. Some shading under the eyes, but that's probably because of the after effects of the tranquilizer. Did you get any sleep?"
Lex kept silent.
Fu Yang's smile grew colder. He put down the needle, instead picked up his scalpel. "We can do this the easy way," he said, "or the hard way. The easy way means you tell me what I want to know, truthfully. The hard way I cut you open and read the answers I desire from your healing factor and your blood. I don't need to stick to your chest. You have other places I can cut without endangering your life. More painful places. I can use saltwater instead of iodine to cleanse your wounds."
Lex did not bother to respond. Threats he could deal with, even if he didn't relish the prospect of hurting more than he already did. But the threat itself didn't intimidate him.
Fu Yang, feeling his utter contempt, raised his eyebrows, and then smiled again.
"Interesting," he murmured. He stared at the crisscrossing scars on his chest, picked at a scab and watched a small drop of blood seep from below the tissue. He clacked his tongue. "Which reminds me. I need to take another sample."
"Another?" Lex asked, then bit his tongue. His throat was parched. Talking physically hurt. His stomach grumbled, not entirely sure it could actually deal with food but complaining at its absense.
"Of course!" The combination of the knife and that cheerful, enthusiastic grin was so…so…wrong. "I took some blood when they brought you in. That's the blood I used to test my new mixture on," he nodded at the needle on the table. "But you were still affected by the tranq, so I'd better take a new sample now." He proceeded to do so, chuckling delightedly when he found that the tiny wound of the injection yesterday had already healed.
"You might be interested to know," he said as he dropped the vial with Lex's blood into his shirt pocket, "that you seem to heal faster during the preliminary stages of Phoenix Fire intoxication."
"How fascinating."
"Isn't it?" He picked up the dose again. "Now, what I am wondering is: if I up the dose, will your healing speed up as well? Or will it collapse? Well. Only one way to find out."
Lex couldn't help struggling, but he might as well hadn't bothered.
"There, there," soothed Fu Yang, gently patting his shoulder. "You should feel better in a few minutes. Ah. I brought you some water. You must be thirsty. People usually are after being sedated. Here you go, just sip from the straw." He pressed a straw against Lex's lips, and after a moment of consideration he tongued it inside and sucked. Refusing water would be foolish—all he'd accomplish was that he'd grow weaker, and maybe not even that, because if Fu Yang simply pinched his nose closed he'd be able to pour it down his throat. Lex wasn't foolish, and unfortunately, neither was his captor.
He drank the water. It made the fish hooks in his throat disappear, but hit his empty stomach like ice. He began to shiver again. Or maybe that was the Phoenix Fire, he didn't know.
"There you go," Fu Yang repeated, and softly tugged at the beaker to make Lex release the straw. "I'll give you some Gatorade later. You may have noticed that I haven't brought you any food, but food might alter your blood work, and I want to have it as pure as possible for my tests."
*
"That is nonsense," Lex said disdainfully. His mind insisted he'd replied only a fraction of a second after Fu Yang's preposterous claim, but the other man looked up from what looked like a newspaper as if he'd been engrossed in it for some time, and Lex's words drew him out again.
Fu Yang smiled. He put his newspaper aside. "Yes, it is. But I figured that the less that goes in, the less that needs to come out, and since I don't want you to be uncomfortable in my absence, you have to agree with me on that account."
"Fuck you," said Lex calmly. The lights had begun attracting insects again; their wings buzzed and fluttered near the ceiling. "You don't give a damn about my convenience."
"A larger dose works faster," the other man determined, disregarding the subject of food. He had pulled out his note book again.
"No, it doesn't. I'm not…" He was stunned to silence as Fu Yang slashed his scalpel across his chest again. No pain, just the warmth of blood welling up.
"Yes," Fu Yang said smugly, "you are. I can see it in your eyes: your pupils are dilated. If I concentrate, I can even hear it in your voice: your tone is lower, your voice slower when you're under influence. And did this hurt?"
"No," Lex whispered, appalled.
"Well then. Let's see if you heal faster, shall we?"
*
"I have been thinking," Lex drawled while he watched the letters of his words drift apart in the air. They joined the many-winged butterflies that crowded around the light bulbs.
"Yes? About what?" At some point Fu Yang must have left and returned, because he was standing at the small steel table, dripping a light green fluid into an Erlenmeyer with an eyedropper. Another flask was heating over a Bunsen burner. The ghost of a purple flower haunted the steam coiling from the flask. It wailed its grief in a tiny, trilling cry.
"About the situation here. It doesn't make sense."
"What doesn't make sense?"
"You know what I mean," Lex said, annoyed.
"Not really," said Fu Yang, "since I don't know what you know and what you don't know."
"Then tell me what I don't know."
"Let me make you a better offer." He checked on one of the still-open cuts, wrote a number in his book. "You tell me what you know, or think you know, and I'll tell you whether you're right or wrong."
"Why?" asked Lex, immediately on guard. "Why tell me anything?"
"You're asking, aren't you? I am interested in what you've made of the facts. So if you won't indulge yourself, indulge me, and I'll let you walk around for a bit as a reward. What do you think of that?"
Lex considered the offer for a while. Even though the worst of his muscle spasms had already passed, he was still aching to move, if only to relief his poor back. And, if he were up and about, he might, just might, get another chance to sink his teeth into Fu Yang's neck and tear out his throat. Or his balls. Both. Simultaneously, if in any way possible. His hands cramped to fists above his restraints.
"Alright."
"Very well then. Why don't you start with what you know? And please try to remain focused. I can stay only for about another hour, and if you keep fading out you'll have to chew on your own thoughts for the entire day. Have a sip of Gatorade." He transported the straw from the beaker to a bottle of the energy drink. "The sugar will keep you awake."
Lex drank some Gatorade. He felt empty, but not exactly hungry anymore. He had no idea what time it was, or how much time had passed since Fu Yang shot him up when he'd come back. If I still had hair, I could have measured time by beard growth. If I had hair, I'd be completely useless to the fucking bastard. God, I wish I didn't heal, was stupid, fat, and looked like Cousin It.
"Mister Ruthor?" Fu Yang snapped his fingers over his face.
Focus. He racked his scattered thoughts together. "You claim there are two groups. Two opposing people. One that wishes the glass factory to be built, the other doesn't."
"Yes."
"But yesterday you told me that the Phoenix gang doesn't want the factory. And the men that attacked us yesterday said they didn't want it. But they weren't of the Phoenix gang."
"No."
"That is the part that makes no sense. If none of the parties wanted the glass factory, why go through the trouble of…of…" He trailed off, losing his train of thought. "Who made Mayor Fengfei disappear? Was he pro or against the Phoenix gang?"
"What do you think?"
"If I had any ideas, I'd have told you," Lex said snappishly.
Fu Yang chuckled a little. "What if I told you the good mayor was completely unaware there was something like the Phoenix gang?"
Lex scoffed. "It wasn't called Phoenix for nothing. I assumed it had to do something with his name."
"His family name, yes. Not him. Although the legend of the Phoenix is very popular around here, and this was the main reason the drug was called that way." He checked his watch, relaxed against the table. The ghost of the flower was dissipating; Lex wondered if that meant that the drug was leaving his system, or that the substance was almost done. "No, our mayor Fengfei was an honorable man—an ambitious man, desirous to ensure his name in the town's history, and his town on the map."
In spite of his own dismal situation, Lex was involved enough with the riddle to feel completely dazzled. "Then…I don't get it. I…just don't understand. Why replace Fengfei if he wasn't against the factory, and let his substitute go ahead with the plans?"
"Because Fengfei's death didn't fit in our plans. Besides, our current Mayor is a Fengfei. Just not THE Fengfei. You see, our good Mayor thought it was a good idea to build a factory—for no other reasons than what I said before: he thought it would put his town on the map, create job opportunities, etcetera. The…other group tried to persuade him it was a bad idea. His brother, and me…tried to convince him otherwise. Fengfei—the original Fengfei—decided to go through with the project. The other group then sabotaged his car, and he crashed in the mountains. Luckily," Fengfei smiled brightly, "we still had his brother."
"So that's why they looked so much alike…"
"Up to the phoenix tattooed on their backs! Not enough, though. So we did some work on his face. It still wasn't enough—as you proved. But it would suffice until the plans for the factory were completed."
"But the other group…" Lex fished for a name, an identity, but didn't get it.
"Wasn't happy with the proceedings. They've been trying to get you and your Sparkling Sources colleagues out of here with their little sabotaging actions." He tittered. "Like a Green Peace dinghy laying siege on a whaler. So desperate to try and regain their former innocence after their lethal attack on the Mayor. I don't think they realized he would actually die."
"They killed Wong," Lex said from between gritted teeth.
"Who? Oh, him. Ah. They didn't move him? That's a pity." He sighed. "Bodies complicate matters. It will be harder to keep the police in check when people are actually found murdered. But he shouldn't have fought. And he shouldn't have been so dreadfully impolite."
Something about the way he said it nudged at Lex's subconscious. And then it came to him so clearly he could hit himself for not seeing it earlier. The way he spoke, his razor. Chloe's exclamation, it all made sense. It DID make sense…even as that didn't make sense at all.
"You killed him. You're one of them. You're not of the Phoenix cartel, you're part of the other group!"
Fu Yang smiled. "Not exactly. I am mainly part of the group that consists of me, and me alone."
"But you're Fengfei's friend…And you work on the drug. But you…It wasn't the Phoenix gang that took Chloe, was it? That was the other group. The temple people."
"Where did you hear that name?" The scientist's expression didn't change, but, his voice sharpened.
"I don't know," Lex said, truthfully. He couldn't remember for the moment. "I must've heard it somewhere. Maybe one of the gray men mentioned it."
"I highly doubt it."
"I can't remember, Fu Yang. Maybe if you stopped injecting chemicals into my arm my brains wouldn't deteriorate quite so much. Explain to me how you can be part of a protest group if you create the drugs for their rivals."
"They must get the means to subdue their agents somewhere, shouldn't they?"
"WHAT?" Lex raised his head in astonishment, then let it fall back as his neck muscles cramped up. "They're USING it?"
"Not them," said Fu Yang. He gazed on his watch again.
"They give it to other people?" No answer. The man was staring at his chest again. Even though that look disturbed him like hell, Lex ignored it for the moment. "They're fighting the Phoenix cartel by giving their drugs to other people? That….that's insane! And what does that make you? A double agent? Surely they can't be that stupid!? I mean, they must know you're producing the damn stuff! We're in…" and then he shut up, because letting the crazy fuck know he actually knew in whose house—or rather basement—they were, was not such a good idea. But still…what the fuck? With every answer he got, he got more confused, and he couldn't blame it on the Fire anymore. What on earth had he stepped into this time?
"If you have an infection," Fu Yang said, "does it heal quickly? Do you ever get infections?"
"No," said Lex, mind reeling. "Not that I know of."
"Let's get some of your wounds dirty, then." He shot Lex one of his disturbing little smiles. "After you've had your walkies. You know the drill. Oh, and if you need to take a leak, I strongly urge you do it now. I'm leaving in about ten minutes."
*
When it was about nine in the morning (according to her phone), a man opened the door, tossed a plastic bottle of water and a wrapped package into the room and barked something at her that might be a question or a curse.
Chloe thought it might be a question, because when she kept silent, he repeated the sentence. She still didn't understand it. Not one word, not after nine days of diligent study of the language. So she shrugged, said, "I don't understand what you're saying," and thought about jumping him.
No. Her mat was too far away from the door. Stupid. The moment the man was gone she got up and sat down next to the door, so she could trip him the next time he came in. Of course, he didn't.
The package contained a cylinder shape of sticky rice with meat inside, wrapped in foil. She'd seen it before; as far as she knew it was called Lumper. She ate and drank without worrying about poison; if they'd wanted to kill her, they'd have done it already. It wasn't exactly her first choice for breakfast, but the rice snack was tasty and salt, and the water tasted better than the finest champagne.
"Now if only I had a cup of coffee."
No coffee. Maybe they wanted to torture her anyway.
Now she was more properly awake, she reinvestigated her cell, and found that there was a hole in the ground in the corner, complete with toilet paper. The hole, about the size of her head, was covered by a wooden lid.
"Well, at least the room is provided with any conveniences a woman could wish for," she thought aloud. "I'm sure I'll find a hair dryer somewhere behind a stone."
Stones.
She ruined a few nails trying to find out if any of the stones were loose. Then she scraped her fingers raw on the door, that wouldn't move either. Finally, she made another round with her cell phone, but the reception hadn't magically improved either.
She sat down again, tired of doing useless things and unable to come up with anything constructive.
Ten minutes later, she was back at the door, kicking at it with all her might—and with her boots, that was quite impressive—trying to get someone to open the door again. But the sound boomed through the entire room and probably through the hall behind it, but no one came to see what she wanted. Again, she thought she heard an answering boom far away, but again, she couldn't be sure.
At last, she dropped back on her mat, tearful with anger.
"Bastards!" she screamed at the door. "Stupid Asian ASSHOLES! What do you WANT with me?" Abduct her, fine. Lock her up, fine. But why didn't they tell her what they wanted with her? Why didn't anyone come to gloat? How was she supposed to know what was going on if nobody told her? Should she be afraid? Or just bored? And how did they expect her to get through the day without anything to do? Even forced labor was preferable to this dreadful tedium.
For more than an hour she ranted and raved, and nothing happened, nothing at all. Finally, she fished her notebook from her purse, dug out a pen, and started writing with furious, jerky movements that sometimes punctured the paper.
I have been imprisoned. This holiday/work trip turns out to be rather disappointing. China sucks. I should have believed Lana and Clark when they told me it wasn't all that cool. It all started yesterday, when L was shot. No, before, I guess, when we went to the cave and the SS manager almost fell down a shaft.
Yes, that was it. Write everything down. Every fact, every tidbit. Maybe it would help her figure out what was going on. If it didn't, at least it would keep her occupied.
L saved him. Later Shan. told L that he thought L had staged the event, that he no longer believed that. After L was shot, Shan. confessed that he suspected sabotage.
Gradually, the worst of her anger disappeared as she concentrated on her memories of the past few days, and on ways to put them to paper. She may be locked up like a stray dog, but she was still a reporter, and it wouldn't do to produce sloppy writing. The facts should be straight and clear.
Feng Lao helped me get Lex back to his room. In retrospect he seemed to appear every time I needed him. Is that a coincidence, or careful orchestration? I'd like to think Feng is on our side, but I am forced to consider the possibility that he has actually been spying on us. His actions might have been a ploy to win our trust. However, even if he was not to be trusted, I cannot believe that he would willingly betray us.
She rested her back against the wall, blew on her cold fingers. She had mittens, but writing in those was impossible. Pulling up her knees, she placed the notebook against her thighs and busily wrote on. Lois would have called it a report. Lois knew shorthand, and used abbreviations like ETA and ASAP. Chloe did not like such words, but as she was writing faster and faster, she put them in as well. Everything to get a better picture of what was going on.
*
Chloe was just getting very tired of not being able to recollect the name of the famous female movie icon with the pretty legs from Germany in the 60s (she had taken a break from writing her memoirs and had started on a half-solved crossword puzzle), when she heard a grating noise and the door opened at a crack.
"Ah, lunch?" she asked with sarcastic cheer. A man in the doorway held up a square package and another bottle of water. She raised her hands in front of her and he carefully pitched them at her, waiting with the bottle until she had put aside the food package.
He said something in Chinese. She thought he might be asking whether she was alright. But since the Chinese didn't really use an upward stress to indicate a question, she wasn't sure.
Note to self: study my Chinese phrases. And didn't I have my quick-dic with me? I should look up what 'Let me out you monkey-fucker' is, and tell him that next time.
"Nihao," she sneered. "I still don't understand you." More chattering in Mandarin. "You know, facts don't change just because you want them to. If that were the case, I wouldn't be here. I still don't speak your language."
The man had the audacity to look frustrated. Apparently he didn't speak a word of English. Tough shit for him; now he knew what it felt like.
She pushed herself up, and immediately he stepped back into the doorway, pulling the door closed.
"No, wait! At least tell me if Crystal's alright. Shanyuang Shu? Mao mei? About my age? Is she here?"
"Mao mei?" the man questioned, apparently hesitating over her accent. Then his eyes widened. "Měi nǚ. Spalklin Sosses."
"Yes!" Chloe cried. "Sparkling Sources! Crystal. Shanyuang Shu. Is she here?" She grabbed her purse, searching for the small dictionary she'd carried around ever since Clark gave it to her.
The man gave her one sharp nod. Then, he backed out of the room and the door slammed back in the lock. Chloe pounded her fist on the wood. "NO!" she cried. "Wait! Don't go away! Damn it, at least tell me if she's here!"
Tell me if Lex is here.
But of course he wasn't. Lex, she hoped, was safe at the hotel, and busy trying to figure out how to get her out.
TBC